The way to prevent crime isn’t to punish those who haven’t hurt anyone, but to more strongly punish those who have.

Theft has a victim, what are you talking about???

Without an actual victim there is no crime.

We agree on the last part. But my feeling is that if a crime isn’t “bad” enough to require actual jail time then it probably shouldn’t be a crime at all.

Speeding, DUI, and other risky behaviors should be punished if, and ONLY if, an actual incident occurs. Because then there is actually a victim, and not just some nebulous might-have-been.

Hurt someone while drinking and driving? That’s no accident, that’s an intentional attack. Kill someone? Again, not an accident, but premeditated murder.

Now, if say, your insurance agency decides that you are a risk due to your alcoholism, and either drops you, or increases your premiums that’s not a problem. There’s no criminal punishment happening, and if it’s in the contract you signed, that’s expected.

But, you should only criminally punish someone after they’ve hurt another person. Not when they engage in risky behaviors.

Yeah, when I was driving semi trucks, I had to get a medical card renewed every 4 years, but if my BP was over a certain limit when I got the physical to get said card, it would be reduced to 2 years.

I was borderline on that, and mentioned it to my PCP at a visit for an unrelated issue, and he decided that yeah, it was borderline high, and that we should be proactive and go ahead and start me on a mild-ish BP medication, and then he said “Ya know what, your cholesterol is starting to go up, too, let’s go ahead and do something about that, too.”

Prevention is the best cure.

Probability is not certainty.

I do not want people in jail for doing something that is probably a crime.

Every so-called crime that has no jail time shouldn’t be a crime. Fees are just another way of enforcing class warfare.

Heart’s fine. Just a little HBP and HC which I’m medicated for. There’s a slight murmur, but no real concerns at this time. Former trucker who didn’t go to a quack for his required 2yr medical checks. :)

I don’t wake every night but i do drink a LOT of water throughout the day. About 2 to 2.5L a day on top of all my other sources.

Except for being a fat ass, I’m fairly healthy. And the fat ass part is a work in progress, sadly, I have other physical ailments that preclude me from doing a lot of actual exercise.

I had 650lbs of steel collapse onto my head and back, way back in 1998, and extended sitting, walking, running, etc is painful. I had knee surgery from slipping off a step ladder and landing awkwardly on said knee probably 6 or 7 years ago, which limits me even more.

Tore a rotator cuff and bicep tendon about 3 or 4 years ago…

I’m falling apart at the seams! 🤣😂

Old fart here. (49)

Trust me. It gets worse. If I don’t drink water before bed, I will have a major headache when I wake up due to dehydration. If I do, I won’t sleep through the night, as I’ll be waking up 2 to 3 hours before I need to, because I have to piss like crazy.

And that’s if I’m lucky. If I’m unlucky, it’s less than 2 hours before, which makes it impossible to go back to sleep and not sleep right through an alarm.

Now I know why old men are typically so grumpy. Everything fucking hurts, and you don’t get enough sleep.

Proven? To whom?

Excessive alcoholism is known to cause harm. Should we make being an alcoholic illegal? Wouldn’t that make it harder for alcoholicsnto try to get help, for fear of being arrested instead of getting help, much like what happens to drug addicts?

People get hurt constantly while fishing, too. Should we make fishing illegal?

The problem is where do we draw the line. You want to draw it at some possibility of harm to others. I want to draw it at actual harm to others.

Which of these is more or less likely to wind up being stretched over time?

You aren’t thinking about bureaucrats and politicians 20, 30, 50, or 100 years down the road. “We’ll just fix the laws when it becomes a problem!”

Sure. Because we’re really REALLY good at removing or rewriting broken laws… Oh, wait. No we aren’t.

I don’t like the idea of actions that don’t hurt others being a crime.

It’s about consistency. If we make it illegal to do things that MIGHT wind up hurting someone there’s no limit to what we can make illegal.

If they hurt someone, then they get charged with a crime. If they do not there’s no injury to anyone else so it’s not a crime.

Is it One+? They already did it once before with CyanogenMOD.

As you said. You aren’t American, so you don’t have any right to interject yourself into our voting system. And for the record, our 2 party system is absolutely nothing like most other nations that have multiple strong parties.

You cannot break the stranglehold of the 2 party system by continuing to vote for those two parties.

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Let me turn that around on you.

You think people should be charged with a crime they haven’t done yet? Because that is exactly what happens in some DUI arrests.

Sleeping it off in your car but have the engine on because it’s cold/hot outside? DUI.

Then there are the idiotic open container laws where even an open alcoholic drink is legally a DUI, even if the driver isn’t drinking.

And if you can’t afford a good lawyer? It’s a conviction. Which goes on your permanent record.

A guy I worked with had a motorcycle try to pass his company vehicle as he was turning left. The motorcycle driver was killed.

It fucked the guy up so bad, mentally. He began drinking. Never at work, but he drove a company vehicle. See where this is going yet? If not let me finish.

A block from his house, he cracked open a beer. Now even if he had chugged it, there’s no way he’d be even slightly drunk before he got home. But he didn’t realize the worker who sold him the beer had already called the police and he was being followed.

The arrested him for DUI in his own driveway, due to idiotic open container laws, despite blowing a 0.

He took a plea for reckless endangerment, but it didn’t matter. He was 4 years from retirement. He was fired.

No. Voting for the lesser of two evil is still voting for evil. I’ll write someone in before I vote for some party functionary that only cares about their own political power.

The problem with that is that you quickly become responsible for EVERYONE, and then you wind up right back where we are with government bureaucrats telling parents how to raise their children.

If a law or rule can be used to harass otherwise good people, then it will be.

If you give some self-important bastard an inch, they’ll take a mile. Just look at the police.

Except you forget about the whole “as long as it doesn’t directly affect others” thing.

Or, more likely, you intentionally ignored it in order to score some “gotcha” for Internet points.

Propane doesn’t need electricity to work… The tank is pressurized, and opening a valve allows it to flow.

Just ignore the trolls. Apparently I ate his pie or something equally sinister.

You’re right. I shouldn’t have responded in anger. My bad. I get frustrated when I feel like people are talking down to me simply because I’m a USian, and I let it get the better of me.