Post Archive
Region: Lands End
Thanks for the well wishes and good luck to Legoa as VP-R!
Also how're you guys doing today?
Atkemri, Buryasia, The American Imperialists, Legoa
I don't like alcohol abuse or any other legal drug abuse. Just because legal types of addiction exist that doesn't mean other forms are ok. It's pretty clear that our current opioid epidemic is a national security issue and something needs to be done to curb it
Unwinnable wars are perpetual wars. It adds violence to society. It does not reduce drugs one iota. We need a support group against drugs, not a war on drugs. Correction, we already have thousands or millions of local support groups against drugs, and the federal government should support these and otherwise get out of it. "War on drugs" sounds like using drugs while murdering, by the way. And often it is exactly that, by the cartels and by many bad actors in law enforcement. Drug busts have long been among the most corrupt actions of the U.S. government. I'm not saying that arresting those in possession of drugs is in itself corrupt, but the manner in which it is usually done is very corrupt. Look into the history of crack cocaine in NYC in the 80s if you don't know what I'm talking about. The best the government can do to affect at all the amount of drug use in the nation is for politicians to talk honestly about the reasons not to do drugs.
Oh, and a national or international war on something citizens are choosing to do is extremely authoritarian. Let more decisions be made individually and locally, and get the feds out of the culture wars.
(This goes both ways, as while the war on drugs is essentially a conservative cause, there are several liberal causes that the feds are way too involved in, such as what I call the war on hate. Hate is bad, but the war on hate is itself hateful. Hate has become a thought crime. We need to step up at the individual and local level as responsible citizens and municipalities to give an alternative to the authoritarian federal government.)
Hollip, Mythel, Legoa, Agarntrop
I don't care if it's an 'individual choice. The drug abuse death toll in America in 2017 alone was 72,000, doubling from the 36,000 in 2007, and the cost annually for drug abuse in America is roughly 1 trillion per year, 400 billion of that was from illegal drug use. Every single dollar Americans spend on drugs is used to fund and expand this problem. I don't see how you can just brush this off as an individual choice and decide we don't need to do anything to stop the people producing and selling these products
Atkemri
And a war on them is the best solution? That will foster violence and not solve addiction. Make drugs available to put them out of business, and then rehabilitate those who become addicted.
Agarntrop
I said I want to rehabilitate drug users and not use punitive justice against them, but how would making drugs legal make our addiction problem go away? It'll just make drugs easier to access and less socially condemned. The legalization of a product doesn't make the illegal trade of it go away, the vast market expansion counteracts any substitution effect legalizing the product will. That's what happened with the legalization of prostitution in places like Germany and the Netherlands. After it was legalized human trafficking into the nations increased substantially. The same will happen with the legalization of drugs
Bluximburg
I didn't say to legalize. I am certainly 100% against legalizing opiates -- I agree with you there. Force has not worked to prevent drug use. They tried dialing up the force many times. No more surges. Try a different approach.
But again, I agree that opiates are terrible and something needs to be done. I just think it has to be done locally. Anyway, the feds aren't even really at war on opiates. They get billions of dollars for law enforcement by prosecuting low-level potheads while the drug companies have a green light to find new opiates that they can use to steal the illegal market from the cartels. And with the new narcotic OD treatments, their addicts don't even die anymore so instead they can continue to steal from the people they used to love, when they had the ability to love anything but narcotics, and funnel all that money to phizer, bayer, and the rest of them.
Hollip, Agarntrop
We are now at Defcon 1, I repeat we are now at DEFCON 1 report to your assigned battlegroup/bunker.
Nordhpadhan, Agarntrop
It is necessary to join a faction. Augustin Alliance is not automatically choised.
