

Con Artist costs Google millions - ahsanhilal
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204624204577176964003660658-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNTEyNDUyWj.html

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mindcrime
The problem in this story isn't Google, or the con-artist, or the drug-
dealers, or the people buying the drugs, or Canadians, or GNU hippies or
people born on Wednesday or whatever they're trying to spin it as... the
problem is the US government. The government has no business attempting to
regulate voluntary transactions between free individuals, or trying to
regulate how people medicate themselves.

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ahsanhilal
I think the problem is more nuanced than that. The regulatory ability of the
government is a premise of governance; governments are designed to invoke fear
of a Leviathan force so that the polity does not fall into a state of nature.
The argument that less governance is good governance is a slippery slope one,
since it is hard to determine where the cut off should be; should it be drugs,
should be weapons, what can you trade volutarily? On the other hand,
government is/should be a reflection of its polity. I would argue that the
majority populace in the US would still agree with the notion that 'drugs
should be banned', 'prostitution is illegal' (voluntary economic transactions
between two individuals). I, like yourself, do not agree with this view but
the puritanical hangover that still afflicts the political base causes the
government, and the its operators, to make such laws. So it is more of a
reflection of our society than anything else.

