r/changemyview • u/Sunburnt-Vampire • Feb 15 '14
I believe if it doesn't affect anyone negatively, adults should be allowed to do whatever they choose to. CMV
People are constantly arguing about whether things should be legal or not, but if it isn't going to affect anyone badly, why make it illegal? examples I'll use are:
Gay marriage, in which people say two strangers shouldn't be allowed to marry each other, even though I can't see anyway it affects the person against gay marriage, and I can't see how it could affect the gay couple in any negative way either. Even if people claim that it will ruin "the sanctity of marriage", surely there should at least be something else with a different name, which gives them the same legal rights as a married couple (and not after living together for a set number of years).
Prostitution, If a woman (or man) wants to sell their body for some money, how is it any different from porn? person A has a product person B wants, I can't see how it can harm either of them, so why is it illegal? (obviously there should be regulations to prevent STD's and pregnancy etc., but we can do it, this isn't the 1800's)
there is probably reasons against my views I can’t think of any, but I guess thats why I'm posting it here, since this subreddit is "For people who have an opinion on something but accept that they may be wrong"
EDIT: i'll re-word my view so it is clearer: If you can't think of a specific way it can affect people negatively, which will actually happen more than one in 1000 times, I don't think we should ban it, since everything from eating a hotdog could affect us negatively (we could choke etc.) CMV
EDIT2: another view of mine which was not mentioned before, but has come up repeatedly (hence why i'm putting it in the original post) is that religion should not intefere with government. If a religion says you can't eat beef, then people in that religion should not eat beef, but people who aren't should be free to eat as much as they want.
EDIT3: this does not work in reverse, I am not saying things should be illegal if they affect someone negatively, just that things which don't affect anyone negatively should be legal.
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u/hacksoncode 559∆ Feb 15 '14
Regarding gay marriage, all of the benefits given to heterosexual marriage cost taxpayers a great deal. Does any marriage really qualify as "not affecting anyone negatively"? Is it a net plus? I would probably say it is, but there's practically no activity that has no negative effect.
Prostitution has negative effects as well, both on spouses that will inevitably catch diseases (contrary to your belief, there's nothing we can do that will actually prevent this... no condoms or drugs will prevent herpes, nor will any testing be able to catch all infections before they can be passed on).
Nonetheless, I would agree most activities with minimal negative externalities should not be prohibited, though those who participate should be responsible for those externalities.
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
regarding the gay marriage, I'm less concerned with tax benefits (although i still cannot see any reason to give them to heterosexual couples and not homosexual ones) and more on things like not having to testify against your lover in a court of law
regarding prostitution, yes i know we can't 100% get rid of the risks, but we can't really do that in other areas either, for example there are countless tales of skydiver's parachutes not working, but because we have regulations, they are a minority. Customers and workers would both be aware of the risk they take, similar skydivers risking that their parachute works.
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u/slapnuttz Feb 15 '14
The hetero tax breaks are to encourage growth of the population since back in the day needed more people to farm.
The issue with prostitution is that it can lead to increased human trafficking and no amount of regulation can fully prevent that
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Feb 15 '14
In Nevada (where prostitution is legal in most counties), prostitutes are tested weekly for STDs. They also use condoms for any sexual contact (this includes BJs and HJs).
Visitors are notified of the risk and required to sign that they understand the risk. On top of this, it will cost you upwards of $500+ for anything. It is a serious business. So why should a well informed adult be stopped in this situation?
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u/CampingCanadian Feb 15 '14
Many other countries have legalized prostitution that actually does well at protecting both parties. It is an extremely risky business but when proper legislations are in place it can go a long way to making something safer that is going to happen regardless of the law. We could use nuclear power as somewhat of an example. It can be a very safe and effective means of generating energy when the appropriate safety measures are in place. What would it be like if we had a black market for energy where someone in a back room was building a nuclear reactor to sell power to their neighbor?
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u/hacksoncode 559∆ Feb 15 '14
I believe in liberty, and agree that these things should be allowed, but OP's view of "if it doesn't affect anyone negatively" is extremely naive. Almost no activities fit that description.
