Gambling: Legal gambling doesn’t stop illegal gambling. Like dog fights, cock fights (which–disappointingly–involve chickens), or people that are out of money and credit; they’re still going exist. It would be healthier for society to make gambling unpopular, rather than squeezing every last bit of revenue out people that usually can’t afford it.
Prostitution: Legalizing under the Nevada model does nothing to illegal prostitution, because the Nevada model puts it out of financial reach for most of the clientele and restricts the locations to places that the clientele usually aren’t (e.g., they’re a long way out of the city, and you have to drive several hours from Vegas to get to the closest one). An (illegal) independent escort in Las Vegas will typically cost $350-500 per hour, and quite possibly far, far more. A sex worker at a legal brothel will easily cost more than $1000 for the same time period. A sex worker controlled by a pimp is going to be $200 or less, and have less ability–or no ability–to refuse acts that s/he doesn’t want to do. The cost of compliance with regulations is on the sex worker, who passes it on to the clientele; that regulatory model means that legal avenues will end up being less affordable to people than illicit avenues. (And, given that you can pretty easily find escorts working in Vegas despite legal options being available in the state, I think it’s pretty clear that people will be price sensitive.
Drugs: Same issue. Regulatory oversight–which is necessary for recreational drugs to not kill people unintentionally–increases costs, and those costs get passed to the consumer. For a very real-world example, a single 10mL vial of 200mg/mL testosterone cypionate costs about $60 at Costco, and over $100 at Walgreens, et al.. (Testosterone cypionate is a schedule III drug.) You can buy a 20mL vial of 300mg/mL testosterone cypionate on the black market for anywhere from $30-60. You can buy raw hormone powder for under $2/gram (e.g., the raw hormone used in the black market 20mL vial costs the producer $12 or less). A therapeutic dose will be perhaps 150-200mg/week, depending on your own physiology, and what you’re target blood values are. An IFBB pro bodybuilder is going to go through a minimum of 3,000 mg/week during a bulk. If an IFBB pro were to buy their testosterone cypionate legally–if they didn’t need a prescription–it would cost $90/week, versus $15-30. (This ignores all the other shit they take, too.) IFBB guys have been using their black market suppliers for years, maybe decades; what’s their incentive to pay 3-6x as much for something they aren’t going to see a difference in? Legal marijuana has depressed prices for illegal marijuana, but it’s still cheaper to buy a quarter from my local guy than it is to buy in a dispensary.
much like they make tobacco companies do that right now in the us.
Organized crime makes a fuckton of money by forging tax stamps on cigarettes to evade taxes. Before prices started going up dramatically on cigarettes (which I think was a good thing, since smoking doesn’t end up costing just the smoker), that kind of fraud and tax evasion was chump change. Now it’s millions.
I don’t take a stance on either from a morality basis.
In regards to gambling, I see it as a fundamentally predatory business model that preys on the people that are least able to afford it. If a rich guy wants to blow a million dollars on blackjack, I don’t fucking care, that’s not my problem. If a poor person is buying $500 in scratchers because that’s they’re only hope for excaping poverty, that’s a problem. Or a retired person that pushes a button as fast as they can on a slot machine, burning through their retirement savings, because that’s the only thing that lights up their dopamine receptors anymore. And there’s a lot more of the latter two than the former. There are also a whoooooole lot of people with gambling problems, and a person that’s blowing all their money on gambling ends up becoming a problem for the people around them, as they are no longer able to take care of their own needs.
The only issue I see with prostitution–aside from the fact that a not insignificant amount is from trafficked victims–is the public health risks. Given that healthcare in the US is outrageously expensive, there’s not a great way for people that are usually working at a near subsistence level to treat STIs. And, for certain STIs (HIV, hepatitis C), they are strongly disincentivized in regards to informing customers, as there’s not cure and long-term treatment is deeply burdensome.
