Yay and Also Beware Trivial Inconveniences (a future full post)

I am coming around to a generalized version of this principle. There is a vast difference between:

Something being legal, ubiquitous, frictionless and advertised.

Something being available, mostly safe to get, but we make it annoying.

Something being actively illegal, where you can risk actual legal trouble.

Something being actively illegal and we really try to stop you (e.g.*removed*, murder). 

We’ve placed far too many productive and useful things in category 2 that should be in category 1. By contrast, we’ve taken too many destructive things, too many vices, that we long had the wisdom to put in category 2, and started putting them in category 1.

Prohibitions, putting such things into categories 3 and especially 4, tends to work out extremely poorly. Don’t do that unless absolutely necessary. Let people do privately destructive things if they want to do that.

Often, it is important that you make doing the wrong thing a little annoying. It is especially important to not make it annoying to do the productive things, and not annoying to instead do the destructive things.

This actually sums up well some feelings I’ve been having with regards to vice legalization in general. I agree prohibition doesn’t work but I’ve also had some misgivings about full and total legalization since that also comes with some negative social effects since having a vice being so freely available to addicts does lower the barrier to entry for destructive behaviors. Maybe there is something to be said for society making your vice a big pain in the ass to indulge in. I’ve known people who quit smoking once it got more expensive.