Not only they are bad ideas, but the incentives are horrible.
I could see the point of prisons if there was "warranty". If a person guess back to jail, the first sentence was useless and the prison should be financially punished. You'll see then how quickly therapy and quality job trainings are implemented.
Nah, they'd just have hitmen ready to kill anyone who leaves the prison.
The exit leads to an airlock, except the open button turns on the incinerator.
Also education
Infinite return customers = infinite profit!
Man, just reading this plain sentence. It's so glaring as to why this should be illegal.
Using "tipping" as an excuse not to pay workers living wage.
Displaying prices without tax.
P.S.
This is illegal where I live, but some places would be better off if it were illegal there also.
Displaying the price you will pay at the counter is my personal benchmark for civilized society. No price tags? You're a medieval backwater. Wrong price tags? Go see a shrink, USA. Correct price tags is the way to go.
It's weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don't have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it's so freaking nice.
About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That's refundable too, at least theoretically, so it's not that bad.
Would it change your assessment if they have dynamic price tags that you can only see with the aid of some network-connected augmented reality solution or an online catalog (that you access with a QR code you scan, geotagged software, or something along those lines)?
digital serfdom
Advertisements for prescription medication
Well that highly depends on location. I think that's illegal in most of Europe
Most places other than the US. I know it's illegal here in Canada.
We get medication ads here in Canada, they're just very restricted in what they can actually say, but Sportsnet runs a rybelsus ad every hockey game
That's only legal in like two countries.
I'm in one of them. I wish it wasn't.
Advertisements in general. Imagine world without ads and sponsored content.
I don't think that's realistic. Even the guy at the local market shouting "get your potatoes here" is technically advertisement.
What could work instead is to make both the company that advertises and the one that displays the ad liable for the ad itself. If it's inappropriate, contains malware or is in any way malicious, the company displaying it should also be liable for endangering the customers. Also outlaw tracking for advertisement purposes altogether
This one is pretty location specific but I agree that US law doesn't make any sense.
Like, physician and pharmacist spend 10 years at university to learn all the details about prescription medication and then have to get yearly retraining, so how do you even do ad's for that
Two ways: first, you go to doctors offices and hospitals and give gifts to the person responsible for picking which version of this medicine to buy/prescribe.
Second, convince patients to ask for your version when they see their doctor by telling them on tv that it will make their life better or whatever
I left the US to work overseas and when I came back the law changed and everyone was hooked on viagra, the "little purple pill" and everything else...it was VERY obvious what happened...after we sttled down we went to establish care woth a GP & I walked out of my initial appointment with 6 prescriptions.
ridiculous...
Lobbying and lobbyist groups.
Lobbying in and of itself isn't bad, it makes our politicians aware of issues and alternatives.
Unrestricted lobbying is the problem, I recently read that lobbyists from Amazon would no longer have access cards to the European parliament so they no longer could come and go as they liked.
I just wonder why lobbyists ever got that access in the first place...
Owning shares when you are an elected official with jurisdiction over the industry you own shares in.
Also, any political figure owning shares in a media organisation, regardless of whether it is traditional media or βnew mediaβ.
God the nerds in here are annoying.
"Ackchually banning lobbying would mean nobody could talk to politicians anymore blah blah..."
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Could you explain?
Lobbying as in "bribery with extra steps" where companies give money to politicians, ask them to do something, then say it's ok because it's "lobbying" and therefore not bribery, but people are coming in and pointing out how lobbying technically just means talking to politicians, but that's not what RotatingParts meant.
Isn't the problem that the "extra steps" are loopholes?
And legal loopholes are like a hydra. Close one and the lawyers will open up two more.
I imagine the line is hard to draw. But of course, the ones doing the drawing of that line are also on the receiving end of the good stuff, so there's incentives to not close those loopholes...
Probably the part where they're straight-up bribing politicians to rubber stamp the garbage that ALEC writes.
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
People who don't know anything about lobbying know what you mean when you say lobbying should be illegal.
Banning lobbying would mean no one would be able to talk to a politician/official about an issue. Not even writing your local officials, proposing a local ordinance to making bike lanes or spending money to fix-up/improve a local park. Because that's lobbying. You're asking a government to wield their official power and/or spend public money, for your (and potentially others') benefit.
Even lobbying groups aren't necessarily bad. The Sierra Club, EFF, ACLU. These are American, but I'm sure there are equivalents of these in other countries.
So banning lobbying doesn't really work. Now if you're talking financial contributions and gifts and nice dinners from those who lobby, yeah that probably needs to be more highly regulated or stopped altogether. Generally speaking, any kind of quid pro quo.
But just talking to a politician should not be made illegal. In democracies, talking to people, talking to politicians, and trying to convince them to align with your view is the name of the game.
Does that include unions?
Gonna overturn the 1st Amendment?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I'm sure there are ways to dial in the abuse, but what legislator is gonna vote for that?
Gerrymandering.
Some forms of it are illegal, but it's hard to define what exactly constitutes Gerrymandering. Rather than enumerating all of the ways the Gerrymandering is possible, we really just need to make it so only one specific policy for forming districts is used. I think mathematicians have been proposing models for this that attempt to create districts with roughly uniform distribution of population and isotropic borders.
One side changes on EULAs.
Hardware that requires a proprietary service to work.
Looking at you, nvidia.
Selling life-saving drugs at large multiples of the cost to manufacture + distribute. The most obvious example being insulin.
Switching political party in the same term that you were elected to office.
CEOs making 100x the median worker at the same company.
Assault rifles and other automatic or military-grade weapons. They have no practical purpose in the hands of a citizen. Pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles should be sufficient for hunting and self defense.
Generic finance bro bullshit. Frivolous use of bank credit for speculative investment. Predatory lending. Credit default swaps. It's just a spectrum of Ponzi Schemes. Let's reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
Non-disclosure of expensive gifts to Supreme Court judges. Looking at you, Clarence.
Military recruiting at high schools.
Junk mail. You literally have to pay a company to stop sending it.
Automatic weapons for the most part are already illegal, assault rifle isn't a term that actually means anything and neither does military grade. In fact only 3% of gun deaths in the states are from rifles. The real issue is the illegal gun market and the endless supply of hi-points and other pistols.
You've been lied to.
An "assault rifle" is specifically a selective-fire rifle with detachable magazines and intermediate cartridges. AR-15s, AK-47s, and M16s meet this definition. You are likely thinking of "assault weapon," a term which is not well-defined.
And while it's true that most mass shootings and gun deaths in general are perpetrated by handguns, assault rifles are responsible for the deadliest mass shootings.
Because it is so challenging to pass gun control legislation in the US, the least we can hope to do is forbid ownership of the deadliest types of guns.
I agree that this is not sufficient though. We need to have more stringent requirements for acquiring any firearm. 28 states don't even require background checks for private sale of guns. Our laws fall way too short on gun trafficking.
The illegal gun market is just a symptom of the very legal gun market. The head of the ATF even said, "virtually every crime gun in the US starts off as a legal firearm."
We need background checks, and I don't think private unlicensed gun sales should be legal either.
Okay except most rifles, including AK47's AR15's and M16's are semi automatic only so they aren't selective fire. And if we ignore that requirement and go with the the other two requirements it means that .22lr hunting rifles with a box mag count as "assault rifles"
Pistols are still the deadliest type of guns no matter what metric you use.
The head of the ATF is also responsible for operation fast and furious. Not to mention that is a nothing statement when you think about it. Of course they start off as legal firearms. Gun traffickers are "legally" buying these weapons overseas end mass from firearm companies and warlords or they're being stolen from legal gun owners.
The head of the ATF is also responsible for operation fast and furious.
That's just whataboutism.
Honestly true. I just think he's a moron so I discount much of what he says.
Also I looked up the statement about most guns being legal. Based on data from his own agency its 54%. While that is technically the majority, thats a coin flip. "Virtually all" in my books is 70% or higher.
Pistols are still the deadliest type of guns no matter what metric you use.
That's a silly statement. Why do you think soldiers prefer to use assault rifles in combat? I said "deadliest" meaning the most capable of killing, not the most statistically likely gun to kill someone.
"Most capable of killing" doesn't mean anything though. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet. What gun its fired out of doesn't really matter when its against soft targets. 9mm 5.56 and 7.62 are all the same lethality.
Edit: Also comparing the use case of gangers and even school shooters with soldiers is foolish. The main benefits of a rifle (in war) are range, stability and higher cyclic rate. Virtually all rifles are semi automatic so cyclic rate doesn't matter. And at the range pretty much all school shootings take place in, pistol vs rifle doesn't matter. Stability is also largely irrelevant based on distance and the fact that unarmed civilians dont shoot back.
All this to say, 91% of school shootings are perpetrated with pistols. So this hyperfixation on "assault rifles" is silly. I say again, you've been lied to.
Ok I don't really agree with all of your lines of reasoning but I'm curious what you think the solution to our gun problem is. We at least agree that we have a problem, right?
Oh certainly.
Legislation needs to focus pistols. Cracking down on the black market of highpoints.
I thought the last few school shootings were from legslky owned rifles?
That's what you hear about. You don't hear about the other 40,000 gun deaths (almost half suicides) anymore than you hear about the 40,000 vehicular deaths.
Kis shoots up a school and kills 5? All over the media for a solid week. Asshole ripping down the interstate takes out a family of 5? Meh. Quick local news blurb.
OP's point is that rifles, legal or not, aren't what's doing all the killing. It's the pistols. Nobody will talk about it because there's no way in hell for a pistol ban to pass. But words like "assault" and "military" get traction.
Remember Virginia Tech? Worst mass murder at the time? Kid did most of his killing with a .22 pistol.
They were. They were horrific tragedies. They are also the outlier of outliers. And any legislation targeting them is either a) going to have zero effect on crime, b) only going to harm law abiding citizens or C) both
isn't it specifically going to rein in the outlier of outliers that school shootings are? I think people would be really happy with that, even if the average crime rate doesn't go down
I doubt it If they cant get an ar they'll just go get a black market pistol for $100. And besides, the way to curb school shootings isn't through firearm restrictions. It's through actual proper mental health programs and funding. Something that the US government refuses to fund because it'll actually fix the problem instead of just being a feel good gesture.
The only shootings where mental illness plays a major factor are suicides. When it comes to gun violence, only 4-5% of perpetrators have a severe mental illness. When it comes to school mass shootings specifically [ source ]:
67% are white
100% are male (95% according to a different source)
βSevere mental illness (e.g., psychosis) was absent in the majority of perpetrators; when present, psychotic symptoms are more associated with mass murders in academic settings involving means other than firearmsβ
And with regard to school shootings generally:
77% of the time, someone knew about their plans for the shooting ahead of time
more than half of K-12 shooters have a history of psychological problems, but the bigger issue is that nearly three quarters of the time, they had been being bullied or harassed in school
depending on the source, nearly half or more than half got the gun from home or a relative, often by stealing an unsecured or under-secured firearm
If we could reduce bullying and do a better job at making students feel like they have value and matter, that would go a lot further toward reducing school shootings than anything involving mental illness (aside from, perhaps, efforts to reduce the stigma associated with it).
