Smoking. Millions of euros of taxpayer money spent every year on those lung cancer patients which could be well spent elsewhere. It's also an activity that negatively affects not just the smoker but everyone around them.
Smoking is something I truly despise, we all know that it is bad, really bad for you, we teach kids about it, yet people still start smoking.
Do as New Zealand did, set a cut off year, if you are born after 2015, you will not be permitted to buy tobacco at all.
Great. You've just made another illegal narcotic, a black market and a way of financing illegal activity.
I'd agree with you on that if tobacco was completely banned, but banning from a specific age, seems like a fairly low impact.
...and as time marches on?
The use would be drasticly cut down, we'll never get every one....
What I meant was that "a ban from a certain age" is a total ban eventually. Black market will grow as the ban becomes more and more complete.
What I find amusing is that the cigarettes packages where I live have disgusting images with the potential sickness it comes from its usage, and yet people still buy them 'hey man, this will literally kill you someday" warning does not work.
I thought this was a well known measure but it seems that my USA cousin did not know about this kind of marketing.
They ought to increase it by 2 years every time. That way people have to get clean. Also, we ( US citizens) should take control of all tobacco companies, and wind them down, putting all profits and assets towards addiction recovery services, and cancer treatments.
They've been making billions off of slowly killing people for the last 100+ years, they don't need one more fucking day.
The tax on cigarettes is so high, it's been claimed they pay more into the system than they claim out, as they die too soon. 🫣
(In Australia)
At least here in Germany this is apparently still not true as smokers in particular add a huge cost to the healthcare system due to the long-term and repeated damage. For example, once they get parts of their feet amputated from clogged arteries, most actually continue to smoke ("Ah well now it's too late anyways"), and hence will get half a dozen such amputations over time.
Obesity is the issue these days not tobacco. Tobacco use is a fraction of what it once was. Now a huge portion of the EU and USA is obese, which causes way more strain on the healthcare system.
X
That sounds like marketing by tobacco companies.
Haha I had to go digging.
So it is mentioned in an Australian page about the costs of Tobacco in Australia:
A report commissioned by the tobacco company Philip Morris, when the Czech government proposed raising cigarettes taxes in 1999, concluded that the effect of smoking on the public finance balance in the Czech Republic in 1999 was positive, an estimated net benefit of 5,815 million CZK (Czech koruny), or about US$298 million. 77 The analysis included taxes on tobacco, and health care and pension savings because of smokers’ premature death, as economic benefits of smoking, and these benefits exceeded the negative financial effects of smoking, such as increased health care costs. The report created a furore; public health advocates found the explicit assumption that premature death is beneficial morally repugnant. The controversy was described by the journalist Chana Joffe-Walt on the radio program This American Life,78 and was reported in the British Medical Journal.79 According to This American Life, Philip Morris distanced itself from the report in response to the controversy, banning its employees from citing the findings. In fact, the report’s claim that smoking was beneficial relies on its inclusion of taxes as a benefit, not any savings due to smokers’ premature deaths80 Costs associated with smoking while the smoker was still alive totalled 15,647 million CZK, 13 times more than the ‘benefits’ associated with early death. The net benefit reported in the analysis arose because the tobacco tax revenue of 20,269 million CZK was regarded as a benefit. As detailed in Section 17.1.1, taxes are not an economic cost (or benefit); they are a transfer payment. The recipient (the government) gets richer, while the taxpayer gets poorer.
So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.
So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.
...in a study funded by a tobacco company.
Thank youj for the link, I read the section you linked to and the cancer council seems like a good soruce, and it was about what I expected.
Australian here, in Finland. Holy shit it seems everyone smokes like chimneys here.
Never really thought about how much smoking has declined in Aus over the last 20-40 years, but yeah coming over here has been an eye opener.
Seems to be a Europe thing, or really a rest of the world thing. It's very rare to smell cigarettes, particularly after vaping took off.
In my country there was like 10 wonderful years when almost nobody smoked.
In the last 5-10 years all that got reversed by vaping, it’s everywhere now. Not as bad as smoking though.
Yeah, and unlike what people commonly think, it doesn't just directly affect the user (first hand smoke) and the people around it (second hand smoke), but also the furniture and nature around it (third hand smoke).
I despise those cigarettes laying around everywhere in nature. You can even smell them on remotes if someone was a hardcore smoker.
They need help in kicking off from it.
i hate tobacco but prohibition doesnt work.
we should have learned that lesson with alcohol and weed but it seems we did not.
Supermarkets and businesses throwing food away and not allowing people to take it for free. ("If I can't sell it nobody can have it").
Would only work if you also made them immune from lawsuits due to people getting sick from eating expired food.
they already are under the good samaritan laws; they use lawsuits as an excuse for their shitty behavior.
Depends on your location. Good Samaritan laws vary widely.
The food would presumably "last moment before expiry" i.e. we can't sell this tomorrow so we give it away tonight.
Expiration dates on packaged food are almost always about how enjoyable the food is to eat, not safety. Donating expired packaged food with legal protection from liability would be good for the world.
Requiring the purchase or use of proprietary software or formats to view or submit public records.
Or medical. Or educational.
Collection of personally identifiable information on every website ever.
Corporate murder.
Making a profit from healthcare and health insurance.
Or even just make private health insurance illegal.
Lobbying.
Lobbying is fine. Lobbying with money should be illegal.
ITT: people so used to lobbying that they got convinced it's a necessary evil so that minorities and common folks can lobby as well.
It's clearly absurd. Many places call lobbying with its real name: corruption. And there are laws in place to fight it.
Are they perfect? No. Is it then more effective to legalyze corruption? OF COURSE NOT ARE YOU INSANE?!?
Lobbying isn't the same as corruption.
Lobbying is informing politicians about an issue while pushing your agenda.
Corruption is giving a politician an incentive to vote as you want.
I get what you mean, but that would backfire increadibly quickly.
Civil rights organizations would no longer be able to talk with politicians directly, possibly never, as demonstrations and manifestations could be classified as lobbying depending on how strict it would be enforced.
Environmental groups could no longer invite politicians to important conferences.
Lobbying isn't just something that monolithic companies do, take it away, and it will only be something the bad guys does.
Yup, a late friend of mine was a lobbyist at the state level for a mental health lobbying group. His daughter has schizophrenia and that was his way to give back in his retirement. Without lobbying, it's hard for politicians to know when there is a problem they need to fix. They have a small staff and they don't just magically know when there is a problem. The problem is when a politician either can't sniff out unethical lobbyists or just doesn't care.
Members of Congress trading individual stocks, bonds, and other investments.
Lies and exaggerated advertising.
No, it's not "best in the world" or "lightning fast", it's an entry level $200 GPU!
No, it doesn't have "crystal clear high-res screen", it's just a budget phone!
No, that tampon will not change my lifestyle!
No, that perfume will not make guys drooling over me!
I'm ok with "it's decent quality with an affordable price".
I'm ok with "it's the best budget-friendly option".
I'm ok with "it's not the best in the world, but it's definitely worth a try".
I personally think the "how good is it" part of "advertising" should literally just be a percentage value of "how many existing customers say it was worth it".
But even that would get gamed the way 5/5 amazon reviews can be bought today already.
So maybe it should really just be "it's a insert thing made out of insert material produced in insert country by insert labour conditions and it costs insert price".
For-profit healthcare.
For-profit insurance too.
Not sure Rick when one can insure a hole in one is just a business decision.
But I get it health housing and catastrophic losses could be better monitored and regulated.
I'd qualify that as for-profit mandatory insurance.
Canpt get a mortgage without home insurance. Canpt drive a vehicle without at least liability. Those rates should be strictly government regulated to be sustainable and non-profit.
But if you want to insure your collection if priceless Whitworth wrenches, well maybe I care a bit (Just a bit!) less about insurance gouging.
I'd go further and ringfence all the basic needs so that you can't profit from providing them, just make enough to live off if needs be.
Making more than 10x the money of your least paid employee.
I get where you're coming from, but I think you'd just see companies divide into tiers where one tier would subcontract to the tier below. Think "cleaning services companies" all the way down.
Well I don't expect the exact phrasing of the code of law to be 11 words.
Simple : let's make that illegal too
This.
Nutrition information based on unrealistic serving sizes.
I've seen an individually wrapped muffin "servings per pack: 2".
Then there's that Tom Scott video on how "zero calory" sweetener can be 4 calories.
There's a great video by Vihart about how even when accounting for servings per unit it can still be manipulated to fit their marketing goals.
