The article is a joke, and so is the author. Everyone says we should listen to the youth because they are young. Meanwhile, the young are inexperienced, irrational, and mercurial with a very limited perspective helmed by an under-developed brain and an even less developed sense of self and purpose. Teenagers eat tide pods and routinely kill themselves or their friends (or others) driving drunk. The question is, why do we need advice from high school students? Easy. We don't.
You might want to retake your constitutional law courses. The Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8) grants the government power to regulate business. It does not grant citizens the right to do business. The right to do business and participate in commerce and trade is a natural right. You do not allow businesses to exist. You are nobody.
Then being more specific: you do not have a right to a profitable/successful business. Nobody is required to inconvenience themselves for the benefit of your business and pocket.
You can always trust politicians to do the exact opposite of their claim. For example: inflation reduction act, affordable health care act, voting rights act 2023. The propaganda is strong with net neutrality. It is just another play for more government control over information.
Would you mind explaining specifically how the FCC's intention to add net neutrality rules again (actually Chairwoman Rosenworcel's intention, and dubious in mettle [1]) would give the government "control over information"? Additionally, would you mind describing what you mean by "government control over information"?
A required condition of net neutrality is that the ISPs be considered common carriers once again. Common carriers are an exception to the legal paradigm of compelled speech. So the most you can say is that the government would be disallowing the ISPs from engaging in money-motivated censorship. If that falls under your idea of "government control over information" then you would be correct (but only pointlessly correct in my opinion).
If you go outside, you will see what unfettered access to drugs does to a society. Of course, you don't need to go outside to see it, since you can do a search and find plenty of examples and studies. The truth can exist, even if someone doesn't want to do your homework for you. Late 19th century China comes to mind. Right now, one only needs to walk the streets of LA, NYC, Chicago, Charlotte, Orlando, Detroit, San Diego, Philly, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and any other city. You will see this on the streets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e72zMER95ps
Is this really glamour? How is it helping, exactly? I don't see any purpose to unrestricted access to these substances, unless your goal is to shatter and/or destroy the lives of 20,000,000 Americans.
I'll add that I think people should have a choice, but rights cease being rights when they impose on the rights of others. Weed, tobacco, and alcohol are legal, but that doesn't mean there is no cost to society. People do stupid shit after smoking. Tobacco has health care implications. Alcohol destroys families. Free access to fent, heroin, crack, cocaine, lsd, meth, and even mdma is going to incur a very big cost. Those are non-starters. And while I think mdma can be used under medical care, abuse of that specific drug incurs a debt.
The annual NSDUH survey disagrees with you. You know, actual evidence. And a random Sky News video about a specific increase in fentanyl-associated deaths where xylazine was detected is hardly evidence of larger trends.
So you follow one poor example of evidence with another. There are many confounding factors for why large cities are more likely to have observable population of unhoused and drug abuse, such as availability of services and facilities that treat vulnerable populations and the habit of smaller cities to ship their vulnerable populations to these areas. Let's not forget stagnant wages and disproportionate increases to the cost of living and lack of housing.
Decriminalization also means we're not hiding away this vulnerable population by stuffing them in jails and treating the justice system as a half-assed mental health solution. Let's also not forget that the Greater Los Angeles area has a population equal to the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Utah combined.
> Free access to fent, heroin, crack, cocaine, lsd, meth, and even mdma
How do you jump from decriminalization to free drugs? What a silly attempt at a straw man.
So about your list of cities and the masses of homeless in them. Are you saying that drugs are legal in all those cities? It seems like the homeless issue is completely orthogonal to drug decriminalization.
Yea, don't blame the current administration for printing more currency and the fed for raising rates, making new mortgages a non-starter. Don't blame government for giving colleges a means to sell worthless unproductive degrees at premium tuition with inescapable terms that hurts the applicant's earning potential and buying power. Don't blame the myth of "following your passion" as a means for earning a living, while simultaneously killing the work ethic of a generation. And don't blame the people who made poor decisions, despite the volumes of information available.
Just blame old people who have worked hard their entire lives, and never knew the conveniences and luxuries that the younger generation now takes for granted.
The article does two things extremely well. It is shores up the stereotype of young people not taking responsibility for their own shitty decisions, and it absolves leadership of the consequences of social engineering.
> Don't blame government for giving colleges a means to sell worthless unproductive degrees at premium tuition with inescapable terms that hurts the applicant's buying power.
That was the boomers, whi right when they became politically dominant fostered that as the primary mechanism for college affordability.
> And don't blame the people who made poor decisions, despite the volumes of information available.
You mean the people that shifted the tax burden from the rich to the working class (including and especially the middle-income segment sometimes mistakenly referred to as the middle class) toward the end of the political domination of the Silent Generation, which was doubled down on during the political domination of the Boomers?
> Just blame old people who have worked hard their entire lives, and never knew the conveniences and luxuries that the younger generation now takes for granted.
The last generation where asubstantial share of private-sector retirees have defined-benefit pensions, as a result of policies adopted under their and the preceding generations domination. Talk about things taken for granted that newer generations don’t get.
The Silent Generation and Boomers — well, predominantly the White subset of each — systematically dismantled, by targeted policy, the strength of the American working class in favor of capital, and did so largely in response (if you look at the political messaging of thr 70s-90s of the elements in both major parties that led it) to messaging appealing to their racial resentment in the wake of the advances of civil rights just prior (from the War on Drugs to Welfare Queens, from Willie Horton to “superpradators” and the Sister Souljah moment.)
Who is deciding what is in the best interest of "the people?"
Motor vehicles are an absolute necessity in the United States, both for economic and personal reasons. If people didn't need cars, they wouldn't buy them. Mass transit will never be able to replace motor vehicles, and trying to shoe-horn an wholly ideologically-driven agenda will blow up in everyone's faces spectacularly.
I agree with everything above minus the last part. Bikes, walking, and mass transit can (and should) absolutely replace car usage if the infrastructure is there to support it. This has been proven in many European cities, Americans are just stubborn and carpilled.
> If people didn't need cars, they wouldn't buy them.
This is a chicken-and-egg problem. US cities have spent billions on highways and parking and rewrote ordinances to require low density, car-dependent development. You could argue all of that is an honest reflection of voter desires (or at least voter desires of 40 years ago, when most of that stuff happened), but many have undoubtedly bought a car because their environment was designed that way.