Substance abuse - drugs, particularly those that are illegal, and alcohol - as well as poverty and inequality is much more strongly linked to gun violence.
Iβm not saying that we shouldnβt continue improving our available mental health resources (the majority of deaths from guns are by suicide, after all), but we shouldnβt use mental illness as a scapegoat.
Huh well alright then. I thought mentally illness played a bigger part. Now I know. Thanks!
What the fuck? You have to pay to stop getting junk mail? We in Australia just put a little sign on our letterbox saying 'no junk mail' and we stop getting it. That's insane. Same thing with the insulin comment and some of the stuff other people said like forced arbitration. America is crazy.
You think thats bad, we have active shooter drills and safe rooms because nothing is done about our gun nut problem.
Yup I paid the fee to stop getting marketing junk mail. Then when I started an LLC, they started sending all of that mail again addressed to the LLC. You can't fucking win.
Free paper is free paper. You can also mess with them by signing them up for each other and/or sending them stones (if there's a return envelope; they'll be charged for it).
Lol @ just filling return envelopes with worthless dead weight
belonging to one particular political party or another doesn't necessarily dictate which way a politician votes.
Insider trading by Congress
Cheaters
Edit:
"they are cheating!"
Got elected to be congressman
"LET'S DO THIIISS"
Trading at all by Congress. They should be required to lock their money in a blind trust with heavy oversight. If a CEO has to publish their stock sales months in advance, congresspeople should too.
Landlords. Housing as a commodity in general.
Just curious what your preferred solution would be?
I don't think owning your home is realistic in all scenarios. For example, let's say because you needed to leave your abusive partner, so you don't have the luxury of going through the whole process of saving money, then researching, and eventually purchasing a home. You need to get out, maybe live somewhere for a year or two to get your feet under you and save some money so you can purchase a home. If you couldn't rent a home, how could you possibly get out of this situation if you had no money on hand?
If you move to a new city that you've never visited before, sometimes you want to rent in a few areas to find the areas you like before commit long term to a place.
I really don't think buying a home should be your only option for living in a home. It's just not what's best for some people in some scenarios.
Government owned housing used to be a common thing in the UK and itβs how housing works in Singapore today, just because private landlords donβt exist doesnβt mean people canβt rent houses from the government
Could you elaborate on Singapore? I have a friend who lives there and her rent is obsceneβ¦
It is illegal to a degree, it violates rules and regulations with the IRS. When they back a politician, they are supposed to lose their church non-profit status. But that doesn't happen because any move to it would cause a huge "the government is attacking out religious freedoms/churchs".
In fact it's now a religious event every year called "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" to purposefully break these laws.
That's true for the US but not everywhere else
Something (almost) no one has mentioned: factory farming of livestock. I'm not gonna say a person who engages in subsistence farming shouldn't be able to keep a coop of chickens for eggs (as long as their chickens are well cared for), but large scale animal husbandry and livestock is devastating to the environment and genuinely cruel.
Kill it yourself and eat it? Fine by me. Circle of life, yadda yadda.
Send hundreds into an abattoir to be machine killed by robots or strangers and eat it? No. Own up to the process, or don't partake.
Own up to the process, or don't partake.
That's actually why I went vegan: I couldn't see myself ever killing an animal.
That's great in theory, but there's just too many people for that to be anywhere close to realistic. If we had about 20% of our current global population, then I'd agree with you, but even the worst pandemic in modern history couldn't scratch 1%.
my parents grew up eating meat once a every few months, from animals they raised themselves. No big farm, just a house in a village. Is that not sustainable?
No it isnt because unless you eat/drink enough dairy or take B12 supplements, youre going to have a B12 deficiency if you do that. People forget that meat actually serves a nutritional purpose.
Well shit, B12 supplements are cheap enough. Are there any other reasons itβs a bad idea?
Vegans and vegetarians (once a month meat consumption isnt really an omnivore diet) are more likely to be deficient in Zinc, Iron and are more susceptible to osteoporosis due to poor Calcium uptake. Because animal protein does help the body to absorb minerals like Iron, Zinc and the like (it isnt known for sure why and phytates in certain plant foods also hampers mineral uptake) vegetarians and vegans need to overcompensate for those minerals in their food. On the order of about 50% higher than the RDA for omnivores.
Now I am not saying it cant be healthy, it can and there certainly are problems with how the average westerner eats, but I have no confidence in this being done correctly on a mass scale given the data that has come out. eg. 50% of vegans are deficient in B12 as measured by blood test and thats among a population that is likely much more aware of B12 being problematic since it is only naturally found in significant quantities in animal products and almost every meat and dairy substitute on the market is fortified with B12. And that widespread deficiency STILL happens. Vegetarians are less susceptible to B12 deficiency but still generally rely on the dairy industry to obtain that B12 along with Calcium and Zinc. And because B12 is water soluble not fat soluble, it needs to be obtained daily or in higher doses, semidaily. And the effects of B12 deficiency can be delayed months (pernicious anemia) or years (permanent nerve damage with the anemia hidden by excess folate consumption)
People need education and better meat and dairy substitutes that arent as processed to make this work. Right now, most of them have too much salt and saturated fats to be an improvement.
No such thing as animal protein being different from any other protein.
This is not true at all.
You made the claim, prove it.
Denying that there are substantial differences between animal and plant protein is a weird take. (Anyone with a milk protein allergy is grateful that the proteins in plant milk arent the same as the ones in cow milk) Plant proteins arent always complete and the type of proteins arent the same. Plants for example, dont have proteins like casein which is present in cow milk. And as is pointed out in the linked review, can be deficient in amino acids such as Lysine, Cysteine and Methionine. (The sulfur containing amino acids they refer to) There is also evidence that plant protein by and large isnt absorbed as effectively as animal protein. Which is fine for the vast majority of people. i.e contrary to the fear mongering, vegetarians and vegans still get plenty of protein unless theyve done something horribly wrong. And the lower digestability of plant proteins has been useful in treating proteinuria (excessive protein in the urine) which is usually associated with kidney failure.
"A recent meta-analysis concluded that soy protein resulted in similar muscle mass and strength gains as animal protein"
"Meta-analysis revealed that although consuming animal protein provided a favorable effect on absolute lean mass compared to plant protein, the result was not statistically significant"
"As for muscle strength, meta-analyses showed no statistical difference in effect between animal protein and plant protein"
Also all the protein they are talking about is dairy not meat.
Well they did eat lots of cheese and dairy. Is that not okay?
You need cows to produce all of that just like you would meat. The way cow physiology works requires that calves be birthed periodically to maintain milk production at large scale. The dairy industry is to a large extent, a by product of the meat industry. Those new calves have to go somewhere. And you have to keep in mind that 70% of the world's population is lactose intolerant as adults. They rely on nondairy meat products for the majority of the B12 they get. OR you switch people to vegan substitutes that have B12 added to them. Right now those are niche/luxury products which is problematic for developing nations. Like... imagine going from small scale cattle and poultry farming to relying on B12 bacterial fermenters and soy production at large scale. That might be doable if new processes for using certain strains of B12 producing pseudomonas bacterial cultures can be developed for fermented soy products like tempeh can spread there but again, those arent there yet. More R&D is needed.
Screwing over a large number of people to benefit a small number of people. Religion and corporations immediately come to mind.
That's very vague and sounds like it would mainly affect minorities in a negative way. Not that I think that's your intention of course.
Forced arbitration
Definitely in a B2C context. If businesses want to force arbitration between themselves then fine.
Even worse in a Business to Employee context.
Tracking & profiting off it.
Forcing people to be tracked to use a product that they then sell that data should be illegal without your complete, informed consent, and you get to opt out and still use the product.
All tracking should be regulated. You own your personhood 100% and only you can make money off of that.
How about we set a no tracking flag in our browsers for example and companies actually respect the choice? One can only dream...
Zero hour contracts in the uk donβt actually have to have an actual contract so if your boss says that something is in your job description you canβt argue otherwise because there was never a contract that said what your job roles were to start with.
How is that even legal somewhere ?
For context this is how the vast majority of jobs work in the US by default.
payday loans
I've heard the argument that if those were illegal, loan sharks would just take their place. And they tend to be worse.
And then if those were illegal, actual sharks would take their place. And they are way worse.
yeah well why not have state licensed hit men then
They're licensed at the county level.
You know what would be really funny? Starting a payday loan business that isn't as nightmarishly exploitative just to upset the industry.
The sad thing is that the rates would still be pretty high just to cover the risk. People dont get a payday loan because everything is going fine for them financially.
Non-utilitized internet service.
Internet providers ARE UTILITIES. Regulate them like one.
Also utilities need to be regulated like utilities; make them publicly owned services, not for-profit companies.
At the very least, do so for the infrastructure. I don't mind companies trying to sell me the service competitively, but the infrastructure should allow for a competitive market.
Capitalism
EDIT: also i read the other comments and hilarious amount of other things mentioned also boils down to "capitalism" or their illegalisation would basically needed for capitalism to be outlawed too.
A bit tired and misread this as Capitalisation. That caused my brain to freeze, then reboot π€£
If writing in the German language (DSL for interfacing with Germans) should use PascalCase for nouns and camelCase for everything else.
RindfleischetikettierungsΓΌberwachungsaufgabenΓΌbertragungsgesetz
vs
RindFleischEtikettierungsΓberwachungsAufgabenΓbertragungsGesetz
Much more readable.
For a specific definition of readable, yes
Your brain rebooted...so did you pass out, or have a seizure? Haha
idk, but I felt refreshed and ready to go, almost like I never had any bugs or errors before...
Let's give an example that is more uplifting.
A 16 year old who just got their motorcycle license being able to buy a 200hp superbike capable of doing 180+mph.
For all intents and purposes, this should be illegal, because the teenager (usually) doesn't have the skills and willpower to handle such a powerful motorcycle as a noob.
But it does feel awesome to be able to buy whatever motorcycle you can afford once you get your license in the US, rather than being forced to start on a 125cc that can't even hit 60mph.
It's wild that's legal there! Where I live learners and provisional riders are restricted by power to weight ratio (150kw per tonne/200hp per 2000lbs), and that honestly seems like it keeps them on reasonable bikes for the skill level without having them all stuck on 125cc bikes struggling to reach the speed limit
Your provisional rider laws are a lot more fair than Europe's, which limit teenagers to 125cc for the first two year of riding.
150KW/tonne (with the rider) is enough to get a Ninja 400 or Harley Sportster 1200, both of which are plenty powerful for the street. But maybe these calculations don't factor in a typical rider's weight.