did you know that Cocaine and Methamphetamine are not schedule 1 drugs
Yes. Cocaine and meth are both schedule II, which is used for drugs with a high probability of abuse, but still have recognized medical uses. (Marijuana is currently schedule I, but I believe that the FDA has been asked to re-evaluate it an move it to schedule III, which would make decriminalization much easier, and would mean that it would no longer be a prohibiting factor for buying a firearm.) Cocaine is–or was–used for surgery in highly vascular areas (esp. nose and sinus surgery) because it acts as a vasoconstrictor. Amphetamines used to be issued to soldiers, esp. pilots, that needed to be alert and focused for long periods of time. See also: Aimo Koivunen. The fact that certain drugs do have legitimate medical uses doesn’t mean that the abuse/addiction is not a material problem. Try chatting with anyone that has been prescribed anxiolytic medication, and has tried to titrate their dose down, or discontinue their use entirely (same goes for certain SSRIs, TBH). Yes, drugs are a personal choice, right up until they’re functionally not a choice any more because you’ll suffer serious physiological effects from cessation. And it’s not like the US has a great track record of providing effective assistance for people that want to get cleaned up. Full legalization or all recreational drugs, without also building the necessary social supports, would create far more problems than it would solve.
Legalization of prostitution is a problem by itself, because the regulatory costs end up being borne by the sex workers (more on that in a tic). For prostitutes that are working at a subsistence level or only doing sex work occasionally as a stop-gap–which is the majority of voluntary prostitution–that’s not going to work. And what do you do, for instance, when a registered sex worker suddenly tests positive for HIV, or hepatitis C? Revoke their license, and then…? Legalizing doesn’t eliminate trafficking, it just pushes the prices for trafficked prostitutes down, because trafficked prostitutes are slaves.
There are definitely harm-reduction models that can, and do, work for sex work, but legalization and regulation–when that regulatory costs are paid by either the sex worker or the customer–will not work the way you think for harm reduction. For the system to work as intended, you would also need things like national single-payer healthcare (…that isn’t constantly getting funding slashed by conservatives), and licensing that was both on-demand and free to the licensee, and you would need something to deal with the loss of income if they contracted an incurable STI. (Otherwise they would continue working, which would be a public health risk.) Inspections, compliance measures, et al. could not be a cost borne by the sew worker/clients or else you’d see non-compliance with regulatory measures. Most sex-worker advocates call for decriminalization rather than legalization/regulation because that’s the model that moves the most risk away from the sex worker, but you do need to also balance the needs of the worker against the the needs of society to a degree.
That’s… Not a good argument. Child pornography and prostitution is illegal because it’s morally reprehensible, and incredibly, profoundly harmful to children. Same with murder, robbery, theft, etc. By definition, anything that is illegal is going to be done–or controlled–only by people that are criminals.
Does prohibition stop those things entirely? No, of course it doesn’t. But it gives society tools to fight against them in a way that decriminalizing does not.
In Illinois you didn’t have to ‘register’ for section 8 (I believe it was called ‘housing choice’), but it’s been a long time ago. (I owned a house that had two apartments; I lived in one, rented the other out.) Most tenants are functionally judgement-proof, unless you only rent to upper-middle class people. Sure, you might get a judgement against them, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever see a penny of it. As far as not being a slumlord, I have absolutely no tolerance for landlords that don’t want to keep properties in good repair, full stop. Yeah, it’s expensive to replace a roof, but fuck you, that’s why you’re taking in rent.
Gambling should never be considered a legit business. IMO casinos et al. should be shut down, for the same reason that payday lenders should be beaten to death in the streets: they’re fundamentally predatory businesses.
The problem with prostitution and organized crime is that it’s not victimless once the mob gets involved. “Bitch better have my money” is a threat; you pay the pimp, or you get beaten, and possibly killed. You want to hire an independent escort? I’m fine with that. But significant amounts of prostitution involve sex trafficking, esp. “agencies” that constantly advertise “new girls”.
All of the businesses that the mob–or any organized criminal gang–is in end up increasing costs due to corruption, and involve the threat of violence if anyone disrupts their money. People that try to compete in sectors controlled by criminal groups tend to end up dead very, very quickly, regardless of what the nature of the business is.
It really is the Dems on this one. Esp. in MA, which has a Democratic supermajority. And California, and New York, and Illinois. All of those things you are saying are problems are problems created by Democrats, in Democratic-controlled states, because wealthy Democrats don’t want to live near poor people.
