Changing Times

Axios:

All the old vices — from sex to gambling to drugs — are quickly becoming legal, as both society and the criminal justice system rethink their values.

The big picture:

This amounts to an under-the-radar shift in how society treats what have long been thought of as victimless crimes — behaviors that might not harm anyone who isn't participating, but that are considered to offend social morals.

What's happening:

• When the NFL season began last month, fans in more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia were legally allowed to place bets on games. Five more states are projected to allow it by the end of the NFL season according to the American Gaming Association.
• The Manhattan district attorney's office announced earlier this year that it would stop prosecuting sex work and unlicensed massage, joining a number of other jurisdictions that have moved to partially decriminalize sex work.
• Last November, after the passage of a ballot initiative, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all illicit drugs, while four more states — Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota and Montana — joined 11 others that have legalized the recreational use of cannabis.

Background:

• The definition of "vice" is always shifting because society's morality is always shifting.
• Generally, part of what makes a vice a vice is that a lot of society considers it questionable, but a lot of society also participates in it.

By the numbers:

• An estimated 45.2 million people — more than 12% of the country — plan to wager on the NFL this season, up from 32% the year before, according to the AGA.
• In a 2019 Pew survey, 18% of U.S. adults reported they had used cannabis over the past year — a drug that is still illegal under federal law.
• A 2020 poll by Data for Progress found 52% of respondents at least somewhat support decriminalizing the buying and selling of sex between consenting adults, compared to just 24% in a similar 1978 poll.

Between the lines:

• Legalizing or at least decriminalizing activities that millions of Americans engage in — and millions more tacitly tolerate — can reduce arrests and prosecutions that disproportionately affect people of color, while also freeing up police and courts to focus on crimes that harm more people.
• If regulated and taxed, it can also divert substantial revenue to government coffers. Legal gambling generates nearly $700 million in tax money at the state level, while legal marijuana has generated nearly $8 billion in tax revenue since states first began allowing recreational use.
• Bringing an activity out of the black market can also starve criminal organizations of revenue and help protect individuals who will engage in it — a key argument for decriminalizing sex work.

The other side:

• Opponents question whether vices are truly "victimless crimes" and raise concerns about the unintended consequences of allowing activities that, if taken to the extreme, can produce both individual and social harm.
• A 2020 study found recreational cannabis legalization in Washington state in 2012 was followed by an uptick in the likelihood that teens would use marijuana, though other research has found no clear connection.
• Between 3% and 6% of U.S. adults are considered to have a gambling problem, and one study found the rate doubles among people who live within 10 miles of a gaming establishment.
• Experts also have long worried that legalizing sports betting can lead to more opportunities for fixing games, eroding the integrity of the sport.
• Sex work presents the biggest questions of all. Some experts doubt that selling sex can ever be truly consensual and fear that decriminalization inadvertently puts sex workers at greater risk from clients.

What to watch:

... whether legalization and decriminalization are followed by additional support for the social and personal consequences of vices.

Even advocates for Oregon's drug decriminalization worry far too little funding has been allocated to treatment and recovery.

The bottom line:

50 years after President Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs, American attitudes toward and laws about activities that have long been classified as vices are changing — and with it, the assumption that it's the government's role to police public morality.

Applied Science

Here's a video about The Dzhanibekov Effect or Tennis Racket Theorem - how spinning objects behave.

As long as there's something like gravity to govern the object's behavior, it's harder to observe the effect, and we don't see it as any kind of big problem because we have relatively stable conditions, and the objects generally rotate on either of the two axes that are most prevalent. Remove gravity, and the thing flip-flops regularly and frequently enough for us to see it plainly in real time.

Imagine a politician or a political party - and further imagine that the governing force is the basic morality of an individual.

Now think of a democratic self-government where you have a process of checks and balances built in, but you systematically remove pieces of that process over time.

That 3rd thing - the 3rd axis that we don't spend much time or energy noticing - becomes a more dominant factor.

There are some vexing questions rattling around in my head right now.

eg:
How did "the party of Lincoln" become the party that fights to reinstate so many of the things Lincoln (and other Republican presidents) fought to abolish?

How did "the party of fiscal responsibility" become the party that dramatically increases our Revenue Deficit and the National Debt every time they're in power?

How does "the party of freedom and patriotism" become the party that builds concentration camps?

What is the political (ie: human) equivalent of that 3rd axis, other than morality, ethics and a sense of honor?

I don't know. And that bugs the fuck outa me.

I also don't know that it hasn't always been this way - and that really bugs the fuck outa me.

A Thinker

If you were god, what would you do?

You are morally superior to a god who sees this and does nothing.

Why would you worship that god?

It's Rainin' Shoes

And then this - from a hearing on June 14 this year:

Natalia Veselniskaya occupying some prime real estate
This shit does not happen by accident

This thing is very wide and very deep.  It's about money, and the power that money gets you.

Once you "free" yourself from all that boring plebeian morality - when you abandon what tethers you to the Impulse Control of a working knowledge of why you do the good things and why you don't do the bad things - you replace that morality with matters having solely to do with profit and loss.

These people have no soul and no honor.

Today's Lesson

Michael Shermer - Morality: absolute and otherwise

Without god, there can be no "Objective Morality"?

How do you claim anything is objective if it's based on something as subjective as a belief in god?

If you start with a premise that's false, it's almost impossible to reach a conclusion that's true.

It's Not Hypocrisy

Let's call it a Flexible Multi-Tiered Moral Code.

CNN:

Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit thousands of artifacts from modern-day Iraq and pay a $3 million fine to resolve a civil action the Justice Department brought against the company, according to court documents.

The DOJ said the company received the falsely labeled artifacts from a United Arab Emirates-based supplier.

The artifacts, ancient cuneiform tablets and clay bullae, were smuggled into the United States through the United Arab Emirates and Israel, Justice officials said. Cuneiform is an ancient system of writing on clay tablets that was used in Mesopotamia, and clay bullae are balls of clay on which seals have been imprinted.

That whole 6th commandment thing - OK for thee but not for me.

That Duck Schmuck

Phil Robertson's a piece of work, ain't he?

Morality is a rational thing that grows from an understanding of what it takes to live in a world with other people who have exactly the same rights and responsibilities that you have.

Those ISIS fuck wads have a god-given morality.  Jim Jones had a god-given morality.  David Koresh had a god-given morality. Jephthah had a god-given morality that led him to burn his daughter alive as a way of sucking up to that god.

I don't have a nice easy 10-word bumper sticker solution for the problems of ethics and morality, and it should be pretty obvious by now that we're not getting anywhere just listening to the voices in our heads and consulting with imaginary friends that turn out to be nuthin' but brainwave activity in our right temporal lobes.

So let's start fresh with something like this:

It takes a buncha work and a lotta thought, but ya gotta figure out how to live your life without needing your mommy or a cop or Jesus looking over your shoulder all the fucking time.

hat tip = Right Wing Watch

A Difference Of Ethos

(not an April Fools thing)

There is no Chief Ethics Officer.
This is not a democracy.
The free market is morally neutral - as God intended.
You get along by going along.
Conform and be dull.
Embrace the Noble Lie.
Watch more TV.  Go out to a movie.
Stay safe - take the blue pill.



DecodeDC

The Morality Gene

Bible Thumpers think they win the God vs No God argument by claiming we have to have some kind of outside agency that dictates morality to us.  And that one's always been a really tough nut to crack in rebuttal.  Except that it isn't.

From the last of a 5-part YouTube thingie: