[HN Gopher] Drones are the new drug mules
___________________________________________________________________
Drones are the new drug mules
Author : rntn
Score : 99 points
Date : 2024-01-05 15:44 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| lagniappe wrote:
| And anybody who's been to the Funker lately can tell you that
| they're the new insurgents as well. It's astonishing how
| overnight the terrain of war changed completely when the first
| drone guided projectile was launched in personal combat.
|
| I'd be curious to know what percentage of a certain brand of
| drones is dedicated to this purpose, and what those supply lines
| look like, because most of the videos I see have only but a small
| handful of models in use.
| scrps wrote:
| Ukrainians mostly use their own drones made by various groups
| locally to avoid being centralized, they are also running into
| issues with russian jamming.
|
| Consumer drone gear is very easy to jam, also easier to foxhunt
| (RF location hunting) so it works both ways.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I wonder would something like a small anti-radiation missile
| work against whoever is sending the strong EW signal
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Or an anti-radiation drone!
| reactordev wrote:
| So now you have SEAD missions to protect your CAS missions
| but all in 1/14th scale FPV drones... the future is wild.
| It's a game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock.
| scrps wrote:
| Somehow prescient:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Soldiers
| hdhfjkrkrme wrote:
| A missile is too heavy, it's easier to just fly the drone
| into the jammer if you can locate it.
| ponector wrote:
| I doubt the signal is stronger than mobile phone or
| satellite connection.
|
| And the drone is too small to be intercepted with missile.
|
| FPV drone costs 500-1000$ now and is the game changer in
| the current war. No ground offensive operation can be maid
| now without great loses.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Jamming is a mixed bag, because a) you lose your own drone
| capability in that area and b) you broadcast a loud beacon
| that says "HERE IS THE APPROXIMATE LOCATION OF A HIGH-VALUE
| ASSET". The Ukrainians have had some big wins from
| triangulating weird-looking RF signals and unleashing hell on
| whatever is radiating it - you can jam a drone, but you can't
| jam a 155mm shell.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Jamming can avoid "friendly fire" through a variety of
| means. Directional antennas can emit RF in the direction of
| the enemy, but not your own assets. You can also jam on
| different frequencies than you're using to operate your own
| drones.
| scrps wrote:
| That and larger drone comms for russia I would guess are
| satellite based which is harder to jam and sadly out of
| budget for the Ukrainians.
|
| That being said I wonder if you could control small
| drones over satellite or if that is a $900 solution to a
| 99 cent problem.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Satellite communications also has the issue of bigger
| form factor and larger power requirements. Not an issue
| for a predator drone, but your DJI isn't going to be
| using satellite comms any time soon.
|
| The more promising areas are optical communications (but
| this has issues with fog and atmospheric attenuation), or
| directional antennas. Like, a yagi on a gimbal constantly
| pointed at the control station.
| jsight wrote:
| That's all fine and dandy, but if you can use the source
| to approximate a location, you can hit it with himars.
|
| Alternatively, send gps guided drones with optical
| targeting. If the jamming system has inadequate air
| defenses, it might not be jamming for long.
| reactordev wrote:
| It's a lot cheaper to 3D print your own frame and just buy the
| components to build an FPV drone with an attachment for
| whatever payload you want to deliver. You can build one for
| under $300 if you already have controllers and headset to pilot
| one. Blades can now be 3D printed as well using SLA printers or
| using carbon fiber. ESC's can be made with Arduino. I doubt
| they are flying DJI's in one-way missions. Military drones are
| one thing but these new front-line drones have changed warfare
| forever.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| The drones are so cheap it's pointless not to send them on
| suicide missions. The cost per kill is vastly far from the
| limiting factor.
| aftbit wrote:
| They are 100% flying DJI drones on 1-way missions. Even a
| relatively expensive DJI drone costs less than an artillery
| shell. War is hell in many ways, not least of which is the
| sheer expense and resource consumption it demands.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Actually the American M795 155mm HE artillery round costs
| the US army about $820 each.
|
| However, FPV drones are the cheapest GUIDED weapon by far.
| It's finally cost effective to give every single soldier a
| "Fuck that guy in particular" weapon.
|
| They will be significantly less effective in a real, peer
| conflict between great powers though. China or the US would
| likely have significant EW capabilities against drones. The
| US would probably rather turn off GPS entirely than deal
| with American soldiers being donked on the head with
| personalized grenades every day.
|
| So drones in a conflict like that would be much less useful
| in "hot" locations, or will be significantly more expensive
| per unit so they can be made harder to jam and interfere
| with, or will be used more as a nuisance.
| stormfather wrote:
| In a great power war the autonomous drones with inertial
| guidance and optical targeting are coming out.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Hell, with cell phone AI capabilities these days it
| wouldn't be too hard to shove an android in one of the
| larger dones and say if you get jammed and see something
| like this list of pictures, blow it up.
| swamp40 wrote:
| The drones will soon be autonomous. The technology is
| already here, just not well distributed. EW (except for
| EMP pulse) will be a dead end.
|
| They are already tracking down signal sources and
| targeting them. The drones fly around till they get a
| signal maximum then look down.
|
| I have also seen enemy analog video snooping where they
| watch the drone take-off point and geo-locate it to bomb.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The drone wars have just begun and it's going to be years
| before the new paradigm shakes out.
| swamp40 wrote:
| Grenades used to cost $8. Crazy how cheap that stuff is.
|
| I just saw Ukraine drone-dropping Russian landmines back
| onto Russians. Fields full of free munitions.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The US would probably rather turn off GPS entirely
| than deal with American soldiers being donked on the head
| with personalized grenades every day._
|
| Would that help, considering that GLONASS, or Galileo, or
| BeiDou or could be used instead?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigati
| on)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou
| reactordev wrote:
| No, it's not like the internet where you can just turn it
| off. GPS modules use the 3 major bands (2 at least) in
| case of failure so you would have to create a localized
| EMF field to block the radio of a UAV. Turning off GPS
| will not deter a drone that has a commercial grade or
| better GPS module.
|
| You are correct that most (all?) the "GPS" modules used
| for drones would fallback to one or more of the above
| alternatives to GPS.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think the comment I was replying to was talking about
| the United States literally shutting down the GPS
| satellites and the signals they send out.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I disagree. The US can't turn off all GPS, short of
| blasting EU, Russian and Chinese satellites out of the
| sky. I have an affordable GPS module on my desk right now
| that already detects spoofing with a fairly high degree
| of reliability.
|
| But GPS is just one thing in the navigation toolbox.
| There are _so_ many other ways for drones to orient
| themselves, from triangulating on RF signals to object
| recognition and location with ML, and both of these are
| now commodity technologies. And capabilities (and thus
| options) go up considerably once you start mixing and
| matching systems rather than leaning heavily into a
| single design.
|
| When I say commodity technologies, I mean this stuff is
| so cheap and accessible now that I can see belligerents
| launching drone swarms simply to get the countermeasure
| batteries to reveal themselves. To an extent this is
| already happening in Ukraine; Russian ECM is superior to
| anything fielded by the Ukrainians (and allegedly, to
| anything the west has), but Ukrainians are in turn
| selectively targeting Russian ECM trucks.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >significant EW capabilities against drones.
|
| >harder to jam and interfere with
|
| This is where I have my doubts... We have things like
| HARM missiles, and I think we probably already have are
| or are developing "HARD" High-Speed Anti-Radiation
| Drones, that loiter around then attack whatever decides
| to start making noise in particular areas.
| latchkey wrote:
| > _these new front-line drones have changed warfare forever._
|
| Beyond true. I'm in a telegram of the Ukraine war and there
| is so much drone footage of them literally dropping bombs on
| the heads of Russians, it is insane. All of this caught on 4k
| video.
|
| There is one video of a guy sitting in the dirt... he's
| pointing at the drone to show where his friend is... drone
| bombs the friend, right on the head... and then comes back
| and bombs him. I'd link it here, but I think it is just too
| extreme for this site.
| swamp40 wrote:
| The Ukrainian drone frames are almost all 7"-10" carbon fiber
| pieces machined out from a sheet in China. About $15.
| Speedybee (Also China) took over the ESC and controller
| market by undercutting everyone by 50%. The blades can't be
| 3D printed because they need to be smooth and strong, but
| China again sells them for $1. Motors, China. Ukrainian
| volunteers are assembling them en masse.
|
| China is also selling the same stuff to Russia. Some local
| manufacturing is being attempted (for instance I have seen a
| Ukrainian made ESC board and Russian steel frames) but China
| pricing and quality is really difficult to compete against.
|
| Russia is beginning to ramp up drone production in real
| factories and I suspect they will eventually out-produce
| Ukraine, who is easily building 10K/month right now.
