If you wanna know what is actually happening here it is:

To me, that is a conspiracy. Turning it into a business is the way to remove political oversight, but the profits don't hurt.

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.

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

I followed on your steatment. If I forgot it, you also forgot it.

But my point stand, by the traffic code you cannot drive drunk also if you don't affect anyone else on the road.
Generally it is not that you can do something that is illegal thinking that it is ok as long as it doesn't affect others.

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.

Ok, so do you think it is better to not be responsible for nodoby ? Good, as long as you are prepared to pay the consequences of this, both at personal level and a social level.

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.

Sadly true, but this do not means that we should not have laws.

So functionally, you abstain from voting and dont express a preference about how you are goverened.

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.

My preference is plain to see. I will NOT vote for the false dichotomy.

Keep voting for evil if you want to, just quit trying to force everyone else to.

Republicans or Democrats. They're nothing without complacent voters with no real convictions.

You have no right to lecture me on my belief in self-governance when it's plain to see that you lack even a modicum of conviction in your political beliefs.

You'll vote for a party shill simply because they're a party shill, despite the party not following through on any of their promises for the last 100 years, and then you have the absolute gall to try to lecture me?

At least I have the courage of my conviction to stand on principle.

What do you have, boot licker?

Given that I havent expressed a preference and have never voted either Democrat or Republican in a single election (owing to not being American) I believe you may be inventing things about me.

And what I said stands, you functionally dont express a preference and what you do is equivalent to staying in bed and not turning out to vote.

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.

Yeah exactly. It's not right but they are at fault.

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.

Of course not, but then maybe the problem is not the DUI law, it is the fact that you cannot fight it if you cannot get a good lawyer, which cost money. Basically your justice system is fucked up.

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

Slippery slope. How can police know that you just turned on the engine but not moved instead of driving and then stopping because you fall asleep ?

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.

That is a stupid law, I agree, but it is the law.

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.

Well, he should not have done it. He know the laws. I can feel pity for him in the specific case, but he breaks the stupid law.

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

That was the problem here. The laws is written so you fail either way. Here if I have an open wine bottle in the car but I blow a 0, nobody could do anything to me.

But assuming I agree with you, what would be your suggestion to avoid people driving around while drunk ? Or to avoid minors to access porn material ? Aside the charade "parents need to educate they children" that obviously you cannot take for granted.

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.

I don't like the idea and where it could take us.
In the case of DUI, I think the idea behind the law is to avoid that a drunken driver hurts someone, with potentially lethal consequences, not only punish them if he do it.
Once a drunken driver killed someone is too late, even with the harsher punishment.

Again, your problem is not the law itself, it is the fact that your law and the justice system is designed in such a way that you are always set up to fail, in a way or another, be for the stupid DUI charge if you are sleeping in your car, the open container law or the way too expensive justice system. That is what you should fight.

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.

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

Me neither, but I like even less the idea that an action that is, demonstrably, dangerous to other should not be stopped until it provoke damages.

It’s about consistency.

You are right. And it is about consistency the starting point from which we are discussing: minors should not be able to access porn. Now, in the real life there is such law and it in on the seller to check, exactly because you cannot count on the fact that a parent is 24/7 with his child, so I don't see why we should not try to enforce the same law on the Net, it is only on a different media.
Now, I agree that checking on the net is way harder than in real life, but minors are minors and porn is porn. If it is dangerous to see a naked woman on Playboy is also dangerous to see her on Playboy.com.

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

I see your point, but I simply think that if something is proven to hurt someone, like DUI, then maybe it is right to make it illegal.

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.

Capitalism isn't a conspiracy, it's the current Politico-economic system.

A market economy is our politico-economic system. If billionaires conspire to distort the markets against the interest of the people, and unbeknownst to them, then that's a conspiracy, normalized by calling it Capitalism.