A 16 year old who just got their motorcycle license being able to buy a 200hp superbike capable of doing 180+mph.
True, but rarely does a 16 y/o have ~$10k saved up to purchase a sport bike with that power.
Then it wont be a problem for most of them when theyre not legally allowed to buy one.
lol, that's pretty funny π
Eh, I don't think the correlation of age is the causation of getting wounded or killed due to questionable decisions on powerful motorcycles. I'd venture to say the correlation is moreso in personality type, and aversion, or lack thereof to risk.
Like, you don't see complete straight edge 16 year olds getting bikes, and from my own anecdotal experience, my straight edge friends were scared of it. Though if there wasn't an inherent aversion to the risk, I'd bet those types would be incredibly safe motorcycle drivers.
The types that currently get them are the types that will take risks, regardless of their age, and we can't rightly outlaw something because some risk takers act dangerously on them. We'd have to outlaw cars too.
the extensive statistics correlate highly with age on the below 20 and above 75 with a plateau in between. risk aversion and personality could be great factors but how would you sample and test for that across large groups? i dont want my insurance company to give me some personality test or judge my social media. but maybe AI would help them to do it soon?
In India, minimum age is 18.
Family vloggers
Child exploitation is already illegal
Smoking. It's literally a drug and causes lots of health issues like increased lung cancer risk, but the worst part is that if someone smokes near you then you also inhale some of the toxins even if you yourself don't smoke. And in my country it's common to see people smoking on the streets. Combine this with air pollution and yikes
And alcohol.
Reality proves enough that forbidding drugs doesn't work though, it just creates a lot of other problems. Forbidding some parts of it like ads about them, selling to minors etc do have effect however
Tipping.
Giving tips is okay. Paying your employees less because you expect them to be tipped is stupid. Culturally requiring tips to make up the majority of a position's income is ridiculous, but very difficult to change.
Yes exactly. And now every payment maybe has tipping options enabled it seems, and it takes more steps to skip tipping options than to tip. Ridiculous.
Politic lobby.
Capitalism
Ultra bright headlights.
I see what you mean
How can you see anything anymore?
Capitalism, Literaly all of capitalism.
Fun fact: Pyramid Schemes (now called MLMs) cannot be made fully illegal because they are pure expressions of capitalism. In order to make them fully illegal they would have to admit the entire system is a scam, which they obviously aren't willing to do since they benefit from it.
Inb4 a Supreme Court ruling including βMLMs are like hard-core pornography - βI know it when I see it.ββ
That's just stupid enough to work.
Killing animals forr pleasure.
I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your comment, but killing animals for pleasure alone is already largely illegal in Western countries. And that includes hunting. You aren't allowed to just hunt an animal for fun and then leave it unharvested. It is hard to enforce, obviously. But you can definitely be charged for killing deer, moose, ducks, even fish, without a license and at least the intent to eat it. For example, you can't kill a bear, cut off its paws or gall bladder, and then throw the carcass in the bush. You also can be charged for killing or treating an animal inhumanely or in a way that causes it distress. That theoretically applies to all animals, including pets, livestock, aquariums, wildlife, and even small animals like mice and bats.
Taste pleasure
Yes, there is that. I am personally against hunting because I figure wild animals are already under enough pressure from habitat destruction and climate change.
Hunting is largely cultural now and isn't needed for sustenance except in very remote places. At the same time, I'm not sure if it is fair to classify a cultural practice as being for mere pleasure. It is a bit more complicated than that. Certainly, in Canada, indigenous peoples and the descendents of early settlers think so.
Hunting is needed for wildlife management. We've killed most of the natural predators for the animals we have hunting seasons for so we need to fill that niche or those animals won't have enough food to go around during winter. I can't speak for the animals, but I would prefer being shot to death rather than starving to death. There's also the factor of more deer (and other prey animals) crossing roads being more dangerous for everyone involved.
Agreed, at least for some species like deer. I can't think of too many others, though, especially with global warming. Most of the animals that thrive despite human encroachment, like coyotes, crows, and raccoons aren't animals that we hunt.
Governments, businesses, corporations and all of us just normalizing and accepting that the majority of everything we own or buy at affordable prices are all based on taking advantage of as many poor people as possible in our home countries and most of the time in third world developing nations where people are paid pennies for their work.
We complain about China, yet everyone buys everything from them. We look down on third world developing countries yet we base our economies on manufacturing a ton of stuff from them because they all hire people for as little as possible. In America, Canada and Europe, we have agricultural workers we ship in from poorer countries to harvest our crops because we don't want to pay higher prices for labour to the people that live in our countries .... we would rather pay poverty wages for imported labour that we don't want to stay in our country.
Everything we do, buy and pay for is all based on exploitation ... our entire economy the world over is based on it ... yet it is perfectly legal ... but if we are all so moral, enlightened and intelligent then it should be illegal.
Exploiting animals
As a general rule, the amount of exploitation and fraud it takes to "become" a billionaire should probably be illegal.
Lying about what you do with peoples data and who you share it with.
Sentencing and punishment are affected by "caste"
There is no ethical way for an individual to possess a billion dollars. The amount of harm an individual would have to cause to attain and retain assets of that magnitude should not just be criminal; it should be a capital offense.
Reposting things from reddit that have been posted there over 1000 times.
Oh shit! He's on to us.
Religion
I don't think it should be illegal. It should just be laughed off and not be taking seriously.
Except for the parts where, in the name of religion, people are subjected to barbaric surgical procedures; "cures" for their sexual preferences; and pedophiles in positions of authority, among many other terrible things.
In the history of humankind, religion is responsible for more human suffering than all other causes combined.
Careful, son, you might cut yourself on all that edge.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Where do we draw the line what is or isnβt a religion? If you have definition, try applying it to Pastafarianism, Communism, Budhism and a bunch of other ideas and practices from Asia.
Personally, I prefer to go with a super simple and completely arbitrary list definition. If itβs on my secret list, itβs a religion. If not, itβs a philosophy.
Pets. Or at least you need to know how to take care of them.
For example rabbits shouldn't be alone.
And wtf is up with putting birds in cages? They are supposed to be free and fly you sick ****!
Dogs on chains..
I feel I can continue forever and it's sad.
Parents who dont know how to be parents having one or multiple childs is the same
This seems significantly more impactful than pets
Yeah pet licenses should definitely be a thing
Dogs on chains are outlawed in Croatia.
For example rabbits shouldnβt be alone.
This is why I got a hamster, instead of rats. They LIKE being alone.
And SO MANY HAMSTER CAGES you buy in pet stores, recommended by pet store employees are WAY too small for them. So many of the wheels you can get for them are too small and give them back problems. If you buy something retail for a rodent, get the thing for a one size bigger rodent! Some of the things PetSmart markets for Syrian hamsters for instance are criminally small, enough to amount to cruelty.
But taking my hamster and putting him in the wild would be like taking a dude who lives in a five bedroom condo with a private swimming pool and an indoor gym and free door dash twice a day and sending him to live in a cave in the woods and telling him he should be grateful he gets to live free, the way he was meant to.
EDIT: Also... fuck hamster balls. Hamster's have very very poor vision, so they can't really see anything outside the ball. They're rolling around in a confusing environment with very poor ability to gauge the outside world. If you put a hamster in one of these, you have no idea if it's freaking out or stressed out or having a good time... but it IS rolling around in absolute ignorance of where it's going or what it's bumping into and if you pick it up and move it around it has very little understanding of what's happening.
βββββ
Boobstreamers eroticizing themselves in front of kids and luring them to their onlyfans sites. Should be treated as pedophilia
Removing AUX ports, forcing people to throw away their headphones, because you ALSO nowhere sell your overpriced USB DACs.
Climate Destruction
Stealing already existing nature land, forcing people out of it, and "taking care of it" and get carbon credits for it like what?
Mine Coal or Oil in 2024. Same with building nuclear plants.
We had a thing in Germany, where nuclear industries needed to pay for the disposal of nuclear waste. Instead of calculating real numbers, they should invest β or less of the actually needed money into trust funds. Like... what? Money doesnt grow just like that, it comes from exploiting workers, and "magically" they didnt need to pay that much. And of course that was too little so now the tax payers have to pay for these horrible companies.
Nuclear energy is significantly greener than coal and oil, IIRC. As well, there are a lot of places where it can be hard to get enough energy from renewable sources like hydro and solar.
Nuclear energy is slow, which is why things like "night storage heating" where invented, which store the unneeded heat generated at night.
We have a constant electricity demand and a varying. Especially if we use "smart" devices (nothing IOT, just washing machines only washing during the day) the constant demand can be decreased a lot.
So as we are awake roughly around the time that we can produce solar energy, and have wind for the constant part, we dont need nuclear power, really.
Also building these plants takes years which we dont have.
And nothing is sustainable if it produces non-disposable nuclear waste that will likely live longer than humanity on this planet.
I'm definitely pro solar, wind, and other renewable sources of energy. I'm just not convinced that nuclear shouldn't be included in a "greenification" of energy sources.
As an aside, I live somewhere where the days are pretty short in the winter, and even then, we get ~25 days of cloudy weather per month between December and February. Last year it felt like I didn't see the sun in 2023 until April, aside from a couple of days here and there (mostly in March).
Thankfully, most of our power comes from hydro anyways.
Half of the things that go on with donations. People who are enlightened enough to know 90% of your money doesn't go to its intended place (whether you're donating to starving Africans, people with a medical condition, etc.) cannot effectively stand up to corrupt charity organizations in a culture where half of the people still think the Salvation Army is a literal branch of the army. Even the charity watch groups are compromised.
Engaging your turn signal against traffic when the light turns green.
killing animals
Political parties and religions. All of them.
Parties? Why? What's the alternative?
I will quote George Washington to explain the why: "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
There is a safe level of oxygen and water you not only can, but must take. Your phrase sounds cool, but it's 100% misinformation.
and bacon.
Alcohol is pretty significantly toxic, especially compared to oxygen and water.
I'm not in favour of banning it outright, but alcohol is more dangerous than some drugs that are illegal in many parts of the world, including the US.
Oh yeah, a lot of people die because they drink too much water. Don't forget how moch money is wasted because people break shit and beat each other up when theu are high on water.
Isn't that more a social issue? Getting drunk and becoming violent isn't a cause-effect. Someone that becomes abusive after drinking would be abusive without alcohol as well, that's just a trigger for the behavior.
This is closer to an actual answer, though. It's easier to remove drinking than to change drinking culture. It just didn't work the last time they tried to ban alcohol (in the USA), so if behavior around drinking is the issue that is trying to be solved there are probably other ways to go about it.
Alcohol is popular because also improves your socialization, could be linked perfectly, but I'm not an expert to say it. And smoking cigarettes is also bad and isn't banned, while weed is safer than those two addictions, and it's still mostly illegal. There are reasons, and hippies are probably the cause, government wanted to criminalize them and their love movement. If alcohol keeps you down, and quiet, the government will not care to ban even if it's bad for your health, they need the companies to keep winning money.