| melling wrote:
| It might be astonishing but it was obvious soon after the war
| started that drones would change warfare.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31842578
| lesuorac wrote:
| I'm not sure that's accurate.
|
| Drones have been in use long before Russia took any land from
| Ukraine in 2014.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_warfare#Notable_drone_st.
| ..
| melling wrote:
| Sure, they've been around for a while.
|
| However, a war like the one in Ukraine will accelerate the
| development and usage of drones. You could tell by the
| early usage in the first few months of the war.
|
| Now more global defense dollars will go into the rapid
| development.
|
| Wait until we see swarms of (semi)autonomous drones
| bostik wrote:
| > _Wait until we see swarms of (semi)autonomous drones_
|
| Slaughterbots[ss] becoming reality in 3...2...1...
|
| ss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
| jsight wrote:
| I think we are already there. "Optical targeting" and
| "edge computing" are terms getting tossed around in weird
| ways at times.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| Prior to 2022 it seemed clear this was coming, fighters in
| Burma were using small drones against the dictatorship both
| for spotting and to drop explosives. It seemed like Ukraine
| was where real resources could be put into action, and things
| ramped up significantly. Before the videos from Burma I'm not
| sure where else to look, maybe Syria? There were drones used
| by ISIS but they seemed closer to military drones than what
| we see now with commercial drones or drone components used.
| I'm glad not be in the business of protecting
| people/infrastructure from harm.
| cbsmith wrote:
| I like the implication that drug mules aren't effectively
| insurgents. ;-)
| hdhfjkrkrme wrote:
| For FPV drones both Ukraine and russia but the components from
| China and assemble them locally.
|
| Ukraine is very worried that China is trying to cut them off,
| so they buy through a long chain of intermediaries.
| autoexec wrote:
| On the plus side, if you can shoot one out of the sky, you get
| free drugs! No pesky armed drug dealers around to stop you from
| stealing from them! Just watch out for GPS trackers in the
| package.
| mortallywounded wrote:
| Hopefully not near your home-- when the cartel comes to the GPS
| coordinates ;p
| adolph wrote:
| Pretty close to the plot of No Country for Old Men
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Country_for_Old_Men
| yard2010 wrote:
| That's a tough and important movie
| dingnuts wrote:
| lol you mean a pointless movie that intentionally
| tortures the audience and is unpleasant to watch because
| that's "subverting expectations"
|
| trite critic-pandering trash imho, it's only "tough" in
| that the director hates you, the audience, and thinks
| you're stupid, and it has a nihilistic message that is
| the opposite of important, it's stupid and disastrous,
| and most of the people who I have encountered who like
| this film seem to be in a pissing contest with one
| another over who can enjoy the most unpleasant film
| wilkystyle wrote:
| ...? For such a strong opinion, you didn't include any
| examples of why you and your circle of friends feel this
| way about the movie.
| InSteady wrote:
| Wow, what a take. Of course you are fully entitled to it!
|
| This is perhaps favorite movie, written by my favorite
| author and adapted/directed by my favorite filmmakers. I
| was absolutely on the edge of my seat basically from
| start to finish on the first watch, and am still fully
| captivated every time I revisit it.
|
| I find it a fascinating character study of three
| different people -- the cowboy, the sheriff, and the
| assassin. Each of them feels so incredibly authentic
| despite inhabiting roles from tired old tropes. I also
| believe the movie was superbly acted, which I guess is no
| surprise given that it was a critical success with some
| big names.
|
| The point of the plot isn't to subvert expectations so
| much as to tell a story that is true to life: the
| societal decay which began in the 70's and 80's that can
| be embodied by, if not directly attributed, to the war on
| drugs.
|
| More than anything else, the plot is a massive indictment
| of the war on drugs, as well as an (unpleasant)
| meditation on the role of violence in the American West
| that has existed for generations. Of course, that latter
| point applies to basically all of McCarthy's work. While
| some of the characters are certainly nihilistic (or just
| bewildered and filled with existential dread, in the case
| of the sheriff), the story itself is not. In fact, the
| novel was criticized by some for being too moralizing
| compared to McCarthy's other work.
|
| The hero (and just about everyone else in the story)
| loses in the end to the implacable evil: an honor-bound
| psychopath who is motivated by more than just greed (but
| plenty of that too), who is perfectly suited to
| navigating his desires and achieving his grisly ends with
| absolutely no regard for the society that enables his
| success.
|
| By the end of the film, he almost feels like a force of
| nature moreso than a man (and I think this is
| intentional, for instance in the way he is polite and
| almost apologetic as he murders the hero's widow at the
| end simply because he gave the hero an ultimatum that was
| refused). The point wasn't to subvert our expectations,
| although that may have happened along the way. The point
| was to show a very brutal reality that we still face
| today by retelling a story old as time through unique
| characters and a (semi) modern setting.
|
| Haha ok I'll stop adding to this now. As you can tell, I
| have a lot of love for this story. You don't have to love
| it, but maybe don't be so quick to shit on people who do
| :)
| InSteady wrote:
| It is also a great book. The Cohen brothers adapted it
| masterfully, as they tend to do (see also: True Grit and
| Oh Brother Where Art Thou). Overall it's extremely
| similar to the movie, but it's a short read so well worth
| it if you enjoyed the movie and enjoy reading for fun.
|
| Interestingly, Cormac McCarthy originally wrote No
| Country as a screenplay in the 1980's and went all over
| Hollywood trying to pitch it, only to be told things like
| "that will never work as a movie." Eventually he gave up,
| and later he adapted the screenplay into a novel
| (published in 2005). Then Cohen brothers take interest,
| and then they readapt it back into the screenplay for
| their film.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| This made me spit out laughing! The future is cyberpunk, just
| no in the ways you'd expect.
| celticninja wrote:
| I'm not sure what cyberpunk you read, but this is the exact
| cyberpunk future I expected. Aside from implants we pretty
| much got the sprawl trilogy, anonymous, WikiLeaks, drones,
| surveillance, AI, megacorps, I often think I should re-read
| and work out who is who. Like what faction IRL imare the
| cognitive dissidents ?
| pegasus wrote:
| Names like Chomsky, Assange, Snowden pop first to my mind.
| Or someone like Navalny in Russia or Mandela in South
| Africa. Scientists like Dyson or Bohr could go under that
| rubric as well. And of course, many artists are bona fide
| cognitive dissidents. The list goes on...
| pixl97 wrote:
| >cognitive dissidents
|
| Heh, I love the term, and am surprised on how little it's
| used based on Google searches for the term. Also, how
| many people misuse dissidents instead of dissonance
| mistakenly.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Chomsky is a tenured professor in the Ivory Tower -- how
| on -earth- does he classify as a dissident? If anything,
| Chomsky represents the dominant ideology in academia in
| America. Maybe he was a dissident sixty years ago, when
| he was relevant?
| celticninja wrote:
| And as with all of these things they ebb and flow. I
| would challenge you on the point that he represents a
| dominant ideology any longer, he may have once and he may
| still have adherents but he is not as instrumental as he
| once was. So perhaps he started a dissident and will end
| as one too, but for different reasons.
| emodendroket wrote:
| A good hint your ideology is not "dominant" is you spend
| a great deal of time decrying what the government does
| and it carries on while ignoring or ridiculing your
| criticisms. For that matter, how can he both represent a
| dominant strain of thought and also be irrelevant?
| debo_ wrote:
| Until I get to vacation on an orbiting satellite owned by a
| cryogenically-rotated family of Swiss aristocrats, you
| can't tell me I'm living in a Sprawl trilogy yet. And plus,
| RAM sells for way less per MB than Neuromancer led me to
| believe.
|
| Oh yeah, discovering an alien AI would be nice too.
| celticninja wrote:
| January 1st 1983 the internet goes live.
|
| July 1st 1984 Neuromancer is published.
|
| Today, we are easily over 60% of the way to the future
| envisaged in the sprawl. Just give it time.
| golergka wrote:
| Drug addicts have been scavenging dead drops for about 10 years
| now, since drug dealing first adopted Tor and dead drops. The
| danger lies in identifying the substance. A lot of people ended
| up dead using methadone thinking its mephedrone.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > mephedrone
|
| For a moment I wondered if this was a pun on the content
| matter.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Nope that's "bath salts" and lots of analogs or designer
| variations - none of which are in any way similar to mu
| receptor opioids like methadone. Sounds kinda dangerous to
| me.
| yard2010 wrote:
| I love how something murderous like bath salts get the
| attractive name "designer drug" bitch no designer
| designed this that's f'ing poison
| celticninja wrote:
| The designer in designer drugs indicates that someone
| changed a molecule here or there in a known drug to get
| around drug laws that specified certain substances as
| illegal. So we ended up with a bunch of derivatives until
| such time as the law could catch up
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Great way to star in a cartel video.
