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The government/society is already regulating vices. It really is just a question of who gets to decide what is a vice and what is not. Propositions that reference "human or civil rights" are begging the question. What are "human rights"? What are "civil rights"?

I suggest you can't really have a useful understanding of political questions in the abstract. When you look into the history of these policy decisions, there's always something more going on than a purely reasoned universal morality.

Take your example of Prohibition. The Temperance Movement was around for a long time before it formed a political party and started gaining traction. Why? Was there any connection between the massive social upheavals that were changing the society in the U.S. at the turn of the century that might have put wind in the sails of this party? Prohibition was "progressive" politics but does that word "progressive" still mean what it meant then? No. You can't have a Progressive party without some sense of "progressing towards what?". In that case, you were talking about the WASP ruling class that had very long-held ideas about what progress meant, dating back to before the founding of the country by English Dissenters. Of course, the advent of WWI had the normal accompanying propaganda campaign. Prohibition benefited from wider anti-German sentiment (anti-beer) and war-time grain conservation efforts.

But, arguably a bigger reason for Prohibition's policy achievements were widespread anxiety about urbanization and "saloon" culture in the cities, which was widely and accurately associated with immigrants and african americans. In a sense, you can see Prohibition as a last-gasp attempt to control the social forces changing America at that time and restore "law and order". The fact that it gave rise to organized criminal gangs (mostly run by the very people they were trying to restrain) was an unintended consequence. We see a similar thing at work with the War on Drugs.

I would argue, the reason these Prohibition-type campaigns against vice fail is because they treat the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is a culture that is dissipated and lacks moral cohesion. Arguing about "moral universalisms" like libertarianism proposes is just more of the same. All honest morality is particular, just like all rights are particular. There has never been and never will be a universal morality without turning the world into one homogeneous goo. So long as there are different peoples, there will difference conceptions of the good. The sort of pro/con argumentation is a distraction from reality, imho.

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The history lesson is very much appreciated. I didn't know most of those facts about Prohibition.

I agree with everything you said about morality. There is no real cure for the "disease"; critical thinking is lacking among the populace but even with it, people will still hold various moralities. I think the government should enforce a few minimal, overarching rights and households and companies can impose additional restrictions (idea may need refinement). There is no universal morality, so I say we should provide maximal freedom within reason. That would at least be a subset of many people's moralities. At the end of the day I'd rather have some government than none.

I appreciated the pro/con linked because I could see why other people held the positions they did and because I found a perspective that particularly resonated with my morality. Understanding where other people are coming from is useful even if they have significantly different moralities, I think.

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I appreciate your points and why one might want such things. I don't, however, think it's possible for the government to enforce a few minimal, overarching "rights" except over populations capable of self-governance. If something isn't possible, then there's little point in spending too much time thinking about it, (except theoretically). At worst, it can be a kind of "opiate of the masses", who can spin their wheels thinking about such things like "profit maximizing rational actors" and other myths, while the real power is controlled by those who practice realpolitik.

There is a real cure for the disease, but it involves creating enclaves of such populations. The early American settlers were such a population. Barring a new frontier and settler population capable of self-government, then we look back to the conditions that allow for culture to develop. Culture cannot develop without separation and boundaries.

Think of the culture of any organization. If you've ever been part of a growing corporation, you'll have experienced culture changes in person as the org becomes larger and larger. With more diverse personnel, the surface area of commonality becomes smaller and smaller. HR starts to take on more and more of a role in dictating the rules of the org. Disputes must be arbitrated by the corporate "government". Compare to how things were in the beginning, when much agreement could be assumed and people could generally "manage themselves".

The analogy, obviously, is to society and government. When people don't have the "moral law within," then we start to see all kinds of new rules to constrain a multifarious population that doesn't constrain itself. You can have a very diverse society with many rules, or a very homologous society with very few official rules (but many implied). You can't have both at the same time. The irony is that the effect of having many rules is that the individual people become all the same, because they have delegated their moral decision-making apparatus to the state. Morals are just an indirect way of saying Values. Values are what people think are better/good and worse/bad. So, basically, the State is deciding what is good/bad. Hence, the people running the State (those practicing realpolitik) decide what is good or bad.

