Friday, February 22, 2013

Are The Crimes Really Victimless?

Fellow SLOB Left Coast Rebel blogged recently about victimless crimes such as gambling, something that came up in her business law class.
The course work this week delves into usury laws, so-called payday loans and statewide statutes involving gambling. We've been given the option to argue either side of each issue and conclude if we think usury laws and the "disproportionate" state legislation regarding gambling loans (rather, taking out loans to gamble) should be targeted by the feral government.

Unfortunately most of my classmates travel the road of government essentially doing everything it can to protect people from themselves (which I, of course couldn't disagree with more)...
Italics in the original. Is the crime really victimless? Dig this.


 Finally, we have this.
Learn more about us debt.

To a great extent, the debt comes from entitlement spending. Entitlement spending goes to the poor. If you become poor, you get entitlement benefits like the EBT in the song. The money for that EBT comes from me and my kids. The more entitlements we hand out, the less anyone learns from their stupid decisions. Nothing good happens at all. In the end, the US goes bankrupt, my kids and I learn Portuguese and we move to Brazil because too many people were behaving stupidly and demanding our money to make up for their bad decisions. You either move somewhere else or you stay here and pay, pay, pay.

Is that a crime or not?

Maybe it isn't such a crime after all. Brazil is nice.

6 comments:

tim eisele said...

Are you sure that Brazil is much different?

K T Cat said...

Brazil has much lower debt - 66% of GDP compared to our 102%. They're growing and I think you could find a decent place to live and work in Brazil.

Jedi Master Ivyan said...

I don't mind laws against usury, because sometimes it's the gubmint making stupid financial decisions. For instance, that school district in CA you posted about a couple days ago...

tim eisele said...

"Brazil has much lower debt - 66% of GDP"

Six years ago, so did we. Things can change in a big hurry when the same mistakes are made. And if you look a bit deeper, I think you'll find that Brazil is busy making them.

K T Cat said...

True enough, Tim. The Brazil statements on the blog are more of a thought experiment than an actual plan. Still, it would be nice to know Portuguese and have Brazil as an option. It's in better shape than most places.

Anonymous said...

What a horrible viewpoint: "Crimes aren't victimless because government is taking responsible peoples' money to pay for the problems irresponsible people create for themselves."

Ummm... No. You can't claim we need MORE government control because of ... morally hazardous government policies. That's just an ever-increasing spiral of moral hazards where more funding enables more bad behavior which then requires more control and more funding. It's a circular argument. Eventually these policies ENCOURAGE irresponsible behavior because idleness and neediness is rewarded and productive citizens are asked to contribute more. That the is OPPOSITE of the social pressure that is needed.

Talk to an addiction therapist about the role of the "enabler". It's the person with sympathy and caring toward the addict, and their sensibilities drive them to do whatever they can to "help" the addicted person. The actual effect of this is that the addict is LESS likely to deal with their addiction, due to the assistance of the "enabler".

Your idea that we are all victims because of the enabling role of government assistance just brings to light the damaging effect of bureaucratic entitlement programs.