| autoexec wrote:
| A sky pirate's life is full of adventure.
| Podgajski wrote:
| Technology wins again!
| amath wrote:
| Maybe this is a contradictory thought, but this is probably a
| good thing. I think you could argue that most drug mules are
| doing it because they don't, or don't think, they have another
| option to change their current life. If this reduces the number
| of humans used to smuggle drugs, it is probably a good thing.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _I think you could argue that most drug mules are doing it
| because they don 't, or don't think, they have another option
| to change their current life. If this reduces the number of
| humans used to smuggle drugs, it is probably a good thing._
|
| We really don't have the same outlook on life, because my first
| thought was "Oh shit, what are the people with shitty enough
| lives to be drug mules going to turn to _now_? "
| ethbr1 wrote:
| We should tax drone sales and use the proceeds to fund drug
| mule job retraining programs.
| dessimus wrote:
| Because you have drug smugglers buying them in the US? I'm
| pretty sure they can buy drones and parts in Mexico, too.
| Terr_ wrote:
| They'll become straw-buyers for drone parts.
| rurp wrote:
| Cartels don't seem like the most laissez faire employers,
| especially when they need a lot of people for risky menial
| work like drug mules. There's probably quite a bit of
| coercion involved in these roles.
| foobarian wrote:
| Ah yes, here we go again with tech taking jobs away from poor
| people.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| least surprising headline of 2024 so far
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Drones man. I think drones are gonna be the end of mankind man
| lol.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Things that change the future are because they change it in
| kind, not in specifics.
|
| Drones (a) remove the requirement to have a human present & (b)
| aerial ones can operate is a largely congestion-free medium.
|
| Taken together, those two attributes are game changing for a
| lot of things.
|
| Persistent naval ISR is going to revolutionized, just as aerial
| has.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| > Things that change the future are because they change it in
| kind, not in specifics.
|
| As always not sure what you're on about.
|
| All it takes is one moron who wants to hurt people to strap
| something dangerous to a drone and send it off in a civilian
| area. In a best-case scenario, going outside is ruined for
| everybody. In a worst-case scenario, like China or North
| Korea is the who does it and it's a widespread/orchestrated
| event.
|
| Seems pretty inevitable to me
| rurp wrote:
| > In a best-case scenario, going outside is ruined for
| everybody.
|
| It's not like progress will get to a certain point and then
| just stop. If terorists reach the point of being able to
| bomb anyone they want, an insane amount of resources will
| be directed at stopping that and new countering methods
| will be developed.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| > terrorists reach the point of being able to bomb anyone
| they want
|
| I mean I think all they have to do is attack voters
| psychologically. Furthermore, what happens when these
| awful school shooter losers decide to apply Ukrainian
| tactics on after school activities? They're all little
| wannabe terrorists. I personally think it's just a matter
| of time, the same way Columbine was (unfortunately) a
| matter of time.
|
| I sure hope I'm just over-paranoid. Could be a really
| dark future.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Technical aptitude tends not to be found in one-off
| terrorists (school shooters). More so in insurgencies
| (IEDs), where there's an opportunity for specialization,
| training, and iterative improvement.
|
| Mostly because technical people tend to be well-off, and
| well-off people don't have many reasons to throw their
| lives away.
|
| The drone attack scenario seems more likely from a
| clandestine state actor, hoping to take advantage of
| anonymity.
|
| E.g. ship a drone into the country, then detonate it in a
| mass gathering, then walk away
|
| But state actors, even hostile ones, don't usually commit
| acts of terror against civilian targets, because they're
| counterproductive. They don't harm military capability
| and rally the public.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| I'm sure that was the same logic they had pre-Columbine
| lgkk wrote:
| You know... like I get people "want" to do drugs and all. (Not
| me)
|
| But the older I get the more I'm on the side of this stuff isn't
| necessary. It is detrimental to society and if someone wants to
| do drugs they should honestly reconsider their life and do
| something productive.
|
| If it was possible to hot patch this crap out of existence I'd be
| in favor of it. Might even implement it myself if I could. I
| don't want my kids to see junkies or live in a world where this
| kind of violence happens.
|
| When there are way nicer and better options out there. And yea I
| get it not everyone has it well. I certainly didn't coming from a
| 3rd world country, but I still found other ways. But that's not
| an excuse. Honestly kind of demeaning/stupid when well to do
| people treat it that way.
| aftbit wrote:
| Most things aren't necessary. Many things are net detrimental
| to society. We still allow the vast majority of them, because
| people are free to do what they want with their lives in this
| world. Just because you have kids doesn't mean that your wishes
| have more weight than theirs.
|
| The biggest harms from drugs come not from the drugs
| themselves, but from the fact that their users and sellers have
| been locked out of our legal dispute resolution system. Drugs
| only lead to violence as long as someone is trying to stop
| them. If they were regulated and sold openly, with just 10% of
| the funding that currently goes to law enforcement to futilely
| try to stop them instead being diverted to addiction treatment
| and honest non-fear-mongering education, they would result in
| an order of magnitude less harm.
| ben_jones wrote:
| You know... I understand people "want" to drink coffee and all.
| (Not me)
|
| But the older I get, the more I realize this habit isn't
| necessary. It's not beneficial to society, and if someone feels
| the need for coffee, they should really reconsider their
| lifestyle and find something more productive to do.
|
| If there was a way to completely eliminate the culture of
| coffee consumption, I'd support it. Might even take action
| myself if I could. I don't want my kids to grow up in a world
| obsessed with coffee.
|
| There are so many better and healthier alternatives available.
| And yes, I understand not everyone has it easy. I certainly
| didn't, coming from a 3rd world country, but I still chose
| other options. That's no excuse, though. It's honestly quite
| demeaning and foolish when well-off people treat coffee
| drinking as something essential.
| bequanna wrote:
| A more apt comparison would be alcohol vs illegal drugs.
|
| Coffee vs meth or heroin does even come close to ringing
| true. What are the individual or societal costs to consuming
| coffee? Both approach zero.
| ttt11199907 wrote:
| There may not be societal costs in the consuming country,
| but there are certainly negative externalities to the
| people/countries that produce the coffee beans
| bequanna wrote:
| I guess I don't consider this a legit argument. You could
| point to negative externalities that are the result of
| literally everything humans produce/consume.
|
| But if we want to use that metric, OK. I would venture a
| guess that the production of coffee yields a heck of a
| lot less suffering than the production of cocaine, heroin
| or meth. Any far fewer people consume the latter.
| bb88 wrote:
| Also to further your point: consider blood diamonds,
| mining of toxic substances, lead batteries, plastic in
| the oceans, etc.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't know, the guy in Kona running the coffee farm
| seemed pretty happy. And the coffee was _great_ (and I
| typically dislike coffee! It was that good...)
|
| In any case, legal production can be regulated in ways
| that illegal crops cannot. It's hard to draw a legitimate
| comparison.
| dleink wrote:
| Alcohol would be a great comparison. Alcohol causes more
| deaths (and presumably human suffering) than illegal drugs.
| Only recently has the Opioid crisis caused a dent in these
| stats.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Even sugar would be a better comparison than coffee.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| And yet I introduced my partner to magic mushrooms on xmas day
| and we both had a great time. I only use drugs very
| occasionally and this one is decriminalized where we live. We
| both have stable employment that is not jeopardized by our
| substance use. We're happy and productive members of society.
|
| I like drugs and I wish we'd end their condemnation.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Bit difference between magic mushrooms and fentanyl though.
| wddkcs wrote:
| Yes, the difference being fentyl is widely used in legal
| medical procedures, and the ease of street access largely
| happens as an offshoot of that legal market-
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/fentanyl-deadly-drug-
| deale...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Psychedelics shouldn't really be in the same category as
| "drugs" at all. Completely different things, users and uses.
| When people are talking about the problems with drugs and
| drug users, they are not talking about psychedelics.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Echoing the responses from other commenters here that this
| problem is mostly created by people trying to control what
| other people do with their own bodies. Its really a sad reality
| that our society seeks to have so much control over other
| peoples bodies, uses violence to try to enforce that control
| then cries "I dont want my kids to live in a world with this
| violence". Somehow killing, beating and locking people in cages
| fixes all our problems if we just do it enough? Not working?
| Just kill beat and lock more people in cages that will fix it
| surely.
| GoToRO wrote:
| When you do drugs with your own body, do you also drive and
| create accidents, forcing other on what to do with their
| bodies (go to hospital, cemetery)?
|
| Right now in my country this is the situation with the rise
| of drugs use.
| olyjohn wrote:
| That's not a problem with drugs. That's a problem of
| irresponsible behavior.