Europe has "per 100g"
Thank you! That had6 given me much more to be outraged about!
Canada passed 'rational servings' laws a few years ago to this exact end. No more cases where a single-portion package would contain 1.6 servings, or whatnot.
Boneless chicken with bones
u want to outlaw chickens ?
A throwaway reference to another thread on here …. Someone tried to sue a restaurant when he choked on a bone in his boneless chicken wings. The court ruled he can’t sue because “boneless” is just a style of cooking and doesn’t make any claim about whether that meal has bones. …. That kind of misrepresentation, and dodging responsibility should be illegal. All sorts of scamming the customer should be illegal and isn’t
If I can go on a bit of a rant, I do believe in the power of the market to shape our lives, our economy, our society. Conservatives got that part right. But a market is only “free” when everyone plays by the same rules and has same facts and knowledge, free choice. A market is only beneficial when it is shaped by regulators to benefit society. A market is only sustainable when it incorporates externalities. If Conservatives are gung ho about free markets, they need to step up and do their part. While there’s a nice theory about the usefulness of Marketting, the primary use is to lie, subvert, fool, distort the market, and THAT should be illegal
Some.
Just the bonless ones with bones.
Unlimited political spending, particularly by corporations - see Citizen's United.
Campaign financing in general. If you get enough signatures you'll get a fixed amount of money from tax payers for your campaign. If you accept money from anyone else you're barred from public office for life. End of corruption right there.
Qualified immunity for police officers. Prosecutors and judges basically get qualified immunity, too-- in that they can be caught engaging in all sorts of inappropriate and illegal activity without facing punishment because like police, it usually doesn't even get to the extent of being charged.
I don't even understand how qualified immunity could even be implemented without massive social unrest
Maybe fix the social issues as well so there's no need to riot
I'd love to but even our most citizen aligned presidential terms only side with the people 20% of the time...
Locked bootloaders
Requiring agreement to some unspecified ever-changing terms of service in order to use the product you just bought, especially when use of such products is required in the modern world. Google and Apple in particular are more or less able to trivially deny any non-technical person access to smartphones and many things associated with them like access to mobile banking. Microsoft is heading that way with Windows requiring MS accounts, too, though they're not completely there yet.
Billionaires. Nobody ever needs that much wealth. Resources better used elsewhere for the public good.
But less people work on weekends than on weekdays.
There is no universal day for everyone to make it, which is why Sweden offers pre-election voting and voting by mail, plenty of other countries does as well.
predatory microtransactions in video games that are essentially gambling.
Mutilating the bodies of people too young or otherwise unable to give consent.
I want to live in a world where "stop cutting bits of babies dicks off" doesn't require any further explanation.
"No, actually, its you who needs to justify cutting bits of babies dicks off. Not the other way round. Unless its hair, nails or connected to the mum, the default position is actually not to cut bits of the baby off."
Oh lmao I was way off, I was like "damn I'm surprised to see an anti abortion post at +9 -0 on lemmy, wtf?!"
I didn't realize until I read your post lol.
So im asking this question as a person who has had to have an adult circumcision, I get the consent part, but why is this considered mutilation?
Again, im genuinely ignorant of the subject beyond medical requirements
Because it serves a genuine function, because the process poses an unnecessary risk, because there is no way to know how big the penis is going to get when the kid grows up, and that is part of the reason for the foreskin, to have a ton of give so it doesn't happen like it did to my ex. He got circumcised as a newborn, and by the time he finished puberty, his penis grew far more than the leftover foreskin, so he wasn't even able to have full erections without a tremendous amount of pain and sometimes, even tearing.
This is a complicated way to flex with a big dick.
But thanks for the insight. Didn't know about this specific problem circumcision has.
vocabulary.com: "When a person or an object has been altered or damaged in a permanent way, that's a mutilation."
it can desensitize the penis and cause health issues and/or sexual dysfunction (arguably its intended consequence). forced body alteration is mutilation
If you chop someone's leg off without consent for no good reason, that's mutilation. If you amputate it with consent for legitimate medical reasons that's a medical procedure.
This 100% reads to me as an anti-trans post. Maybe that's not your intent, but that's the way it reads. Esp. since anyone under 18 con not legally give consent to anything.
I read it as an anti-circumcision post. You ckuld be right, though.
Child marriages. Fact that's legal in any US States is absurd.
Absurd? Yes. Surprising? No. If you put children in bathing suits to decide which is the hottest child? It's not shocking to hear that they want to marry these hot children.
Speaking as a non-American: it's a fucking obscenity
What the fuck really?
Insane rent hikes. Landlords and corps shouldn't be able to raise rent from $1,700 mo to $8,000 mo in a single period, let alone a handful of years.
To piggyback off that: the concept of rent.
It's fine as a concept, it allows you to live somewhere without making a commitment long-term.
But there needs to be more regulations in place, like maybe making it illegal for corporations to buy residential property and requiring by law that any new residential building must have the option to buy as well as rent, with regulations to ensure it's a fair price.
Housing shouldn’t be gatekept. Rent as we know it is broken. Someone owns a property, while you pay the mortgage. But you’re not paying down to own, you’re paying it down for someone else to own. Sure, renting is fine for people who move a lot, but that money shouldn’t be flushed down the drain every month—from the position of the renter. Rental credits, to where that money you’re putting down acts as a credit toward getting the opportunity to own. This would take a massive restructuring of the way we behave as a society, but it’s desperately needed.
Advertising. I just hate how it’s crept into every facet of our lives and it’s not done intruding in on our daily lives either.
Yep. It’s insane to me how society goes to such lengths to make road transportation, driving, cars etc safer, and then is perfectly fine with billboards. It’s super illegal to be distracted by your phone whilst driving, but a giant graphical ad on the side of the road is totally cool. Whut
Conflicts of interest. Sometimes illegal, but not nearly as much as they should be (almost always)
Like congress members being allowed to trade stock, which can then be affected by their vote
Or one of the specifically carved out exceptions to the medical kickbacks laws is for the people who negotiate drug prices for pharmacies
I think tacking on irrelevant laws onto popular bills to get them passed shouldn't be allowed.
Politicians shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks, especially when they're in a position to pass laws that would directly affect their holdings.
Super PACs, it's absolutely wild that that's a thing IMO.
I think there should also be a "cooling off" period of some sort over passing/repealing laws. I'm thinking as an example of the Republicans after Obamacare was passed, when they tried to repeal it something like 70 times in 10 years. I get that things change and laws sometimes need to be amended or updated, but there should really be some system in place to prevent people from spamming up the whole system like that.
I'm also not a big fan of the filibuster.
Monopolies
Predatory advertising... commonly is the form of fear mongering, but any form should be illegal.
When you are in a political position you are not allowed to lie.
We have to develop the technology to perfectly detect lies and give everyone who wants to be in office a collar which gives them seizures when lying.
Every Parlament around the world would look like a Harlem shake gone wrong.
Lobbying.
It defintly is a slippery slope. I work for a municipalitylies utilities company. Part of my job is working with a utilities companies union to lobby politicians to make laws that will actually improve the way we can work. I think we actually do improve things for the German public by bringing desperately needed knowledge to the table.
But I think we are a small minority among lobbying institutions.
Small print, excessive legalese and outright deceptive language in ads, agreements and such. All the "free" (not really free) trials, "unlimited" (not really unlimited) plans, "best value" (according to the producer and their mum) deals and shit like that.
There really should be a law prohibiting that - if reading through terms and conditions for using a damn website or a toothbrush or whatever requires 4 hours of free time, a magnifyibg glass and degree in law, such t&cs should be illegal. Same for disclaimers and such in ads - any 4pt text displayed for 2 seconds on screen should automatically result in a massive fine.
Honestly? Alcohol. I used to work security at a rehab, and it was always the worst addiction. The withdrawls are horrible, up to and including death. Yes, even worse than heroin.
Read up on US prohibition and how it funded the Mafia. It just changes the form of the societal disease.
The answer to addiction is having support and care on place for those that fall to it so society helps pick them up again. You can't stop the abuse of substances unless you fix why people are crawling into a hole to avoid the world. Lack of mental health is a disease of society as well as the individual.
Its so mad that we have such a literal example of exactly what happens, due to prohibition, yet society refuses to see like for like. The mafia simply used the exact same routes to smuggle heroin. They didn't disappear or die out, due to alcohol prohibition ending. They got into bed with the CIA, under operation gladio. What they did with crack wasn't the first or the biggest example.
Like you said, you can't people abusing substances. They remain illegal because somewhere some very powerful people are making too much money from them remaining so.