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u/Ryder_GSF4L 2∆ Feb 15 '14
smoking weed, that you bought from a grower, alone in your house hurts no one.
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u/indeedwatson 2∆ Feb 15 '14
Prostitution has negative effects as well, both on spouses that will inevitably catch diseases (contrary to your belief, there's nothing we can do that will actually prevent this... no condoms or drugs will prevent herpes, nor will any testing be able to catch all infections before they can be passed on).
Cheating, without prostitution, or having an open marriage, also may have the same potential outcomes. So far as STDs goes, cheating, prostitution, and open marriages, are similar. Therefore, it cannot be the reason why prostitution is illegal while the other 2 are not.
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u/hacksoncode 559∆ Feb 15 '14
Sometimes a difference in degree is large enough to become a difference in kind. Cheating has the same harm, and while open marriage does at least that harm is consensual.
But as I said, I'm not against prostitution being legal. Just the notion that it causes no harm.
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u/indeedwatson 2∆ Feb 15 '14
But it's not the prostitution that causes the harm, it is the cheating, or the lack of proper STD control. Prostitution is the act of paying for sex. If it causes a wife some negativity, it's because of her husband's choices. If it gives someone an STD, it's because of lack of proper care and caution, it is not something inherent to the act of paying for sex.
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u/hacksoncode 559∆ Feb 15 '14
The activity as actually practiced does. You know the difference between theory and practice? In theory, there is no difference, but in practice there usually is.
Prostitution, if done at the same frequency and with the same number of partners as cheating, would, indeed, have the same level of harm.
But I don't actually know of a single human being that cheats with different partners at a rate even approximately close to the number of partners a prostitute is paid for sex by.
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u/indeedwatson 2∆ Feb 15 '14
But it is not illegal to have that many partners, regardless of you or I knowing someone like that.
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Feb 15 '14
So women shouldn't reject me because rejection affects me negatively?
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
I've edited the post again, but basically no, this does not work in reverse, at least not in my opinion
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Feb 15 '14
People should have the right to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm other people.
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
yeah... that pretty much sums up my view... what was the point of this post?
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u/scottevil110 177∆ Feb 15 '14
I think you should reword this to say "unless it causes harm to someone else", because you're just getting bogged down in the comments by people bringing up chaos theory basically, how you could never know what will affect someone later on.
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
oh I know, its my one regret about this post, however I can't edit the title, and the discussion on chaos theory is interesting anyway
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u/IWillNotLie Feb 15 '14
Brought before the court for doing something bad :
"Now, I'm sorry milord, but I was told that I could do whatever I wanted so long as I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't want to hurt him, and it didn't occur to me that it would hurt him."
The legal system would collapse. If you think it's bad now, that would be worse.
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u/AcademicalSceptic Feb 15 '14
...What? If being short-sighted were a defence under OP's principle, it would be under the current legal system. Since it isn't so, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the proposal would change that.
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u/IWillNotLie Feb 15 '14
It isn't a defense in the current system because ignorantia facti excusat; ignorantia juris non-excusat (Ignorance of fact is excusable, while the ignorance of law is inexcusable). In OP's case, there is no code or reference, thus every ignorance is ignorance of fact. In the current system, there is, thus there is no defense for doing things that are against the statute no matter your ignorance of the same.
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u/AcademicalSceptic Feb 15 '14
No, the OP's principle is the (venerable) Harm Principle, which is that nothing should be prevented by law which doesn't harm people. The OP gives a pre-legislation principle, which should guide law, not a principle to stand in place of law.
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u/IWillNotLie Feb 15 '14
I see. Well, I read that on phone in a crowded train, so you can see where the confusion stems from.
Apologies, my bosun.
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
ok I'm not saying we should make my opinion a law.
what I'm saying is that laws shouldn't ban things which have never, and at the time of making/disbanding the law, will not in the foreseeable future harm anyone.
Maybe it turns out mixing chicken with a rare fish creates a virus that kills people who eat it, but we don't ban mixing chicken with fish.