| blargey wrote:
| Yes, and X% of drug use is going to be "irresponsible".
| The societal burden doesn't change from phrasing.
| GoToRO wrote:
| I agree with you. I don't agree with the tone of the
| parent commenter that implied that people who try to
| solve the problems of drugs use, somehow try to impose on
| others what to do with their body.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| By definition making it illegal to ingest a given
| substance is imposing what someone can or cannot do with
| their body. It is a different conversation entirely than
| solving the problems with drug use which for the most
| part comes down to education and fixing broader societal
| issues that lead to people seeking out hard drugs in the
| first place. Opiate addiction is a scourge on our society
| and despite the seeming failures of some recent
| decriminalization efforts I truly dont believe continued
| violence and repression is the answer. I believe my
| stance is supported by the failure of the "war on drugs"
| to curb the problem despite immense resources being
| dedicated to it.
| setr wrote:
| But that's resolvable under other standard frameworks,
| specifically those covering mental impairment. You can make
| drinking legal, while still making drunk driving or public
| nuisance punishable.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Alcohol too?
| warner25 wrote:
| I'd say alcohol too. I didn't drink in college, so I got a
| lot of questions about why not. I responded basically that I
| viewed it as not necessary and detrimental to reaching all of
| my goals - academic, financial, health, relationships, etc.
| yard2010 wrote:
| While I agree with this attitude, sometimes I love to set
| an "exploration coin toss experiment, in which I
| deliberately choose something against my agency
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Ah, as an introvert alcohol definitely didn't play a
| detrimental role in my relationships, quite the opposite
| actually, rather pivotal.
| warner25 wrote:
| To be clear, I do think that drinking would've helped me
| to make more friends and meet more girls (some guys asked
| me, incredulously, how I would ever meet girls if not at
| a kegger). But I didn't think that it would help me to
| make friends _with people who shared my worldview,_ or
| develop the kinds of relationships that I wanted.
| huytersd wrote:
| Not doing drugs leads to a healthier society and better people.
| However it definitely results in much lower life enjoyment.
| Getting satisfaction from being productive is not universal. Me
| for instance. I've worked on and managed hugely important
| projects and get almost no satisfaction from it being
| successful. I'm happy and content when I have nothing to do and
| can peacefully work on my hobbies that may or may not be
| productive. Nothing compares to having a good time at the rave
| in ecstasy or gambling and sex high on cocaine. I haven't done
| hard drugs in a decade but they do make life enjoyable for
| people not driven by traditional societal drivers.
| arcbyte wrote:
| > Nothing compares to having a good time at the rave in
| ecstasy or gambling and sex high on cocaine.
|
| This attitude is the problem. Drugs are an easy trigger for
| those experiences and feelings that avoid all the self work
| humans are meant to do that would give them BETTER and more
| intense versions of the same feelings without any of the
| downsides. You don't need drugs to have highs and psychedelic
| experiences.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Is it a problem? Why, exactly?
|
| Humans are "meant to"? By whom?
|
| You should keep in mind that stigmatization and
| criminalization of drug use is a very recent invention.
| Recorded psychedelic drug use goes back many thousands of
| years, if not more.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >You don't need drugs to have highs and psychedelic
| experiences
|
| If someone is having psychedelic experiences without drugs
| they'll usually want drugs to stop that..
| calmworm wrote:
| Where would you draw the line for "drugs" that should and
| shouldn't exist with your hot patch fix?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| For most people it's "get rid of the drugs I don't like but
| keep the drugs I like."
| rylittle wrote:
| I'm pretty sure theres a lot of people who would get rid of
| heroin even if they know they might enjoy the experience or
| "like" it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Heroin is an easy target because it is only used
| recreationally (in the US, at least), so we don't have
| any legitimate patients who'd be impacted by eliminating
| it.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Maybe. But what about the rest of the opioids? Then you
| get some kind of cancer where you need them. There is no
| simple solution here.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not OP, but I'd use externalities to guide the decision.
| After all, it isn't the drug users partaking in the quiet of
| their home that we really care about. It's the junkies on the
| street making life worse for everyone else around them, the
| smugglers, the violence, the people dying from overdoses,
| etc.
|
| Of course the problem is that almost all of the drugs in
| question have legitimate medical uses so we can't just wave a
| magic wand and make them go away.
|
| I'd personally try the angle of making drug use completely
| non-criminal (but not the associated behavior problems that
| do impact other people; this is a non-trivial element), and
| then make dealing drugs punishable with a LOT of time.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >You know... like I get people "want" to do drugs and all. (Not
| me)
|
| > if someone wants to do drugs they should honestly reconsider
| their life and do something productive.
|
| I don't think you get it.
|
| For some people it's like drinking a beer. Not everyone feels
| the need to be productive 24/7/365.
|
| On the other side. The people that are addicted to worse
| substances, can't just choose not to not and "do something
| productive"
|
| An addict isn't waking up tomorrow, sweating, in pain, sick
| from withdrawal and thinking "Man i should just learn to code"
| rootusrootus wrote:
| When an addict reaches that point, they are almost certainly
| costing society resources. Not just being non-productive, but
| everything from social services to law enforcement, they are
| costing the rest of us resources which would be better used
| as an investment in our collective future. Society has a
| legitimate interest in the problem.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Ah yes, the path of good intentions that leads to hell.
|
| "That point" is a nebulous term that has a very wide range
| of potential definitions.
|
| Also 'non-productive' is one of those terms that get
| bandied about by the worst of us as excuses to commit the
| worst acts against the other humans.
|
| I mean, in your idea, we should give up democracy and
| follow some kind of authoritarian system that perfectly
| optimizes our choices for 'the greater good'. We've seen
| this doesn't work out so well in practice as even "good
| upstanding citizens" are still greedy pieces of shit that
| will screw over their fellow human for another dollar.
| petsfed wrote:
| >as even "good upstanding citizens" are still greedy
| pieces of shit that will screw over their fellow human
| for another dollar.
|
| I think a more charitable way to look at this is that
| whatever "good" is being pushed, hasn't really been sold
| effectively, or its being meted out unfairly or in a way
| that negates the "good". People are not greedy in a
| vacuum, they are greedy because they believe that failing
| to be so puts them at risk of losing resources they need.
| People in general don't horde toilet paper, but they
| definitely did when they thought their ability to get
| more toilet paper later was in danger.
| junon wrote:
| What evidence do you have for this? Have you met an addict?
| Have you met a _high functioning_ addict?
| lawlessone wrote:
| >When an addict reaches that point, they are almost
| certainly costing society resources. Not just being non-
| productive, but everything from social services to law
| enforcement, they are costing the rest of us resources
| which would be better used as an investment in our
| collective future. Society has a legitimate interest in the
| problem.
|
| I won't disagree or agree.
|
| My point is addiction isn't something people can just
| rationalize themselves out of by sitting down and thinking
| of a "greater good".
| warner25 wrote:
| I was a libertarian, and I still have some libertarian views,
| but I agree that my views have changed as I've gotten older and
| now have kids. In theory, I'm all for consenting adults doing
| whatever they want as long as it doesn't infringe on others,
| but I don't want _my kids_ doing whatever they want or being
| influenced by some things.
|
| Things that were abstract to me, like drugs, because _I_ would
| never consider doing them, are more concrete now.
|
| Our kids are still very young, but my wife has recently said
| things like, " _I 'm really afraid of our kids ending up on
| drugs someday_," after hearing yet another story about the
| opioid crisis. And I was like, " _Oh wow, yeah, it hasn 't
| crossed my mind until now, but that's a really scary thought._"
| lawlessone wrote:
| I don't know if you intended it or not but:
|
| "I was a libertarian until I had children" is very funny.
| warner25 wrote:
| That's pretty much it. I've seen how market mechanisms and
| natural consequences don't necessarily lead to my kids
| making sound decisions. Before having kids I envisioned
| myself being a Laissez-faire parent. Now my wife tells me
| that I need to calm down and be less authoritarian.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Same experience. Everyone is a libertarian until they
| meet kids and realize how impressionable and gullible
| even the smartest of them are at a young age -- easy prey
| for the advertising industry, the junk food industry, the
| junk media industry, and worse. Giving them total freedom
| at too young an age doesn't really help them be free, it
| helps them be slaves to someone else with more ad
| dollars.
|
| Libertarianism and freedom, etc, rest upon a foundation
| of a well educated society with members who have enough
| understanding of themselves and their world to resist
| exploitative influences -- you are not born ready for
| freedom, in fact, you are born literally a baby, totally
| dependent for years. After years of good parenting which
| helps you develop self respect, values, and critical
| thinking, hopefully then you are ready to responsibly
| embrace that freedom.
