[john_b]

> "They'll deflect, ignore, and basically try anything to escape the reality - they broke the rules of society and now society wants to punish them."

I think most people, criminals or otherwise, understand this quite well. In fact, I'd guess that criminals understand it better than non-criminals.

What some people don't seem to understand (or even want to think about) is that the law is often a pitiful and nationally embarrasing reflection of ethics. Laws don't get passed because they are good, or helpful, or promote some positive thing. They get passed because enough politicians could be convinced (sometimes by bribery, sometimes by real or implied threats) to vote for them. Why anyone imagines that the resulting laws have a significant correlation with what's good for an individual's rights and freedom is totally beyond me.

Gandhi, MLK, and the U.S. Founding Fathers were all criminals of their times. Sometimes the world needs people to break the law to show how broken the law really is. If you or anyone else judges them solely because the label "criminal" applies to them, then I have no pity for you.

[slg]

>Gandhi, MLK, and the U.S. Founding Fathers were all criminals of their times. Sometimes the world needs people to break the law to show how broken the law really is.

Except those individuals fought the laws and the people behind them. They did not simply try to circumvent the unjust laws. It is tougher to take the moral high-ground when you aren't striving for change. These people are not battling some great injustice, they are breaking [perhaps unjust] laws for their own personal gain (either monetarily or recreationally).

[indrax]

Lots of slaves just escaped.

It's is not anyone's place to assign to the oppressed the duty of changing their oppressors' minds.

The Founding Fathers were just victorious. Being powerful enough to deter enforcement is not a reliable indicator of moral high ground.

[slg]

I'm not saying oppressed people have a responsibility to change things or that being powerful means you have moral weight behind you. I am saying that breaking an unjust law has no moral value. Gandhi, MLK, and the U.S. Founding Fathers have the moral high-ground because they fought for change. The guy buying pot over the internet is only serving himself. Grouping them all together just because they broke [potentially] unmoral laws is dismissing the motives and sacrifices of the former group.

[karmacondon]

People who break the law are criminals, period. It doesn't matter if the law is just or unjust, or whether or not you personally agree with it. The simple fact is that the majority of citizens don't want online drug dealing to be legal, so it isn't legal.

Equating drug dealers with Ghandi, MLK and the US Founding Fathers is a stretch at the least and outright offensive at worst. These people aren't making bold political statements. They're selling drugs.

If you think that drugs should be legal, convince your fellow citizens to vote to make them legal. MLK, Gandhi and the Founding Fathers did what was necessary to change laws that they felt were unjust. Criminal behavior isn't the same thing as civil disobedience, and there are no shortcuts.

[dllthomas]

People who break the law are "criminals, period" only in the most uninteresting sense. I certainly would not make any claim that most drug dealers are acting in political protest - I don't know enough to say, and would be unsurprised if the overwhelming majority had purely a narrow profit motive; but I do want to raise the issue that breaking laws is often a powerful part of convincing our fellow citizens to change them. MLK very specifically argued that it is our moral responsibility not to obey an unjust law.

[vacri]

The simple fact is that the majority of citizens don't want online drug dealing to be legal, so it isn't legal.

Last I saw, several US states were legalising marijuana sales. It seems that attitudes are shifting.

Your statement is also simplistic: a majority of citizens don't care one way or the other about catching undersized lobsters, yet it's illegal. Trademark infringement is another such law. Then there are laws that the public kind've want but the people in power don't, so they don't get made (eg protection for whistleblowers). The simplest counterexample is tax law. Taxes are incredibly unpopular, yet laws requiring taxes exist.

The genesis of laws is a lot more complex than magically popping in and out of existence with popular demand.

[jstx]

"If you think that drugs should be legal, convince your fellow citizens to vote to make them legal."

The burden of enlightening someone should never fall upon anyone but that someone. To argue that avoiding imprisonment isn't a burden would be the definition of sophism.

[FireBeyond]

To claim that people who are actively hiding their identities, deny, destroy evidence, pass blame, abrogate responsibility - and make sometimes millions of dollars tax-free by doing so are just revolutionaries for the progression and advancement of our society is ... disingenuous at best.

[CyberDildonics]

No one has claimed they are 'just' revolutionaries. The founders of the US wanted to stop paying as much in tax. In the process they set up the most decentralized system of their time.

[dragonwriter]

The level of taxation was not a central concern of the founders, nor was the US system any more decentralized than, say, the Holy Roman Empire.

[CyberDildonics]

States rights, separation of justice, executive, and legislative branch, equal senators per state, congress numbers by population, no central bank, right to bear arms, jury of your peers...

These are all decentralization of power. The Roman empire had an emperor.