We tried that in the US. It went very poorly.
In fact in the US it can't be illegal federally without a constitutional amendment.
Because they saw just how badly prohibition went, shame it took them a century to catch up with weed.
Weed was made illegal in the 70s, no?
Nope, it was just returned to public spotlight in the 70s as a tool to fight the counterculture
I am in my late 30s. Drank in college with friends at parties. I dont anymore just not into it. I like things that make me faster, smarter, or stronger. I dont understand why all TV shows and movies seem to be centered around drinking when its a social scene. (I live in north america). Nothing good comes from drinking alcohol. They make it seem like if you're relaxing or want to have fun you need alcohol. I just need a good brisket for both those.
"By buying [unnecessary product] you will help [marginalized group] to gain a livable income and also send their kids to school instead of sending them to [work place with - even for adults - horrible work conditions]. Also, when buying [product] we will save [arbirtary area] of [rainforest/ coral reef/ mangrove swamp] that would otherwise have been destroyed [but not by us]. Additional to that, your purchase helped us to save [arbitrary ammount of CO~2~ - at least in a completely hypothetical scenario]. While using [product] you will make the world a better place."
As a customer there is barely any way you can ensure or check that these things are true. It cannot be possible to save the enviroment while buying stupid products like, for example, internet-of-shit-devices which will be phased out in no time or single use products made from plastic or other harmful materials that are not recycleable.
All these claims are just an indulgance trade - like it is done for centuries in a religious context. It is just that you have an excuse to consume more, because they to something to help people/ enviroment. If there was a product that would have been advertised as: "Well, we irretrieveably destroyed 100 km^2^ of nature, and for each single product in average two workers died and at end-of-life this product will fuck up the environment once more - also it will impair your health just by existing", it would be horrible - but at least it would be honest.
Minor being member of religious (or political) organization
In the US slavery should be illegal since ages but isn't yet.
The employer-employee contract
It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.
Inalienable means something that can't be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor
I think that it depends on the nature of the contract. Sure, most of them are terrible.
On the other hand, NDAs are a form of employment contract that are often a necessity. Non-compete contracts can serve a legitimate purpose, in preventing unfair competition or using company secrets for person gain. They're usually written in an overly broad manner though, or prevent legitimate employee activities.
Private cars in cities.
They're noisy, unhealthy, cause massive damage to infrastructure, transport one person at a time while taking up enough space for ~10 in the road, fill open spaces for parking, sometimes while being completely unusable, endanger everyone else on the roads....
I'm a fan of a nested zone approach.
City center, no cars, pedestrians, bikes and busses only.
A few blocks away, compact cars only.
A few more blocks from that, all cars, no trucks or SUVs
A few more from that, All cars trucks and SUVs allowed, no trailers.
Absolutely outer edge, drive whatever you want.
Killing animals for pleasure.
Edit: I love how the voting discrepancy here shows the hypocrisy lol
This is generally illegal and heavily fined as well. Depends on where you live, I guess.
Also depends on which animals
It’s generally legal and heavily subsidised. See also animal agriculture.
Hunting isn't purely done for fun, it is also done to harvest meat
and ecological conservation
Absolutely, the biggest nature lovers in my family are all hunters, they enjoy being in the woods, they enjoy seeing animals, they follow the rules to only harvest as much they are allowed and only during the season permitted.
In my country it's mostly done for fun.
So people go out, shoot a deer and just leave it there?
Seems like an extreme waste to me...
It's usually not that much extra effort to take the carcass and bring it to a butcher, so they do that sometimes. But yeah. Often, just leave it.
It's actually not all that bad because we have a lack of natural predators (because we already hunted them almost to extinction) so hunting keeps the deer population from exploding.
Surprised to see no one has said cigarettes yet. Not only are you poisoning yourself, it's harmful to everyone else around you that has to inhale that shit.
In the same vein, driving gas cars
I would vastly prefer that gas cars be phased out. But I believe that this is a bit different:
Cigarettes don't offer any benefit beyond making you "feel good." And you don't need cigarettes to feel good, and, in fact, literally any other option is better for both you, and everyone around you, save for harder drugs.
Gasoline cars, while poisonous to the world around us, also offer us far greater benefits: supplies and logistics, we can carry goods further, wider, and faster than we ever could without them. And because of that, without them, sure we'd pollute a lot less, but then we'd have a far harder time carrying critical resources to more remote parts of the world where trains and planes can't reach, and people would starve or lack critical medicine.
As it stands, EVs are not a reliable substitute. They're getting there, I want them to get there, but I disagree with the notion that cars should be made illegal as things currently stand. I don't think it's nearly as cut and dry as cigarettes are. I can only hope to live long enough to see a world where gas powered cars could be outlawed without leaving hundreds of millions of people high and dry.
Not really something that is legal that should be illegal, but I would love to see this nonsense that corporate executives can't be held criminally responsible (the corporation is) for their illegal acts.
I think it would correct an awful lot of shitty things corporations do really quickly (assuming enforcement).
I think all those in the management chain should be held responsible. Maybe with a weighting of the proportion of those under them engaged in the criminal behaviour.
It should be treated as in the military, "I was just following orders" is not an excuse.
Yeah, I like that! 👍
Corporations don't make decisions... Those people do
Products purposefully manufactured to be unfixable. Main example being anything apple...you can't even add ram to a iMac anymore and they have the audacity to sell the lower end model with 8 gigs of ram as if that's enough when everyone knows its not. Basically selling a 1400$ piece of shit.
It is far worse if you look at the radmom no name brand products sold by Amazon, they are straight manufactured trash, that is only barely functioning when it comes out of the factory.
Everyone not having access to a 1-bedroom apartment or living space that is all theirs and affordable. So much crime is because people are forced to live with others they shouldn't be around and can't get along with in a shared living space.
Additionally, so many people are driven by the fear of homelessness so they just suck it up to their detriment until they snap and go really nuts and end up with shelter either way
Are you saying what should be legal but isnt?
Whoops my bad, curse this episodic dyslexia
Arbitrary surcharges and fees. Like "5% to offset the rising minimum wage" bullshit restaurants are doing.
If that gets rid of tipping, I don't see an issue with it.
Tipping is fine, but only as a bonus for excellent service. There shouldn't be a "suggested gratuity" or some shit like that and also obviously shouldn't be counted as part of the employee's salary, like in the US
Lying if you're a politician. You should be in a state similar to "under oath" in court, but at all times.
Advertising. I should have the legal right to not be advertised at. I should have the right to not have to accept advertising in order to access services, especially so if I already pay a subscription to that service. I cannot put into words how much I loath and despise advertising and advertisers. I hate them. Hate, in the real sense of the word.
Loot boxes in video games, whatever age group the game in question is aimed at, but especially so in kids' games.
Microtransactions in video games for anything other than non-essential/non-advantageous items, like cosmetics. Even then, their presence should upgrade the PEGI rating to adult/18, regardless of the actual content of the game. This might help prevent their inclusion at all.
Whatever the fuck is going on in Gaza right now.
Shielding police or soldiers from prosecution for crimes they've committed. If you stand in the way of the due process any other citizen would face, you should be heavily penalised for that. Like, the murderer soldiers who carried out Bloody Sunday are currently being protected by the British state and its lackeys, and I cannot fathom why. Cops in the US who murder people are frequently protected by unions and get to retire rather than be fired etc. All of that shit should be illegal. Get the fuck out of the way of due process.
Naziism and related nonsense like Holocaust denial. Germany already has laws about this, but that shit needs to be legally smothered in its crib everywhere.
Conspiracism surrounding public health issues like vaccines and masks.
Climate denial.
Slave labour in prisons.
Private prisons.
PACs and donations to PACs.
Lobbying.
Joe Rogan.
Slave labour in prisons.
It would be nice if prisoners of non-violent/minor crimes could (voluntarily) work (at maybe a lower wage than usual) and and they would be able to get what they earned once they get out of prison.
Using lies, especially lying about the beliefs of important historical people or of gods in someones religion, for a political campaign is legal
Copyrights
Nope, copyrights isn't the issue, they enable people to earn money from their creativity, the issue is rather that they are way too long.
Back in the 1780s copyright lasted 14 years after the work was created.
This is fine, the current obscene legnth of copyright is terrible.
I'd be fine with copyright being like 20 years or so, that's plenty of time to make a good amount of money from your work IMO. But yeah the current system where some corporation gets to keep cashing in on something half a century after the author is dead is pretty ridiculous.
We only really run into trouble when we start treating corporations like people and copyright as a commodity in it's own right.
