- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
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I read the first paragraph of this article and I already think it sucks. If heroin was fully legalized, zero restrictions, we’d be much better off than the current situation we have right now with the war on drugs, fentanyl analogs, and xylazine. Full stop.
Second paragraph:
Heroin distribution and sales would quickly become a huge, multibillion-dollar industry. They would become a significant part of GDP, even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it. Given the increasingly naked corruption of U.S. politics, the heroin industry would be able to purchase massive political influence, enough to block any attempts to limit the harm it does — the harm it knows it does, because heroin industry executives would surely be aware of the damage their products inflict.
This is already happening. Who is this author and why is he so ignorant of the past few decades of opiate problems in the US? There is not a significant fundamental difference between heroin and any other opiate/opioid. I say this as someone who has experimented with many types of them.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article because he’s already demonstrated a head-up-ass perspective.
Paul Krugman is a nobel-prize winning economist who used to have a column in the NY Times. He has a relatively impressive record of predicting terrible things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
And while I certainly don’t want to push back on the difference between heroin and other opium derivatives, it’s worth noting that legally speaking they’re both exactly as illegal when not used as prescribed for the treatment of pain or disease.
It’s not a blog post about heroin or opiates, though, so quibbling over the imperfections of his analogy is kinda missing the point. Please give it another read if you have a few minutes; the analogy is fairly apt, though very depressing as an American.
Removed by mod
He’s deliberately making the point accessible because he’s writing for all levels of readers, including Americans.
He won the nobel prize for economics and was one of the few sane voices during the great recession.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article because he’s already demonstrated a head-up-ass perspective.
You do know that the entire rest of the article never mentions drugs ever again and you’re getting needlessly spun-up about a metaphor for social media and you’re just trolling, right?
No, I’m not trolling. Why would I believe this person to know what they’re talking about in a subject I don’t understand well, when I know they’re wrong about a subject I do understand well?
The person is using heroin as a metaphor for a destructive product that causes harm to its users in order to setup an article about digital privacy. When people use metaphors, we all understand that they’re a rhetorical technique and not an attempt at describing reality.
If someone says that their grandchildren are perfect little angles, you don’t say “well, actually, angels are divine beings who don’t dwell upon this earth Grandma, so your grandchildren are not angels and also you’re so dumb for literally thinking that.” In this scenario, it isn’t the grandmother that is dumb.
You’re getting caught up in the fact that he said to imagine a scenario. You think that the fake scenario he imagined, where US corporations are selling recreational heroin, is not as bad as the current opioid epidemic. That is a completely irrelevant detail because, once again, the article isn’t about drugs.
It’s like you’re saying “this guy is stupid, you can’t put social media in a spoon and melt it over a candle in order to inject it into your arm!”. Sure, I guess you’d be correct, but it would be completely irrelevant and make it look like you can’t navigate basic conversations without pointless digressions about irrelevant details.
The scenario is not imaginary. His analogy sucks. The rest of the article isn’t anything remarkable either. Wow, the current digital media landscape is addictive, and addictive things are bad. Can you believe an industry would monetize addictive things? What an incredible observation, never heard that one before.
Obviously industries would, and given how under-regulated the US markets are, they can do as they please. The remarkable thing is not how industry is behaving though, it’s how the US goverment is behaving, hence America has become a digital narco-state.
If heroin was fully legalized, zero restrictions, we’d be much better off than the current situation we have right now with the war on drugs, fentanyl analogs, and xylazine. Full stop.
If we hadn’t invaded Afghanistan and started importing heroin in bulk through Ahmed Wali Karzai’s mafia connections, we wouldn’t have tons of cheap heroin to hook people to begin with. Also, we did have fully legalized (functionally) zero restrictions opioids, back under Bush Jr.
That’s what Oxycotin was.
If you want to describe the US as a criminal nacro-state, you can start at the Florida pill-mills that flooded the country with hundreds of billions of dollars in highly addictive prescription drugs and made the Sackler Family some of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article
Who is this author and why is he so ignorant of the past few decades of opiate problems in the US?
The author is Paul Krugman, a little known economist, writes for the papers I think.
Sorry if I’m getting whooshed, but Krugman is an infamous economist. He takes really big swings and is sometimes incredibly wrong.
I’ve heard the name before but I’m not super tuned into this area. The analogy just really struck out for me in the first two paragraphs, monumentally so. If he writes with this amount of conviction about something he clearly has no idea about, I’m not likely to trust anything else that he writes in the same article. It’s important to know your limitations.
Sackler heroin? … Only if Bayer gives up the patent!
Yeah because the tobacco, pain reliever, and social media industries clearly show how great and non predatory totally legal heroin would be.
Freely available heroin is not a good thing. Drug addiction would get significantly worse. Decriminalize possession, criminalize distribution. That’s a more balanced approach
They weren’t saying it was a good thing, just that it would be better than what we have. Which is true.
Freely available heroin is not a good thing. Drug addiction would get significantly worse.
same thing was argued about cannabis and there was no explosion of addiction predicted by the puritanist false Cassandras.
That’s because Cannabis is not a substance with a strong chemical addiction. There has been a significant increase in cannabis usage. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/ss/ss6511a1.htm
Strictly, Cannabis isn’t really any worse than alcohol.
Heroin is far worse. Drugs are addictive, and when available legally it will encourage more people to try them.
So it would be OK to hit the suppliers with bombs like the US does in South America?
Damn Paul, from downtown!
I’m not sure heroine is the right sample, I know digital products cause addiction like heroine, maybe cocaine would be more realistic when talking about possible increase in GDP, with all that heroin around the US population would be wiped out in a couple of gen
It’s an analogy, the article is about digital privacy not drugs.
It doesn’t matter what substance he uses as an analogy because he’s talking about the dangers of pushing a dangerous product at industrial scale.
Well, didn’t I say it was just the wrong analogy?
It’s not just about digital privacy. It never talks about data privacy. It’s about consumer protection and social media’s nature being harmful. The only European law violations mentioned are anti-scamming + “𝕏 refuses to make its public data available to researchers”. It’s also explicitly in favor of KOSA, which lets the FTC ban anything it wants from children’s eyes online. It’s quite implied that the article supports banning social media for youth.
As well as just your average narco state. We love our drugs
The metaphor is a bit of a reach
Seems like the Opium Wars all over again.
Is comparing social media to a dangerous drug over the top? Not according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, which in 2023 released an advisory titled “Social Media and Youth Mental Health” (download it now before RFK Jr. suppresses it!), which summarized extensive evidence of mental health damage to children and adolescents who consume excessive amounts of social media.
Okay, that comparison’s still wayyyy over-the-top.
