[CryptoPunk]

You are crudely generalizing an entire class of ostensibly voluntary interactions, as "swindling", and prohibiting them all on that basis, and then handing out exemptions from that prohibition on a case by case basis, upon a party receiving approval from a centralized gatekeeper.

What you are effectively advocating for is a massive limitation on people's rights to freely interact with others, and using their safety - as if you know better what's best for them - to justify it.

[otterley]

I’m not personally doing any such thing. The people who make the rules are ourselves through the democratic process, guided by a set of morals and tenets that we take reasonable measures to protect the weaker and less powerful or capable among us.

Now you may disagree with those tenets, and that’s of course your right; but people should understand why we make such rules based on history and have at least some amount of respect for what came before, imperfect though it may be.

Ideological purity doesn’t serve anyone well, because the world is a messy and complicated place. Every rule has exceptions; there are shades of gray; etc.

[CryptoPunk]

>>take reasonable measures to protect the weaker and less powerful or capable among us.

Those measures, which you support, are what I described:

crudely generalizing an entire class of ostensibly voluntary interactions, as "swindling", and prohibiting them all on that basis, and then handing out exemptions from that prohibition on a case by case basis, upon a party receiving approval from a centralized gatekeeper

And yes, democracy can support laws that violate of human rights. Democracies instituted slavery for instance, often justifying it with claims that it was to protect the slaves from the dangers of freedom.

>>but people should understand why we make such rules based on history and have at least some amount of respect for what came before, imperfect though it may be.

I am definitely open to hearing about the arguments for those restrictions, but I have looked quite a bit, and what I've seen is those restrictions inflicting massive harm on society on the balance. Again I am open to seeing what evidence you have of the contrary.

And this is consistently the case when I look at different industries, and the reason I believe it's a universal effect is due to basic organizational dynamics: a free-er system has a larger range of options, and thus is more likely to discover, through trial and error and the natural tendency of people to seek out mutually beneficial configurations, superior processes.

I described what I see as strong indications of that with respect to healthcare in earlier comments. I've seen the same thing when I look at venture capital fundraising:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29756193

[otterley]

Spend some time with John Oliver, discussing just a few of the problems with predatory lending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw

Usury laws go back to Biblical times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury - there is plenty of literature to follow from this point.

There are still prohibitions on drug use that most agree should still be upheld due to the serious harm they tend to cause (addiction -> crime, serious health decline) relative to their benefits: heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, crystal meth, etc. Go spend some time in some majority Black neighborhoods in the U.S. like deep East Oakland, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. if you want to get a real sense of how bad the problems are and what the locals think about it. Or spend some time in poor white areas in Appalachia or the midwest U.S.

[CryptoPunk]

Studies on laws limiting what interest rates payday loan companies may charge suggest such laws are net-harmful, because they reduce the availability of such loans, leading to people resorting to worse options, like bank overdrafts, or not paying rent being evicted:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1538-4616....

>>There are still prohibitions on drug use that most agree should still be upheld due to the serious harm they tend to cause (addiction -> crime, serious health decline) relative to their benefits

Prohibition is the reason there is a link between addiction and crime. In the absence of prohibition, prices would be as low as ground coffee, and no one would need to commit crime to support their habit.

Another example of the harm of prohibition is the effect it had on how concentrated the drugs were in the form sold. In the late 19th century before prohibition most of these drugs were found in low concentrations in the products that marketed them.

With the advent of prohibition, producers started to create higher concentration doses because such doses were easier to smuggle.

[otterley]

> Prohibition is the reason there is a link between addiction and crime. In the absence of prohibition, prices would be as low as ground coffee, and no one would need to commit crime to support their habit.

You don't understand how poor some people really are. And there are values to consider, like quality of life and justice, other than pure economic efficiency. We don't want people to be hopelessly enslaved to drugs and unable to otherwise lead productive, meaningful lives, even if drugs are as cheap as "ground coffee."

Please, I beg you, actually spend some time in the Real World instead of sitting in your comfy room and relying on Google searches in vain attempts to justify your cold academic view of the world.

[CryptoPunk]

No one in the developed world is so poor that they would need to commit crime to pay for drugs, if the drug market was unrestrictedz and could be bought alongside baking soda at the hardware shop. They would die from an overdose long before they spent their entire welfare cheque.

>>We don't want people to be hopelessly enslaved to drugs and unable to otherwise lead productive, meaningful lives, even if drugs are as cheap as "ground coffee."

Of course, and in that case, the person can be segregated from wider society, and committed to a rehabilation center.

>>Please, I beg you, actually spend some time in the Real World instead of sitting in your comfy room and relying on Google searches in vain attempts to justify your cold academic view of the world.

I have plenty of real world experience. The real world consequence of people in the government controlling our private interactions is inefficiency and corruption, that reduces the opportunities, wealth and hope available to marginalized people who are not connected to the insiders who control the levers of power.