Non-transferable copyright for the life of the author would be perfectly acceptable.
the statute of Anne was the first copyright law and it was written to stop printers in London from breaking each others' knees over who was allowed to print the world of Shakespeare who was already long dead.
copyright is a bill of goods when packaged as a protection for creatives.
Not for something like medicine or crops that people will die if the copyright holder abuses their copyright. In that case we have to act for the greater good and make medicine first, compensate creators later, if at all.
Eh... where? This seems like a very location-specific question.
if no location is given, assume an american asked the question without realizing there's more to the world
No just answer for your location or name global/international examples.
What is this rest of the world you speak of?
Factory farming
Leveraged buyout, cutting yourself a huge check, folding the company and walking away.
Over the past few decades it's become very clear this is needed. The problem is that by making LBOs illegal you are saying that a controlling stake of the company's stock isn't the same as owning a controlling stake in the company. So at that point the value of stocks becomes a bit more speculative and likely much less stable. Given that basically the entirety of our economy is built on the stock market I think this is incredibly unlikely to ever happen.
Not putting your shopping cart in a corral.
Being noisy in public.
Ugh yes, and ban scooters and motors as well, they make such a ridiculous amount of noise compared to their speed.
Also ban talking on the street, public transport, and trees. All of these can be very noisy, and I can't stand it! Oh and bikes too, their bells are very infuriating, especially when it's bad and rings all the time.. and better not let your kids play in the front of the yard!
Seriously, I have seen loud motors, but haven't any loud scooters. Which one do you think is loud?
In my experience cars and newborns are louder, not by a little margin, just to give a few examples.
Yes please. People should shut up in public transportat and other crammed public places.
Over and over again we have to have the discussion about how alcohol consumption has been a massively important social practice across the planet for thousands of years, and despite the significant health effects, prohibition always does more damage because people do not accept being told that they aren't allowed to imbibe.
Alcohol has been linked to early onset Alzheimer's and drunk driving is a major cause of death.
When traveling in south asia like Thailand or Indonesia I was a little disappointed that it was that much more expensive relative to everything else. Like it was a hardcore drug or something.
Yeah eastern countries just don't have the same relationship with alcohol that the west does.
Gambling, however...
I’m personally not a fan or alcohol. But I do think it’s just a “people are gonna want it” kind of thing. I think it should be regulated in a way that discourages abuse and boosts local economies.
I see modern alcohol companies just funneling money out of communities (especially on weekends). Stuff like wines coming out of vineyards might be one thing, but global conglomerates selling cheap beer worldwide is definitely another.
I wonder if it would be beneficial to regulate tobacco and alcohol products so that they were produced locally and thus harder to get, with lower marketing budgets, and limited supply. The added perk is that the money stays in the community.
MlM's. They're predatory.
while I generally agree with you, lots of things that are legal could be called predatory and people don't seem to have a problem with them, but somehow MLM crosses the line.
Everyone has a different definition of what is acceptable and I don't think there is enough of a majority consensus one way or the other to do something about it.
Tbh this is one is a little personally motivated.
I watched a very smart person I worked for get sucked into an MLM and it was disturbingly cult like the way it played out. One day literally everything about was this Lev-el Thrive vitamin shit. Which around $300 a month to take caffeine laced vitamins with willow bark. Which they were told was safe for everyone by the company... but willow bark is more or less asprin. People with heart issues shouldn't be taking that shit.
I used to think only stupid people fell for mlms, but my previous boss successfully ran a business for around 15 years(the one I was employed at). I had to leave that job because my boss couldn't pay me anymore. All their money went into this 'side business' that the company kept saying they'd make it back. They did not.
That whole experience was like a fever dream to me. It felt like my boss had been body snatched by some mlm greed demon, and ever since i just see mlms as culty life ruiners that should be illegal.
Those chainsaw discs for angle grinders.
I've never seen those, but it sounds fun
Didn't even know that was a thing. Looks so sketchy.
"Sketchy" is an understatement, the thing is just itching to embed itself in your throat meat.
They is crazy, I didn't know those existed. Are they dangerous? Seems low utility given the small diameter.
Incredibly. They're used for carving wood, but they're super grabby. Grabby with any cutting tool is bad.
I think I saw a video mentioning they are illegal in some places, showing just why they're so dangerous
Stock trading.
I am fine with companies issuing stock and with people selling that stock back to the company. Everything else should be illegal.
Why wouldn't companies just set themselves up as the exchanges in that scenario?
I don't think it would functionally change anything
I'm envisioning stock as a sort of non-transferable contract between you and a company. There would be no way to pass the stock to a third party.
Then how would the stock have any value?
The way it originally had value. You are loaning the company money and betting they are successful enough to pay you back with dividends.
non-consensual advertising (consensual being things like steam discovery queue, where I actively want to be advertised to), "lobbying" (bribing), fossil fuels and friends, gerrymandering (US), the electoral college (US), publically trading your company
Most advertising is non-consensual, but I'm still whole-heartedly in agreement. One could argue that ads that are shown to a person consuming media without paying (podcasts, YouTube, etc), are kinda consensual.
Rent seeking and usury (the charging of interest)
Without charging of interest, why would a bank lend you money?
Also you would not get interest on money you have in the bank.
I agree that limits on charged interest on loans are needed, but abolishing them completely would destroy a big part of our society.
Usury means a paticoularly high interest rate.
Also, destroying a big part of our society sounds great!
It might sound great untill it starts affecting you or someone you care about
My aunt works in oil, if it was made illegal tomorrow that wpuld dirsupt her life. I would be glad to help her and glad that the future of everybody just got brighter?
If oil was made illegal tomorrow, society would collapse.
Supply chains would collapse, artificial fertilizer would not be made, crops would die, massive famine would set in, medicine would not be able to be made, power generation would stall, including emergeny generators, and vast numer of people would die globally.
Congratulations, who ever makes oil illegal, will be responsible for the biggest mass death globally ever.
Thanks for making me feel smarter.
capitalism
"illegal" is overrated, anyway. Trump did a ton of illegal stuff and yet, here we are.
It's really hard to take the "law" seriously when we constantly see rich people getting away with violating it.
Guns
Already illegal (without proper licence) in most first world countries. Or at least not as unregulated as as in Murica
They shouldn't be illegal, but heavily regulated.
I mean, hunting and harvesting meat is far more ethical to the normal meat industry.
Ridiculous rental prices and annual rent increases with no improvements to show for it.
Witch hunting.
Which hunting?
Witch ones.
Cigarettes
yea outlawing people's drugs worked so well so far lmao
Yes.... let's create another prohibition era item... it's a vice.
Possibly controversial but prostitution. Allows for regulation and workplace safety. Would probably calm a lot of men down as well and help them focus on the more important aspects of getting into a relationship.
Edit: misread the title and thought it said "legal".
I think you misread the title.
I think you are right.
Did I understand correctly are you saying prostitution should be illegal? If so what do you mean with regulation and workplace safety?
I misread the title because I was hungover and distracted.
there is in fact only regulation as long as it is legal. how do you regulate if it is illegal? it only gets hidden then. and literally everywhere it went bad when it became illegal. everything you claim to want to achieve (regulation and workplace security) is completely lost and things get worse, more victims, less control, violence cannot be prosecuted cause none would go to police when anything happens, etc etc. , that is until it becomes legal again, but until then making it illegal even short time would cause way more damage than is possible to "fix" in a decade or two. just read about what happened where govs already took that path. if you want it to get out of control and destroy health and lifes, and create ground for forced prostitution (aka slavery), then yes, making it illegal is the way you get exactly that result.
and for the relationship thing... as far as i know (which is not much) the mayority of such customers already are in a relationship (mostly the one called marriage) while singles way less do such.
I misread the title. Sorry for wasting your time
accepted
Buy-here-pay-here car dealers
Pawn shops
Payroll advance loans
Title loans
Private prisons
Bankruptcy-proof loans
Bankruptcy for corporations
Just spitballing here, feel free to add any I missed...
i'm sorry, but what is that first one, and what's the alternative?
I feel like my answer might break AskLemmy's rule 2 about "Overt Politics", but so do a lot of the other answers? Feel free to delete if so.
::: spoiler overtly political answer, also CW for violence.
As far as the current American system goes... nothing. By and large, even laws that seem good are mostly only used in service of the elites, against the people. Consider this series of events:
In 2015 a white supremacist in South Carolina commits a mass shooting, killing 9 people.
In 2017, the Georgia state gov expands the state's domestic terrorism laws, directly in response to this shooting, because the previous version wouldn't have covered it.