In this case it's old American money. The idea doesn't come as an investment opportunity from the trust. They are not creating a better future for children with the age verification as the last missing piece. Conspiracies are not magic. You know how it was implemented but you can only guess why.

If billionaires conspire to distort the markets against the interest of the people, and unbeknownst to them, then that’s a conspiracy, normalized by calling it Capitalism.

That's not distorting the markets, that is what they are for. The market isn't some magical deity who's only been stopped because their will is being misinterpretated by the billionaires, they are the market. They control the market. The purpose of a system is what it does. The "Free" market is as much of a myth as when MLMs say the state will "dissolve away" to produce true Communism with the workers owning the means of production. The moment a "free" market is made, it instantly gets manipulated by people with money and the market stops being free anymore. That's part of the reason why so many rich cunts babble on about "free" markets, because it gives them power The billionaires fucking with the market and the law isn't an aberration of the system, it is the system. Once you realise that, everything falls into place.

This isn't a conspiracy, this was pretty much done out in the open. To call it a conspiracy suggests there was some amount of subterfuge. Like Carnegie UK published papers on why they think the OSA is a good idea in 2022, the Online Safety Act 2023, plus the additions made in '25, are publicly viewable here. The transcripts of the debates are here on Handsard.

You know how it was implemented but you can only guess why.

Oh Oh! I can guess why!

The whole reason why the bill was made and written as it was is money. We live in a period of surveillance capitalism where various companies make fuck tonnes of money from your data. Google, Facebook and the like didn't make their money from merely "running ads". They took the data you gave them through cookies and your posting and used it to more accurately target ads at you. Then, they started selling your data to other data brokers who then sold it to anyone with enough money. We've all heard the story about how target knew a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did, and we all know about Cambridge Analytica, Brexit and Trump. Facebook will literally monitor your emotional state through your posts and target you with ads for loans when they think your emotionally vulnerable.

So, we all know data brokers are hungry for data to sell, and as one Murray Bookchin once said: "Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing". So guess what? Investment firms saw a load of moral panics and calls for digital ID. They invested in firms like YOTI (they are not required to say who invested in them, nice and convenient) and started doing research for the government through their think tank arms to convince the government that the OSA is a good idea. The bill says that stringent age checks must be done to view certain pieces of content, but not how, so that means websites have to hire YOTI and co to do that for them or do it themselves. If they can't afford to they either have to shut down because they don't care about the little guy.

So now data brokers have some very valuable data they can take from you: Your unedited face, your passport/drivers licence (plus all the biometrics that come with that) and (alongside that), your sexual habits, more controversial views, and your neuroses! The government can buy that off them (not that they couldn't already find that out), but also so can the people with the big bucks, COMPANIES! On Grindr? Well now your health insurer can increase your premiums if they think you are promiscious. Got political views? Well now they can be manipulated for an outcome favourable to large corporations. Your employer can buy your data and see if you have been saying things they don't like, annorexic people can be given ads for gym memberships and health fads. Oh, and all this can be sold to the government, be it yours or someone else's.

It's all money, it's no shady conspiracy, literally it is business as usual and it sucks.

Proven? To whom?

Never heard about people killed in crash caused by drunken driver ? Or pedestrians hit by cars driven by drunked drivers ?

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?

No, we should just have laws try to avoid consequences for others
Are you an alcoholic ? Ok, we will help you to be ok but at the same time we try to avoid you drive while drunk. It not seems too unreasonable

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

Point is: how probable is that someone fishing hurts someone else ? How much damage you can do ?
Again, the point is not to make something illegal because you can hurt yourself, it is about trying to have law that try to prevent you hurt someone else while doing something.
If fishing can hurt others, maybe we should have a law that, while not forbidding to fish, protect the others from what you are doing. I would imagine that you would not like to swim in the sea while someone is fishing with bombs (illegal) 2 meters away from you, don't you ?

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.

Fine as long as you accept the consequences. I just don't agree with you.

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

Both, because you just need to redefine what "harm" means. And some people is good to do it.