Ok, but there are plenty of other items that that do that as well. It's not a call out of "all drugs, including tobacco and alcohol". It's not a callout of microplastics. So there's something specific to alcohol.
So thereβs something specific to alcohol.
Being widespread. One bad set of laws in bad place in bad time (propination laws in eastern Europe in XVIII-XIX century) caused untold suffering and is keenly felt to this day, showing how easily hundreds of millions of people can be fucked up by poisonous commodity.
I'm not for entirely banning alcohol, but only because it would be rather futile, but for restrictions in its selling and far going educational campaigns to finally get rid of it - and it is possible, even if not entirely, looking at the decline of consumption of other poison, tobacco.
USA tried banning these once...
Compound interest.
Letβs say you need to borrow 5000 β¬ for your first car, but you have only 700 β¬. First, youβll need to find a lender who is willing to share the risk with you. Then, you form a joint stock company (Tomβs Volvo C30 2008 incorporated), where you own 7/50 of the car and the other party owns the rest. When you have some more money, you can buy some more stocks. One day, youβll own the whole car and the lender has all of their money back.
So...instead of loans, you're advocating that people form corporations where shares are bought over time instead?
You'll still have to pay some interest to motivate the other party to invest, all you've really done is generate a bunch of extra paperwork to spin up a corporation.
The idea is to avoid the expense spiraling out of control due to exponential growth.
In order to motivate your business partner, you should have a contract that defines the price of the stocks in a favorable way. Itβs like buying and selling really. The lender pays 4300 β¬ for the car, and sells it at a higher price, such as 4600 β¬.
Oh, if you're trying to prevent usury, it would be far simpler to either cap interest rates or ban compound interest in favor of simple interest.
Rate caps are the simplest solution least likely to backfire, but unfortunately they tend to push people away from legitimate sources of lending, so you do have to be careful that they aren't too low.
Like I said, forming a corporation isn't a simple thing, doing it to organize a personal loan would take up an enormous amount of time and money, and result in substantially fewer consumer protections.
Well, now that taking a loan is fast and easy, people tend to spend the money they donβt have and buy the things they canβt afford. Having some sort of a speed bump along the way should make people think a little more and avoid getting into unnecessary debt.
I agree, but forming a corp is time consuming in an expensive way, you need (usually) retain lawyers and an accounting firm.
I think it would be better if getting credit were subject to income and asset verification, and most importantly that the government make sure eligibility verification is not abusive, discriminatory, or inconsistent in nature.
Billionaires
Ads for medication
Campaign contributions greater than $n from people and greater than $0 from corporations
The issue isn't psychiatry, the issue is tying it to capitalism.
Not completelly legal, but still too legal. Alcohol.
I can see where you are coming from, but if you don't allow me this vice, you'd better get me an alternative.
Great idea: a life worth living without taking drugs.
Passive income.
Does that include a ban of UBI (universal basic income)? Because that is a idea I do indeed support
Going by the traditional definition, UBI is indeed passive income. I don't think it is as bad as other forms of passive income, but I would prefer subsidies over just giving people cash.
musicians in shambles
There were musicians far before passive income for creative work was a thing. And it's not like the β¬0.003 per play Spotify pays is making bank for most musicians.
Didn't we try that and it was an absolute disaster?
actually, no, not a complete disaster. During american prohibition, domestic abuse all but disappeared, same went for a big part of self-harm due to alcohol abuse. It's normal to paint the prohibition as some complete mistake, but it has positive sides too.
And I say that as an enjoyer of alcohol and other fun stuff, disagreeing with banning it again
I'd be really interested to know the source of whatever stats say that. I mean, it's not like people actually stopped drinking, so why would domestic abuse "disappear"? That also totally implies that domestic abuse almost entirely happens because of alcohol.
With how much political/financial influence/bribery was behind prohibition, I'd totally bet statistics are skewed in favor of prohibition.
Yes but this time we legalise all the other drugs. Huge profits.
In all seriousness, no drugs should be illegal and healthcare and education should be freely available. Universal income. We would need to make conservatism, lobbying and billionaires illegal.
Owning more than one firearm
*more than zero
I can get total ban but why a ban on amount?
Because you can't get rid of guns completely. For one, the security forces of those in power will have them and second, those who intend to do bad things to people will have them.
Once the technology exists and is available to the public, one can no longer stop its proliferation.
Or you just ban it completely for everything but hunting and regulate that strictly (ofc with exceptions for police and military). This is the way gun laws work in most European countries and most of them are indeed very save places to live in.
Your point here is a typical American one and just not any good. Guns in self defense rarely help anyone and do way more harm when random idiots who suddenly feel a need to kill someone finds themselfs already with a gun in their hand. Not to say that it's impossible to get your hands on a gun in (for example) Sweden but the price and complications that ce with it do stop a lot of people from doing stupid things.
Well yes, but Americans have that unpleasant thing called ACAB that likely prevents them from accepting any attempt at removing their perceived self-defense against the abuse committed by authorities.
ACAB is a global fact, not unique to America. It's also a fact largely recognised by the same kinds of people who are opposed to the free flow of guns. The kinds of people who think guns should be unrestricted are also the kinds who, by and large, are supportive of police and believe police are on their side.
All you people using the downvote button to disagree instead of saying something need to go outside and touch grass.
I disagree.
Now you're getting into the spirit.
I agree π
If it annoys you, you could consider moving to an instance without downvotes so your feed will act like they don't exist.
OP is not bothered by the downvotes, they are bothered that they are being used as nothing more than a "I personally disagree" or "I don't like your opinion" button and that the vast majority downvoters are too cowardly to put forward their own counter opinion.
Any comment that is making an honest contribution to the discussion shouldn't be getting downvotes. When comments are downvoted for no legitimate reason, the website becomes at risk of being an echo chamber.
A feature that is consistently misused is a useless feature. Either get used to them being used to express disagreement or admit that they're a failure and stop trying to make them work.
I admit they're a failure but I won't stop being the change that I want to see.
Ooh please tell me which instances operate like that?
This page has a table of instances with a bunch of info including whether the instance has downvotes.
Thank you! I think if I didn't see downvotes it would be better for my mental health.
Passing on the right.
Definitely illegal in Belgium, is that not the norm elsewhere?
Apparently, and perhaps not surprisingly, the US allows it on highways. Which helps explain why their traffic related deaths rate per capita is almost twice the European average.
Not just on highways. It happens sometimes on surface streets as well.
I've never seen anyone do it so I'm pretty sure it's illegal in all countries were I've found myself on a highway. The US and Germany (due to their free speed generally quite weird autobahns) come to mind as countries that might allow it.
It's illegal in Germany as well.
Passing on the left in regions with LH traffic (RHD)
Since it is the opposite of Overtaking, it is typically called undertaking, especially if you try to undertake a large truck with limited visibility on the passenger side.
Assuming lef hand drive country, then don't use the passing lane for not passing.
I'm turning left on a two-lane street, waiting for incoming traffic to clear, and some jackass pulls into the right-turn cutout to pass me. It's both rude and dangerous.
What. So this "jackass" and all the people in the right lane should pull up behind you and wait for you to turn left? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. That's partially why there are two lanes, so traffic can continue to flow instead of waiting for you.
Edit:
Hold up. When you say "two lane street" do you mean one lane on each side? Because that changes everything. Whenever people I talk to refer to a two lane street they mean two lane in your direction.
Yes, one lane in each direction.
Where else are you meant to pass?
Downvotes from all the Americans who don't realise people drive on other sides.
To be fair, this is one of those times where the US is actually in alignment with most of the rest of the world.
Flying planes. A few months ago, I got to do take-off and pilot a bit in a tandem plane. Being in a small, single-engine 1969 plane instead of the typical jumbo jet--I realized it was literally just a shitty old RV inside, shag carpet, rickety little passenger window, and all. Except for one minor difference: we were soon IN THE FUCKING SKY. That's when I realized humanity has no place being up there, with all due respect to John F. Kennedy, NASA, etc. And a little sidenote to those same scientists: a giant metal object ascending into the sky makes no sense--I don't think it can last. It's the folly of man. Oh, and you can just have a plane!? That's allowed somehow!?
You have no clue how rediculously well regulated aircraft are. However aesthetically displeasing the plane you flew in was, it wouldn't be in the sky if it wasn't flightready.
You have no clue how rediculously well regulated aircraft are
While I'm broadly in agreement with you (and am certainly not in favour of banning flying), I think recent events have shown us pretty clearly: they are not nearly as well-regulated as the industry likes to claim, especially with the large commercial aeroplanes.
Still better regulated than cars and driving.
I think the problem is that some of the corporations have decided that it's acceptable to increase the margins of error in the name of profit.
If they make more money than they lose due to lawsuits and lost customers, it's a win in the eyes of capitalism!
The FAA and industry response to Boeing's neglegence has been swift and complete. I don't think these recent events detracts from what I said.
Boeing has been having issues going back a lot further, since at least the 787 Dreamliner. It's just gotten a lot worse with the 737 Max.
The problem is that the FAA allows them to use "Designated Inspectors" to ensure their compliance, which are Boeing employees, not independent FAA staff. And the FAA is still allowing them to fly despite there still being serious known flaws (being unable to run the anti-ice system for more than 5 minutes without potentially damaging the engine).
It's also probably why their only real competitor, not being based in business-friendly safety-regulation-hating America, hasn't had similar problems.
In a properly regulated market, the FAA never would have allowed 737 Maxes to be certified for use, or it at least would have grounded them once issues became clear. Instead, they treat Boeing as "too big to fail" and don't want to upset the travel market in the way that grounding large numbers of planes because of a safety concern.
Planes are by far the safest way to travel due to the extremely strict regulations, regulations that don't exist for other means of transportation
Now imagine being a wwii fighter pilot and charging straight ahead through enemy's AA in a plane built from wood and paper.
Im pretty sure your thinking about ww1, planes made in ww2 mostly consisted of metal.
Iirc biplanes were still used in ww2. Some of the newer ones also have wooden elements, such as the famous "wooden wonder" mosquito.
For-profit prisons and hospitals.
Not only they are bad ideas, but the incentives are horrible.
I could see the point of prisons if there was "warranty". If a person guess back to jail, the first sentence was useless and the prison should be financially punished. You'll see then how quickly therapy and quality job trainings are implemented.
Nah, they'd just have hitmen ready to kill anyone who leaves the prison.
The exit leads to an airlock, except the open button turns on the incinerator.
Also education
Infinite return customers = infinite profit!
Man, just reading this plain sentence. It's so glaring as to why this should be illegal.
Using "tipping" as an excuse not to pay workers living wage.