|
| Moreover, how much my perspective was changed made me
| realize some problems in today's society could have to do
| with the fact that being a parent or at least being
| around and being responsible for kids, was a universal
| fact of life for nearly all adults until very recently,
| but now it's possible for a young adult to barely ever
| encounter a child through their entire 20s and beyond. No
| wonder it's easy to end up with a worldview that does not
| account for how children can fit into it.
| warner25 wrote:
| I love the points you made, and how well you articulated
| them.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Not everyone is a libertarian at any point in their
| lives; not all of us needed to have children to realize
| that people (and not just ones under whichever age of
| majority you subscribe to) are shaped by the systems they
| live in. But I ask, what about those who are unable to
| "responsibly embrace that freedom"? What is to be done
| about them?
| flatline wrote:
| I have kids and recognize that they will become full grown
| adults and should have some agency. I want them to be
| informed enough to navigate the treacherous world into which
| they've been born, and given the emotional, financial, and
| other forms of stability so they don't turn to drugs as a
| crutch. When I hear opiates I think of the medical industrial
| complex as the primary threat vector, not street drugs. All
| fully legal right now. Everyone I know who got hooked started
| under doctors orders. I'm not against responsible
| recreational drug use as they get older. I'm also not against
| the responsible prescription of opiates, all we've done to
| curb this is make pain treatment harder to obtain for those
| who need it. Either way, punishing people is not the way
| forward.
| warner25 wrote:
| Yeah, as parents that's all we can do. I just want to
| underscore the sentiment of the original comment that - as
| a thought experiment - if it were possible to put the non-
| prescription or recreational drug genie back in the bottle
| somehow, that would be nice. I certainly don't know what
| the way forward should be.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> I don 't want my kids doing whatever they want or being
| influenced by some things._
|
| You're allowed to want or not want whatever for your
| children, but as soon as they become adults, their own wants
| for their own life override your wants for their life. In the
| meantime, plenty of people (all of whom are _somebody 's_
| children) have chosen to try hard drugs despite the fact that
| they are already illegal and demonstrably dangerous. You
| can't store your children in a crystal sphere for their whole
| lives, so it's your job to teach them as best you can and let
| them go. You can do the best you can as a parent and they
| might still choose to throw their lives away, and if they do
| then that's on them, not on you. Their lives are their own.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Every society needs policing, it's a matter of who's doing
| the policing and who's making the rules.
| pprotas wrote:
| Most drug users aren't junkies, they just smoke a joint in the
| weekend or pop a pill once a year at a festival. Or, you know,
| drink a beer with their mates.
|
| Life isn't about being productive, and humans have used
| substances recreationally for our entire history. It's
| definitely a problem when some take it too far, though.
| celticninja wrote:
| Sometimes productivity can be bettering yourself not
| necessarily increasing the size of the economy. The insights
| you can gain about yourself from MDMA or LSD for example are
| significant.
|
| I think perhaps you are only seeing problem drug users, there
| are plenty of productive members of society who choose to use
| drugs, and you really dont understand the subject matter if you
| are not also lumping alcohol in with the drugs you want nuked
| from existence.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| > But the older I get the more I'm on the side of this stuff
| isn't necessary. It is detrimental to society and if someone
| wants to do drugs they should honestly reconsider their life
| and do something productive.
|
| How would you feel if someone said this about an activity that
| you personally value and enjoy? Would you willingly give that
| activity up, just because some other people don't personally
| value it?
|
| Why do you feel the need to control the activities of others,
| when those activities do not encumber your ability to live your
| life?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The kinds of drugs drones are flying over to the US easily
| can encumbere your way of life. I take it you've never had to
| navigate past meth heads or crack addicts on your daily
| walks.
| throwaday8383 wrote:
| I have. Live in Philadelphia near one of the worst open air
| heroin markets. While I empathize with people having to
| deal with such a mess, I do all the time, I still would not
| want to persecute them. That is a slippery slope. Am I also
| awful because I partake occasionally? I think not. Neither
| are all my friends who are professionals that pay taxes and
| bother no one.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Briefly, but yes, I've experienced that.
|
| My reaction was "our social support systems really suck"
| and not "we need to restrict how people choose to live
| their lives".
| lgkk wrote:
| You really think someone shooting up heroin or fentanyl and
| someone going rock climbing or playing jazz are the same
| thing?
|
| Why the insanely unrelated analogies? I specifically said
| drugs, like the kind you see when you pass any alley near
| Civic Center or downtown SF with dozens of people just laying
| there and drug dealers with backpacks walking around. Is that
| a sign of a good society? Those people don't want help and
| they sure as hell aren't engaging in anything productive like
| building software, buildings, or offering any services on
| Taskrabbit..
|
| yes it's sad but there's also a balance and line between
| what's acceptable and not for a functioning society. This is
| a minority % wise of society (don't want help, aren't
| interested in getting clean) and they cause a
| disproportionate level of destruction. The problem is drugs
| and people are willing to do whatever it takes across the
| drug supply chain to keep it operating.
|
| Btw you need to be productive in order to afford rock
| climbing or skiing or even gaming on a pc...
|
| Unbelievable.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| It would be nice if you actually answered the questions
| that were posed.
|
| Instead, you just once again reiterated that you don't
| approve of how other people choose to spend their time.
| lgkk wrote:
| I gave you an answer.
|
| Literally picked a couple things I like (pc gaming and
| rock climbing) which require me to maintain health
| insurance and a good financial status so I can buy a 4090
| and whatever to play some games. I have to be productive
| to enjoy those things. That's not even what we are
| talking about, and I don't understand why you conflate
| those with cartels who behead and dismember people and
| people who just disturb the peace or attack people while
| on hard drugs.
|
| And yeah I guess I don't approve seeing people destroy my
| city with drugs and violence. I'm paying more than half
| of my annual personal income in taxes, and what I have to
| do is to avoid certain areas of my city at night because
| it's not safe and not a nice sight with people self
| harming themselves voluntarily and on purpose.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Ok. So let's consider PC gaming. There are many people
| out there who consider that activity to be harmful, and
| to not be a productive use of one's time.
|
| So....are you going to give up gaming?
|
| > And yeah I guess I don't approve seeing people destroy
| my city with drugs and violence.
|
| Sounds like your actual problem is with violence, have
| you considered advocating for better policing against
| that?
| lgkk wrote:
| Am I going to give someone a disease if I leave a needle
| out?
|
| Am I going to start attacking people who are just
| drinking coffee while having a business meeting
| (literally happened to me, dude ran at me and pushed me
| and then ran away while screaming)?
|
| I really don't understand how you don't get that being
| high on certain drugs and being really harmful to other
| people is comparable to a video game addict who at worst
| would just stay in their room and smell bad?
|
| Are you trolling? Anyway I said my piece above, I guess
| people like you and me will always contend with each
| other because I guess some people are okay and maybe want
| to see more of the current situation in tenderloin, civic
| center, etc.
|
| Cheers!
| realce wrote:
| > Am I going to give someone a disease if I leave a
| needle out?
|
| You are engaging with a severely addictive product
| produced by addiction-merchants that produces nothing
| other than good feelings for the user. Your disease of
| gaming addiction is contagious to others if they see you
| enjoying it or hear about you enjoying it. The supply
| chains needed to support your drug of choice involve
| ripping millions of pounds of rare materials out of the
| dirt of poor nations that have virtually no labor
| protections. The thing you enjoy has outrageous
| externalities that society chooses to accept and legally
| profit from. There are probably 20x more human life-hours
| devoured by gaming than by being high all the time, and
| much less good art is made by the gamers.
|
| "dude ran at me and pushed me..." Yes, in this completely
| heartless monstrosity we call "American society" there's
| no help for people who are crazy. Many of those people
| turn into drug addicts simply looking for relief from
| their mental illnesses. Seeing this in action can be
| scary or violent, but this is the outcome you support if
| you're a tax-payer in America.
|
| The issue is that we have a horrible, violent, selfish,
| greedy, and self-important society and culture in
| America. Being exposed to that is uncomfortable, but
| that's what it is. Trying to imprison the outcomes of
| that society, or ignore it, or condemn it, etc, is an
| effort to extract your personal culpability from it. We
| created this place where people would rather be unhealthy
| than be healthy. It's human nature to react to a sick
| place like this, and it's totally unproductive to blame
| the least amongst us in society for a problem created by
| the wealthiest amongst us.
|
| Don't like drug dealers? Me neither - the State should
| provide free drugs. Don't like drug addicts? Me neither -
| the State should provide all the support needed to
| rehabilitate citizens, which goes much farther than
| putting people in a clinic. Don't like drugs? Everything
| in America is drugs in one form or another.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| At no point above have you actually answered the question
| posed. Since you seem to be easily distractible, here it
| is again in concise form: How would you react if someone
| told you that (in their opinion) one of your preferred
| activities (such as gaming) is unproductive and
| detrimental to society. Would you stop that activity?
