The way to prevent crime isn’t to punish those who haven’t hurt anyone, but to more strongly punish those who have.

Theft has a victim, what are you talking about???

Without an actual victim there is no crime.

We agree on the last part. But my feeling is that if a crime isn’t “bad” enough to require actual jail time then it probably shouldn’t be a crime at all.

Speeding, DUI, and other risky behaviors should be punished if, and ONLY if, an actual incident occurs. Because then there is actually a victim, and not just some nebulous might-have-been.

Hurt someone while drinking and driving? That’s no accident, that’s an intentional attack. Kill someone? Again, not an accident, but premeditated murder.

Now, if say, your insurance agency decides that you are a risk due to your alcoholism, and either drops you, or increases your premiums that’s not a problem. There’s no criminal punishment happening, and if it’s in the contract you signed, that’s expected.

But, you should only criminally punish someone after they’ve hurt another person. Not when they engage in risky behaviors.

Probability is not certainty.

I do not want people in jail for doing something that is probably a crime.

Every so-called crime that has no jail time shouldn’t be a crime. Fees are just another way of enforcing class warfare.

Proven? To whom?

Excessive alcoholism is known to cause harm. Should we make being an alcoholic illegal? Wouldn’t that make it harder for alcoholicsnto try to get help, for fear of being arrested instead of getting help, much like what happens to drug addicts?

People get hurt constantly while fishing, too. Should we make fishing illegal?

The problem is where do we draw the line. You want to draw it at some possibility of harm to others. I want to draw it at actual harm to others.

Which of these is more or less likely to wind up being stretched over time?

You aren’t thinking about bureaucrats and politicians 20, 30, 50, or 100 years down the road. “We’ll just fix the laws when it becomes a problem!”

Sure. Because we’re really REALLY good at removing or rewriting broken laws… Oh, wait. No we aren’t.

I don’t like the idea of actions that don’t hurt others being a crime.

It’s about consistency. If we make it illegal to do things that MIGHT wind up hurting someone there’s no limit to what we can make illegal.

If they hurt someone, then they get charged with a crime. If they do not there’s no injury to anyone else so it’s not a crime.

Is it One+? They already did it once before with CyanogenMOD.

As you said. You aren’t American, so you don’t have any right to interject yourself into our voting system. And for the record, our 2 party system is absolutely nothing like most other nations that have multiple strong parties.

You cannot break the stranglehold of the 2 party system by continuing to vote for those two parties.

Removed by mod

Let me turn that around on you.

You think people should be charged with a crime they haven’t done yet? Because that is exactly what happens in some DUI arrests.

Sleeping it off in your car but have the engine on because it’s cold/hot outside? DUI.

Then there are the idiotic open container laws where even an open alcoholic drink is legally a DUI, even if the driver isn’t drinking.

And if you can’t afford a good lawyer? It’s a conviction. Which goes on your permanent record.

A guy I worked with had a motorcycle try to pass his company vehicle as he was turning left. The motorcycle driver was killed.

It fucked the guy up so bad, mentally. He began drinking. Never at work, but he drove a company vehicle. See where this is going yet? If not let me finish.

A block from his house, he cracked open a beer. Now even if he had chugged it, there’s no way he’d be even slightly drunk before he got home. But he didn’t realize the worker who sold him the beer had already called the police and he was being followed.

The arrested him for DUI in his own driveway, due to idiotic open container laws, despite blowing a 0.

He took a plea for reckless endangerment, but it didn’t matter. He was 4 years from retirement. He was fired.

No. Voting for the lesser of two evil is still voting for evil. I’ll write someone in before I vote for some party functionary that only cares about their own political power.

The problem with that is that you quickly become responsible for EVERYONE, and then you wind up right back where we are with government bureaucrats telling parents how to raise their children.

If a law or rule can be used to harass otherwise good people, then it will be.

If you give some self-important bastard an inch, they’ll take a mile. Just look at the police.

Except you forget about the whole “as long as it doesn’t directly affect others” thing.

Or, more likely, you intentionally ignored it in order to score some “gotcha” for Internet points.

Just ignore the trolls. Apparently I ate his pie or something equally sinister.

You’re right. I shouldn’t have responded in anger. My bad. I get frustrated when I feel like people are talking down to me simply because I’m a USian, and I let it get the better of me.

I’ve never voted for a Republican OR Democrat that I didn’t know personally in my entire life. Why do I add that qualifier? Because I did know some older small town politicians, in both US parties, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when my grandfather was still alive, and they were his friends.

Despite what they think, we are human beings too over here. That’s my point.

I don’t care about the politics of nation vs nation.

I care about humanity’s liberty as a whole.

Nations are shit. Because the only ones in power are typically the ones who want to be. And there’s no one worse to hand power to, than one who craves it.

… I was online in 1993, bro. I was dialing into BBSs with worldwide fidonet bulletin boards even earlier than that.

Don’t be such a dipshit.

Because the US has humans inside it, despite what all the Eurocentric trash think.

I let my anger control me, shouldn’t have said this.