Displaying prices without tax.
P.S. This is illegal where I live, but some places would be better off if it were illegal there also.
Displaying the price you will pay at the counter is my personal benchmark for civilized society. No price tags? You're a medieval backwater. Wrong price tags? Go see a shrink, USA. Correct price tags is the way to go.
It's weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don't have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it's so freaking nice.
About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That's refundable too, at least theoretically, so it's not that bad.
Would it change your assessment if they have dynamic price tags that you can only see with the aid of some network-connected augmented reality solution or an online catalog (that you access with a QR code you scan, geotagged software, or something along those lines)?
digital serfdom
Advertisements for prescription medication
Well that highly depends on location. I think that's illegal in most of Europe
Most places other than the US. I know it's illegal here in Canada.
We get medication ads here in Canada, they're just very restricted in what they can actually say, but Sportsnet runs a rybelsus ad every hockey game
That's only legal in like two countries.
I'm in one of them. I wish it wasn't.
Advertisements in general. Imagine world without ads and sponsored content.
I don't think that's realistic. Even the guy at the local market shouting "get your potatoes here" is technically advertisement.
What could work instead is to make both the company that advertises and the one that displays the ad liable for the ad itself. If it's inappropriate, contains malware or is in any way malicious, the company displaying it should also be liable for endangering the customers. Also outlaw tracking for advertisement purposes altogether
This one is pretty location specific but I agree that US law doesn't make any sense. Like, physician and pharmacist spend 10 years at university to learn all the details about prescription medication and then have to get yearly retraining, so how do you even do ad's for that
Two ways: first, you go to doctors offices and hospitals and give gifts to the person responsible for picking which version of this medicine to buy/prescribe.
Second, convince patients to ask for your version when they see their doctor by telling them on tv that it will make their life better or whatever
I left the US to work overseas and when I came back the law changed and everyone was hooked on viagra, the "little purple pill" and everything else...it was VERY obvious what happened...after we sttled down we went to establish care woth a GP & I walked out of my initial appointment with 6 prescriptions.
ridiculous...
Lobbying and lobbyist groups.
Lobbying in and of itself isn't bad, it makes our politicians aware of issues and alternatives.
Unrestricted lobbying is the problem, I recently read that lobbyists from Amazon would no longer have access cards to the European parliament so they no longer could come and go as they liked.
I just wonder why lobbyists ever got that access in the first place...
Owning shares when you are an elected official with jurisdiction over the industry you own shares in.
Also, any political figure owning shares in a media organisation, regardless of whether it is traditional media or βnew mediaβ.
God the nerds in here are annoying.
"Ackchually banning lobbying would mean nobody could talk to politicians anymore blah blah..."
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Could you explain?
Lobbying as in "bribery with extra steps" where companies give money to politicians, ask them to do something, then say it's ok because it's "lobbying" and therefore not bribery, but people are coming in and pointing out how lobbying technically just means talking to politicians, but that's not what RotatingParts meant.
Isn't the problem that the "extra steps" are loopholes?
And legal loopholes are like a hydra. Close one and the lawyers will open up two more.
I imagine the line is hard to draw. But of course, the ones doing the drawing of that line are also on the receiving end of the good stuff, so there's incentives to not close those loopholes...
Probably the part where they're straight-up bribing politicians to rubber stamp the garbage that ALEC writes.
People who don't know anything about lobbying know what you mean when you say lobbying should be illegal.
Banning lobbying would mean no one would be able to talk to a politician/official about an issue. Not even writing your local officials, proposing a local ordinance to making bike lanes or spending money to fix-up/improve a local park. Because that's lobbying. You're asking a government to wield their official power and/or spend public money, for your (and potentially others') benefit.
Even lobbying groups aren't necessarily bad. The Sierra Club, EFF, ACLU. These are American, but I'm sure there are equivalents of these in other countries.
So banning lobbying doesn't really work. Now if you're talking financial contributions and gifts and nice dinners from those who lobby, yeah that probably needs to be more highly regulated or stopped altogether. Generally speaking, any kind of quid pro quo.
But just talking to a politician should not be made illegal. In democracies, talking to people, talking to politicians, and trying to convince them to align with your view is the name of the game.
Does that include unions?
Gonna overturn the 1st Amendment?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I'm sure there are ways to dial in the abuse, but what legislator is gonna vote for that?
Gerrymandering.
Some forms of it are illegal, but it's hard to define what exactly constitutes Gerrymandering. Rather than enumerating all of the ways the Gerrymandering is possible, we really just need to make it so only one specific policy for forming districts is used. I think mathematicians have been proposing models for this that attempt to create districts with roughly uniform distribution of population and isotropic borders.
One side changes on EULAs.
Hardware that requires a proprietary service to work.
Looking at you, nvidia.
Selling life-saving drugs at large multiples of the cost to manufacture + distribute. The most obvious example being insulin.
Switching political party in the same term that you were elected to office.
CEOs making 100x the median worker at the same company.
Assault rifles and other automatic or military-grade weapons. They have no practical purpose in the hands of a citizen. Pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles should be sufficient for hunting and self defense.
Generic finance bro bullshit. Frivolous use of bank credit for speculative investment. Predatory lending. Credit default swaps. It's just a spectrum of Ponzi Schemes. Let's reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
Non-disclosure of expensive gifts to Supreme Court judges. Looking at you, Clarence.
Military recruiting at high schools.
Junk mail. You literally have to pay a company to stop sending it.
Automatic weapons for the most part are already illegal, assault rifle isn't a term that actually means anything and neither does military grade. In fact only 3% of gun deaths in the states are from rifles. The real issue is the illegal gun market and the endless supply of hi-points and other pistols.
You've been lied to.
An "assault rifle" is specifically a selective-fire rifle with detachable magazines and intermediate cartridges. AR-15s, AK-47s, and M16s meet this definition. You are likely thinking of "assault weapon," a term which is not well-defined.
And while it's true that most mass shootings and gun deaths in general are perpetrated by handguns, assault rifles are responsible for the deadliest mass shootings.
Because it is so challenging to pass gun control legislation in the US, the least we can hope to do is forbid ownership of the deadliest types of guns.
I agree that this is not sufficient though. We need to have more stringent requirements for acquiring any firearm. 28 states don't even require background checks for private sale of guns. Our laws fall way too short on gun trafficking.
The illegal gun market is just a symptom of the very legal gun market. The head of the ATF even said, "virtually every crime gun in the US starts off as a legal firearm."
We need background checks, and I don't think private unlicensed gun sales should be legal either.
Okay except most rifles, including AK47's AR15's and M16's are semi automatic only so they aren't selective fire. And if we ignore that requirement and go with the the other two requirements it means that .22lr hunting rifles with a box mag count as "assault rifles"
Pistols are still the deadliest type of guns no matter what metric you use.
The head of the ATF is also responsible for operation fast and furious. Not to mention that is a nothing statement when you think about it. Of course they start off as legal firearms. Gun traffickers are "legally" buying these weapons overseas end mass from firearm companies and warlords or they're being stolen from legal gun owners.
That's just whataboutism.
Honestly true. I just think he's a moron so I discount much of what he says.
Also I looked up the statement about most guns being legal. Based on data from his own agency its 54%. While that is technically the majority, thats a coin flip. "Virtually all" in my books is 70% or higher.
That's a silly statement. Why do you think soldiers prefer to use assault rifles in combat? I said "deadliest" meaning the most capable of killing, not the most statistically likely gun to kill someone.
"Most capable of killing" doesn't mean anything though. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet. What gun its fired out of doesn't really matter when its against soft targets. 9mm 5.56 and 7.62 are all the same lethality.
Edit: Also comparing the use case of gangers and even school shooters with soldiers is foolish. The main benefits of a rifle (in war) are range, stability and higher cyclic rate. Virtually all rifles are semi automatic so cyclic rate doesn't matter. And at the range pretty much all school shootings take place in, pistol vs rifle doesn't matter. Stability is also largely irrelevant based on distance and the fact that unarmed civilians dont shoot back.
All this to say, 91% of school shootings are perpetrated with pistols. So this hyperfixation on "assault rifles" is silly. I say again, you've been lied to.
Ok I don't really agree with all of your lines of reasoning but I'm curious what you think the solution to our gun problem is. We at least agree that we have a problem, right?
Oh certainly.
Legislation needs to focus pistols. Cracking down on the black market of highpoints.
I thought the last few school shootings were from legslky owned rifles?
That's what you hear about. You don't hear about the other 40,000 gun deaths (almost half suicides) anymore than you hear about the 40,000 vehicular deaths.
Kis shoots up a school and kills 5? All over the media for a solid week. Asshole ripping down the interstate takes out a family of 5? Meh. Quick local news blurb.
OP's point is that rifles, legal or not, aren't what's doing all the killing. It's the pistols. Nobody will talk about it because there's no way in hell for a pistol ban to pass. But words like "assault" and "military" get traction.
Remember Virginia Tech? Worst mass murder at the time? Kid did most of his killing with a .22 pistol.
They were. They were horrific tragedies. They are also the outlier of outliers. And any legislation targeting them is either a) going to have zero effect on crime, b) only going to harm law abiding citizens or C) both
isn't it specifically going to rein in the outlier of outliers that school shootings are? I think people would be really happy with that, even if the average crime rate doesn't go down
I doubt it If they cant get an ar they'll just go get a black market pistol for $100. And besides, the way to curb school shootings isn't through firearm restrictions. It's through actual proper mental health programs and funding. Something that the US government refuses to fund because it'll actually fix the problem instead of just being a feel good gesture.
The only shootings where mental illness plays a major factor are suicides. When it comes to gun violence, only 4-5% of perpetrators have a severe mental illness. When it comes to school mass shootings specifically [ source ]:
And with regard to school shootings generally:
If we could reduce bullying and do a better job at making students feel like they have value and matter, that would go a lot further toward reducing school shootings than anything involving mental illness (aside from, perhaps, efforts to reduce the stigma associated with it).
Substance abuse - drugs, particularly those that are illegal, and alcohol - as well as poverty and inequality is much more strongly linked to gun violence.
Iβm not saying that we shouldnβt continue improving our available mental health resources (the majority of deaths from guns are by suicide, after all), but we shouldnβt use mental illness as a scapegoat.
Huh well alright then. I thought mentally illness played a bigger part. Now I know. Thanks!
No, because 91% of school shootings were performed with a handgun.
What the fuck? You have to pay to stop getting junk mail? We in Australia just put a little sign on our letterbox saying 'no junk mail' and we stop getting it. That's insane. Same thing with the insulin comment and some of the stuff other people said like forced arbitration. America is crazy.
You think thats bad, we have active shooter drills and safe rooms because nothing is done about our gun nut problem.
Yup I paid the fee to stop getting marketing junk mail. Then when I started an LLC, they started sending all of that mail again addressed to the LLC. You can't fucking win.