|
| It's pretty clear that your answer is "obviously not",
| and that it's causing you great discomfort to reconcile
| that answer with your hatred towards the different ways
| that others choose to live their lives.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > You really think someone shooting up heroin or fentanyl
| and someone going rock climbing or playing jazz are the
| same thing?
|
| You really think someone smoking a bowl or drinking a glass
| of alcohol after a day at work is the same thing as
| shooting up heroin or fentanyl?
|
| Seriously, that was a very uncharitable take of their
| comment. You really did just say this about "do[ing] drugs"
| which includes "drinking alcohol" as well as "smoking
| marijuana" as well as "taking medication".
|
| I'm someone who might smoke a bowl when I get home from
| work; do I not do productive things? As you said, I have to
| be productive in order to afford my vice. Consider also:
| one might take a hit of something and _then_ start playing
| jazz.
| stetrain wrote:
| > I specifically said drugs, like the kind you see when you
| pass any alley near Civic Center or downtown SF with dozens
| of people just laying there and drug dealers with backpacks
| walking around.
|
| There is a very wide variety of things referred to as
| "drugs" including ones that are in various ways controlled
| or illegal, and some that aren't, on a state by state and
| country by country basis.
|
| The ones you are referring to are a subset, and the addicts
| who "don't want help" are likely a subset of those users
| and the only ones you see and take notice of.
|
| So just saying "drugs" is probably over-generalized.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| It's wonderful knowing there are people out there ready to
| police my body and my lifestyle! Truly, what's better than to
| be protected from myself, for my own good of course! (And the
| kids of other people, god forbids they see something bad on the
| streets) Freedom never felt more free, now in the year of our
| lord 2024.
|
| I grew up in a totalitarian regime; to see the same
| authoritarian streaks being now replicated by westerners is
| mind blowing. They told us how to live, how to cut our hair,
| what to think, moment after moment, day after day, year after
| year after year, all for this idea of "harmonious society", a
| society in their image, crushing any individuality, any
| originality.
|
| Is it so hard to live and let live?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Is it so hard to live and let live?
|
| No, it is easy. As long as the junkies have the same courtesy
| towards the rest of us.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| That's also easy: the junkies just want drugs. They don't
| care about the rest of us at all. If the junkies had access
| to the drugs they wanted, you won't see them on the
| streets, they will be in an institution somewhere, being
| high. The problems start when the junkies don't have access
| to their drugs...
| paulddraper wrote:
| Or...they need money to fuel their addiction which is
| simultaneously preventing them from finding gainful
| employment.
| yard2010 wrote:
| That's a huge over simplification IMO! Addiction problems
| often come with personality traits that correlate being
| jobless and miserable. As humans I believe we should
| solve these problems logically, holistically with love
| and empathy.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The employability of an alcoholic increases dramatically
| after recovering from alcoholism.
| nradov wrote:
| Which institution? Most homeless shelters and mental
| hospitals don't allow recreational drug use or possession
| on the premises, and I doubt those policies would change
| even if drugs were legalized. And most drug addicts can't
| hold down a stable job to pay for private housing
| regardless of legal status.
|
| I generally think legalization is a good idea. But
| junkies are always going to be a burden who live on the
| margins of society and survive by leeching off the rest
| of us (crime, welfare, donations).
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If the junkies had access to the drugs they wanted, you
| won't see them on the streets, they will be in an
| institution somewhere, being high.
|
| Your proposal is that we open institutions where people
| can live, eat, sleep, presumably have all of their needs
| met, and also do as many drugs as they want all day?
|
| There is no way this theoretical free-housing-with-drugs
| institution would do anything but increase the number of
| people abusing drugs and decrease the odds of getting
| them back on their feet.
|
| Can't pay your rent this month? Well if you get addicted
| to drugs, you get free drugs and free everything at the
| Free Drugs Institution...
|
| Want to leave the Free Drugs Institution? Oh you don't
| have any money to get a place of your own and getting a
| job while you're in the throes of addiction is hard, so
| you might as well stay at the Free Drugs Institution...
|
| Every single one of these theories relies on the number
| of drug addicts remaining fixed, but they always ignore
| the fact that you can't remove all of the costs of doing
| drugs without dramatically increasing the number of
| people doing drugs, relapsing, or stuck in addiction
| cycles.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the free drugs institution is in fact the
| street, and the drugs are only free in the sense that
| they're bought with the proceeds of crime. I can't speak
| for everyone, but the thought of going to live in a more
| formal institution does not increase the attractiveness
| of doing drugs for me (and I speak as someone who does
| like the occasional drug, legal or otherwise, in
| moderation of course). You could also imagine a path out
| like halfway houses or that sort of thing, but obviously
| it's a non-starter in the US.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I can't speak for everyone, but the thought of going to
| live in a more formal institution does not increase the
| attractiveness of doing drugs for me
|
| You presumably aren't the target audience.
|
| There are a lot of people who are working hard to stay
| clean and keep their addictions at bay because the costs
| of being addicted are too high: They lose their job,
| their housing, their ability to support themselves, and
| their future.
|
| If you offered these people a way to do drugs for free,
| and a place to stay for free while they did those drugs,
| the incentives change dramatically.
|
| Drug addicts are also very good at lying to themselves.
| You'd get people telling themselves they'd only go in
| "for a couple days" or "for a month or two" who would end
| up in there for years and years.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Oh, I've been locked in a hospital before; I wouldn't
| really say that I'm a stranger to addiction. I think the
| job was the main stressor that caused the addiction. A
| layoff later and I feel much better. Being chained to
| that job for healthcare and housing nearly killed me via
| a few means.
| riscy wrote:
| I won't stand for your right to become a meth head or
| fentanyl addict. Addiction is a dangerous disease and we
| should protect everyone from falling into that trap and
| harming themselves and others around them.
|
| Living in a society is by definition not about granting total
| independence and freedom.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| How about the right to open loot boxes? Play gacha games?
| Play the lottery? Watch porn 24/7? Jerk off 24/7? Be
| childless? Be an alcoholic? Play games 24/7? Climb without
| a safety harness?
| orthoxerox wrote:
| No, no, no, yes (with reservations) to the rest of them.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Well the internet is for porn, not gambling. But safety
| first, then teamwork so
| hotpotamus wrote:
| The only one of those that I do is be childless, and I
| have to say I don't really get why that's in with the
| rest.
| pixl97 wrote:
| At the end of the day you have to accept some level of vice
| or you create a much larger and much worse vice black
| market.
|
| Having mildly addictive weaker drugs available and cheap
| helps prevent the development of stronger and more easily
| smuggalable drugs.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Plenty of meth heads in China they just never make it into
| the news. Once a whole town became famous for it.
|
| You do not trade in your freedom for a drug free stable
| society. You trade in your freedom for nothing, then get
| the exact same shit but with a fresh lie to your face that
| it ain't like this.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Addiction is a dangerous disease and we should protect
| everyone from falling into that trap and harming themselves
| and others around them.
|
| Addiction isn't some disease that can strike randomly, the
| science shows that people who are already
| unhappy/unsatisfied/deprived are much more likely to
| succumb to addiction. Addressing the societal problems
| behind that would go a long way towards eliminating
| problematic addiction, and conversely banning all narcotic
| substances wouldn't stop those people from finding other
| ways to harm themselves, like alcohol, gambling or
| overeating to fill the emptiness inside.
| junon wrote:
| Meth and fentanyl are not the only drugs. Most people who
| "do drugs", especially recreationally, are doing neither of
| those. Nor heroin, nor crack, nor PCP or whatever other
| drug is commonly associated with life ending effects.
| pengaru wrote:
| > I won't stand for your right to become a meth head or
| fentanyl addict. Addiction is a dangerous disease and we
| should protect everyone from falling into that trap and
| harming themselves and others around them.
|
| Purdue Pharma[0] has entered the chat.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_Un
| ited_...
| bb88 wrote:
| One just needs to look at the history of drugs in America to
| come to that conclusion. People often do crimes they wouldn't
| do if they weren't hyped up on drugs -- and that affects
| people who don't do drugs.
|
| Now the question is how do we police it? Throwing drug users
| in prison doesn't seem like a good idea anymore. We really
| want to go after the dealers, the people who get users hooked
| and strung out.
| pixl97 wrote:
| So there are two different things that need to be looked
| at.
|
| First order crimes. For example drinking, then getting in a
| crash would be a first order crime of alcohol use.
|
| A second order crime could be something like stealing money
| to buy your next beer, or running an illegal bootlegging
| operation.
|
| In deciding how to police the issue, the last thing you
| want to consider is punishment, and the first you want to
| consider is harm reduction.