In 2022, this expanded law gets used... against people protesting police brutality, who hurt no one, despite the fact that the cops killed one of them.
Unfortunately, this general sequence is not uncommon at all. Neither is the inverse, where the bureaucrats/judges/etc decide "that doesn't count, actually" when it comes to an elite very clearly breaking an existing law, or else changing the law so it doesn't apply to them in retrospect.
:::
Unlimited campaign finance
Social media.
Talking to me.
Take me to prison then.
But it isnt illegal!
Hanging the toilet paper the wrong way.
Why does people care how they hang their toilet paper in their own bathroom?
It was a joke.
From my industry: Perhaps the purchase of chemicals for the manufacture of fireworks. It's surprisingly easy to order pounds and pounds of different oxidizers and fuels.
The one I need is highly controlled. I need to make my own strike anywhere matches since Uco quit, need red phosphorous, don't want to scrape it off of match strikers for hours, want a big ol' jar. Apparently it's also used to make "MeTh" so I can't buy it.
Powdered aluminum though no problem, go figure.
double-dipping your dessert sausage into the fish oil bucket
Smoking. Millions of euros of taxpayer money spent every year on those lung cancer patients which could be well spent elsewhere. It's also an activity that negatively affects not just the smoker but everyone around them.
Smoking is something I truly despise, we all know that it is bad, really bad for you, we teach kids about it, yet people still start smoking.
Do as New Zealand did, set a cut off year, if you are born after 2015, you will not be permitted to buy tobacco at all.
then have a right leaning government win the next election and roll it back https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/510439/smokefree-generation-law-scrapped-by-coalition-government
Damn it...
Blame tobacco lobbies and gullible fools.
Great. You've just made another illegal narcotic, a black market and a way of financing illegal activity.
I'd agree with you on that if tobacco was completely banned, but banning from a specific age, seems like a fairly low impact.
...and as time marches on?
The use would be drasticly cut down, we'll never get every one....
What I meant was that "a ban from a certain age" is a total ban eventually. Black market will grow as the ban becomes more and more complete.
What I find amusing is that the cigarettes packages where I live have disgusting images with the potential sickness it comes from its usage, and yet people still buy them 'hey man, this will literally kill you someday" warning does not work.
I thought this was a well known measure but it seems that my USA cousin did not know about this kind of marketing.
They ought to increase it by 2 years every time. That way people have to get clean. Also, we ( US citizens) should take control of all tobacco companies, and wind them down, putting all profits and assets towards addiction recovery services, and cancer treatments.
They've been making billions off of slowly killing people for the last 100+ years, they don't need one more fucking day.
The tax on cigarettes is so high, it's been claimed they pay more into the system than they claim out, as they die too soon. 🫣 (In Australia)
At least here in Germany this is apparently still not true as smokers in particular add a huge cost to the healthcare system due to the long-term and repeated damage. For example, once they get parts of their feet amputated from clogged arteries, most actually continue to smoke ("Ah well now it's too late anyways"), and hence will get half a dozen such amputations over time.
Obesity is the issue these days not tobacco. Tobacco use is a fraction of what it once was. Now a huge portion of the EU and USA is obese, which causes way more strain on the healthcare system.
X
That sounds like marketing by tobacco companies.
Haha I had to go digging.
So it is mentioned in an Australian page about the costs of Tobacco in Australia:
https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17-2-the-costs-of-smoking#17.2.6
So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.
...in a study funded by a tobacco company.
Thank youj for the link, I read the section you linked to and the cancer council seems like a good soruce, and it was about what I expected.
Australian here, in Finland. Holy shit it seems everyone smokes like chimneys here.
Never really thought about how much smoking has declined in Aus over the last 20-40 years, but yeah coming over here has been an eye opener.
Seems to be a Europe thing, or really a rest of the world thing. It's very rare to smell cigarettes, particularly after vaping took off.
In my country there was like 10 wonderful years when almost nobody smoked.
In the last 5-10 years all that got reversed by vaping, it’s everywhere now. Not as bad as smoking though.
Yeah, and unlike what people commonly think, it doesn't just directly affect the user (first hand smoke) and the people around it (second hand smoke), but also the furniture and nature around it (third hand smoke).
I despise those cigarettes laying around everywhere in nature. You can even smell them on remotes if someone was a hardcore smoker.
They need help in kicking off from it.
i hate tobacco but prohibition doesnt work.
we should have learned that lesson with alcohol and weed but it seems we did not.
Supermarkets and businesses throwing food away and not allowing people to take it for free. ("If I can't sell it nobody can have it").
Would only work if you also made them immune from lawsuits due to people getting sick from eating expired food.
they already are under the good samaritan laws; they use lawsuits as an excuse for their shitty behavior.
Depends on your location. Good Samaritan laws vary widely.
The food would presumably "last moment before expiry" i.e. we can't sell this tomorrow so we give it away tonight.
Expiration dates on packaged food are almost always about how enjoyable the food is to eat, not safety. Donating expired packaged food with legal protection from liability would be good for the world.
Requiring the purchase or use of proprietary software or formats to view or submit public records.
Or medical. Or educational.
Collection of personally identifiable information on every website ever.
Corporate murder.
Making a profit from healthcare and health insurance.
Or even just make private health insurance illegal.
Lobbying.
Lobbying is fine. Lobbying with money should be illegal.
ITT: people so used to lobbying that they got convinced it's a necessary evil so that minorities and common folks can lobby as well.
It's clearly absurd. Many places call lobbying with its real name: corruption. And there are laws in place to fight it. Are they perfect? No. Is it then more effective to legalyze corruption? OF COURSE NOT ARE YOU INSANE?!?
Lobbying isn't the same as corruption.
Lobbying is informing politicians about an issue while pushing your agenda.
Corruption is giving a politician an incentive to vote as you want.
I get what you mean, but that would backfire increadibly quickly.
Civil rights organizations would no longer be able to talk with politicians directly, possibly never, as demonstrations and manifestations could be classified as lobbying depending on how strict it would be enforced.
Environmental groups could no longer invite politicians to important conferences.
Lobbying isn't just something that monolithic companies do, take it away, and it will only be something the bad guys does.
Yup, a late friend of mine was a lobbyist at the state level for a mental health lobbying group. His daughter has schizophrenia and that was his way to give back in his retirement. Without lobbying, it's hard for politicians to know when there is a problem they need to fix. They have a small staff and they don't just magically know when there is a problem. The problem is when a politician either can't sniff out unethical lobbyists or just doesn't care.
Members of Congress trading individual stocks, bonds, and other investments.
Lies and exaggerated advertising.
No, it's not "best in the world" or "lightning fast", it's an entry level $200 GPU!
No, it doesn't have "crystal clear high-res screen", it's just a budget phone!
No, that tampon will not change my lifestyle!
No, that perfume will not make guys drooling over me!
I'm ok with "it's decent quality with an affordable price".
I'm ok with "it's the best budget-friendly option".
I'm ok with "it's not the best in the world, but it's definitely worth a try".
I personally think the "how good is it" part of "advertising" should literally just be a percentage value of "how many existing customers say it was worth it".
But even that would get gamed the way 5/5 amazon reviews can be bought today already.
So maybe it should really just be "it's a insert thing made out of insert material produced in insert country by insert labour conditions and it costs insert price".
For-profit healthcare.
For-profit insurance too.
Not sure Rick when one can insure a hole in one is just a business decision.
But I get it health housing and catastrophic losses could be better monitored and regulated.
I'd qualify that as for-profit mandatory insurance.
Canpt get a mortgage without home insurance. Canpt drive a vehicle without at least liability. Those rates should be strictly government regulated to be sustainable and non-profit.
But if you want to insure your collection if priceless Whitworth wrenches, well maybe I care a bit (Just a bit!) less about insurance gouging.
I'd go further and ringfence all the basic needs so that you can't profit from providing them, just make enough to live off if needs be.
Making more than 10x the money of your least paid employee.
I get where you're coming from, but I think you'd just see companies divide into tiers where one tier would subcontract to the tier below. Think "cleaning services companies" all the way down.
Well I don't expect the exact phrasing of the code of law to be 11 words.
Simple : let's make that illegal too
This.
Nutrition information based on unrealistic serving sizes.
I've seen an individually wrapped muffin "servings per pack: 2".
Then there's that Tom Scott video on how "zero calory" sweetener can be 4 calories.
There's a great video by Vihart about how even when accounting for servings per unit it can still be manipulated to fit their marketing goals.
Europe has "per 100g"
Thank you! That had6 given me much more to be outraged about!