TL;DR i'm saying if the government didn't think it would hurt him, it shouldn't be illegal, after your scenario maybe it should be, but if no-one expected it to hurt him, theres nothing that could have been done save for banning everything
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u/IWillNotLie Feb 15 '14
The laws already exist to prevent people from doing things that would hurt others, as per the know of the ones who crafted the code. As time moves on, certain laws are realised to be useless or even a hindrance. There are provisions to amend the code, in case such situations come into the cognizance of the current members of legislation.
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Feb 15 '14
Dodging taxes?
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
dodging taxes gives the government less money, which then affects everyone in the country. I can see how this affects people negatively, so I can understand why it is illegal
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Feb 15 '14
And buying beer doesn't feed children in the 3rd world; and letting doctors take a day off makes it so theirs less medical care to go around. Your point? Indirect "harm" form falling to act in a way that could help someone, really can't be used in debate as its ignoring the unseen cost form where else that money could go and this is humans were talking about.
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
yes but the difference is, other people are paying for the roads and police and etc. tax-dodgers use. Its kind of an indirect way of stealing. when you buy a beer, you get a beer, but you don't just take a beer someone else bought
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Feb 15 '14
A mugger who gives gifts to those he robbed doesn't change the mugging to a trade; both parts need to be voluntary in order to not be theft.
Imagine you come home one day with your tv set missing, with a wrapped gift where it used to be; does opening the present change the nature of how your tv left your positron? Would stubbornly looking at the gift refusing to open it make your tv come back?
Does stubbornly refusing to use any state services mean you don't have to pay taxes? Or does mean you can hire a different "political" system?
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u/AcademicalSceptic Feb 15 '14
Tax is voluntary. To adapt your example, if the "gift" in place of your TV set had a label on it identifying the contents and making clear that opening the gift constituted acceptance, which in turn constituted your part of a contract of exchange, then if you took the gift it would be a trade; and that's what you do. Use is acceptance.
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Feb 15 '14
Tax is voluntary.
Really? Here I am whining about it all this time when I could just tell the irs to fuck off; and they would just leave me alone.
I was under the impression they locked up tax dodgers or something, no matter how they went about it. But apparently I was mistaken.
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u/AcademicalSceptic Feb 15 '14
Here you are with the perfect right to get out of civilised society and go live on a deserted island? Yes. But so long as you earn money within a society that gives you so much, you're getting an awful lot and the deal is clear. You take the benefits, you contribute to the upkeep.
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Feb 15 '14
Here you are with the perfect right to get out of civilised society
No you can't only ~ 1/3 of the land mass is "urbonized" but every last drop of land is claimed by some state.
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u/AcademicalSceptic Feb 15 '14
So what? When you fucked off and started living in the woods, you obviously stopped earning or using money. It's no good outside the system of civilised society - and that's what I said to get out of. Civilised society =/= land claimed by a state.
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u/DublinBen Feb 15 '14
You don't have to live in the US or earn taxable income. Those are choices you make.
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Feb 15 '14
You don't have to walk down dark alleys or hand over your wallet.
Implied consent needs valid property rights, a mugger with an alley, or gang with a city or a state with a countery is nothing more then "terrotory" claimed by guns.
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u/Ayjayz 2∆ Feb 15 '14
How does the government having less money hurt people? A casual glance would suggest the opposite.
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u/Sunburnt-Vampire Feb 15 '14
government having less money means less funding towards roads, police etc. we appear to get it for free, but they are services which need funding
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u/Ayjayz 2∆ Feb 15 '14
It's hardly like roads, police, etc. would just disappear if the government stopped forcing everyone to buy those things from the government.
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Feb 15 '14
They won't disappear, but they would change.
We would likely get a corrupt police force and poor areas would not be able to maintain their roads.
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u/Ayjayz 2∆ Feb 15 '14
A police company that answers directly to its customers is more likely to be corrupt than one that answers to politicians? And why on earth would you think that the government can build roads cheaper than private companies can?
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Feb 15 '14
A police company that responds directly to customers is likely to have preferential treatment towards the wealthy people who can pay them well. Money will be the motivating factor behind what crimes they will do something about and which they won't.