I’m not saying Republicans are better; Republicans absolutely have a “fuck them poors” attitude, and the Dems are at least claiming to want to treat people decently. But Dems aren’t following through with what they say they want to do–affordable housing for all–while Republicans are definitely following through with their promise to fuck everyone that isn’t already in the top 10%.
BTW - section 8 should be great for a landlord. You are guaranteed payment on the 1st of every month, and you can still initiate eviction if the tenant is trashing your property or doing crime. But most landlords that aren’t slumlords generally hate that shit, because they don’t want poor people living there even if they’re getting their money. It’s stupid and short sighted.
They’re threatening to evict you, yes. But actually evicting you, in at least some states, can be challenging. I know someone that rented out his entire home (long story), and got paid about three months of rent before they quit paying. It took him nearly two years to get them out. (Last I knew he was suing the agent that vetted them; apparently there was collusion, and the tenant has done this multiple times before.)
The flip side is that if you quit paying your mortgage, it’s also going to take months or years to get you out of the house, but then the bank has a piece of real estate. Banks don’t want to own real estate; that’s not their business. They’re not set up to buy and sell real estate. Foreclosing on a house costs a bank a lot of money.
A roof that fails on a 500-unit apartment complex will be cheaper to replace per unit than the roof an a single family home. Same with a water heater that serves multiple families rather than a single family. Honestly, it’s a good argument for communes, but communes have their own set of social problems, since it can be hard to get people to take responsibility for shit unless you go into it with the same kind of contract that you’d have when renting.
All I can do is point to how much power the mob amassed in the US during prohibition, and how long they held that power after prohibition ended. Sure, their revenue took a hit, but they moved fairly smoothly into other areas, and corrupted other power structures in order to build and maintain illicit revenue streams. It wasn’t until the 80s and 90s that the mob families in NYC really saw significant consequences.
As an example? Mozarella cheese on pizza. That was fully controlled by the mob for a long time.
That doesn’t stop the cartels, not by a long shot. Ending prohibition in the US didn’t eliminate the organized crime families in the US, it just moved them to different areas of corruption. If it’s not alcohol, it’s drugs. If it’s not drugs, then it’s gambling, tax evasion, prostitution, loan sharking, organized theft, and so on and so forth. And without correcting the underlying issues driving alcoholism and drug addiction in the US–particularly poverty–complete decriminalization would lead to huge problems. Has led to huge problems in some cities.
While decriminalizing drugs would help to a degree, you need to correct the underlying problems that have allowed cartels to amass so much power in the first place, like weak governments, lack of opportunities, and high rates of poverty.
I honestly can’t see a way that doesn’t result in some visible something (although maybe not visible in a photo). You could throw money at it and get custom tiles made, but you’d have to have your measurements and tiling technique perfected to make that work.
That’s the idea. The really big ones get pretty expensive though; a 30# fire extinguisher starts at around $500, and can get up to about $1500. But that size gets you about 20-30 seconds of continuous use, which is enough for a pretty big house fire.
A domino joiner on a job site would be good for things like putting together pieces or a banister (railing) where you needed both the strength or something like a doweled joint as well as the alignment capability of a biscuit joiner. It’s going to add strength to any kind of mitered joint that would be glued/where you don’t want to see nails. Most of the uses are going to be in cabinetry or furniture rather than in general carpentry and contracting, but it definitely has a few very specialized uses on a job site.
I am not a contractor, but I did it for a very brief period of time (until the business owner stiffed me of about a thousand in pay, and I realized it wasn’t a good side gig).
Depending on what you’re doing, you absolutely want Festool on a job site. A Rotex sander is fantastic for doing the edges when you’re refinishing hardwood floors, for instance. (Goddamn incompatible sanding discs though… You have to buy the Festool discs if you want the dust management.) For some jobs, there really aren’t any viable alternatives to Festool; no one else makes a domino joiner, which is somewhere between a plate joiner and a mortise and tenon joint. (You can get close by using a precision doweling jig, but the domino joiner is fast. Mortise and tenons are fantastic joints, but a mortising machine isn’t terribly portable, and cutting one by hand is far, far more skill than I have.)