Canada passed 'rational servings' laws a few years ago to this exact end. No more cases where a single-portion package would contain 1.6 servings, or whatnot.
Boneless chicken with bones
u want to outlaw chickens ?
A throwaway reference to another thread on here …. Someone tried to sue a restaurant when he choked on a bone in his boneless chicken wings. The court ruled he can’t sue because “boneless” is just a style of cooking and doesn’t make any claim about whether that meal has bones. …. That kind of misrepresentation, and dodging responsibility should be illegal. All sorts of scamming the customer should be illegal and isn’t
If I can go on a bit of a rant, I do believe in the power of the market to shape our lives, our economy, our society. Conservatives got that part right. But a market is only “free” when everyone plays by the same rules and has same facts and knowledge, free choice. A market is only beneficial when it is shaped by regulators to benefit society. A market is only sustainable when it incorporates externalities. If Conservatives are gung ho about free markets, they need to step up and do their part. While there’s a nice theory about the usefulness of Marketting, the primary use is to lie, subvert, fool, distort the market, and THAT should be illegal
Some.
Just the bonless ones with bones.
Unlimited political spending, particularly by corporations - see Citizen's United.
Campaign financing in general. If you get enough signatures you'll get a fixed amount of money from tax payers for your campaign. If you accept money from anyone else you're barred from public office for life. End of corruption right there.
Qualified immunity for police officers. Prosecutors and judges basically get qualified immunity, too-- in that they can be caught engaging in all sorts of inappropriate and illegal activity without facing punishment because like police, it usually doesn't even get to the extent of being charged.
I don't even understand how qualified immunity could even be implemented without massive social unrest
Maybe fix the social issues as well so there's no need to riot
I'd love to but even our most citizen aligned presidential terms only side with the people 20% of the time...
Locked bootloaders
Requiring agreement to some unspecified ever-changing terms of service in order to use the product you just bought, especially when use of such products is required in the modern world. Google and Apple in particular are more or less able to trivially deny any non-technical person access to smartphones and many things associated with them like access to mobile banking. Microsoft is heading that way with Windows requiring MS accounts, too, though they're not completely there yet.
Billionaires. Nobody ever needs that much wealth. Resources better used elsewhere for the public good.
Etc.
Most countries have elections on thw weekend.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_day
Lots of people work on weekends.
Yep?
But less people work on weekends than on weekdays.
There is no universal day for everyone to make it, which is why Sweden offers pre-election voting and voting by mail, plenty of other countries does as well.
predatory microtransactions in video games that are essentially gambling.
Mutilating the bodies of people too young or otherwise unable to give consent.
I want to live in a world where "stop cutting bits of babies dicks off" doesn't require any further explanation.
"No, actually, its you who needs to justify cutting bits of babies dicks off. Not the other way round. Unless its hair, nails or connected to the mum, the default position is actually not to cut bits of the baby off."
Oh lmao I was way off, I was like "damn I'm surprised to see an anti abortion post at +9 -0 on lemmy, wtf?!"
I didn't realize until I read your post lol.
So im asking this question as a person who has had to have an adult circumcision, I get the consent part, but why is this considered mutilation?
Again, im genuinely ignorant of the subject beyond medical requirements
Because it serves a genuine function, because the process poses an unnecessary risk, because there is no way to know how big the penis is going to get when the kid grows up, and that is part of the reason for the foreskin, to have a ton of give so it doesn't happen like it did to my ex. He got circumcised as a newborn, and by the time he finished puberty, his penis grew far more than the leftover foreskin, so he wasn't even able to have full erections without a tremendous amount of pain and sometimes, even tearing.
This is a complicated way to flex with a big dick. But thanks for the insight. Didn't know about this specific problem circumcision has.
vocabulary.com: "When a person or an object has been altered or damaged in a permanent way, that's a mutilation."
it can desensitize the penis and cause health issues and/or sexual dysfunction (arguably its intended consequence). forced body alteration is mutilation
If you chop someone's leg off without consent for no good reason, that's mutilation. If you amputate it with consent for legitimate medical reasons that's a medical procedure.
This 100% reads to me as an anti-trans post. Maybe that's not your intent, but that's the way it reads. Esp. since anyone under 18 con not legally give consent to anything.
I read it as an anti-circumcision post. You ckuld be right, though.
Child marriages. Fact that's legal in any US States is absurd.
Absurd? Yes. Surprising? No. If you put children in bathing suits to decide which is the hottest child? It's not shocking to hear that they want to marry these hot children.
Speaking as a non-American: it's a fucking obscenity
What the fuck really?
Insane rent hikes. Landlords and corps shouldn't be able to raise rent from $1,700 mo to $8,000 mo in a single period, let alone a handful of years.
To piggyback off that: the concept of rent.
It's fine as a concept, it allows you to live somewhere without making a commitment long-term.
But there needs to be more regulations in place, like maybe making it illegal for corporations to buy residential property and requiring by law that any new residential building must have the option to buy as well as rent, with regulations to ensure it's a fair price.
Housing shouldn’t be gatekept. Rent as we know it is broken. Someone owns a property, while you pay the mortgage. But you’re not paying down to own, you’re paying it down for someone else to own. Sure, renting is fine for people who move a lot, but that money shouldn’t be flushed down the drain every month—from the position of the renter. Rental credits, to where that money you’re putting down acts as a credit toward getting the opportunity to own. This would take a massive restructuring of the way we behave as a society, but it’s desperately needed.
Advertising. I just hate how it’s crept into every facet of our lives and it’s not done intruding in on our daily lives either.
Yep. It’s insane to me how society goes to such lengths to make road transportation, driving, cars etc safer, and then is perfectly fine with billboards. It’s super illegal to be distracted by your phone whilst driving, but a giant graphical ad on the side of the road is totally cool. Whut
Conflicts of interest. Sometimes illegal, but not nearly as much as they should be (almost always)
Like congress members being allowed to trade stock, which can then be affected by their vote
Or one of the specifically carved out exceptions to the medical kickbacks laws is for the people who negotiate drug prices for pharmacies
Forced arbitration clauses.
selling boneless chicken wings with bones.
I think tacking on irrelevant laws onto popular bills to get them passed shouldn't be allowed.
Politicians shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks, especially when they're in a position to pass laws that would directly affect their holdings.
Super PACs, it's absolutely wild that that's a thing IMO.
I think there should also be a "cooling off" period of some sort over passing/repealing laws. I'm thinking as an example of the Republicans after Obamacare was passed, when they tried to repeal it something like 70 times in 10 years. I get that things change and laws sometimes need to be amended or updated, but there should really be some system in place to prevent people from spamming up the whole system like that.
I'm also not a big fan of the filibuster.
Monopolies
Predatory advertising... commonly is the form of fear mongering, but any form should be illegal.
When you are in a political position you are not allowed to lie.
We have to develop the technology to perfectly detect lies and give everyone who wants to be in office a collar which gives them seizures when lying.
Every Parlament around the world would look like a Harlem shake gone wrong.
Lobbying.
It defintly is a slippery slope. I work for a municipalitylies utilities company. Part of my job is working with a utilities companies union to lobby politicians to make laws that will actually improve the way we can work. I think we actually do improve things for the German public by bringing desperately needed knowledge to the table.
But I think we are a small minority among lobbying institutions.
Small print, excessive legalese and outright deceptive language in ads, agreements and such. All the "free" (not really free) trials, "unlimited" (not really unlimited) plans, "best value" (according to the producer and their mum) deals and shit like that.
There really should be a law prohibiting that - if reading through terms and conditions for using a damn website or a toothbrush or whatever requires 4 hours of free time, a magnifyibg glass and degree in law, such t&cs should be illegal. Same for disclaimers and such in ads - any 4pt text displayed for 2 seconds on screen should automatically result in a massive fine.
Honestly? Alcohol. I used to work security at a rehab, and it was always the worst addiction. The withdrawls are horrible, up to and including death. Yes, even worse than heroin.
Read up on US prohibition and how it funded the Mafia. It just changes the form of the societal disease.
The answer to addiction is having support and care on place for those that fall to it so society helps pick them up again. You can't stop the abuse of substances unless you fix why people are crawling into a hole to avoid the world. Lack of mental health is a disease of society as well as the individual.
Its so mad that we have such a literal example of exactly what happens, due to prohibition, yet society refuses to see like for like. The mafia simply used the exact same routes to smuggle heroin. They didn't disappear or die out, due to alcohol prohibition ending. They got into bed with the CIA, under operation gladio. What they did with crack wasn't the first or the biggest example.
