This is tricky, of course we'd LIKE to believe that fully liberty is the virtue we should strive for and that everyone should be responsible for their actions but due to experience, we know the majority CAN'T handle that and need a hand to smack them into place when they start doing something dangerous.
The problem has always been the balance, we know how physically addictive tobacco or more nicotine is and how psychologically addictive gambling is yet we ignore other addictive issues like social media and parasocial relationships and extreme promiscuity (being a slut) because of who backs them and/or it helps their ideology.
Unless we came up with a test to see how much self responsibility a person has and from there what they have access to, I can't see a way around these kind of blanket rulings. The way they are implementing them is probably bullshit so I'll give you that.
I just don't see this as in any way effective in "stopping the issue" of problem gambling, and I also see it as inherent class war, both in that it will decimate the venues and the people employed by them, but more importantly, laws like this target the poor and disenfranchised, who a) won't be voting for this sort of thing, b) hold very little political power anyway, and c) should be free to make their own poor choices, whatever they may be (if legal, i.e. smoking, drinking, gambling), in regards to how they spend their money...
I don't necessarily agree with two out of your three paragraphs. But the middle one? Sure, I guess.
But no, I can't agree with what you say, sorry. I don't see it that way.
And yes, I accept that these things have consequences. But so does banning them. shrug
It would be better if there was a stigma against succumbing to your addictions and to have a focus on moderation being a virtue...
But the left has successfully eroded all forms of self responsibility on that 'the government should handle it' and some on the right and libertarians have gone too far in promoting absolute freedom over self moderation. Ironically the best people to exclaim these virtues may be old school Christians as everyone else is failing which is justifying these bans.
Yep. And a reversal would take some state peopled with such paragon of virtue with the will and force necessary to ensure compliance to virtue until such a point that it is naturally part of the culture again. Could be by force, could be through disincentive structures like cutting welfare, or incentive structures, could be over a short or long span of time, there's going to be a lot of pain either way. It'd be like making a guy with a decades long addiction to nicotine, alcohol, and opiods go cold turkey with all three simultaneously. (edit: And I don't think it's possible when the end goal for where culture should be is almost completely at odds with where it is. It's easier for a ship to turn several degrees than for it to turn 180 degrees)
OR, more likely, the current system with all its abundance giving people the leeway to live improperly with little risk to their own life and livelihood collapses and reality beats virtue back into everyone by sheer necessity.
We're essentially looking at the problem of how you rebuild a culture from the ground up and gl with that.
This is tricky, of course we'd LIKE to believe that fully liberty is the virtue we should strive for and that everyone should be responsible for their actions but due to experience, we know the majority CAN'T handle that and need a hand to smack them into place when they start doing something dangerous.
The problem has always been the balance, we know how physically addictive tobacco or more nicotine is and how psychologically addictive gambling is yet we ignore other addictive issues like social media and parasocial relationships and extreme promiscuity (being a slut) because of who backs them and/or it helps their ideology.
Unless we came up with a test to see how much self responsibility a person has and from there what they have access to, I can't see a way around these kind of blanket rulings. The way they are implementing them is probably bullshit so I'll give you that.
I just don't see this as in any way effective in "stopping the issue" of problem gambling, and I also see it as inherent class war, both in that it will decimate the venues and the people employed by them, but more importantly, laws like this target the poor and disenfranchised, who a) won't be voting for this sort of thing, b) hold very little political power anyway, and c) should be free to make their own poor choices, whatever they may be (if legal, i.e. smoking, drinking, gambling), in regards to how they spend their money...
I don't necessarily agree with two out of your three paragraphs. But the middle one? Sure, I guess.
But no, I can't agree with what you say, sorry. I don't see it that way.
And yes, I accept that these things have consequences. But so does banning them. shrug
It would be better if there was a stigma against succumbing to your addictions and to have a focus on moderation being a virtue...
But the left has successfully eroded all forms of self responsibility on that 'the government should handle it' and some on the right and libertarians have gone too far in promoting absolute freedom over self moderation. Ironically the best people to exclaim these virtues may be old school Christians as everyone else is failing which is justifying these bans.
Yep. And a reversal would take some state peopled with such paragon of virtue with the will and force necessary to ensure compliance to virtue until such a point that it is naturally part of the culture again. Could be by force, could be through disincentive structures like cutting welfare, or incentive structures, could be over a short or long span of time, there's going to be a lot of pain either way. It'd be like making a guy with a decades long addiction to nicotine, alcohol, and opiods go cold turkey with all three simultaneously. (edit: And I don't think it's possible when the end goal for where culture should be is almost completely at odds with where it is. It's easier for a ship to turn several degrees than for it to turn 180 degrees)
OR, more likely, the current system with all its abundance giving people the leeway to live improperly with little risk to their own life and livelihood collapses and reality beats virtue back into everyone by sheer necessity.
We're essentially looking at the problem of how you rebuild a culture from the ground up and gl with that.