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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

here in argentina uber was very illegal for several years and people used the fuck out of it

in the usa heroin and meth are super illegal and people are using the fuck out of them

many 80s pc video games only survive in a playable form because of a very illegal system of organized copyright infringement that removed copy protection mechanisms; people used the fuck out of that too

in the usa gay sex was super illegal until, in many locations, 20 years ago. guess what gay people did

"if it's illegal people just won't use it" is clearly not correct; i think it's what dave chappelle would describe as an extremely white thought

the problem is if the design of the system provides law enforcement a bottleneck they can use for leverage against righteous lawbreakers

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This draws a false dichotomy between "people use X" and "nobody uses X." There's actually a sliding scale of how many people use X. When a thing is illegal, fewer people will use it and the people who do use it will be at risk. If we thing a thing is important and that people should be able to use it, it's bad if that thing is illegal. There's a reason why people fought so hard decriminalize gay sex—not because laws against gay sex made it impossible, but because those laws were nevertheless really bad for gay people.

i don't agree that i subscribe to that dichotomy

i think it is incorrect for precisely the reason you state

All those things are enjoyable and have no legal alternative. A chat application would have.

uber cab is not especially enjoyable, and the legal alternatives (for riders) include taxis and remises (not to mention buses, trains, bicycles, private cars, private motorcycles, and electric scooters; buenos aires is pretty dense and public transport is pretty good)

uber was just better

the legal alternative to pirating games was to buy them, geez

the legal alternative to gay sex was heterosexual sex, which many people actually preferred; possibly you haven't heard, but it's a more popular alternative even today

you're right about heroin and meth though, so, one out of four i guess

Did you forget about alcohol, nicotine, caffeine? Totally legal addictive alternatives.

arguably caffeine and alcohol are even less adequate as a replacement for heroin than a bicycle is as a replacement for uber cab

i mean if the objective is just 'euphoria' (as opposed to avoiding opiate withdrawal or having a 60-hour-long orgy) there are a lot of ways you can get it: hyperventilation, falling in love, roller coasters, exercise, praying, etc., and i thought about saying this, but i think that this really is a pretty weak counterargument to dtech's claim that heroin and meth have no legal alternatives; they're pretty much right about that

Only Uber had an alternative, the rest you either didn't address or are incorrect

> the legal alternative to gay sex was heterosexual sex

Unless you're subscribing to a unscientific "people choose to be gay" philosophy, having sex with a gender you're not attracted to is not at all an alternative.

> the legal alternative to pirating games was to buy them

You mentioned surviving today, currently a lot of those games cannot be bought legally, which is what I meant with no alternative. Back then also a lot of people didn't pirate, and a lot of people who did did so because they had little money. I would count that situation as having no available alternative.

We were discussing a hypothetical chat application which currently are offered for free, so money is not an issue there.

It is fairly easy to argue that people have more gay sex now that gay marriages are legal.

plausibly, and plausibly making private communication illegal would result in less private communication successfully taking place, but it certainly wouldn't result in private communication dwindling to an insignificant activity, which is the most charitable interpretation i could come up with for the obviously absurd claim i was rebutting, 'if it's illegal people just won't use it'

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