Agarntrop
I enjoy the fact that there are people on both sides of the debate. I believe that this exchange of ideas will make the overall opinion be a stronger and more fleshed out one than what either side had before. may I suggest we change things up? I believe it would make communication easier if we made our arguments in a style where we listed all our premises and then the conclusion of our argument.
for example:
1: humans are mortal
2: Socrates was human
conclusion: Socrates was mortal
as for my personal opinion on the war on drugs:
1: the war on drugs is the same method used in alcohol prohibition
2: the same method yields the same result each time it is recreated
3: the war on drugs will have the same result as alcohol prohibition
4:alcohol prohibition ended up creating more problems than it fixed
5:the war on drugs will create more problems than it can fix
6: laws that do more harm than good need to either change how it approaches the problem it was made for or be removed/replaced
conclusion: the war on drugs needs to either change its approach to addiction or be removed/replaced
and on to the nuke war thing, I never seen this before so I'm probably not going to 100% know what I'm doing and thus will likely mess up a bit.
Legoa, Agarntrop
Long live the AA to war with our foe!
-Supreme general Markus Lee (Command of the nuclear defence and attack system of Red Star.)
(I know its not a RP thing but IDC.-
Atkemri, Agarntrop
In a US context, it's obvious the war on drugs is nothing more than an attack on poor minority communities. There's a clear double standard in how mandatory minimums are applied to blacks and whites in the US, and LBJ basically admitted as such when he started it.
Buryasia, Agarntrop
whelp, looks like I forgot about N-day and missed the whole thing by twenty minutes.
Why am I in the top 1% of trout fishing? I have never put any effort into increasing it
Atkemri, Mythel
The trout has chosen thee, oh blessed one! Embrace your gift, and bring about the age of fish!
Atkemri
The great arvallan nation officially acknowldege you as the lord of the trouts. Prosperity be upon you.
Atkemri, Mythel, Agarntrop
Post by Arvalla suppressed by Grater Tovakia.
oh by the way concerning the war on drugs, it d be better to legalize that and prostitution making it legal would destroy the traffic and piss all dealer off. However it should still not be positively considered by society and medias outlet, and be shamed to discourage that behavior. Basically i m all for legal control and use of propaganda and censorship in a way to limit the spread.
Agarntrop
No double post's, please. There is an edit button if you want to add to your comment.
Mythel, Agarntrop
Is it okay for me to quote someone's doublepost as long as I myself am not doubleposting?
Agarntrop
Mythel, Agarntrop
in that case:
I know this is just one part of your argument, but it is the part that seems the most off to me.
I'm okay with propaganda, but censorship is not to be used. the way I see it, if you need to censor another person's argument that means you don't think your own argument is strong enough to stand against it.
now since I know these arguments will probably come up if I do not address them, I will bring up the three word based crimes: slander, false advertisement, and inciting violence. I would like to note that I am not in favor of them, and will address each one as independently as I can.
first up is slander, here defined as intentionally and knowingly making false claims about someone or something with the intention to ruin their reputation. this is definitely a crime since if successful it can cause very real damage, especially if the slanderer takes their false claims to court. however, the slanderous information is still an argument, and false arguments are inherently weaker than an objectively truthful ones, so countering the slander with well constructed arguments of correct information is a better thing to do than censoring it. the slanderer still faces legal punishment either way, but the damage has to be repaired the right way or you might as well not repair it at all.
second, false advertisement: here described as knowingly and intentionally spreading false information about someone or something with the intention of improving their reputation. again, very real damage can be done here. again false claims fall flat when actually challenged anyways.
basically the best way to deal with both, in my opinion, is this: let what was said be known, but mandate a correction that not only says that the previous claim was wrong but why it was wrong.
as for inciting violence, that is less an information crime and more an actual violence related crime, though what they said should still be countered instead of silenced. after all, how difficult can it be to prove that beating people up for a stupid reason is a stupid idea?
Agarntrop
Post self-deleted by The American Imperialists.
Post self-deleted by The American Imperialists.
What i meant by my usage of the word censorship is not to forbid people to say things. But to limit what can be said publically in facts in media adverts. Basically not let drugs and prostitution appear in advert in an enticing way.
