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
Comment on America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman
deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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.
Devial@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
pdxfed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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. Even if there were, that’s no reason for believing anybody’s opinions far outside their realm of expertise (eg. krugman here).
…substack.com/…/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-nobel
More importantly krugman has been consistently liberal trash since forever.
ijon_the_human@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Sorry if I’m getting whooshed, but Krugman is an infamous economist. He takes really big swings and is sometimes incredibly wrong.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Another shill for the NYTimes… Check their op/ed pages. Full of worthless libs saying dumb shit.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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?
deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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?
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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. What an incredible observation, never heard that one before.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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 (yet). Get a clue.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
You do know that the entire rest of the article never mentions drugs ever again
Cause it’s clickbait bullshit.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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 pain pills 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
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Freely available heroin is not a good thing. Drug addiction would get significantly worse. Decriminalize possession, criminalize distribution. That’s a more balanced approach
demonsword@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
That’s because Cannabis is not a substance with a strong chemical addiction. There has been a significant increase in cannabis usage. 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.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
They weren’t saying it was a good thing, just that it would be better than what we have. Which is true.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Yeah because the tobacco, pain reliever, and social media industries clearly show how great and non predatory totally legal heroin would be.
zebidiah@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Sackler heroin? … Only if Bayer gives up the patent!
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
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.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Aka totally discredited.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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?)
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.