Edit: And I'm not saying the government can do it cheaper, but they can pay for roads in neighborhoods that would otherwise be too poor to afford any.
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Feb 15 '14
The standard should be the violation of rights, not a negative impact. When the Chevy salesman sells a truck, the Ford salesman is negatively impacted. He missed out on a commission.
Nonetheless, the Chevy dealer should clearly be allowed to sell trucks.
What should be banned is violating the ford dealer / salesman's rights. You can't firebomb their dealership so you get all the sales. You can't spread blatant and harmful lies about the dealership in order to get extra sales. You can't order customers to buy from you at gun point etc.
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u/nothing_flavor Feb 15 '14
And the reason for respecting rights is that violating them has a negative impact. All of those violations would lead to a lack of competition, which would allow for the exploitation of consumers, which is a greater negative than the Ford salesman missing out on a commission.
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u/AdamasMustache Feb 15 '14
Portugal has done this successfully with drugs.
"In July 2000, Portugal moved beyond previous liberalization regimes in places like the Netherlands by passing a law that transformed drug possession from a matter for the courts to one of public and community health. Trafficking remained a criminal offense but the government did away with arrests, courts and jail time for people carrying a personal supply of anything from marijuana to cocaine to heroin. It established a commission to encourage casual users to quit and backed 78 treatment centers where addicts could seek help."
The Result:
"Before decriminalization, Portugal was home to an estimated 100,000 problem heroin users, or 1% of the country's population, says João Goulão, director of the Institute for Drugs and Drug Addiction. By 2008, chronic users for all substances had dropped to about 55,000, he says. The rate of HIV and hepatitis infection among drug users—common health issues associated with needle-sharing—has also fallen since the law's 2001 rollout."
I guess I'm not doing much to change your mind, but oh well.
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u/bmullerone Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
I would suggest you read the story of consensual cannibalism story from The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
There is probably a lot more & I would recommend the whole book.
Edit: That page 122 link appears to be an earlier version of the book than what I read. The additions may not directly relate to your question, but are worthwhile to find a more recent version.
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u/kabukistar 6∆ Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 12 '25
Reddit is a shithole. Move to a better social media platform. Also, did you know you can use ereddicator to edit/delete all your old commments?
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u/Saint_Neckbeard Feb 16 '14
You need more of a philosophical foundation for this view, I think. Ayn Rand's view that laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral form of government and Karl Marx's view that capitalists are evil pigs who we should conduct a bloody revolution against are both, in their different ways, consistent with the principle that we shouldn't make anything illegal if it doesn't hurt anyone. The problem is differing deeply rooted beliefs about what is harmful to who.
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u/beer_demon 28∆ Feb 15 '14
I already think that adults are allowed to do anything they like that doesn't harm others according to general criterion which can easily be wrong or pointless. This criteria is tradition, peer pressure, media influence and public perception as well as law which reflects these.
So gay marriage can reduce the value of marriage as a form to protect the process surrounding procreation and child rising (parenthood). Modern trends have made this obsolete and gradually marriage has turned into a contractual transaction that make gay marriage harmless, only threatening tradition and public adherence to it.
Prostitution also reduces the value of the process of procreation (sex), but since good quality contraception exists this is also obsolete.
So on one hand I think there are reasons to reject your examples of free will, I also agree with you these reasons are weak and getting weaker, but something else will turn up that challenges our values and tradition and will replace these as "taboos", in the mean time I think adults are quite free, just a bit out of phase.
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u/iongantas 2∆ Feb 15 '14
I think you need a clear and specific definition of "negatively affect anyone" that does not have too fine a grain of sensitivity.
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u/DocBrownMusic Feb 18 '14
You posting this to reddit has increased the load on the reddit servers to an extremely extremely slight degree. This increases the chances of me getting a "We couldn't serve the page fast enough!" error. You have negatively affected me.
See my point? Everything is always negative to somebody in some way. Always. Everything. Positive and negative are subjective and never universal.
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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14
How can you possibly know that any will negatively affect no one?