Let s note that i know that in the US freedom of speech is kinda absolute which is note the case in my country. So we have a disparacy in values there. I m not saying one system is the best, but i guess we won t be able to agree on that. :)
or you could just make them list the side affects. from what I heard some of those drugs make your limbs rot off, and people have a right to know what dangers await them when they use a good or service anyways. they can have enticing ads, but if you put a disclaimer about how messed up the side affects are then it's going to be difficult to sell something that says on its own package that it basically destroys your body no matter how many nice things you say about it.
why censor when if anything the full truth can do so much more damage?
because it s so easy to find a loophole in what you say they just have to list the effect in a super small police of character in the low ^part of the screen at the end of the videos. advertisers are good an advert will rarely not favor the sells
Hello, how's your guy's day going?
Jzharko, The American Imperialists
Unike, my day is going well.
Arvalla and Mythel, just thought I'd point out that in the US the gov't does censor advertisements along the lines Arvalla mentioned. You can't advertise tobacco, can't advertise alcohol at certain hours (last I checked), and you certainly can't advertise for the sale of banned substances on TV. For better or worse, them's the rules.
Unike
and the package itself? they would of course be mandated that the warning label has to be in big enough font that the average human wouldn't need a microscope to read it. not sure how small that would still end up being, but it would at least be readable.
now that I think about it though, there is one kind of censorship I would be okay with: you can't advertise age restricted goods or services on kids show networks. if your target audience is 12, you shouldn't be showing ads for a product they won't be allowed to buy until 21. I feel this is a fair enough compromise.
I wasn't taking existing US law into account, I was just stating my own opinion on the subject. and I would imagine advertising banned substances would be illegal, if for other reason than that the substance advertised is illegal.
on a completely different note, have any of you heard about a show called making fiends?
Oh well, no i didn't what is it about exactly? i mean ur show
BTW the president of the arvallan federation has an announcement to make to the people of Lands Ends:
"People of lands ends uhm uhm Me as the great president of our noble federation am concerned... Why don't you want to visit our beautiful country and have the honour,Wait what am i saying, the privilege to work uhm sorry to visit our beautiful mines, nuclear power plants, and industry? "
Pretty good
Unike
making fiends is a show about a little green girl named Vendetta that can bake monsters into existence and uses that power to rule the town she lives in with an iron fist. there is also a blue girl named Charlotte who moves into town and tries to befriend Vendetta. Vendetta finds Charlotte annoying and tries to kill ("destroy") her by sending her fiends at her, but Charlotte's luck saves her every time and the plan usually ends up hindering Vendetta in some way instead.
also, since we are doing announcements, we will share an announcement from the well intentioned moron that leads our nation of Mythel:
"people of lands end! as you all probably know, I have passed a law in Mythel not long ago that allowed the government to run and maintain cloning vats in order to fight against a drastic decline in birthrates. unfortunately due errors in the paperwork of processing this decision, I have accidently banned biological reproduction. while the law technically did not actually ban the act of sex, there was always the threat of citizens being arrested for the unintended consequences of beinging intimate with their partner. while due to the mess of paperwork I have yet to find a way to repeal this ban without decommissioning the cloning vats, I do believe I found a solution to resolve the problem until such a time where the ban can be repealed.
from now on, all clones made from our vats will be specifically made to be sterile. I am alerting you all of this so that you may inform your citizens that should they fall in love with a citizen of our colony and decide to settle down and start a family, they will either have to adopt or visit one of our cloning vats to have their genes mixed into a healthy clone baby."
Nordhpadhan
In the end it will turn out that trump is Voldemort.
The American Imperialists
Not sure what you mean by that. Unless Voldemort was a leader who surrounded himself by rather brilliant hardworking professionals and is being credited for the strongest economy his country has had in a long time. (never did read harry potter)
Atkemri
IDK Im just being odd... Im so bored........... so Long live Canada.....(like that kind of odd, Im not even Canadian Im from -Censored-🇦🇩 )
Canada? You mean The United States largest national park?
I said Im not from there Im from 🇦🇩 And good joke.
So you live in a country that has 77,000 people, wow, my county has more people than you (499,000 thanks for asking)
The Democracy Of Red Star
Post self-deleted by The Democracy Of Red Star.
The USA... Quantity over quality.
Buryasia, The Democracy Of Red Star, Tri-Galleon Yudobya
USA! USA! X infinity = Great again. Finally, so dang great again.
