even as you posts reach spam-like proportions, you still manage to give me a laugh now and then. you're practically asking for this prohibition to endure for decades to come. if the choice really is between greed and weed, greed will win out every time. greed is universal. it is nothing more than man's natural self-interest run amok and the man without self-interest soon dies of neglect and want. no one does anything unless they believe they will receive something in return. even the thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours i invest in various charitable endeavors each year are not entirely given for the sake of altruism. i get something in return for my efforts. it makes me feel good and lets me believe that the individual can eventually make some difference.
all of your altruistic delusions are little more than a sham. read through the posts you have inundated us with in the last month or so and embrace the greed you've shown to us all. the calls for increased taxation of the rich and caps on personal wealth practically scream of greed, less for them means more for you. the idea of removing business from the new industry of marijuana production and sales is designed to enrich the community of smaller growers, of which you are a part. the very concepts of forced communism and socialism are rooted in envy, that kissing cousin of greed, and pressed forward by the powers of authoritarian greed. one of the greatest hypocrisies of modern liberalism is that its entire platform is based on selfishness and jealousy, the selfish lust of the political elite for power and the mindless jealousy of the masses for that which others have earned, even as it decries those base tendencies. though you try to occupy the moral high ground and claim that all your efforts are to the benefit of society as a whole, the liberties you would erode through your actions diminish the worth of the lives you claim they would preserve. today's liberalism is a game of quantity over quality, the ends justifying the means and the illusions of safety and equality. one has to wonder if any of you are so naive as to believe that these tactics have any chance of overcoming that most basic of human tendencies, self-interest, or if it ever can or should be overcome.
understanding that greed is an integral part of humanity allows us to understand what must go into crafting any legalization legislation, everyone must win. weed will become a business when legalized and profits will be made, there are simply too many people who already partake and that demand will be met. insisting that any portion of the population be removed from that marketplace is not only constitutionally abusive, it is a sure-fire way to doom that legislation to defeat. remember, everyone must win to some degree. just as in the larger picture, legalization depends on harnessing the inherent greed of the population. in response to my last post in this thread you claimed "It's this idea that a world is it's economics is the thing that is insane" and i wholeheartedly agree. no society is solely defined by its business community, but that community is an integral part of the whole. the success of a society, especially in today's world, is dependent on the growth and management of its business and business does not grow through punishment. it is encouragement, incentive and confidence that allow business to grow and the rest of society along with it. restriction, over-regulation, usurious taxation and, when folks like you have their way, exclusion are the preferred forms of punishment in the arsenal of the liberal agenda and these are the self-defeating tactics of the liberal establishment's short-sightedness. these are the punishments inflicted on the business community to satisfy the whims of mob mentality and to enrich the representatives of the state. the more intelligent, enlightened and constitutionally correct approach is to consider restriction and regulation only as means to avoid the direct abuse of others, to tax only in an equitable manner and never to exclude anyone from any portion of the legitimate marketplace. but of course we know there is nothing intelligent or enlightened about our unresponsive representatives and they consider the constitution to be only an archaic and irrelevant piece of history.
yes, i know i prattled on a bit. i just have only so much time to post here and i'm probably a bit too high to be totally coherent. i pop in here for a few minutes from time to time and i find it rather disturbing how casually some folks throw around ideas that run so contrary to the ideals of freedom. some of you are all too willing to toss out the very tenets that have afforded us our many liberties and seem intent on demanding that the rest of us follow suit. unless the most basic rights of everyone are respected, the rights of none of us can be considered secure. i keep on seeing these posts that seem to indicate that some folks believe we can finally reach a measure of comfort for everyone if only some are forced to give a bit more, but that isn't what it's all about. no one can be guaranteed a home, a decent living, a full stomach every night or even that they will be alive in the morning and there is no end of the road to aim for. no person or institution can ensure us anything other than the right to freely choose how we may go about getting these things for ourselves and that freedom of choice is the one thing we must hold onto most dearly.