Free paper is free paper. You can also mess with them by signing them up for each other and/or sending them stones (if there's a return envelope; they'll be charged for it).
Lol @ just filling return envelopes with worthless dead weight
belonging to one particular political party or another doesn't necessarily dictate which way a politician votes.
Insider trading by Congress
Cheaters
Edit:
"they are cheating!"
Got elected to be congressman
"LET'S DO THIIISS"
Trading at all by Congress. They should be required to lock their money in a blind trust with heavy oversight. If a CEO has to publish their stock sales months in advance, congresspeople should too.
Landlords. Housing as a commodity in general.
Just curious what your preferred solution would be?
I don't think owning your home is realistic in all scenarios. For example, let's say because you needed to leave your abusive partner, so you don't have the luxury of going through the whole process of saving money, then researching, and eventually purchasing a home. You need to get out, maybe live somewhere for a year or two to get your feet under you and save some money so you can purchase a home. If you couldn't rent a home, how could you possibly get out of this situation if you had no money on hand?
If you move to a new city that you've never visited before, sometimes you want to rent in a few areas to find the areas you like before commit long term to a place.
I really don't think buying a home should be your only option for living in a home. It's just not what's best for some people in some scenarios.
Government owned housing used to be a common thing in the UK and itβs how housing works in Singapore today, just because private landlords donβt exist doesnβt mean people canβt rent houses from the government
Could you elaborate on Singapore? I have a friend who lives there and her rent is obsceneβ¦
Forced arbitration
Churches backing and funding politicians.
It is illegal to a degree, it violates rules and regulations with the IRS. When they back a politician, they are supposed to lose their church non-profit status. But that doesn't happen because any move to it would cause a huge "the government is attacking out religious freedoms/churchs".
In fact it's now a religious event every year called "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" to purposefully break these laws.
That's true for the US but not everywhere else
Something (almost) no one has mentioned: factory farming of livestock. I'm not gonna say a person who engages in subsistence farming shouldn't be able to keep a coop of chickens for eggs (as long as their chickens are well cared for), but large scale animal husbandry and livestock is devastating to the environment and genuinely cruel.
Kill it yourself and eat it? Fine by me. Circle of life, yadda yadda.
Send hundreds into an abattoir to be machine killed by robots or strangers and eat it? No. Own up to the process, or don't partake.
That's actually why I went vegan: I couldn't see myself ever killing an animal.
That's great in theory, but there's just too many people for that to be anywhere close to realistic. If we had about 20% of our current global population, then I'd agree with you, but even the worst pandemic in modern history couldn't scratch 1%.
my parents grew up eating meat once a every few months, from animals they raised themselves. No big farm, just a house in a village. Is that not sustainable?
No it isnt because unless you eat/drink enough dairy or take B12 supplements, youre going to have a B12 deficiency if you do that. People forget that meat actually serves a nutritional purpose.
Well shit, B12 supplements are cheap enough. Are there any other reasons itβs a bad idea?
Vegans and vegetarians (once a month meat consumption isnt really an omnivore diet) are more likely to be deficient in Zinc, Iron and are more susceptible to osteoporosis due to poor Calcium uptake. Because animal protein does help the body to absorb minerals like Iron, Zinc and the like (it isnt known for sure why and phytates in certain plant foods also hampers mineral uptake) vegetarians and vegans need to overcompensate for those minerals in their food. On the order of about 50% higher than the RDA for omnivores.
Now I am not saying it cant be healthy, it can and there certainly are problems with how the average westerner eats, but I have no confidence in this being done correctly on a mass scale given the data that has come out. eg. 50% of vegans are deficient in B12 as measured by blood test and thats among a population that is likely much more aware of B12 being problematic since it is only naturally found in significant quantities in animal products and almost every meat and dairy substitute on the market is fortified with B12. And that widespread deficiency STILL happens. Vegetarians are less susceptible to B12 deficiency but still generally rely on the dairy industry to obtain that B12 along with Calcium and Zinc. And because B12 is water soluble not fat soluble, it needs to be obtained daily or in higher doses, semidaily. And the effects of B12 deficiency can be delayed months (pernicious anemia) or years (permanent nerve damage with the anemia hidden by excess folate consumption)
People need education and better meat and dairy substitutes that arent as processed to make this work. Right now, most of them have too much salt and saturated fats to be an improvement.
No such thing as animal protein being different from any other protein.
This is not true at all.
You made the claim, prove it.
Denying that there are substantial differences between animal and plant protein is a weird take. (Anyone with a milk protein allergy is grateful that the proteins in plant milk arent the same as the ones in cow milk) Plant proteins arent always complete and the type of proteins arent the same. Plants for example, dont have proteins like casein which is present in cow milk. And as is pointed out in the linked review, can be deficient in amino acids such as Lysine, Cysteine and Methionine. (The sulfur containing amino acids they refer to) There is also evidence that plant protein by and large isnt absorbed as effectively as animal protein. Which is fine for the vast majority of people. i.e contrary to the fear mongering, vegetarians and vegans still get plenty of protein unless theyve done something horribly wrong. And the lower digestability of plant proteins has been useful in treating proteinuria (excessive protein in the urine) which is usually associated with kidney failure.
The Role of the Anabolic Properties of Plant- versus Animal-Based Protein Sources in Supporting Muscle Mass Maintenance: A Critical Review
"A recent meta-analysis concluded that soy protein resulted in similar muscle mass and strength gains as animal protein"
"Meta-analysis revealed that although consuming animal protein provided a favorable effect on absolute lean mass compared to plant protein, the result was not statistically significant"
"As for muscle strength, meta-analyses showed no statistical difference in effect between animal protein and plant protein"
Also all the protein they are talking about is dairy not meat.
Your own link, did you read it?
Thank you for the write up!
Well they did eat lots of cheese and dairy. Is that not okay?
You need cows to produce all of that just like you would meat. The way cow physiology works requires that calves be birthed periodically to maintain milk production at large scale. The dairy industry is to a large extent, a by product of the meat industry. Those new calves have to go somewhere. And you have to keep in mind that 70% of the world's population is lactose intolerant as adults. They rely on nondairy meat products for the majority of the B12 they get. OR you switch people to vegan substitutes that have B12 added to them. Right now those are niche/luxury products which is problematic for developing nations. Like... imagine going from small scale cattle and poultry farming to relying on B12 bacterial fermenters and soy production at large scale. That might be doable if new processes for using certain strains of B12 producing pseudomonas bacterial cultures can be developed for fermented soy products like tempeh can spread there but again, those arent there yet. More R&D is needed.
Screwing over a large number of people to benefit a small number of people. Religion and corporations immediately come to mind.
That's very vague and sounds like it would mainly affect minorities in a negative way. Not that I think that's your intention of course.
Forced arbitration
Definitely in a B2C context. If businesses want to force arbitration between themselves then fine.
Even worse in a Business to Employee context.
Tracking & profiting off it.
Forcing people to be tracked to use a product that they then sell that data should be illegal without your complete, informed consent, and you get to opt out and still use the product.
All tracking should be regulated. You own your personhood 100% and only you can make money off of that.
How about we set a no tracking flag in our browsers for example and companies actually respect the choice? One can only dream...
Zero hour contracts in the uk donβt actually have to have an actual contract so if your boss says that something is in your job description you canβt argue otherwise because there was never a contract that said what your job roles were to start with.
How is that even legal somewhere ?
For context this is how the vast majority of jobs work in the US by default.
payday loans
I've heard the argument that if those were illegal, loan sharks would just take their place. And they tend to be worse.
And then if those were illegal, actual sharks would take their place. And they are way worse.
yeah well why not have state licensed hit men then
They're licensed at the county level.
You know what would be really funny? Starting a payday loan business that isn't as nightmarishly exploitative just to upset the industry.
The sad thing is that the rates would still be pretty high just to cover the risk. People dont get a payday loan because everything is going fine for them financially.
Non-utilitized internet service.
Internet providers ARE UTILITIES. Regulate them like one.
Also utilities need to be regulated like utilities; make them publicly owned services, not for-profit companies.
At the very least, do so for the infrastructure. I don't mind companies trying to sell me the service competitively, but the infrastructure should allow for a competitive market.
Capitalism
EDIT: also i read the other comments and hilarious amount of other things mentioned also boils down to "capitalism" or their illegalisation would basically needed for capitalism to be outlawed too.
A bit tired and misread this as Capitalisation. That caused my brain to freeze, then reboot π€£
capitalisationShouldAlsoBeIllegalUnlessYouUseCamelCase /s
If writing in the German language (DSL for interfacing with Germans) should use PascalCase for nouns and camelCase for everything else.
RindfleischetikettierungsΓΌberwachungsaufgabenΓΌbertragungsgesetz vs RindFleischEtikettierungsΓberwachungsAufgabenΓbertragungsGesetz
Much more readable.
For a specific definition of readable, yes
Your brain rebooted...so did you pass out, or have a seizure? Haha
idk, but I felt refreshed and ready to go, almost like I never had any bugs or errors before...
Let's give an example that is more uplifting.
A 16 year old who just got their motorcycle license being able to buy a 200hp superbike capable of doing 180+mph.
For all intents and purposes, this should be illegal, because the teenager (usually) doesn't have the skills and willpower to handle such a powerful motorcycle as a noob.
But it does feel awesome to be able to buy whatever motorcycle you can afford once you get your license in the US, rather than being forced to start on a 125cc that can't even hit 60mph.
It's wild that's legal there! Where I live learners and provisional riders are restricted by power to weight ratio (150kw per tonne/200hp per 2000lbs), and that honestly seems like it keeps them on reasonable bikes for the skill level without having them all stuck on 125cc bikes struggling to reach the speed limit
Your provisional rider laws are a lot more fair than Europe's, which limit teenagers to 125cc for the first two year of riding.
150KW/tonne (with the rider) is enough to get a Ninja 400 or Harley Sportster 1200, both of which are plenty powerful for the street. But maybe these calculations don't factor in a typical rider's weight.
True, but rarely does a 16 y/o have ~$10k saved up to purchase a sport bike with that power.
Then it wont be a problem for most of them when theyre not legally allowed to buy one.
lol, that's pretty funny π
Eh, I don't think the correlation of age is the causation of getting wounded or killed due to questionable decisions on powerful motorcycles. I'd venture to say the correlation is moreso in personality type, and aversion, or lack thereof to risk.
Like, you don't see complete straight edge 16 year olds getting bikes, and from my own anecdotal experience, my straight edge friends were scared of it. Though if there wasn't an inherent aversion to the risk, I'd bet those types would be incredibly safe motorcycle drivers.
The types that currently get them are the types that will take risks, regardless of their age, and we can't rightly outlaw something because some risk takers act dangerously on them. We'd have to outlaw cars too.
the extensive statistics correlate highly with age on the below 20 and above 75 with a plateau in between. risk aversion and personality could be great factors but how would you sample and test for that across large groups? i dont want my insurance company to give me some personality test or judge my social media. but maybe AI would help them to do it soon?
