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Notes -
Turning to some good news:
Article link
This is a WSJ article about the rise in justified homicides in the US in recent years. Much of it is about "Stand Your Ground Laws." I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of the more lawyer-brained Mottizens on those kind of laws and their proliferation over the past decade or so.
On the culture war angle, this article is maybe the starkest example of "erosion of trust in society" that I've come across. A few of the anecdotes are pretty hair raising. They're cherry picked, I know, but the idea that a kid loses his father over an argument about a a fence and a property line made me sad. The "road range" incident they cover in detail seems like it was unfortunate but when one guy levels a gun at another, there's only one reasonable reaction.
Violence must be tightly controlled for a society to function. This is something that's bone deep in humans. We've developed methods of conflict resolution that fall short of violence for our entire existence as a species. Even within the context of violence, there are various ways of controlling it. Duels and so forth. Even informal ones; basic Bro code dictates that when one guy falls down in a fight, the other one backs off.
But this article hints at the idea that people are zooming past any of that to full lethality. It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike. How should state laws governing violence respond to this? Stand Your Ground is something I generally still support, but my mind could be changed if simple Bad Neigbor fights end up with more orphans.
You know, this reminds me of when Rittenhouse was found innocent, and a forum I no longer frequent was losing their damned minds that it was now "legal to shoot progressives". I wanted to make a snarky reply along the lines of "Worry not, it's rather simple to avoid getting Rittenhoused. First, don't riot. In the event you riot, don't attack an innocent bystander with a gun. In the event you attack an innocent bystander with a gun, and he runs away, don't chase him. In the event you chase him, run away when he stops and points at you. If you follow even these simple steps, you too can avoid getting shot by Kyle Rittenhouse." But before I could say anything I got banned for reacting to people having panic attacks with the "Awesome" button.
I'm reading this article, and every single one reads like a "When keeping it real goes wrong" sketch. Two people get out of their cars, armed, to fight over a parking space? Someone refuses to get off someone else's property with a chainsaw while high on meth? Some drunk lady needs to give some other drunk dude a piece of her mind in a bar parking lot?
You know, I brought this up when talking about a 14 year old carjacker who was killed in DC. Liberals act like the person who shot the congenital felon was the one who decided their life wasn't worth a car. I said it was the carjacker that decided their life wasn't worth a car. And likewise here, these people decided their life isn't worth a parking space, or a few tree limbs, or your wounded pride. If two people are maladjusted enough to go "Fuck it, two men enter, one man leaves" over a parking space, I'm not exactly against it. In every story provided, I'm not unconvinced the world was made a better place by 1 unit, despite the friends and family of the deceased, even admitting the dead had anger issues, grieving the loss of their unhinged husband or son.
Frankly I'm shocked the article wasn't loaded with more inflammatory anecdotes. Like wildly implausible scenarios akin to all the squatters saying "I have a lease" so that the police won't kick them out of the home they obviously broke into. Felons breaking and entering a house, and then claiming "self defense" when the homeowner draws on them, or shit like that.
But on the other hand, some forms of protecting people from the damage they can do to themselves and others in a fit of passion seem to be very popular. We have laws against drugs and gambling, contra any "it is good that druggies slowly poison themselves/compulsive gamblers surrender their money to someone who is more responsible with it" arguments; the state mandates that you were a seatbelt while driving; most people ban assisted suicide, do not recognise consent to major amputations and maimings to the chagrin of cannibals and trans-disabled everywhere; and, indeed, all have largely banned legal duels.
Your line of argument particularly reminds me of ones about gambling. As it happens, I play a lot of gacha video games (F2P games with a significant "lootbox" component, where you can spend in-game currency that can be either very slowly gained from playing or straight up bought with real money on a probability to obtain a character or item). I have never had issues with self-control, and probably spent a grand total of $50 on all such games in my lifetime, only buying small top-ups to signal to the developers that I especially liked what they did in a particular patch now and then; so for me, these are just ridiculously high-production-value live-service games I get to play for free (but where sometimes I can not get access to some content). However, in these games, if you must get an item and RNGesus is not on your side, it is not uncommon to have to blow $2k or more on gacha rolls. A friend, who likewise plays a lot (of the same games, and then some more), has spent more to the tune of $20k, and continues spending heavily.
A while ago, we both entered an argument about whether gacha should be banned, instigated by a third friend (who does not play it, but is very European). I took what is essentially the pro-gun position: the lack of impulse control of some should not be a reason to stop consenting adults from engaging in business transactions, even if there is a probabilistic component, and rejecting even the polite fiction that adult members of society can be trusted with making decisions for themselves and shouldering any consequences leads you down a path whose endpoint can not really be described as liberal democracy anymore, etc. The addict friend, who continues indulging in his addiction and happily spamming me every day about what haul his most recent $500 of paid pulls got him, took the "ban it all" position. At the end of the argument, the two of them expressed what seemed like genuine, if slightly brainrotten, concern that I am out of sheer contrarianness drifting towards becoming a "libertarian trumptard" (their words!).
(On the other side of the divide, drugs? I would wager that "adults who can use drugs responsibly should not have to take restrictions due to irresponsible addicts" is a much more Blue position.)
It's a liberal position that happens to be closer to Blue, and [within Blue] is a holdover from when Blue was the more liberal-friendly Tribe.
Blue still technically espouses this policy but only as an incidental to the race/marginalized angle.
People who are poor in virtue are better off if virtue is redistributed. They're virtue-communists.
People who are rich in virtue are better off if allowed to capture that value. They're virtue-capitalists.
The stereotype that complains about "all these commie rules" are directionally correct, they're just not capable of telling you why.
That is an outstanding way to put it and gave me much food for thought. Thanks for the jolt.
On a personal level I am an advantage player at some types of gambling (mostly poker and sports betting), but have a tendency to tilt when losing at other games (e.g. craps) and have found that online gaming is really bad for me. So I've self-excluded from online gaming platforms, most of which are currently quasi-legal at best in my state anyway. If they ever are legalized fully, that will be a harder decision. It's simply too easy to throw electrons at a website, and I am much less averse to doing so compared to a brick and mortar casino.
All that said, I am still in favor of allowing access to gambling from a freedom perspective, but much less interested in state-sponsored gambling such as lotteries. I could certainly see an argument for restricting advertising similar to what is done for cigarettes. That's probably the easiest practical method at present.
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