|
| Going after dealers just doesn't fucking work. We've been
| spending billions on it, and in doing so we have a non-stop
| line of dealers and manufactures making more deadly and
| addictive concoctions every day. The more you bust the
| dealers, the more the price goes up, the more stealing
| occurs by the users, the and more corruption of law
| enforcement by the dealers paying people off because of the
| huge sums of money involved happen. As they say "There was
| a war on drugs, drugs won".
| nojster wrote:
| Agreeing on this one. State should sell any kind of
| addictive substance, which would immediately yield
| benefits:
|
| 1. (Large parts of) Funding of organized crime would dry
| up and the state would get extra income via tax
|
| 2. Addicts know they can get their fix and hence can take
| up regular work
|
| 3. Substances would be cleaner and thus safer for
| consumption (easing the burden of the health care system)
|
| Not saying that there are no downsides to this, but the
| downsides have to be weighed against the upsides and in
| my book the upsides outweigh the downsides.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| And you do that by ruining the market, by offering free
| drugs, let the cartells go unemployed.
| bombcar wrote:
| We've tried basically everything else, let's try this.
|
| We take a thousand square miles of BLM land in the middle
| of the desert, and turn it into freedrugcity, and ship
| anyone who wants free drugs there.
|
| Probably cheaper in the long run.
| pc86 wrote:
| As long as there's a fence I'd be willing to try this.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Why shouldn't the state provide free drugs or drugs
| replacements? This way the state (the society) owns the
| problem AND the solution, and you don't even need tax
| payers money since you just erase most of the illegal
| income sources of the organized crime. The state could
| also push rehabs, controlling the addiction problem,
| literally everybody wins, minus the criminals.. Free
| drugs. Free money. Happier, healthier empathetic society.
| Or in one word - Netherlands
| wampwampwhat wrote:
| I believe that already happens every September in North
| Nevada...
| nkingsy wrote:
| Free as long as you spend 20k on gear and food and
| tickets and... drugs
| yard2010 wrote:
| Well sure but then you can virtually forget about humanity's
| best cheat - collective universal health insurance. There has
| to be a balance between live and let live and just living off
| other people
| badpun wrote:
| I would be ok with people wrecking one's health on the
| condition that it means they automatically lose any rights to
| the state's help (health care, housing, any kind of direct
| cash handouts etc.). I don't think we should other people's
| stupidity. What's more, it creates a moral hazard (it's ok to
| wreck my own life, as the nanny state will come to rescue me
| anyway).
| nojster wrote:
| That's a very fine line to walk. The same reasoning could
| be applied to speeding (actively endangering others),
| overeating (actively endangering yourself), hunting,
| snowboarding, skydiving (or any other activity which
| increases your likelihood of having and accident and hence
| burdening the health care system beyond the national
| average).
| badpun wrote:
| I agree, but we should start having this discussion
| nonetheless. As is now, the state is encouraging
| dangerous and reckless behaviours, which is contrary of
| its intentions.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Is it so hard to live and let live?
|
| Only if "live and let live" goes both ways. Junkies make it a
| drain on their family and social circle to support them. They
| also mess up the public spaces and make those unlivable
| (looking at you, SF). If they behaved within limits of
| socially acceptable behavior, I would support "live and let
| live" when it comes to drugs.
| InSteady wrote:
| I guarantee for every "homeless junkie" in SF or any city,
| there are dozens if not hundreds of functional and semi-
| functional substance users. Don't get me wrong, the nature
| of some drugs, especially heroin/fent, meth, cocaine, and
| alcohol, mean a significant percentage of users are going
| to completely fuck up their lives and the lives of those
| around them due to addiction.
|
| It's weird how with illegal drugs we tend to blame the drug
| _and_ the user, whereas with alcoholics, nicotine addicts,
| etc we tend to only blame the user. Does your opinion hold,
| that we should also not "live and let live" with
| dysfunctional homeless alcoholics? Believe me, they also
| make a mess of themselves and the neighborhoods they camp
| out in.
|
| Anyway. Addiction is a beast. But using intoxicants to
| escape, augment, and/or enhance reality is a basic part of
| human (and animal) nature. On HN we all love to talk about
| incentives guiding behavior. Well when your life has been
| shit and likely will be shit indefinitely (due to health,
| social, economic, and other factors), perhaps in spite of
| any effort you are capable of implementing, the incentive
| to get some kind of enjoyment out of it anyway, regardless
| of the cost, is pretty damn high.
| fivre wrote:
| so are what are you actually opposed to? the general concept of
| drugs? you can't really get rid of those: pharmacologically
| active substances exist as a natural consequence of how
| biological receptor and message-based systems work. unless you
| propose dispensing with organic bodies altogether and uploading
| our consciousnesses to the cloud. until such time nature can
| and will produce molecules that fit into the same receptors
| that dopamine, serotonin, GABA, glutamate, etc. do
|
| are you opposed to "non-productive activity"? fuck it, let's
| ban the entire concept of recreation. free solo climbing isn't
| particularly productive and is a risky activity; anyone caught
| doing so should be promptly and harshly scolded, and then sent
| to the salt mines forever to produce economic value
|
| are you opposed to violence and human suffering? yeah, me too,
| but drug abuse is by far not the only thing that can result in
| negative societal consequences. antisocial behavior (which, to
| be clear, is not _all_ drug use, but is some, same as how not
| all driving is reckless driving) is an unfortunate aspect of
| the human condition
|
| "things that I don't engage with personally are inherently bad
| and should be purged from society" is a bigoted and egotistic
| argument. you probably do things i find unpleasant and i
| probably do things you find unpleasant. as a society, we find
| ways to understand why others do things and to minimize their
| negative impacts--we allow drinking, but not the markedly more
| dangerous drunk driving. "simply eliminate everything that may
| have a negative impact that i, personally, the saintliest
| person in the world, do not partake in" is a non-starter.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| Not the OP. But trying to engage in good faith here.
|
| > what are you actually opposed to? the general concept of
| drugs?
|
| No
|
| > are you opposed to "non-productive activity"?
|
| No
|
| > are you opposed to violence and human suffering? yeah, me
| too,
|
| good, we are on the same page
|
| > but drug abuse is by far not the only thing that can result
| in negative societal consequences.
|
| So? You can be opposed to more than one things that can
| result in negative societal consequences.
|
| > antisocial behavior (...) is an unfortunate aspect of the
| human condition
|
| Similarly, constraining it via various means to achieve
| overall societal harmony is a fortunate aspect of human
| societies. Else, there would be anarchy.
| grecy wrote:
| > _If it was possible to hot patch this crap out of existence
| I'd be in favor of it._
|
| I assume, of course, you feel this way about _all_ drugs, and
| don 't want to keep the ones you like.
|
| Goodbye alcohol, cigarettes & coffee.
|
| You're good with that?
| pard68 wrote:
| I agree with you and am confused by so many replies to your
| comment essentially suggesting that drugs are the only means to
| enjoying life or being recreationally unproductive.
|
| I have spent some decades now enjoying life and being very
| enjoyably unproductive at times while remaining sober.
| lgkk wrote:
| It's pretty wild lol. I think they might be trolling.
| haswell wrote:
| > _if someone wants to do drugs they should honestly reconsider
| their life and do something productive_
|
| I think this is a problematic way to frame the situation. If we
| zoom out a bit to look at systemic factors, a significant
| portion of drug use stems from other situations in a person's
| life. People commonly start using/seeking out forms of mental
| escape from these circumstances.
|
| This also runs us immediately into the question of what type of
| drugs are we talking about? I've seen elsewhere you've said
| this is just about the hard stuff, but that then points us
| directly back to systemic factors.
|
| Declaring that someone should have just tried harder to make
| better life choices seems a bit like telling a depressed person
| they just need to start feeling better.
|
| I'd be more interested in focusing on ways we can help people
| past their need for drugs in the first place. Research on
| Psylocibin-assisted therapy in particular looks extremely
| promising and an increasingly important area of focus.
|
| As a thought experiment, it's interesting to wonder what would
| have happened if research into psychedelics wasn't set back an
| entire generation. Where would the world be in terms of mental
| health and trauma recovery? How many people who turned to hard
| drugs could have chosen a better option?
|
| I'm not saying people shouldn't be responsible for their life
| choices, but responsibility and causality are different things.
| stetrain wrote:
| You know... like I get people "want" to drink and all. (Not me)
|
| But the older I get the more I'm on the side of this stuff
| isn't necessary. It is detrimental to society and if someone
| wants to drink they should honestly reconsider their life and
| do something productive.
|
| If it was possible to hot patch this crap out of existence I'd
| be in favor of it. Might even implement it myself if I could. I
| don't want my kids to see drunks or live in a world where this
| kind of violence happens.
|
| When there are way nicer and better options out there. And yea
| I get it not everyone has it well. I certainly didn't coming
| from a 3rd world country, but I still found other ways. But
| that's not an excuse. Honestly kind of demeaning/stupid when
| well to do people treat it that way.
| uwuminatti wrote:
| Hey, just wanted you to know, I told the junkies outside your
| advice that they should reconsider their life and do something
| productive. They didn't realize "just don't" was an option!
| They shook my hand, and went on to become corporate lawyers for
| Raytheon. They thank you from the bottom of their hearts.
| educaysean wrote:
| Ban caffeine! Ban alcohol! Ban rock music!
| thfuran wrote:
| How much coffee do you drink?