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> This has ever been the great problem of Government. The powers of Government are of necessity placed in some hands; they who are intrusted with them have infinite temptations to abuse them, and will never cease abusing them, if they are not prevented. How are they to be prevented? The people must appoint watchmen. But quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who are to watch the watchmen?—The people themselves. There is no other resource; and without this ultimate safeguard, the ruling Few will be for ever the scourge and oppression of the subject Many.

- James Mill

I fear we have doomed ourselves from the start by forming societies. There is always some risk of corruption no matter the extent of education. If the government does wrong, will the people rise up? Indeed, how right and wrong are decided lies in the hearts of every person. When angels seem as devils and devils angels, what recourse does one have? There are but words that proclaim ideals and actions that rage to enact them. To set one's soul on fire, and hope there will be those who take up the torch in turn.

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I don't think there is a point where we were not already in societies. Society is what is natural to man. I agree on this with Aristotle: "Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god."

Your quote from James Mill is interesting for many reasons but also for it coming from such a political radical as James Mill. He was one of the formulators of what would become liberalism/progressivism and himself a proto-technocrat. The Latin quote itself is much older, as you would suppose, and the sentiment goes at least back to Plato.

The same idea pops up in J.S. Mill in the context of laying out a justification for technocracy, i.e., large societies are complex, managing complexity takes skill, skill takes time to acquire, lives are short, therefore, managerial skill must necessarily be invested in a small number of dedicated civil servants (technocrats), and not in the hands of representatives in parliament/congress. The question "who watches the watchers" refers to the bad judgment of Parliament vis a vis the technocrats:

"The bad measures or bad appointments of a minister may be checked by Parliament; and the interest of ministers in defending, and of rival partisans in attacking, secures a tolerably equal discussion; but quis custodiet custodes? who shall check the Parliament? A minister, a head of an office, feels himself under some responsibility. An assembly in such cases feels under no responsibility at all; for when did any member of Parliament lose his seat for the vote he gave on any detail of administration? To a minister, or the head of an office, it is of more importance what will be thought of his proceedings some time hence, than what is thought of them at the instant; but an assembly, if the cry of the moment goes with it, however hastily raised or artificially stirred up, thinks itself and is thought by every body, to be completely exculpated, however disastrous may be the consequences. Besides, an assembly never personally experiences the inconveniences of its bad measures until they have reached the dimensions of national evils. Ministers and administrators see them approaching, and have to bear all the annoyance and trouble of attempting to ward them off."

Had JS Mill lived to see our modern administrative state he might have been less enthusiastic for the integrity and farsightedness of bureaucrats.

My own answer to this is that the watchers must be aligned with the watched at a deep and abiding level. They must come from the same places, same economic conditions, same religion, same value system, same history. Their children must go to the same schools, marry and reproduce with their constituents, their own family's welfare must be tied up with the health and success of the community overall. No amount of "education" can substitute for a lived reality of sharing in the commonwealth of the community. And this societal health cannot be reduced to material welfare. That is the great flaw (angel-seeming devil) in secular materialism. Whatever the ultimate reality is or isn't, there is nothing in secular materialism that can provide for the incorporation of the leadership into the body politic the way a deep and successful culture can. The American WASP culture was that for a few hundred years. In contrast, our present political "consensus" has no solution to moral dissolution (except to double down on a kind of anti-morality). The only way out is down and through some kind of large-scale re-calibrating event, like a global war, which no one wants to experience.

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> I don't think there is a point where we were not already in societies. Society is what is natural to man.

That's fair. I guess alien societies would also have problems of their own, so wishing to not be human probably isn't good enough.

> therefore, managerial skill must necessarily be invested in a small number of dedicated civil servants (technocrats),

Ah yes, the sufficiently smart (and benevolent!) bureaucrats TM. Works every time, 50% of the time.

> My own answer to this is that the watchers must be aligned with the watched at a deep and abiding level. They must come from the same places, same economic conditions, same religion, same value system, same history. Their children must go to the same schools, marry and reproduce with their constituents, their own family's welfare must be tied up with the health and success of the community overall.

I agree, but how do we go about selecting them? It would be nice if politicians felt less otherly, but that's more wishful than realistic. With power comes responsibility, and the gap between citizens and politicians is unhelpful.

> In contrast, our present political "consensus" has no solution to moral dissolution (except to double down on a kind of anti-morality).

I feel like people are moreso doubling down on their beliefs.

> The only way out is down and through some kind of large-scale re-calibrating event, like a global war, which no one wants to experience.

Be optimistic; maybe it'll just be a few civil wars.