But you remember (more) how good you feel when you are high. That is what you want again, and all the time to be high. But it will kill you because you need the bigger dose to get the same high. You know that. You (think) you become more creative, but not really. Watch someone try to play music who (think) they are playing good when they shoot heroin. Maybe in the beginning they have more focus and alert, but after time they only (think) they sound good, but no really. Then it is only them who think they sound good, but their girlfriend, family, friends all see how bad they become.
What I am saying Rearden is for your (mind) you think you are better with the drug, you think more creative, more focus. But that is true only for the short time, then you become less creative. So you are doing good with 15 months of no drug. Try to remember you ARE NOT better with the drug in the long time frame.
How odd that someone who preaches personal freedom above nearly all else...would willingly choose to be a slave of heroin, and glorify the slave trading mentality of drug dealers...
So all that is required, according to vhehn, is for a majority of citizens to decide to vote a restriction into law. Just like they did with slavery, just like the oppression of women for centuries, just like the Germans did with Nazism, just like jailing homosexuals for sleeping with each other in private - majority vote is full justification for any action whatsoever, no matter how evil, no matter the actual morality of the law and subsequent punishment. According to this "morality", if the majority votes to torture all ginger-haired 6 years olds or illegal immigrants to death on live television for their personal amusement, this is justifiable because it was voted in democratically. This demonstrates that vhehn and his ilk are completely *amoral* - the moral content of an action or a law has *no bearing whatsoever* on whether they think it is acceptable. Only majority vote matters. Why should we listen to the opinion on moral matters of someone who has just admitted they don't care one fig about morality? Such people are normally labelled sociopaths and most of them are put in prison the moment they try to impose their evil views on us. But, if you are a sociopath who happens to share opinions with the majority, then - so long as those entrenched social mores remain respectable - you can pretend you are just a reasonable person and that your brutal oppression is justifiable. Someone in the 19th century who believed in keeping slaves, imprisoning gays, and keeping women as chattel property with no vote or inheritance rights would have talked exactly the same as vhehn is doing now. They would have considered themselves just as much in the right. They would have been viewed just as contemptibly by society once those evil, oppressive laws and customs were overthrown for being so morally repugnant and disgusting. The example vhehn cited no more demonstrates that drugs should be illegal than a drunk driving incident demonstrates that alcohol should be illegal, or that a rape demonstrates that having sex should be illegal. According to this vhehn logic, *driving* should be illegal, since many people - who are neither drunk nor drugged up - slaughter, maim and disfigured tens or even hundreds of thousands per year. This is the logical consistency of the typical knee-jerk authoritarian - they are hypocritical, because by their very own arguments their views are immoral.
"Quote from Ghost of Cutten: By driving you pose a risk to me and other pedestrians. You and other murdering scum like you should be jailed for the tens of thousands of innocent people you kill each year." It's interesting to see the uncontrollable emotional response of a typical oppressive personality type. Vhehn thinks it is outrageous how Rearden Metal takes drugs, causing the heinous consequence of very marginally increasing the demand for opiates. The appropriate punishment, according to him, is for Rearden to be violently kidnapped and then kept for years during the prime of his life in a small room with a steel door and bars on the windows. Nothing about this strikes Vhehn as barbaric, disproportionate, or anything other than laudable justice in action. Vhehn justifies his position not by anything Rearden Metal has done wrong, but by the actions of other people. In other words, if others who use drugs do bad things, Rearden deserves to be punished for it. Effectively he is to be punished for the sins of others i.e. collective punishment. Collective punishment is prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and is specifically outlawed by the UN convention on human rights, to which the USA is a signatory. It is also widely viewed by normal people as barbaric and unjust. But, suppose we give Vhehn the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that the negative actions of some drug users *does* justify punishing all drug users no matter if they individually have done anything harmful to society. Fine, let's accept collective punishment after all. And let's not stop at drug users. Let's go to vehicle users. For is it not a fact that vehicle users, collectively, kill tens of thousands on the roads each year? Do they not also maim and injure hundreds of thousands? Other vehicle users could be said to have accepted these risks the moment they drive a vehicle. But pedestrians, cyclists, and people who do not even own cars obviously do not tacitly accept these risks. The fact is that vehicle users kill and injure huge numbers of non-vehicle users. Thus, if we are to punish all drug users for the sins of some, should we not by the same principle also punish all vehicle users for the sins of some? We therefore arrive at the conclusion that vehicle use should be outlawed for exactly the same reason that drugs are outlawed - they kill lots of people and inflict misery on others. Vhehn's individual driving standards and record are irrelevant to his guilt, just as Rearden's conduct with drugs are irrelevant to his guilt. What matters it the actions of the group of drivers, and the group of drug users. Both groups by their actions cause very bad consequences, therefore both individuals, judged by the collective actions of the groups they are in, deserve prison. Vhehn must therefore commit himself to years behind bars for the sin of driving, or change his mind and admit that drugs should be legal - anything else would be gross hypocrisy.
Smokers IMO. They've already banned it in "public places" (i.e. privately owned places). How long before it's banned in the home for the passive smoking effects on young children? Fatness won't be next (at least in the USA and UK) for one obvious reason - most of the public and the political class are fat. Turkeys don't vote for christmas. Other candidates: speculators, middlemen/dealers, gun owners, "hate speech", home schoolers, bdsm-ers etc. Anyone whose life isn't conventional, basically.
Assuming human nature has not changed much...which it hasn't, then one step that should probably be taken by government (simply because of the medical cost, loss of business productivity from illness due to the dangers of obesity, etc.) is to regulate the nature of the food that is produced and/or sold by the corporations. Were the government to remove all the sugar, corn syrup, and chemicals from the food manufactured and/or sold in America, then it is unlikely we would see many of the health problems we have today in our society. Demanding more physical exercise in the public schools will help as well. If the following is not addressed, we are in serious trouble in America: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/11866/national_epidemic_the_rise_of_diabetes.html?cat=25