America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman
Social media giants have bought our government, and are trying to bully Europe
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I read the first paragraph of this article and I already think it sucks. If heroin was fully legalized, zero restrictions, we’d be much better off than the current situation we have right now with the war on drugs, fentanyl analogs, and xylazine. Full stop.
Second paragraph:
Heroin distribution and sales would quickly become a huge, multibillion-dollar industry. They would become a significant part of GDP, even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it. Given the increasingly naked corruption of U.S. politics, the heroin industry would be able to purchase massive political influence, enough to block any attempts to limit the harm it does — the harm it knows it does, because heroin industry executives would surely be aware of the damage their products inflict.
This is already happening. Who is this author and why is he so ignorant of the past few decades of opiate problems in the US? There is not a significant fundamental difference between heroin and any other opiate/opioid. I say this as someone who has experimented with many types of them.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article because he’s already demonstrated a head-up-ass perspective.
Paul Krugman is a nobel-prize winning economist who used to have a column in the NY Times. He has a relatively impressive record of predicting terrible things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
And while I certainly don't want to push back on the difference between heroin and other opium derivatives, it's worth noting that legally speaking they're both exactly as illegal when not used as prescribed for the treatment of pain or disease.
It's not a blog post about heroin or opiates, though, so quibbling over the imperfections of his analogy is kinda missing the point. Please give it another read if you have a few minutes; the analogy is fairly apt, though very depressing as an American.
Paul Krugman is a nobel-prize winning economist who used to have a column in the NY Times.
Aka totally discredited.
The "nobel in econ" is as much of a fraud as econ in general.
Anybody who knows this goofball knows not to listen to his crap.
An ad hominum attack and a distinction without a difference is a hell of a response to "who is this guy".
Do you want to show the class where on your wallet the Keynesian model of economics touched you? (Or do you perhaps have a "Krugman sucks and you shouldn't listen to him" link you'd like to share?)
Since you went for an Appeal to Authority as the very first paragraph of your comment, a response that trashes that person's authoritative credentials is logic in the very context you created and thus not an Ad Hominum.
Without that first paragraph on your post you would've been right to claim Ad Hominum.
You didnt attack any of his actual credentials, though. You just said that he should be dismissed because he wrote for a particular newspaper and the award he was given by the Swiss government was not one of the awards given by the Swiss government funded by the gift of a 19th century arms merchant.
If you want to rebut my statement that Krugman "has a pretty good track record", please do so! But you didn't, and haven't, and instead asserted your own biases as fact.
Which is obviously your right to do but, again, is a really weird response to a "who is this guy" post.
Mate, I'm not the person who answered your original comment.
I just saw you making claims about somebody else making fallacious statements when in fact it was you who started with a big fat fallacy and then removeded and moaned about how they were the ones being fallacious when somebody else countered it by pointing out that at least one of the points of "evidence" that you yourself presented for Mr. Krugman's "pretty good track record" (whatever the fuck such vague and ill-defined expression means) was in fact a Swedish Central Bank Prize For Economics In Honor Of Alfred Nobel, which is commonly misportrayed as a genuine Nobel Prize - even by Krugman himself - when it is no such thing.
Of all the things to use to claim somebody has a "pretty good track record", him having something he himself calls a Nobel Prize which is not in fact a Nobel Prize actually weakens that point rather than strengthens it, as it casts suspicion on his honesty.
As it so happens for a while I had a lot of exposure to Mr. Krugman's opinions - on and after the 2008 Crash, when I in fact worked in the same Industry as he did - and in my opinion he was often full of shit and all over the place, at least back then, and a pretty good illustration of the caricatural Economist "who has predicted 10 of the last 2 downturns". One could say that he likes to throw shit at the wall, wait to see what sticks and then claim he was a genius for spotting it.
I'll repeat myself: had you not started with an Appeal To Authority in your original post and absent all those words of praise for the person making that point, just let the logic of the point speak for itself, you would have been better off.
A mere casual endorsement is not an appeal to authority. If you don't like the guy that's fine, but it's not a logical fallacy to, for example, describe a late night comedian as "a kinda funny guy.". (A logical fallacy would require that someone assume Krugman is RIGHT because of his record, not that he's merely worth reading )
How is dismissing someone because of where they worked NOT an ad hominem attack?
How is splitting hairs over which awards given by the swedish government are and aren't "nobel prizes" NOT a distinction without a difference?
Has this dude never heard of the tobacco, alcohol or gun Industry ?
He's talking about commercial heroin like it's some outlandish and unthinkable idea that a harmful thing would become a billion dollar industry
He's deliberately making the point accessible because he's writing for all levels of readers, including Americans.