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Does anyone know anything about current defenses against large-
| scale drone attacks? The scenario I'm thinking of is 100+ small
| drones, each with an explosive device attached (maybe a grenade),
| all programmed to attack a specific target, at a specific
| date/time. The defenses that I know about (shotguns and nets?)
| might stop, maybe, half of the drones, but that still leaves 50
| grenades, all set to explode on the same target. I just don't
| know how a target would defend against an attack like that - GPS
| jamming?
| aftbit wrote:
| If you want to know more about the state of the art here, read
| more about the Ukraine war, preferably on Slavic language
| sites. It seems the main defense is electronic warfare, either
| jamming the GPS or the control signals. This is leading to an
| autonomy arms race at the moment, as a drone with a
| preprogrammed mission and optical flow sensors is much less
| vulnerable to jamming.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The future of MicroAI is going to be interesting for military
| purposes. Just think about the AI capabilities of your cell
| phone these days, then thinking just how a little bit more
| intelligence on a dumb weapon could make it far more deadly.
| rurp wrote:
| I think there are enough limitations with the current tech that
| this isn't a big concern at the moment, otherwise we would
| certainly be seeing these types attacks in Ukraine. But the
| field is evolving incredibly quickly and it's possible this
| becomes viable in the future.
|
| Some current drawbacks I can think of:
|
| * Small drones carrying a load generally have a short range,
| which could make launching such an attack (and surviving the
| response) difficult.
|
| * Coordination is hard. Manually controlled drone frequencies
| can conflict. There have been some automated sky displays that
| went well, but attacking a busy hardened target is much more
| difficult and I don't think the autonomous software is good
| enough yet.
|
| * Cost in terms of money, time, and risk. Jerry-rigging drones
| with improvised explosives is time consuming and dangerous,
| plus 100 drones cost money.
|
| * Jamming can protect a specific area from drones
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I think the coordination problem is pretty much solved.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbCR8mOPkuo
| petsfed wrote:
| >Small drones carrying a load generally have a short range,
| which could make launching such an attack (and surviving the
| response) difficult.
|
| I understand _why_ such things are relatively rare, but its
| always sort of a wonder to me that fixed wing or tilt-rotor
| drones are not commonly suggested for deliveries of this
| kind. Obviously the flight plan is necessarily more complex
| when you have to have take-off and landing phases with
| horizontal components (which requires more pilot training),
| and the mechanical complexity of a tilt-rotor affair is
| substantial, but it seems like significantly improving the
| range could be a significant win. Are the training and design
| challenges the limiting factor? Is the maneuverability trade-
| off too much?
|
| Anybody working in this space able to comment?
| btbuildem wrote:
| Honestly, I think it's about the immediate availability,
| and hackability of the tech. The Ukrainian (army?
| partisans?) had to respond incredibly quickly to
| overwhelming force. Off the shelf DJI quadcopters that just
| happen to have a light control that could be hacked into a
| release switch + some 3D-printed parts for said switch and
| fins to convert mortar shells / hand grenades into
| droppable bombs -- that's one hell of a trial-by-fire
| hackathon, grab what you can access and convert it into
| what you need.
| warner25 wrote:
| I think there's a lot of stuff that's really hard to defend
| against once it's deployed, launched, or implanted. Think about
| small arms, artillery rounds, dumb bombs, land mines, or
| improvised roadside bombs. You have deception, concealment,
| cover, armor, reactive armor, jamming, and some close-in weapon
| systems but the best defense is probably more active attacks
| against earlier links in the kill chain. I think what we (US
| military, intelligence community, and law enforcement) learned
| during the "Global War on Terror" (specifically about
| improvised explosive devices) was to analyze the networks and
| target the planning, recruiting, training, financing,
| manufacturing, and distribution components.
| uoaei wrote:
| War is a game of logistics. Even Sun Tzu's Art of War is all
| about explaining the logistical realities of war to the
| aristocrats back home who were making the decisions.
| milkshakes wrote:
| check out what epirus is working on, it's basically a directed
| HERF weapon that can mount on a vehicle or ship
|
| https://www.epirusinc.com/counter-electronics
| lawlessone wrote:
| Does this work if the drone(s) are automated and don't need
| an operator or to phone home?
| pixl97 wrote:
| These weapons are the next generation of targets. Guys
| driving those trucks are going to get really nervous when
| HARM drones show up.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| https://defensescoop.com/2023/11/01/army-receives-first-epir...
| Don't worry, the US military industrial complex has us covered.
| We just shoot as much wireless energy as we can at them until
| their insides melt or something like that. I would be surprised
| if these things aren't covering the border within the next year
| or two. Bonus points: uses the same new cool GaN tech that all
| the new Anker chargers do.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I get the motivation here, but it seems like the people who
| came up with the "solution" are using an outdated mindset vs
| those who came up with the "problem".
|
| One, large, central weapon against a swarm of hundreds of
| small ones? It's a deadly assumption that an entire swarm
| would come from one direction, for example. Or that it would
| appear all at once. I'm sure volumes will be written about
| the strategies yet to come, but if what we've seen in the 20
| years of occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, asymmetric
| warfare is very effective at tying up resources.
|
| Watching what the twichy youngins do with FPV drones gives me
| the heebiejeebies -- this has already transferred to
| battlegrounds in Ukraine, with some serious impacts (no pun
| intended).
| panzagl wrote:
| Aegis go brrrrrrrrrrrrr.
| dcgoss wrote:
| this is a major business line for Anduril
| https://www.anduril.com/capability/counter-uas/
| dw_arthur wrote:
| Some sort of lightweight material/string that gets caught up in
| the blades might work. Use it in flak guns and have it float
| down to the earth saturating the airspace. You could also use
| it in a barrage balloon manner.
|
| Nets are also a good idea, there has to be a way to physically
| deny the drones from airspace.
| Balvarez wrote:
| I suspect sub/boat drones have been used in the water for a long
| time. Seems like it would be relatively easy.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, I've read in the past some busts of big drug submarines,
| but I think having some small drone subs would make much more
| sense:
|
| 1. Unlike air drones, relatively small sub drones would be much
| more difficult to spot and intercept. The ocean is already
| filled with a lot of stuff like fish, so it seems like it would
| be relatively easy to camouflage.
|
| 2. One lost drone is a relatively small loss vs. having a big
| sub get intercepted and lose millions worth of product.
|
| 3. Now sure how big of a battery you'd need. Curious how long,
| say, a 2 mile long swim by a small sub would require in kWh.
| rainworld wrote:
| http://www.hisutton.com/Narco%20Subs%20101.html
| Balvarez wrote:
| wow that's super cool thanks!
| adolph wrote:
| The article's examples use relatively expensive and human
| controlled quad-copters. They would be better off with a
| cardboard plank like the Corvo PPDS running an ArduPilot waypoint
| mission:
|
| _The Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System (PPDS) is a low
| cost, disposable UAS that is optimised for the covert delivery of
| small volume payloads. The PPDS is designed to be deployed into
| theatre in a flat pack configuration._
|
| https://corvouas.com.au/corvo-ppds/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sypaq_Corvo_Precision_Payload_...
|
| https://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/common-mission-planning.htm...
| btbuildem wrote:
| Pretty cool stuff!
| j4yav wrote:
| I feel like we aren't too far away from the worlds first school
| or venue mass shooting via drone.
| pard68 wrote:
| Not the drone delivery program I was promised
| Sateeshm wrote:
| People expected Amazon deliveries
| totalview wrote:
| I notice a DJI Matrice 300 (larger drone) and a DJI Mavic 2
| (can't be totally sure if it's a pro model). DJI is well known as
| the top market leader in UAV space because of its relative low
| cost ($13K for the Matrice, under $3K for the Mavic) for high
| utility/reliability (something you care about if you have a
| payload worth $10K plus). Similar drones made in the USA or EU
| are 2X-4X the cost and do not come with any other features that
| DJI hasn't already thought of.
|
| I guess that being a market leader means you will have a wide
| range of customers using your product
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