The War On Bullshit

Once again, public policy is being manipulated by people who watch too many action movies. In light of the recent events at Virginia Tech, a number of states, including Virginia and Louisiana, unfortunately my home-state, are considering a brilliant new law to deal with the problem of shootings on college campuses: allowing students and teachers with the proper licenses to carry concealed handguns with them to class. You heard me: concealed handguns in classrooms.

State Representative Ernest Wooten of Belle Chasse, La. (where there must be some serious inbreeding going on) has proposed that we arm more people on campuses – not just allowing guns in dormitories, but allowing students with the proper licenses to carry concealed handguns to their classes. In Virginia, NRA representatives have pushed legislation to allow basically the same thing. Under this proposal, college kids would be required to carry weapons to school.

Ted Nugent. Who needs photoshop when the world is populated by so many idiots?

I’ll make this real easy for you to figure out. Here’s three simple reasons why arming college kids is about the dumbest idea any statesman has proposed since Hitler decided Russia was worth invading.

3. Psychos are not deterred by guns.

Now, I realize that you and I, the average Joes, are pretty terrified of having our brains blown out. The college kid who decides shooting up a college campus is the best way to solve problems is, however, not the average Joe. Just consider a couple of the most recent examples of how these nuts commit suicide after shooting up a school:

Stephen Kazmierczak shot seven classmates and then himself at Northern Illinois University.

Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 schoolmates and then himself at Virginia Tech.

Right here in Louisiana, a nursing student shot and killed two women and then herself at the Louisiana Technical College. It’s pretty obvious to me that anyone deranged enough to shoot up a school is not going to be deterred by somebody’s concealed Beretta.

2. College guys are often on the prowl for a fight anyway. I don’t know if you remember your college daze as well as I do, but I recall most college-age guys putting off enough testosterone to intimidate the starting line of the Dallas Cowboys. Just think back on all the stupid reasons guys in their 20s beat each other senseless. I know, you’re saying, “but we arm our soldiers at that age!” Yeah, but soldiers and law enforcement are trained to use guns. We’ll look at that more in a moment. First, let’s look at a very typical college scene.

Greg just failed his College Algebra exam. He’s not doing as well as he needs to in order to stay on the track team, and he’s having a pretty bad day. Rufus is, unfortunately, the guy who gives him a reason; Greg catches Rufus laughing with Greg’s girlfriend Alice as they do homework together in the Student Union. In the good, old-fashioned, Andy Griffith version of this scene, Greg lashes out with a mean right cross and knocks Rufus’s block off.

In the Dick Cheney-sanctioned version of this scene, Greg reaches to the small of his back, pulls out the .45 tucked under his shirt, and blows Rufus and Alice’s brains out. Greg runs, but realizes after burning off the adrenaline that he has just killed his girlfriend, and shoots himself in the head. Unfortunately, Greg does not die – he just suffers massive brain damage and is then elected President. …well, I guess I was wrong on that one. Things worked out better for Greg in Scene II, right?

1. And the number one reason this is the dumbest crap I’ve ever seen: guns in untrained hands = chaos. Alright, we’ve seen on the news what happens when just one irate student opens fire on a college classroom. Can you imagine the devastation if there had been guns in the hands of five or ten classmates – all untrained in the use of a firearm? It would be a war-zone – worse, a war-zone full of idiots who can’t use a gun properly.

Imagine the devastation if one guy walks in brandishing a pistol, and eight people in the back row decide to take him down before he can hurt someone. In a matter of seconds, everyone in the front of the class is on the floor, dead.

Conclusion

This has got to be the stupidest shit I have ever seen anybody suggest. After Columbine, parents just said we had to stop letting our kids listen to devil music and we needed to censor everything. Now, Dick Cheney and Ted Nugent would have us believe we need to put more guns in schools. Do these morons really think a bunch of untrained, testosterone-laden college kids will be able to prevent more deaths when these shootings happen?

It seems like the theory is, if pantywaist liberal professors cannot protect our kids, let them protect themselves. Someone needs to tell Cheney that the flaw in this logic is that it is not a college administrator’s job to protect our students. That’s what campus police are for, you Darth Vader look-alike imbecile. Come to think of it, why would anyone even consider any gun law proposed by the guy who shot his hunting partner!?