From what I can tell very little has actually changed in the USA recently but apparently it's great again..
I guess if you keep saying it and hoping then it might finally become true.
Unike, Buryasia
Hello my old friends
The Democracy Of Red Star, The Cincinnatus Republic
howdy
The Democracy Of Red Star
Haha so true
The Democracy Of Red Star
We were just about to make it socially unacceptable to hate brown people, but now that the God Emperor has descended from his glass and steel throne in Manhattan to save this country from the libtard cucks, he's single-handedly made America Great again with the power of Twitter and Obama's economy.
Eww.
Hollip
Stop being such a lefty snowflake!
Keep saying it if you want. I'm not outraged. But I do think its gross, and do I need to point out that using pornography terminology to describe our politics says a lot about our politics?
September
Can you guys stop arguing whether or not America is great or if it's "quantity over quality" or whatever on here. So cringey
Well I'm parodying your side so... it says a lot about your politics and your politics only. Even by right-wing standards the POTUS is a hack. At best the country has barely changed from the course left by the previous administration, and at worse it's been moving backwards
Hollip
I love the United States. I would go so far as to say it is the best country on Earth. Travel all around it and you will see what I mean--it is vast and incredibly beautiful, with a stunning diversity of culture, races, language, architecture, religions, economic classes, climates, landscapes, wildlife... I could go on forever. If you only look at one tiny piece, the US is easy to criticize, but on the whole there is no country like it. It is quality and quantity.
The government, though? A train wreck, an absolute embarrassment that steals all the attention from the good things this country has to offer.
Hollip, Unike, Legoa, Karbachav
How exactly are Russia and China your rivals?
The Democracy Of Red Star
Russia's long term geopolitical goals of expanding into east Europe to create buffer zones between Europe and West Russia inevitably will cause friction with NATO and America. China's goals of establishing their own spheres of influence in Asia and Africa directly comes into conflict with American spheres of influence
The Democracy Of Red Star, The Cincinnatus Republic
For all of you who voted against the Liberation, I recommend reading the forum thread dedicated to this, it is rather informing about why a liberation is deserved.
forum link: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=451021&start=175
The Democracy Of Red Star
I know that it's a parody. I don't think you know my side. But I promise it's neither Republican nor Democrat.
The American Imperialists, I agree with you that Russia and China are, in many ways, rivals. And in the case of China, I agree he's stood up to them. I think I approve of the recent changes in NAFTA he negotiated. Overall, I am not satisfied with the president, but I hope some good things come from his presidency. And I agree that the area of the US economy is an area where he has some promise to potentially do some good, and he's probably already done some good for the US economy. I will point out that any president can grow a bubble until it bursts, and I hope some of the economic gains we make are not just bubbles that inevitably burst.
The Democracy Of Red Star, Legoa
I may not be in the SC but I personally know Gagum, the founder of the region and he's cool. This resoultion comes off the back of a DDos attack on him and a attempted coup in his region. It makes me suspicious
The American Imperialists, The Democracy Of Red Star, Mythel
Post self-deleted by The Democracy Of Red Star.
To me the proposal itself read more like a personal vendetta. and "liberating" a region just to invade it yourself does not exactly sound like the kind of thing you plan from the kindness of your heart. I share your suspicion.
The American Imperialists
Hi, Im new to NationStates. Is there a way to reverse policies? I just passed a no-streaking law which apparently means my citizens have to dress certain ways? How do I fix this?
Just wait until an issue comes up that can let you reverse it. Might take a while
Ok thank you.
I implore everyone to please vote against the "GreenHouse Gas Cap and Trade Program." External regulation "at the expense of industry" is unacceptable and it imposes upon your individual sovereignty. Bluximburg as a nation does care about the environment, and we are proud to say that we are in the top 16% of the world in terms of eco-friendliness, however, we self-regulate and we consider and balance the various factors relating to industry and the environment. We do not wish to allow external bureaucratic bodies to tell us how to regulate.
Unike, Atkemri, Buryasia, Nordhpadhan, The American Imperialists, Cyanation
I voted against it, but I have a feeling its going to be passed either way.