He won the nobel prize for economics and was one of the few sane voices during the great recession.
He won the nobel prize for economics and was one of the few sane voices during the great recession.
There is no nobel prize for economics. It's an even phonier prize made up by bankers. Even if there were an actual nobel, that's no reason for believing anybody's opinions far outside their realm of expertise (eg. krugman here).
More importantly krugman has been consistently liberal trash since forever.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article because he’s already demonstrated a head-up-ass perspective.
You do know that the entire rest of the article never mentions drugs ever again and you're getting needlessly spun-up about a metaphor for social media and you're just trolling, right?
No, I’m not trolling. Why would I believe this person to know what they’re talking about in a subject I don’t understand well, when I know they’re wrong about a subject I do understand well?
The person is using heroin as a metaphor for a destructive product that causes harm to its users in order to setup an article about digital privacy. When people use metaphors, we all understand that they’re a rhetorical technique and not an attempt at describing reality.
If someone says that their grandchildren are perfect little angles, you don’t say “well, actually, angels are divine beings who don’t dwell upon this earth Grandma, so your grandchildren are not angels and also you’re so dumb for literally thinking that.” In this scenario, it isn’t the grandmother that is dumb.
You’re getting caught up in the fact that he said to imagine a scenario. You think that the fake scenario he imagined, where US corporations are selling recreational heroin, is not as bad as the current opioid epidemic. That is a completely irrelevant detail because, once again, the article isn’t about drugs.
It’s like you’re saying “this guy is stupid, you can’t put social media in a spoon and melt it over a candle in order to inject it into your arm!”. Sure, I guess you’d be correct, but it would be completely irrelevant and make it look like you can’t navigate basic conversations without pointless digressions about irrelevant details.
If someone says that their grandchildren are perfect little angles, you don’t say “well, actually, angels are divine beings who don’t dwell upon this earth Grandma,
Nobody is murdering angels in the global south. This perspective is a privileged delusion.
The victims of prohibition are real people who are actually being violently attacked.
The scenario is not imaginary. His analogy sucks. The rest of the article isn’t anything remarkable either. Wow, the current digital media landscape is addictive, and addictive things are bad. Can you believe an industry would monetize addictive things? What an incredible observation, never heard that one before.
Obviously industries would, and given how under-regulated the US markets are, they can do as they please. The remarkable thing is not how industry is behaving though, it's how the US goverment is behaving, hence America has become a digital narco-state.
You do know that the entire rest of the article never mentions drugs ever again
Because the headline is clickbait bullshit.. because the author is a grifter.
If heroin was fully legalized, zero restrictions, we’d be much better off than the current situation we have right now with the war on drugs, fentanyl analogs, and xylazine. Full stop.
If we hadn't invaded Afghanistan and started importing heroin in bulk through Ahmed Wali Karzai's mafia connections, we wouldn't have tons of cheap heroin to hook people to begin with. Also, we did have fully legalized (functionally) zero restrictions opioids, back under Bush Jr.
That's what Oxycotin was.
If you want to describe the US as a criminal nacro-state, you can start at the Florida pill-mills that flooded the country with hundreds of billions of dollars in highly addictive prescription drugs and made the Sackler Family some of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article
Who is this author and why is he so ignorant of the past few decades of opiate problems in the US?
The author is Paul Krugman, a little known economist, writes for the papers I think.
Sorry if I'm getting whooshed, but Krugman is an infamous economist. He takes really big swings and is sometimes incredibly wrong.
Another shill for the NYTimes... Check their op/ed pages. Full of worthless libs saying dumb shit.
I’ve heard the name before but I’m not super tuned into this area. The analogy just really struck out for me in the first two paragraphs, monumentally so. If he writes with this amount of conviction about something he clearly has no idea about, I’m not likely to trust anything else that he writes in the same article. It’s important to know your limitations.
Sackler heroin? ... Only if Bayer gives up the patent!
Freely available heroin is not a good thing. Drug addiction would get significantly worse. Decriminalize possession, criminalize distribution. That's a more balanced approach
They weren't saying it was a good thing, just that it would be better than what we have. Which is true.
Freely available heroin is not a good thing. Drug addiction would get significantly worse.
same thing was argued about cannabis and there was no explosion of addiction predicted by the puritanist false Cassandras.
That's because Cannabis is not a substance with a strong chemical addiction. There has been a significant increase in cannabis usage. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/ss/ss6511a1.htm
Strictly, Cannabis isn't really any worse than alcohol.
Heroin is far worse. Drugs are addictive, and when available legally it will encourage more people to try them.
Yeah because the tobacco, pain reliever, and social media industries clearly show how great and non predatory totally legal heroin would be.
