One big problem with banning people from selling stuff is that you still live on earth.
You can develop explosives using chemicals you can distill from urine. Are we going to ban urination?
Cyanide is really easy, you can get jars of ferrocyanide for cyanotypes.
There was a story about a young man who was able to acquire large amounts of radioactive material through entirely benign means including commonly available fire detectors. One year I picked up a bunch of glow in the dark tubes that use tritium, a poisonous gas that is also radioactive.
You can ban cyanotypes if you want, but you can also get cyanide from almonds, particularly bitter almonds. Cyanide is a naturally occurring substance inside many plants. Are you going to ban most nuts?
And then there are industrial uses as you mentioned. Cyanide is sold the gold mining by the ton, and many industrial plants use radiation from radioactive sources to do various things, whether it is farming which uses radiation to eliminate germs from meat, or something like a paper mill which would use radiation to measure the density of certain chemicals.
Besides the fact that you can make incredibly poisonous hydrogen cyanide with bitter almonds and a bit of vinegar, you can make incredibly poisonous chlorine gas with nothing more than salt and water.
All of this leads to one fundamental thing that I've come to agree with: it is authoritarian to believe that everything can be solved by the state, or even most things. Instead of trying to have the state try to micromanage every substance that exists, we need to build non-governmental institutions, things like strong families, societal institutions, popular ideologies, religious institutions such as churches, and anything else we can think of to help push people towards doing the right thing. It's only because people are worthy of being free that they can be free, and they can't be made worthy through an omnipresent State alone. Using that tool by itself, what ends up happening every time is people end up hyper focused on what they are allowed to do rather than what they ought to do.
Anyone who claims to believe in liberal values must therefore realize that if you want liberty, "what laws should we have" is actually mostly the wrong question. Everything looks like a nail when all you have is a state shaped hammer. The question we should be asking is: "how can we holistically reach outcomes we want?" And the answers actually probably won't make anyone happy in the short term.
You can develop explosives using chemicals you can distill from urine. Are we going to ban urination?
Cyanide is really easy, you can get jars of ferrocyanide for cyanotypes.
There was a story about a young man who was able to acquire large amounts of radioactive material through entirely benign means including commonly available fire detectors. One year I picked up a bunch of glow in the dark tubes that use tritium, a poisonous gas that is also radioactive.
You can ban cyanotypes if you want, but you can also get cyanide from almonds, particularly bitter almonds. Cyanide is a naturally occurring substance inside many plants. Are you going to ban most nuts?
And then there are industrial uses as you mentioned. Cyanide is sold the gold mining by the ton, and many industrial plants use radiation from radioactive sources to do various things, whether it is farming which uses radiation to eliminate germs from meat, or something like a paper mill which would use radiation to measure the density of certain chemicals.
Besides the fact that you can make incredibly poisonous hydrogen cyanide with bitter almonds and a bit of vinegar, you can make incredibly poisonous chlorine gas with nothing more than salt and water.
All of this leads to one fundamental thing that I've come to agree with: it is authoritarian to believe that everything can be solved by the state, or even most things. Instead of trying to have the state try to micromanage every substance that exists, we need to build non-governmental institutions, things like strong families, societal institutions, popular ideologies, religious institutions such as churches, and anything else we can think of to help push people towards doing the right thing. It's only because people are worthy of being free that they can be free, and they can't be made worthy through an omnipresent State alone. Using that tool by itself, what ends up happening every time is people end up hyper focused on what they are allowed to do rather than what they ought to do.
Anyone who claims to believe in liberal values must therefore realize that if you want liberty, "what laws should we have" is actually mostly the wrong question. Everything looks like a nail when all you have is a state shaped hammer. The question we should be asking is: "how can we holistically reach outcomes we want?" And the answers actually probably won't make anyone happy in the short term.
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