Like you said, you can't people abusing substances. They remain illegal because somewhere some very powerful people are making too much money from them remaining so.
We tried that in the US. It went very poorly.
In fact in the US it can't be illegal federally without a constitutional amendment.
Because they saw just how badly prohibition went, shame it took them a century to catch up with weed.
Weed was made illegal in the 70s, no?
Nope, it was just returned to public spotlight in the 70s as a tool to fight the counterculture
I am in my late 30s. Drank in college with friends at parties. I dont anymore just not into it. I like things that make me faster, smarter, or stronger. I dont understand why all TV shows and movies seem to be centered around drinking when its a social scene. (I live in north america). Nothing good comes from drinking alcohol. They make it seem like if you're relaxing or want to have fun you need alcohol. I just need a good brisket for both those.
Go pick up a history book.
Social- and greenwashing proposals.
"By buying [unnecessary product] you will help [marginalized group] to gain a livable income and also send their kids to school instead of sending them to [work place with - even for adults - horrible work conditions]. Also, when buying [product] we will save [arbirtary area] of [rainforest/ coral reef/ mangrove swamp] that would otherwise have been destroyed [but not by us]. Additional to that, your purchase helped us to save [arbitrary ammount of CO~2~ - at least in a completely hypothetical scenario]. While using [product] you will make the world a better place."
As a customer there is barely any way you can ensure or check that these things are true. It cannot be possible to save the enviroment while buying stupid products like, for example, internet-of-shit-devices which will be phased out in no time or single use products made from plastic or other harmful materials that are not recycleable.
All these claims are just an indulgance trade - like it is done for centuries in a religious context. It is just that you have an excuse to consume more, because they to something to help people/ enviroment. If there was a product that would have been advertised as: "Well, we irretrieveably destroyed 100 km^2^ of nature, and for each single product in average two workers died and at end-of-life this product will fuck up the environment once more - also it will impair your health just by existing", it would be horrible - but at least it would be honest.
Minor being member of religious (or political) organization
The selling of personal information.
In the US slavery should be illegal since ages but isn't yet.
The employer-employee contract
It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.
Inalienable means something that can't be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor
@asklemmy
I think that it depends on the nature of the contract. Sure, most of them are terrible.
On the other hand, NDAs are a form of employment contract that are often a necessity. Non-compete contracts can serve a legitimate purpose, in preventing unfair competition or using company secrets for person gain. They're usually written in an overly broad manner though, or prevent legitimate employee activities.
Private cars in cities.
They're noisy, unhealthy, cause massive damage to infrastructure, transport one person at a time while taking up enough space for ~10 in the road, fill open spaces for parking, sometimes while being completely unusable, endanger everyone else on the roads....
I'm a fan of a nested zone approach. City center, no cars, pedestrians, bikes and busses only.
A few blocks away, compact cars only.
A few more blocks from that, all cars, no trucks or SUVs
A few more from that, All cars trucks and SUVs allowed, no trailers.
Absolutely outer edge, drive whatever you want.
Killing animals for pleasure.
Edit: I love how the voting discrepancy here shows the hypocrisy lol
This is generally illegal and heavily fined as well. Depends on where you live, I guess.
Also depends on which animals
It’s generally legal and heavily subsidised. See also animal agriculture.
Sustenance is different from pleasure
Does your country not allow hunting?
Hunting isn't purely done for fun, it is also done to harvest meat
and ecological conservation
Absolutely, the biggest nature lovers in my family are all hunters, they enjoy being in the woods, they enjoy seeing animals, they follow the rules to only harvest as much they are allowed and only during the season permitted.
In my country it's mostly done for fun.
So people go out, shoot a deer and just leave it there?
Seems like an extreme waste to me...
It's usually not that much extra effort to take the carcass and bring it to a butcher, so they do that sometimes. But yeah. Often, just leave it.
It's actually not all that bad because we have a lack of natural predators (because we already hunted them almost to extinction) so hunting keeps the deer population from exploding.
Trophy hunting, after all this time, is still legal and big business.
Surprised to see no one has said cigarettes yet. Not only are you poisoning yourself, it's harmful to everyone else around you that has to inhale that shit.
In the same vein, driving gas cars
I would vastly prefer that gas cars be phased out. But I believe that this is a bit different:
Cigarettes don't offer any benefit beyond making you "feel good." And you don't need cigarettes to feel good, and, in fact, literally any other option is better for both you, and everyone around you, save for harder drugs.
Gasoline cars, while poisonous to the world around us, also offer us far greater benefits: supplies and logistics, we can carry goods further, wider, and faster than we ever could without them. And because of that, without them, sure we'd pollute a lot less, but then we'd have a far harder time carrying critical resources to more remote parts of the world where trains and planes can't reach, and people would starve or lack critical medicine.
As it stands, EVs are not a reliable substitute. They're getting there, I want them to get there, but I disagree with the notion that cars should be made illegal as things currently stand. I don't think it's nearly as cut and dry as cigarettes are. I can only hope to live long enough to see a world where gas powered cars could be outlawed without leaving hundreds of millions of people high and dry.
Not really something that is legal that should be illegal, but I would love to see this nonsense that corporate executives can't be held criminally responsible (the corporation is) for their illegal acts. I think it would correct an awful lot of shitty things corporations do really quickly (assuming enforcement).
I think all those in the management chain should be held responsible. Maybe with a weighting of the proportion of those under them engaged in the criminal behaviour.
It should be treated as in the military, "I was just following orders" is not an excuse.
Yeah, I like that! 👍 Corporations don't make decisions... Those people do
Products purposefully manufactured to be unfixable. Main example being anything apple...you can't even add ram to a iMac anymore and they have the audacity to sell the lower end model with 8 gigs of ram as if that's enough when everyone knows its not. Basically selling a 1400$ piece of shit.
It is far worse if you look at the radmom no name brand products sold by Amazon, they are straight manufactured trash, that is only barely functioning when it comes out of the factory.
Everyone not having access to a 1-bedroom apartment or living space that is all theirs and affordable. So much crime is because people are forced to live with others they shouldn't be around and can't get along with in a shared living space.
Additionally, so many people are driven by the fear of homelessness so they just suck it up to their detriment until they snap and go really nuts and end up with shelter either way
Are you saying what should be legal but isnt?Whoops my bad, curse this episodic dyslexia
Arbitrary surcharges and fees. Like "5% to offset the rising minimum wage" bullshit restaurants are doing.
If that gets rid of tipping, I don't see an issue with it.
Tipping is fine, but only as a bonus for excellent service. There shouldn't be a "suggested gratuity" or some shit like that and also obviously shouldn't be counted as part of the employee's salary, like in the US
It would be nice if prisoners of non-violent/minor crimes could (voluntarily) work (at maybe a lower wage than usual) and and they would be able to get what they earned once they get out of prison.
Popups.
The Man Who Invented Pop-Up Ads Says 'I'm Sorry'
Rich people and cops breaking the law.
They should make it illegal to break the law
Using lies, especially lying about the beliefs of important historical people or of gods in someones religion, for a political campaign is legal
Copyrights
Nope, copyrights isn't the issue, they enable people to earn money from their creativity, the issue is rather that they are way too long.
Back in the 1780s copyright lasted 14 years after the work was created.
This is fine, the current obscene legnth of copyright is terrible.
I'd be fine with copyright being like 20 years or so, that's plenty of time to make a good amount of money from your work IMO. But yeah the current system where some corporation gets to keep cashing in on something half a century after the author is dead is pretty ridiculous.
We only really run into trouble when we start treating corporations like people and copyright as a commodity in it's own right.
Non-transferable copyright for the life of the author would be perfectly acceptable.
the statute of Anne was the first copyright law and it was written to stop printers in London from breaking each others' knees over who was allowed to print the world of Shakespeare who was already long dead.
copyright is a bill of goods when packaged as a protection for creatives.
Not for something like medicine or crops that people will die if the copyright holder abuses their copyright. In that case we have to act for the greater good and make medicine first, compensate creators later, if at all.
Eh... where? This seems like a very location-specific question.
if no location is given, assume an american asked the question without realizing there's more to the world
No just answer for your location or name global/international examples.
What is this rest of the world you speak of?
Factory farming
Leveraged buyout, cutting yourself a huge check, folding the company and walking away.
Over the past few decades it's become very clear this is needed. The problem is that by making LBOs illegal you are saying that a controlling stake of the company's stock isn't the same as owning a controlling stake in the company. So at that point the value of stocks becomes a bit more speculative and likely much less stable. Given that basically the entirety of our economy is built on the stock market I think this is incredibly unlikely to ever happen.