Imperium Anglorun seems to be behind a fair few resolutions that take away nation's rights. Hmm... YOUR REGION NEEDS YOU! VOTE NO!
Cyanation
I think this is the first time I ever described my country as "dangerously capitalist".
Jzharko
What a load of nonsense. You can never be "dangerously capitalist," just like you can never be dangerously rich. Dangerous is the wrong word here. However, you can be dangerously poor, or dangerously socialist.
Buryasia, Cyanation
Dangerously un-socialist (joke)
Dangerously capitalist isn't a think but dangerously socialist is? The former does certainly exist.
The Cincinnatus Republic
Nobody expects the Capitalist inquisition!
Did someone say "hersey"?
Atkemri
Yes, would you like to join the inquisition?
Moved my WA membership here. Please endorse me.
I plan to focus more attention on Land's End in the near future.
Unike, Atkemri, Sea View, Buryasia, Nordhpadhan, Bluximburg, Grater Tovakia, Legoa, Karbachav
i totally agree with those saying that capitalism should prevail in our beautiful region, that s why my country has enabled slavery so that everything can really be bought and sold (except for alcohol and drugs they are detrimental to the concentration ofvour slaves)
That sounds fascistic.
The Cincinnatus Republic
wait, what? you are both going too far and not far enough. for one, slavery is stealing someone's labor. one person's strengths, skills, and body are their property, not someone else's. now if both parties agree to a contract that seems suspiciously close to how slavery usually works then while I'd want to keep an eye on them it's their business in the long run as long as the "slave" has the option to terminate the contract. point is, everything that slavery allows you to buy and sell can already be allowed in the free market without denying random people their freedom.
two, and this is from a hypothetical situation where slavery is allowed, if you don't want your slaves getting high then just don't give them your drugs. should we outlaw chocolate because some of our pets get really sick if we're stupid enough to give it to them?
now if you really want slaves, then I would suggest genetically engineering a slave race that biologically has no capacity for independent thought and is unable to feel real pain. if it is capable of having its own desires beyond "do what master commands" then you have failed with that batch and need to grant your creation citizenship and probably give it gene therapy so that its capacity for independence is brought back up to human levels.
Tri-Galleon Yudobya, Karbachav
Or just develop robots?
Just a reminder, if you want to gain access to more of what Land's End has to offer, please TG me with this application:
[spoiler]Nation Name:
Founding Date*:
WA Status (Y / N):[/spoiler]
This will allow you to take part in exclusive events and allow you the right to vote.
the great Arvalla federation demands public excuses from the federal republic of bluximburg ;). The arvallan state is proud of it s democratic elections. Our people just understand the importance of the efficiency that considering people as ressources give.
As for robots if it s possible we will indeed put them to use, same for genetic modifiation as soon as the issues will allow it.
what is the brain if not an organic computer? what is the body if not a biological machine? life is just fleshy robots.
Buryasia
it doesn t matter for us, robots equal an even stronger economy
We in Buryasia would enjoy watching a movie based on this premise :0
I'm confused about the poll. isn't a republic a kind of democracy? if I'm wrong about this, then could someone please explain the difference?
also:
now I want to see that movie as well. who do we call to have someone make it?
Buryasia, Bluximburg
Can someone update the list of shareholders linked to in the World Factbook Entry?
Uhg I got switched from Corporate Bordello to New York Times Democracy.
my filter has you as a New York Crimes So-Called Democracy
You use the conservative NS theme? Nice!
Yeah I use the same filter lol. Im going to try to get back to Corporate Bordello.
does anyone know what the not sure what happened there banner is?
People think it's linked to high Ideological Radicality (above 40), but no-one knows for sure.
So no one ever got that banner?
No, people have gotten it. It's just they don't know why they've gotten it. The title text says 'be strange', after all.
I use the liberal theme; I have you as a "Corporate Dominated Sham Democracy"
Yeah, it seems New York Times Democracy falls out of bounds for both sides lol.
Saint Gloria
Assembled with Dot's Region Saver.
Written by Refuge Isle.