I have been around business schools a fair bit and have noticed a few disturbing trends. For one, it seems that the majority of undergraduate business programs include at least one core course involving Microsoft Access. Sometimes Access is taught in labs or tutorials outside regular class, but the question remains, why?

I have received two answers to this question:

These answers are bullshit.

First, “fundamentals of database” includes at least two things. The first is database design. The second is SQL. If the B-Schools are teaching fundamentals of database, why in the hell are their students using Access’s proprietary query builder instead of writing SQL, and what is this bullshit about Access’s “forms” and “reports.” You won’t see this crap in Oracle, DB2 or MySQL. Furthermore, I haven’t seen much education on database design in these intro classes, and assignments rarely include design activities because they can’t be graded quickly.

Second, I can’t find a shred of evidence that Access is heavily used. I don’t know anyone who uses Access professionally. A quick search on Craigslist (Vancouver) brought up 95 jobs requiring Oracle, 122 jobs involving SQL Server, 157 jobs involving MySQL and 7 jobs involving MS Access.

So, my question remains… why does it seem like most schools are teaching not only Access, but also the proprietary wizards and features of Access?

In my previous post I explained the true drug problem. I differentiated the symptoms from the underlying pathology by defining “the drug problem” as a conflict between:

In my next post I will propose my own plan for addressing the drug problem. But first, this post discusses five existing approaches to drug policy and explains why they don’t work.

1. Prohibition

By prohibition, I mean making it illegal to import, produce, sell or consume a substance. In the language of my previous post, prohibition explicitly rejects the individual’s right to choose how s/he lives his or her life.

This is the approach of the United States with respect to drugs like Marijuana, Cocaine and Heroin. The reason this doesn’t work comes down to first-year economics. Barriers on the supply chain of a product (i.e. prohibitions on importing and production) increase the difficulty and risk associated with distributing that product. Increased risk drives up profit margins to the point where some people are willing to take the risk (and reap the rewards). Meanwhile, these barriers to the supply chain get pretty sophisticated. Thus, those who would overcome the barriers must become more sophisticated, i.e., more organized. In this way, prohibition creates organized crime (for those non-history buffs out there, this is precisely how the Mafia became so powerful in the U.S. during the dry years from 1920 to 1933). Furthermore, the huge profit margins associated with drug running fund other criminal activities, not to mention expert legal defenses.

In sum, prohibition does not stop drug use but it does provide the impetus and financial basis for organized crime.

2. Libertarianism

By Libertarianism, in this context, I mean legalizing all drugs. In the language of our drug framework, this approach holds sacred the ‘right to choose’ and ignores either the individual’s responsibility not to cause harm to others or the unfortunate reality that use of and addiction to various drugs causes harm to people besides the user or addict, depending on which libertarian you ask.

This is the approach taken by The Netherlands (more or less). On the upside, rates of drug use in The Netherlands are not significantly higher than in Western Europe overall (probably because prohibition doesn’t work, as we’ve already seen). However, this approach has three major problems. Firstly, and most obviously, it does not address social problems linked to drug use. Second, The Netherlands effectively created a safe haven for drug distribution organizations, making The Netherlands a major drug producer and transit center. In other words, the mob moved in. Third, and most subtly, many people continue to slip into life-destroying drug addiction.

Some people argue that a drug addict’s life isn’t “destroyed,” s/he has just chosen a lifestyle that seems strange to us: perhaps an antisocial existence, supported by petty crime and characterized by violent mood swings and mental depravity. Have you ever seen or talked to a crack addict between fixes? “Alternative lifestyle” my ass.

This brings me to a complex point so please bare with me (this goes double for the Ron Paul Mafia who desperately need to get their heads around this idea). The prominence of ‘the right to choose’ is based on a flawed ideal of human cognition. I, for one, think people should have the liberty to decide how they live their own lives. However, said liberty cannot be implemented by simply removing constraints (i.e. the laws against drug use). For a person to have the liberty to choose among alternatives, s/he must have sufficient information regarding the risks and benefits of each alternative and sufficient mental faculties to understand and process those risks and benefits. In a society where children (and adults) are brainwashed, poorly educated, and devoid of critical thinking skills, many lack the liberty to choose, even if society grants them the right to choose. Some legal document granting you the right to do something doesn’t mean you have the slightest clue whether or how to do it. Furthermore, humans are social beings and, especially in youth, are vulnerable to peer pressure and low self-esteem. Many children are incapable of making a sound decisian at precisely the age when they are most likely to get hooked on drugs. How many people do you know who started smoking at 14 and swear they never should have started because now they can’t quit?