Not putting your shopping cart in a corral.
Being noisy in public.
Ugh yes, and ban scooters and motors as well, they make such a ridiculous amount of noise compared to their speed.
Also ban talking on the street, public transport, and trees. All of these can be very noisy, and I can't stand it! Oh and bikes too, their bells are very infuriating, especially when it's bad and rings all the time.. and better not let your kids play in the front of the yard!
Seriously, I have seen loud motors, but haven't any loud scooters. Which one do you think is loud?
In my experience cars and newborns are louder, not by a little margin, just to give a few examples.
Yes please. People should shut up in public transportat and other crammed public places.
"Disturbing the peace" you mean?
Alcohol. It's more dangerous than it seems.
Over and over again we have to have the discussion about how alcohol consumption has been a massively important social practice across the planet for thousands of years, and despite the significant health effects, prohibition always does more damage because people do not accept being told that they aren't allowed to imbibe.
Alcohol has been linked to early onset Alzheimer's and drunk driving is a major cause of death.
When traveling in south asia like Thailand or Indonesia I was a little disappointed that it was that much more expensive relative to everything else. Like it was a hardcore drug or something.
Yeah eastern countries just don't have the same relationship with alcohol that the west does.
Gambling, however...
I’m personally not a fan or alcohol. But I do think it’s just a “people are gonna want it” kind of thing. I think it should be regulated in a way that discourages abuse and boosts local economies.
I see modern alcohol companies just funneling money out of communities (especially on weekends). Stuff like wines coming out of vineyards might be one thing, but global conglomerates selling cheap beer worldwide is definitely another.
I wonder if it would be beneficial to regulate tobacco and alcohol products so that they were produced locally and thus harder to get, with lower marketing budgets, and limited supply. The added perk is that the money stays in the community.
MlM's. They're predatory.
while I generally agree with you, lots of things that are legal could be called predatory and people don't seem to have a problem with them, but somehow MLM crosses the line.
Everyone has a different definition of what is acceptable and I don't think there is enough of a majority consensus one way or the other to do something about it.
Tbh this is one is a little personally motivated.
I watched a very smart person I worked for get sucked into an MLM and it was disturbingly cult like the way it played out. One day literally everything about was this Lev-el Thrive vitamin shit. Which around $300 a month to take caffeine laced vitamins with willow bark. Which they were told was safe for everyone by the company... but willow bark is more or less asprin. People with heart issues shouldn't be taking that shit.
I used to think only stupid people fell for mlms, but my previous boss successfully ran a business for around 15 years(the one I was employed at). I had to leave that job because my boss couldn't pay me anymore. All their money went into this 'side business' that the company kept saying they'd make it back. They did not.
That whole experience was like a fever dream to me. It felt like my boss had been body snatched by some mlm greed demon, and ever since i just see mlms as culty life ruiners that should be illegal.
Those chainsaw discs for angle grinders.
I've never seen those, but it sounds fun
Didn't even know that was a thing. Looks so sketchy.
"Sketchy" is an understatement, the thing is just itching to embed itself in your throat meat.
They is crazy, I didn't know those existed. Are they dangerous? Seems low utility given the small diameter.
Incredibly. They're used for carving wood, but they're super grabby. Grabby with any cutting tool is bad.
I think I saw a video mentioning they are illegal in some places, showing just why they're so dangerous
Stock trading.
I am fine with companies issuing stock and with people selling that stock back to the company. Everything else should be illegal.
Why wouldn't companies just set themselves up as the exchanges in that scenario?
I don't think it would functionally change anything
I'm envisioning stock as a sort of non-transferable contract between you and a company. There would be no way to pass the stock to a third party.
Then how would the stock have any value?
The way it originally had value. You are loaning the company money and betting they are successful enough to pay you back with dividends.
non-consensual advertising (consensual being things like steam discovery queue, where I actively want to be advertised to), "lobbying" (bribing), fossil fuels and friends, gerrymandering (US), the electoral college (US), publically trading your company
Most advertising is non-consensual, but I'm still whole-heartedly in agreement. One could argue that ads that are shown to a person consuming media without paying (podcasts, YouTube, etc), are kinda consensual.
Rent seeking and usury (the charging of interest)
Without charging of interest, why would a bank lend you money?
Also you would not get interest on money you have in the bank.
I agree that limits on charged interest on loans are needed, but abolishing them completely would destroy a big part of our society.
Usury means a paticoularly high interest rate.
Also, destroying a big part of our society sounds great!
It might sound great untill it starts affecting you or someone you care about
My aunt works in oil, if it was made illegal tomorrow that wpuld dirsupt her life. I would be glad to help her and glad that the future of everybody just got brighter?
If oil was made illegal tomorrow, society would collapse.
Supply chains would collapse, artificial fertilizer would not be made, crops would die, massive famine would set in, medicine would not be able to be made, power generation would stall, including emergeny generators, and vast numer of people would die globally.
Congratulations, who ever makes oil illegal, will be responsible for the biggest mass death globally ever.
Thanks for making me feel smarter.
capitalism
"illegal" is overrated, anyway. Trump did a ton of illegal stuff and yet, here we are.
It's really hard to take the "law" seriously when we constantly see rich people getting away with violating it.
Guns
Already illegal (without proper licence) in most first world countries. Or at least not as unregulated as as in Murica
They shouldn't be illegal, but heavily regulated.
I mean, hunting and harvesting meat is far more ethical to the normal meat industry.
Ridiculous rental prices and annual rent increases with no improvements to show for it.
Witch hunting.
Which hunting?
Witch ones.
Cigarettes
yea outlawing people's drugs worked so well so far lmao
Yes.... let's create another prohibition era item... it's a vice.
Possibly controversial but prostitution. Allows for regulation and workplace safety. Would probably calm a lot of men down as well and help them focus on the more important aspects of getting into a relationship.
Edit: misread the title and thought it said "legal".
I think you misread the title.
I think you are right.
Did I understand correctly are you saying prostitution should be illegal? If so what do you mean with regulation and workplace safety?
I misread the title because I was hungover and distracted.
there is in fact only regulation as long as it is legal. how do you regulate if it is illegal? it only gets hidden then. and literally everywhere it went bad when it became illegal. everything you claim to want to achieve (regulation and workplace security) is completely lost and things get worse, more victims, less control, violence cannot be prosecuted cause none would go to police when anything happens, etc etc. , that is until it becomes legal again, but until then making it illegal even short time would cause way more damage than is possible to "fix" in a decade or two. just read about what happened where govs already took that path. if you want it to get out of control and destroy health and lifes, and create ground for forced prostitution (aka slavery), then yes, making it illegal is the way you get exactly that result.
and for the relationship thing... as far as i know (which is not much) the mayority of such customers already are in a relationship (mostly the one called marriage) while singles way less do such.
I misread the title. Sorry for wasting your time
accepted
Buy-here-pay-here car dealers
Pawn shops
Payroll advance loans
Title loans
Private prisons
Bankruptcy-proof loans
Bankruptcy for corporations
Just spitballing here, feel free to add any I missed...
i'm sorry, but what is that first one, and what's the alternative?
Gambling, overtime working.
I feel like my answer might break AskLemmy's rule 2 about "Overt Politics", but so do a lot of the other answers? Feel free to delete if so.
::: spoiler overtly political answer, also CW for violence. As far as the current American system goes... nothing. By and large, even laws that seem good are mostly only used in service of the elites, against the people. Consider this series of events:
Unfortunately, this general sequence is not uncommon at all. Neither is the inverse, where the bureaucrats/judges/etc decide "that doesn't count, actually" when it comes to an elite very clearly breaking an existing law, or else changing the law so it doesn't apply to them in retrospect. :::
Unlimited campaign finance
Social media.
Talking to me.
Take me to prison then.
But it isnt illegal!
Hanging the toilet paper the wrong way.
Why does people care how they hang their toilet paper in their own bathroom?
It was a joke.
From my industry: Perhaps the purchase of chemicals for the manufacture of fireworks. It's surprisingly easy to order pounds and pounds of different oxidizers and fuels.
The one I need is highly controlled. I need to make my own strike anywhere matches since Uco quit, need red phosphorous, don't want to scrape it off of match strikers for hours, want a big ol' jar. Apparently it's also used to make "MeTh" so I can't buy it.
Powdered aluminum though no problem, go figure.
double-dipping your dessert sausage into the fish oil bucket
AI. And PoW-based cryptocurrency.