In India, minimum age is 18.
Family vloggers
Child exploitation is already illegal
Smoking. It's literally a drug and causes lots of health issues like increased lung cancer risk, but the worst part is that if someone smokes near you then you also inhale some of the toxins even if you yourself don't smoke. And in my country it's common to see people smoking on the streets. Combine this with air pollution and yikes
And alcohol.
Reality proves enough that forbidding drugs doesn't work though, it just creates a lot of other problems. Forbidding some parts of it like ads about them, selling to minors etc do have effect however
Tipping.
Giving tips is okay. Paying your employees less because you expect them to be tipped is stupid. Culturally requiring tips to make up the majority of a position's income is ridiculous, but very difficult to change.
Yes exactly. And now every payment maybe has tipping options enabled it seems, and it takes more steps to skip tipping options than to tip. Ridiculous.
Politic lobby.
Capitalism
Ultra bright headlights.
I see what you mean
How can you see anything anymore?
Capitalism, Literaly all of capitalism.
Fun fact: Pyramid Schemes (now called MLMs) cannot be made fully illegal because they are pure expressions of capitalism. In order to make them fully illegal they would have to admit the entire system is a scam, which they obviously aren't willing to do since they benefit from it.
Inb4 a Supreme Court ruling including βMLMs are like hard-core pornography - βI know it when I see it.ββ
That's just stupid enough to work.
Killing animals forr pleasure.
I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your comment, but killing animals for pleasure alone is already largely illegal in Western countries. And that includes hunting. You aren't allowed to just hunt an animal for fun and then leave it unharvested. It is hard to enforce, obviously. But you can definitely be charged for killing deer, moose, ducks, even fish, without a license and at least the intent to eat it. For example, you can't kill a bear, cut off its paws or gall bladder, and then throw the carcass in the bush. You also can be charged for killing or treating an animal inhumanely or in a way that causes it distress. That theoretically applies to all animals, including pets, livestock, aquariums, wildlife, and even small animals like mice and bats.
Taste pleasure
Yes, there is that. I am personally against hunting because I figure wild animals are already under enough pressure from habitat destruction and climate change.
Hunting is largely cultural now and isn't needed for sustenance except in very remote places. At the same time, I'm not sure if it is fair to classify a cultural practice as being for mere pleasure. It is a bit more complicated than that. Certainly, in Canada, indigenous peoples and the descendents of early settlers think so.
Hunting is needed for wildlife management. We've killed most of the natural predators for the animals we have hunting seasons for so we need to fill that niche or those animals won't have enough food to go around during winter. I can't speak for the animals, but I would prefer being shot to death rather than starving to death. There's also the factor of more deer (and other prey animals) crossing roads being more dangerous for everyone involved.
Agreed, at least for some species like deer. I can't think of too many others, though, especially with global warming. Most of the animals that thrive despite human encroachment, like coyotes, crows, and raccoons aren't animals that we hunt.
Governments, businesses, corporations and all of us just normalizing and accepting that the majority of everything we own or buy at affordable prices are all based on taking advantage of as many poor people as possible in our home countries and most of the time in third world developing nations where people are paid pennies for their work.
We complain about China, yet everyone buys everything from them. We look down on third world developing countries yet we base our economies on manufacturing a ton of stuff from them because they all hire people for as little as possible. In America, Canada and Europe, we have agricultural workers we ship in from poorer countries to harvest our crops because we don't want to pay higher prices for labour to the people that live in our countries .... we would rather pay poverty wages for imported labour that we don't want to stay in our country.
Everything we do, buy and pay for is all based on exploitation ... our entire economy the world over is based on it ... yet it is perfectly legal ... but if we are all so moral, enlightened and intelligent then it should be illegal.
Exploiting animals
As a general rule, the amount of exploitation and fraud it takes to "become" a billionaire should probably be illegal.
Lying about what you do with peoples data and who you share it with.
Sentencing and punishment are affected by "caste"
There is no ethical way for an individual to possess a billion dollars. The amount of harm an individual would have to cause to attain and retain assets of that magnitude should not just be criminal; it should be a capital offense.
Reposting things from reddit that have been posted there over 1000 times.
Oh shit! He's on to us.
Religion
I don't think it should be illegal. It should just be laughed off and not be taking seriously.
Except for the parts where, in the name of religion, people are subjected to barbaric surgical procedures; "cures" for their sexual preferences; and pedophiles in positions of authority, among many other terrible things.
In the history of humankind, religion is responsible for more human suffering than all other causes combined.
Careful, son, you might cut yourself on all that edge.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Where do we draw the line what is or isnβt a religion? If you have definition, try applying it to Pastafarianism, Communism, Budhism and a bunch of other ideas and practices from Asia.
Personally, I prefer to go with a super simple and completely arbitrary list definition. If itβs on my secret list, itβs a religion. If not, itβs a philosophy.
Pets. Or at least you need to know how to take care of them.
For example rabbits shouldn't be alone.
And wtf is up with putting birds in cages? They are supposed to be free and fly you sick ****!
Dogs on chains..
I feel I can continue forever and it's sad.
Parents who dont know how to be parents having one or multiple childs is the same
This seems significantly more impactful than pets
Yeah pet licenses should definitely be a thing
Dogs on chains are outlawed in Croatia.
This is why I got a hamster, instead of rats. They LIKE being alone.
And SO MANY HAMSTER CAGES you buy in pet stores, recommended by pet store employees are WAY too small for them. So many of the wheels you can get for them are too small and give them back problems. If you buy something retail for a rodent, get the thing for a one size bigger rodent! Some of the things PetSmart markets for Syrian hamsters for instance are criminally small, enough to amount to cruelty.
But taking my hamster and putting him in the wild would be like taking a dude who lives in a five bedroom condo with a private swimming pool and an indoor gym and free door dash twice a day and sending him to live in a cave in the woods and telling him he should be grateful he gets to live free, the way he was meant to.
Pictures to prove my money is where my mouth is:
https://lemmy.starlightkel.xyz/pictrs/image/1c88b11b-6824-47a3-8d32-341a9ba86e87.jpeg
https://lemmy.starlightkel.xyz/post/128358
That's all for ONE hamster.
EDIT: Also... fuck hamster balls. Hamster's have very very poor vision, so they can't really see anything outside the ball. They're rolling around in a confusing environment with very poor ability to gauge the outside world. If you put a hamster in one of these, you have no idea if it's freaking out or stressed out or having a good time... but it IS rolling around in absolute ignorance of where it's going or what it's bumping into and if you pick it up and move it around it has very little understanding of what's happening.
βββββ
Boobstreamers eroticizing themselves in front of kids and luring them to their onlyfans sites. Should be treated as pedophilia
Removing AUX ports, forcing people to throw away their headphones, because you ALSO nowhere sell your overpriced USB DACs.
Climate Destruction
Stealing already existing nature land, forcing people out of it, and "taking care of it" and get carbon credits for it like what?
Mine Coal or Oil in 2024. Same with building nuclear plants.
We had a thing in Germany, where nuclear industries needed to pay for the disposal of nuclear waste. Instead of calculating real numbers, they should invest β or less of the actually needed money into trust funds. Like... what? Money doesnt grow just like that, it comes from exploiting workers, and "magically" they didnt need to pay that much. And of course that was too little so now the tax payers have to pay for these horrible companies.
Nuclear energy is significantly greener than coal and oil, IIRC. As well, there are a lot of places where it can be hard to get enough energy from renewable sources like hydro and solar.
Nuclear energy is slow, which is why things like "night storage heating" where invented, which store the unneeded heat generated at night.
We have a constant electricity demand and a varying. Especially if we use "smart" devices (nothing IOT, just washing machines only washing during the day) the constant demand can be decreased a lot.
So as we are awake roughly around the time that we can produce solar energy, and have wind for the constant part, we dont need nuclear power, really.
Also building these plants takes years which we dont have.
And nothing is sustainable if it produces non-disposable nuclear waste that will likely live longer than humanity on this planet.
I'm definitely pro solar, wind, and other renewable sources of energy. I'm just not convinced that nuclear shouldn't be included in a "greenification" of energy sources.
As an aside, I live somewhere where the days are pretty short in the winter, and even then, we get ~25 days of cloudy weather per month between December and February. Last year it felt like I didn't see the sun in 2023 until April, aside from a couple of days here and there (mostly in March).
Thankfully, most of our power comes from hydro anyways.
Half of the things that go on with donations. People who are enlightened enough to know 90% of your money doesn't go to its intended place (whether you're donating to starving Africans, people with a medical condition, etc.) cannot effectively stand up to corrupt charity organizations in a culture where half of the people still think the Salvation Army is a literal branch of the army. Even the charity watch groups are compromised.
Engaging your turn signal against traffic when the light turns green.
killing animals
Political parties and religions. All of them.
Parties? Why? What's the alternative?
I will quote George Washington to explain the why: "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Alternatives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition (we use this in 1/3 of our government today - juries)
Alcohol (beer, wine...).
Rather than downvoting, I'd like to ask why you think all forms of alcohol for consumption should be illegal
It's proven that is toxic for our organisms. It hurts our body and creates depressions.
More info: https://www.who.int/health-topics/alcohol
"No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health" https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health
Also, thanks for asking and just not downvoting. π
Probably because they're basically poison that has to be filtered out and fucks up your liver and kidneys.
If we forbid things just because they are mildly toxic, we would need to forbid almost everything. Including oxygen and water.
False,
"No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health" - https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health
There is a safe level of oxygen and water you not only can, but must take. Your phrase sounds cool, but it's 100% misinformation.
and bacon.
Alcohol is pretty significantly toxic, especially compared to oxygen and water.
I'm not in favour of banning it outright, but alcohol is more dangerous than some drugs that are illegal in many parts of the world, including the US.
Oh yeah, a lot of people die because they drink too much water. Don't forget how moch money is wasted because people break shit and beat each other up when theu are high on water.
Isn't that more a social issue? Getting drunk and becoming violent isn't a cause-effect. Someone that becomes abusive after drinking would be abusive without alcohol as well, that's just a trigger for the behavior.
This is closer to an actual answer, though. It's easier to remove drinking than to change drinking culture. It just didn't work the last time they tried to ban alcohol (in the USA), so if behavior around drinking is the issue that is trying to be solved there are probably other ways to go about it.
Alcohol is popular because also improves your socialization, could be linked perfectly, but I'm not an expert to say it. And smoking cigarettes is also bad and isn't banned, while weed is safer than those two addictions, and it's still mostly illegal. There are reasons, and hippies are probably the cause, government wanted to criminalize them and their love movement. If alcohol keeps you down, and quiet, the government will not care to ban even if it's bad for your health, they need the companies to keep winning money.
