Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/26/its-time-for-silicon-valley.html
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I agree that most of the turbulence we’ve seen in the last decade boils down to: “the internet has flicked on the lights in a dark room, and now everyone sees everything that’s wrong with the world, 24 hours a day”.
It sounds like good news, and I think in the long run it is, but the problem is there’s so many things to process, and no way to prioritise. We’re still working full time just to catalog this new worldview – everything’s connected, but you can’t boil it all down to just one root problem like racism or capital or ignorance. (In fact, oversimplifying problems itself on the list of problems).
But like Eleanor Roosevelt says, “the way to begin is to begin”. Drug prohibition is a good place for some of us to start: it’s as close to a black-and-white issue as you’ll get, and lots of people can get behind legalising drugs for positive reasons.
But in that Augean Stables metaphor, I’m not so sure the solution is to rope facebook into it. I actually think that’d be more like an old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly situation, where you’d be compounding two problems together instead of solving the first one. I would argue the river has already been diverted, and we are the river, and as each of us picks a spot and starts shoveling, we can be rid of the War on Drugs and Facebook, and all the other situations where people do evil to each other for no reason.
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That was a ridiculously tortured train of thought to go from freeze peach to Greek Myth to facebook to Drug war and race…for a sponsored post. IMO this was in very poor taste.
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This is the first “native content” post I remember seeing on BB. The Shop posts are always pretty obvious, and we all know about the Amazon affiliate links. But this seems new.
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That headline is peak BoingBoing though.
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While I agree with drug decriminalization, this kind of pharma-bro, libertarian, “government is always wrong and silicon valley is here to disrupt it!” bullshit is pretty much exactly this kind of shit I don’t expect to see on boingboing. Is this not essentially 180 degree opposite to Doctorow-ian walkaway/luxury automated communism doctrine?
And while we are at it… Quit trying to sell us CBD as a backdoor to THC legalization. Just fuckin legalize THC.
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Anyone that can help push towards the goal of legalising and regulating all forms of adult pleasure is more than welcome. The scientific approach to not only harm reduction but joy intensification should be the priority for those that seek to destroy dogma and prejudice. I would strongly argue that the combination if hallucinogens, banging psytrance and a beautiful natural setting are the cheapest most efficient way of dissolving away those insidious tribal stories that are at the root of human conflict.
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If anything corporations are even WORSE when it comes to the privatizing profits and socializing costs.
It’s far more common for government to do the dirty work required by private business then the other way around. Hell, the war on Marijuana basically IS the story of the Federal Government doing dirty work on the behalf of William Randolph Hearst.
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If there were a coalition built around eliminating victimless crimes: Decriminalizing drugs, legalizing prostitution, clearing out blue laws in general… then as a part of that platform. I could get on board with what this guy is saying, just in general principle.
But Marijuana has never been a big draw for me, and I’m not gonna rally aroubd the hemp flag while all these other issues languish.
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