As a recovering alcoholic I enjoyed the section on What Is Addiction?
To me Addiction is a health issue, be it whether we focus on emotional health, mental health, physical health or a combination of all three. In my case I was a functioning alcoholic for 39 years, and I had some pretty good jobs to help support my habit. It wasn't until I could no longer function as I was that I began to take the health side of addiction seriously and get my butt into treatment. Now I'm clean for 10 years and enjoying life again.
To this day when I hear addiction discussed I appreciate it when I see people beginning to realize that addiction is a health issue. And, just like any health issue, we can choose to ignore it, or do something about it. Like unemployment and poverty, it will not go away on it's own.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience here. Yeah it's pretty crazy how we treat a health issue as a matter of criminality, like we can just make something illegal to fix a problem. It's the same logic as supply-side thinking. Just make the supply illegal and demand will fall, but that's bullshit.
Max security prisons are a great example. Drugs are not allowed there. It's even an area completely surrounded by walls. There is a demand for drugs though and that demand results in supply reaching where it should not be able to. Demand is king.
To reduce supply, demand must be reduced, and the only way to do that is to create the environmental conditions where people decide they don't want something, and would prefer something else.
Great work. I am currently waiting on some explanations on how a libertarian idea of mutual aid funds would actually work, I have no idea. Until then, I am a proponent of UBI. I'm considering getting my CASAC here in NYC to advance the working knowledge of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to give people a better chance at healing what really needs to be healed to recover.
This article covers two of my major socio-political concerns.
What you call universal basic income I have always called negative income tax. It seems to me that the taxation system is well equipped to ensure that everyone has at least a livable income. Somewhere between the poverty level and the basic tax deductible income might work.
I had not put together the connection between poverty and drug addiction, but now I see it. Decriminalising will work with basic income to reduce the problem greatly.
Yeah, NIT and UBI are two ways of going about the same thing. And I agree, legalization of drugs would go a long way alongside UBI to reduce the damage being done to people!
I wonder how many people have died from opiates who would have preferred marijuana if legal and regulated like alcohol?
Wonderful comprehensive post, I love that you linked the Kurzgesagt video, I remember watching it and it really revolutionising my views on addiction. I definitely agree that there are class issues at play here, addiction is not solely an issue with people living in poverty, but the addictions/compulsions of rich people are far more "acceptable" in the eyes of society.
Kurzgesagt does such a great job on their videos. The amount of research and commitment to scientific evidence is always apparent. They've been working on a basic income video all year by the way, and it should be posted this month!
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by scottsantens from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
I love how there is no downside to a massive wealth transfer system. Look! No one will be a drug addict if we just redistribute more wealth! How wonderful! Don't worry about collapsing the system with more debt.
It's not more debt, and there are downsides to basic income, but it's all relative. For example in India's UBI pilot, moneylenders hated basic income because they couldn't find anyone anymore to pay for loans at 1000% interest. Instead people used their UBI to pay down their debts and build savings.
So if you look at the evidence, debt goes down, not up with UBI.
As a recovering alcoholic I enjoyed the section on What Is Addiction?
To me Addiction is a health issue, be it whether we focus on emotional health, mental health, physical health or a combination of all three. In my case I was a functioning alcoholic for 39 years, and I had some pretty good jobs to help support my habit. It wasn't until I could no longer function as I was that I began to take the health side of addiction seriously and get my butt into treatment. Now I'm clean for 10 years and enjoying life again.
To this day when I hear addiction discussed I appreciate it when I see people beginning to realize that addiction is a health issue. And, just like any health issue, we can choose to ignore it, or do something about it. Like unemployment and poverty, it will not go away on it's own.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience here. Yeah it's pretty crazy how we treat a health issue as a matter of criminality, like we can just make something illegal to fix a problem. It's the same logic as supply-side thinking. Just make the supply illegal and demand will fall, but that's bullshit.
Max security prisons are a great example. Drugs are not allowed there. It's even an area completely surrounded by walls. There is a demand for drugs though and that demand results in supply reaching where it should not be able to. Demand is king.
To reduce supply, demand must be reduced, and the only way to do that is to create the environmental conditions where people decide they don't want something, and would prefer something else.
Great work. I am currently waiting on some explanations on how a libertarian idea of mutual aid funds would actually work, I have no idea. Until then, I am a proponent of UBI. I'm considering getting my CASAC here in NYC to advance the working knowledge of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to give people a better chance at healing what really needs to be healed to recover.
This article covers two of my major socio-political concerns.
What you call universal basic income I have always called negative income tax. It seems to me that the taxation system is well equipped to ensure that everyone has at least a livable income. Somewhere between the poverty level and the basic tax deductible income might work.
I had not put together the connection between poverty and drug addiction, but now I see it. Decriminalising will work with basic income to reduce the problem greatly.
Yeah, NIT and UBI are two ways of going about the same thing. And I agree, legalization of drugs would go a long way alongside UBI to reduce the damage being done to people!
I wonder how many people have died from opiates who would have preferred marijuana if legal and regulated like alcohol?
Wonderful comprehensive post, I love that you linked the Kurzgesagt video, I remember watching it and it really revolutionising my views on addiction. I definitely agree that there are class issues at play here, addiction is not solely an issue with people living in poverty, but the addictions/compulsions of rich people are far more "acceptable" in the eyes of society.
Kurzgesagt does such a great job on their videos. The amount of research and commitment to scientific evidence is always apparent. They've been working on a basic income video all year by the way, and it should be posted this month!
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Ha, yeah they would. The poor dont deserve holidays yknow ;P
I love how there is no downside to a massive wealth transfer system. Look! No one will be a drug addict if we just redistribute more wealth! How wonderful! Don't worry about collapsing the system with more debt.
It's not more debt, and there are downsides to basic income, but it's all relative. For example in India's UBI pilot, moneylenders hated basic income because they couldn't find anyone anymore to pay for loans at 1000% interest. Instead people used their UBI to pay down their debts and build savings.
So if you look at the evidence, debt goes down, not up with UBI.
This post has received a 8.41 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @scottsantens.