This is an often-misunderstood, fundamental point: it is impossible to grant the freedom to choose whether or not to use a drug simply by legalizing it.

3. Education

Many societies attempt to educate children about the dangers of drugs. The idea is that if the populace is aware of the dangers, they won’t partake in the drugs. Note the hidden bias: ‘the dangers of drugs.’ Drug education, as it is normally practiced, is a politically motivated manipulation intended to produce a taboo. It’s attempted brainwashing. It is not giving people the tools they need to make an educated decision. Do you think junior high students have debates about whether it is reasonable to give crack-cocaine to terminally-ill patients as death approaches? How about an honest treatment of the benefits of amphetamines? Not, that I’ve heard of. To decide whether indulging in a drug is worth the risk, a person needs unbiased information, the critical thinking skills to evaluate that information, and the self confidence to make the decision regardless of what some transient social circle thinks. None of these things are high on the priority list of the education systems I’m familiar with.

I am not claiming that education, in principle, is ineffective. I am claiming that “drug education” is a euphemism for an incompetent, politicized, horribly biased, farcical attempt at brainwashing our children. And because more dangerous socially acceptable drugs are tolerated while less dangerous, taboo drugs are not, the whole exercise ignores the right to choose entirely. Bullshit is not lying but a message conveyed regardless of truth.

I am not aware of any education system that provides the necessary skills and knowledge discussed above. If you know of one, please bring it up in the comments.

4. The In-Your-Own-Home Strategy

The number of countries that ban smoking in public places — in bars, restaurants, hotels, beaches, parks, etc. — is growing steadily. This is an approach that recognizes the responsibility not to harm others and the inevitability of harm to others from smoking in public places. It’s only a matter of time before some country bans smoking anywhere outdoors. In fact, I remember reading some report years ago that said Canada’s drug policy was moving toward a situation where citizens are free to do whatever they like, but only in the privacy of their own homes.

This sounds pretty good, unless you actually think about it. If tobacco addicts can only smoke in their homes, they surely will. Guess who else is in their homes? Their kids, that’s who. So to avoid poisoning the general public, society has created a situation in which the addict must kick the habit or poison their children. And it’s not just smoking - this same scheme might well apply to all drugs. It’s one thing to know daddy’s got a drug problem, it’s something quite different to sit on the couch with daddy while he shoots up. Don’t think it can happen? You ever meet a kid who knows mommy’s like Players and daddy like Camels? Extrapolate. Many addicts will choose to poison their children rather than quit.

This strategy doesn’t solve the drug problem, it just concentrates the victims: now they’re mostly children.

5. The Marijuana Party Approach

In Canada, the Marijuana Party is a political party that bases its platform on legalizing its namesake. The primary argument here is denying that marijuana is dangerous. In the language of my framework, they are denying that use of this particular drug causes harm to themselves or others. This is not a viable strategy for Cannabis or drugs in general. First, even if Cannabis is relatively safe, plenty of other drugs are not. Second, whether or not weed hurts its users, it still interferes with the lives of others. I don’t want to walk through clouds of smoke wherever I go. Whether or not it will kill me, marijuana smoke still smells like post-coital sweat from a fat man’s ass. If the look of something offends you, you can just choose not to look at it, but if the smell of something bothers you, you cannot choose not to smell it. Third, even if there is no conclusive evidence that marijuana is hazardous to adults, we still don’t know what it does to children, and legalization does nothing to protect the children.

Thus, while I admit that the weed party may have a point on decriminalization and maybe even legalization, they don’t have anything approaching a comprehensive plan. I mean, just look at this — whining about jurisdiction is not a proposed solution!

Conclusion

This concludes my discussion of existing approaches to solving the drug problem. Did I miss any? Please bring it up in the comments.

On to part 3 –>.