Yes, I’ve also been addicted to Nicorette for 15 years and smoke when I drink.
I think the freedom of individuals and the role of the state needs to be balanced, which is inherently ad hoc and pragmatic and contingent on history. Not everything harmful need be illegal.
In an ideal world the state wouldn’t encourage inherently harmful activities. People could gamble and smoke but perhaps one couldn’t form a corporation for profiting from such things. Or perhaps the state just needs to tax things like tobacco harshly, which seems to be working.
While I’m for pot decriminalization, the recent experiment with hard drugs in Oregon went quite poorly. It’s always difficult to balance people’s tendency toward self destruction with a concern for liberty, particularly when harmful acts have broader social effects.
Some of the cicadas, however, may have come in contact with a fungal pathogen called Massospora cicadina, which makes them hyper-sexual. The sexually transmitted fungal infection turns them into so-called “zombie cicadas,” with a chalky, white plug erupting out of their bodies and making their genitals fall off. Cicada expert Matthew Kasson says it’s not yet clear how the fungus impacts other wildlife, animals or humans.
I have a bit of a libertarian streak too, but I’d like to see more focus on freedom to do socially beneficial things (build houses, connect new solar capacity to the electrical grid, etc.), rather than solely adopting libertarianism in the weird edge cases that used to be gotchas (legalizing drugs, sports betting ads all over TV).
My theory on the lottery, at least in the US: lottery tickets should be a part of any well rounded financial portfolio. If I can be bankrupted by a random event or medical issue, I should be balancing that risk with windfall potential.
Oh, I totally get that the lottery is predatory and a “poor tax.” I just start with the assumption that it will exist whether we like it or not, so am happy that the money is at least going to good use in Georgia. Aside from the college tuition money, it also funds public pre-K programs, which allows parents to send their little ones to pre-K for free. We didn’t use it because the private programs were fairly affordable (unlike actual private schools, which is like sending a kid to a private college), but it’s great for parents that don’t have that option.
Lotteries are no good in general, but if they are going to exist, might as well provide some benefit.
I wish I could find a longer version of this story with the full narrative, so I’ll do my best.
Young kid somehow gets enough money to buy a Dodge Charger Hellcat, 90k+ car brand new. He like car go VROOM POPPOP! He lives in downtown Seattle and likes to drive his car recklessly through downtown (100+ in a 25mph) and is a known sound nuisance in the area by excessively revving his car, which even had reports of shaking windows in apartments 6+ floors up. He creates an Instagram account at some point and gets 700k followers by going VROOM VROOM. Eventually, people on reddit get PISSED and start posting about him. They start going to meetings and take action to change it.
Well, Miles drove 100+ in downtown again and posted it on instagram. The cops pulled him over and one of the conditions of his bail is he can’t drive this charger with this license plate.