Ok, but there are plenty of other items that that do that as well. It's not a call out of "all drugs, including tobacco and alcohol". It's not a callout of microplastics. So there's something specific to alcohol.
Being widespread. One bad set of laws in bad place in bad time (propination laws in eastern Europe in XVIII-XIX century) caused untold suffering and is keenly felt to this day, showing how easily hundreds of millions of people can be fucked up by poisonous commodity.
I'm not for entirely banning alcohol, but only because it would be rather futile, but for restrictions in its selling and far going educational campaigns to finally get rid of it - and it is possible, even if not entirely, looking at the decline of consumption of other poison, tobacco.
USA tried banning these once...
Compound interest.
Letβs say you need to borrow 5000 β¬ for your first car, but you have only 700 β¬. First, youβll need to find a lender who is willing to share the risk with you. Then, you form a joint stock company (Tomβs Volvo C30 2008 incorporated), where you own 7/50 of the car and the other party owns the rest. When you have some more money, you can buy some more stocks. One day, youβll own the whole car and the lender has all of their money back.
So...instead of loans, you're advocating that people form corporations where shares are bought over time instead?
You'll still have to pay some interest to motivate the other party to invest, all you've really done is generate a bunch of extra paperwork to spin up a corporation.
The idea is to avoid the expense spiraling out of control due to exponential growth.
In order to motivate your business partner, you should have a contract that defines the price of the stocks in a favorable way. Itβs like buying and selling really. The lender pays 4300 β¬ for the car, and sells it at a higher price, such as 4600 β¬.
Oh, if you're trying to prevent usury, it would be far simpler to either cap interest rates or ban compound interest in favor of simple interest.
Rate caps are the simplest solution least likely to backfire, but unfortunately they tend to push people away from legitimate sources of lending, so you do have to be careful that they aren't too low.
Like I said, forming a corporation isn't a simple thing, doing it to organize a personal loan would take up an enormous amount of time and money, and result in substantially fewer consumer protections.
Well, now that taking a loan is fast and easy, people tend to spend the money they donβt have and buy the things they canβt afford. Having some sort of a speed bump along the way should make people think a little more and avoid getting into unnecessary debt.
I agree, but forming a corp is time consuming in an expensive way, you need (usually) retain lawyers and an accounting firm.
I think it would be better if getting credit were subject to income and asset verification, and most importantly that the government make sure eligibility verification is not abusive, discriminatory, or inconsistent in nature.
Billionaires
Ads for medication
Campaign contributions greater than $n from people and greater than $0 from corporations
Civil forfeiture
Prosecuting attorneys withholding exculpatory evidence
Firearms which aren't single action for civilian use (police are civilians)
Receiving gifts greater than $250 USD as a supreme Court Justice or family member of the supreme Court Justice.
Super PACs?
Smoking
Individuals owning something you need many people to use, like a coffee shop, large tracks of land, or an apartment building.
I agree in land and aparment building, but coffee shop? That's a comodity my dude
Psych drugging children and psychiatry in general
I'll hang onto my Lexapro and Buspar so I don't have debilitating panic attacks, thank you very much.
Not sure about those, but see this on Xanax/Alprazolam (49:48). Also, I have panic disorder due to psych drugs
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
but see this on Xanax/Alprazolam (49:48)
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The issue isn't psychiatry, the issue is tying it to capitalism.
Not completelly legal, but still too legal. Alcohol.
I can see where you are coming from, but if you don't allow me this vice, you'd better get me an alternative.
Great idea: a life worth living without taking drugs.
Passive income.
Does that include a ban of UBI (universal basic income)? Because that is a idea I do indeed support
Going by the traditional definition, UBI is indeed passive income. I don't think it is as bad as other forms of passive income, but I would prefer subsidies over just giving people cash.
musicians in shambles
There were musicians far before passive income for creative work was a thing. And it's not like the β¬0.003 per play Spotify pays is making bank for most musicians.
we already are
Richness
Alcohol
Didn't we try that and it was an absolute disaster?
actually, no, not a complete disaster. During american prohibition, domestic abuse all but disappeared, same went for a big part of self-harm due to alcohol abuse. It's normal to paint the prohibition as some complete mistake, but it has positive sides too.
And I say that as an enjoyer of alcohol and other fun stuff, disagreeing with banning it again
I'd be really interested to know the source of whatever stats say that. I mean, it's not like people actually stopped drinking, so why would domestic abuse "disappear"? That also totally implies that domestic abuse almost entirely happens because of alcohol.
With how much political/financial influence/bribery was behind prohibition, I'd totally bet statistics are skewed in favor of prohibition.
Yes but this time we legalise all the other drugs. Huge profits.
In all seriousness, no drugs should be illegal and healthcare and education should be freely available. Universal income. We would need to make conservatism, lobbying and billionaires illegal.
Owning more than one firearm
*more than zero
I can get total ban but why a ban on amount?
Because you can't get rid of guns completely. For one, the security forces of those in power will have them and second, those who intend to do bad things to people will have them.
Once the technology exists and is available to the public, one can no longer stop its proliferation.
Or you just ban it completely for everything but hunting and regulate that strictly (ofc with exceptions for police and military). This is the way gun laws work in most European countries and most of them are indeed very save places to live in.
Your point here is a typical American one and just not any good. Guns in self defense rarely help anyone and do way more harm when random idiots who suddenly feel a need to kill someone finds themselfs already with a gun in their hand. Not to say that it's impossible to get your hands on a gun in (for example) Sweden but the price and complications that ce with it do stop a lot of people from doing stupid things.
Well yes, but Americans have that unpleasant thing called ACAB that likely prevents them from accepting any attempt at removing their perceived self-defense against the abuse committed by authorities.
ACAB is a global fact, not unique to America. It's also a fact largely recognised by the same kinds of people who are opposed to the free flow of guns. The kinds of people who think guns should be unrestricted are also the kinds who, by and large, are supportive of police and believe police are on their side.
All you people using the downvote button to disagree instead of saying something need to go outside and touch grass.
I disagree.
Now you're getting into the spirit.
I agree π
If it annoys you, you could consider moving to an instance without downvotes so your feed will act like they don't exist.
OP is not bothered by the downvotes, they are bothered that they are being used as nothing more than a "I personally disagree" or "I don't like your opinion" button and that the vast majority downvoters are too cowardly to put forward their own counter opinion.
Any comment that is making an honest contribution to the discussion shouldn't be getting downvotes. When comments are downvoted for no legitimate reason, the website becomes at risk of being an echo chamber.
A feature that is consistently misused is a useless feature. Either get used to them being used to express disagreement or admit that they're a failure and stop trying to make them work.
I admit they're a failure but I won't stop being the change that I want to see.
Ooh please tell me which instances operate like that?
This page has a table of instances with a bunch of info including whether the instance has downvotes.
Thank you! I think if I didn't see downvotes it would be better for my mental health.
Passing on the right.
Definitely illegal in Belgium, is that not the norm elsewhere?
Apparently, and perhaps not surprisingly, the US allows it on highways. Which helps explain why their traffic related deaths rate per capita is almost twice the European average.
Not just on highways. It happens sometimes on surface streets as well.
I've never seen anyone do it so I'm pretty sure it's illegal in all countries were I've found myself on a highway. The US and Germany (due to their free speed generally quite weird autobahns) come to mind as countries that might allow it.
It's illegal in Germany as well.
Passing on the left in regions with LH traffic (RHD)
Since it is the opposite of Overtaking, it is typically called undertaking, especially if you try to undertake a large truck with limited visibility on the passenger side.
Assuming lef hand drive country, then don't use the passing lane for not passing.
I'm turning left on a two-lane street, waiting for incoming traffic to clear, and some jackass pulls into the right-turn cutout to pass me. It's both rude and dangerous.
What. So this "jackass" and all the people in the right lane should pull up behind you and wait for you to turn left? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. That's partially why there are two lanes, so traffic can continue to flow instead of waiting for you.
Edit:
Hold up. When you say "two lane street" do you mean one lane on each side? Because that changes everything. Whenever people I talk to refer to a two lane street they mean two lane in your direction.
Yes, one lane in each direction.
Where else are you meant to pass?
Downvotes from all the Americans who don't realise people drive on other sides.
To be fair, this is one of those times where the US is actually in alignment with most of the rest of the world.
The brits are experts at queueing
Driving cars when babies exist in the world.
Flying planes. A few months ago, I got to do take-off and pilot a bit in a tandem plane. Being in a small, single-engine 1969 plane instead of the typical jumbo jet--I realized it was literally just a shitty old RV inside, shag carpet, rickety little passenger window, and all. Except for one minor difference: we were soon IN THE FUCKING SKY. That's when I realized humanity has no place being up there, with all due respect to John F. Kennedy, NASA, etc. And a little sidenote to those same scientists: a giant metal object ascending into the sky makes no sense--I don't think it can last. It's the folly of man. Oh, and you can just have a plane!? That's allowed somehow!?
You have no clue how rediculously well regulated aircraft are. However aesthetically displeasing the plane you flew in was, it wouldn't be in the sky if it wasn't flightready.
While I'm broadly in agreement with you (and am certainly not in favour of banning flying), I think recent events have shown us pretty clearly: they are not nearly as well-regulated as the industry likes to claim, especially with the large commercial aeroplanes.
Still better regulated than cars and driving.
I think the problem is that some of the corporations have decided that it's acceptable to increase the margins of error in the name of profit.
If they make more money than they lose due to lawsuits and lost customers, it's a win in the eyes of capitalism!
The FAA and industry response to Boeing's neglegence has been swift and complete. I don't think these recent events detracts from what I said.
Boeing has been having issues going back a lot further, since at least the 787 Dreamliner. It's just gotten a lot worse with the 737 Max.
The problem is that the FAA allows them to use "Designated Inspectors" to ensure their compliance, which are Boeing employees, not independent FAA staff. And the FAA is still allowing them to fly despite there still being serious known flaws (being unable to run the anti-ice system for more than 5 minutes without potentially damaging the engine).
It's also probably why their only real competitor, not being based in business-friendly safety-regulation-hating America, hasn't had similar problems.
In a properly regulated market, the FAA never would have allowed 737 Maxes to be certified for use, or it at least would have grounded them once issues became clear. Instead, they treat Boeing as "too big to fail" and don't want to upset the travel market in the way that grounding large numbers of planes because of a safety concern.
Planes are by far the safest way to travel due to the extremely strict regulations, regulations that don't exist for other means of transportation
Now imagine being a wwii fighter pilot and charging straight ahead through enemy's AA in a plane built from wood and paper.
Im pretty sure your thinking about ww1, planes made in ww2 mostly consisted of metal.
Iirc biplanes were still used in ww2. Some of the newer ones also have wooden elements, such as the famous "wooden wonder" mosquito.