"What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior?"
Doubtful. It's not that they don't want to help them, but more that there's simply not much government can do.
Consider drug addicts. One of my good friends died of an overdose last year, and all of his friends including myself had tried for years to get him to quit. No luck. If someone's closest friends can't help them, what makes us think the government will be anymore effective?
In fact the government has tried through the "war on drugs". You can disagree with the means of the war, but the intent was to help society and the people most vulnerable in society by eliminating drugs through force.
> You can disagree with the means of the war, but the intent was to help society and the people most vulnerable in society by eliminating drugs through force.
The salient quote is: "“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
A true "war on drugs" would seek to increase access to rehabilitation and counselors, while identifying and working to reduce the causes of addiction. Any time a lawmakers seeks to make something punishable by jail time, he is seeking to hurt someone he disagrees with. (There are obvious exceptions, like murder, theft, etc).
Sure that may have been one individual's motivation for the plan, but the public and subsequent governments thought it was a the best way to prevent drugs from infecting society.
When lawmakers seek to punish someone, they aren't doing it because they relish the suffering of the other person, but because they hope that person's pain will dissuade others from committing those same crimes.
>lawmakers seek to punish someone, they aren't doing it because they relish the suffering of the other person, but because they hope that person's pain will dissuade others from committing those same crimes
Unfortunately this belief is completely unfounded in reality. I really wish this were the case, but we have mountains of evidence on how to help people fight addiction, poverty, get out of the criminal cycle, etc. And that's all ignored in favor of punishment.
A product of circumstance in the sense that murders and theft often occur in low income, low education areas. It doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does shine a light in a place we can make drastic improvements.
Little Bobbie Brown observes a 'rat' try out his brand new cement shoes. One of the boss' hired help sees Bobbie in the bushes, and, in accordance with the boss' desire for no witnesses, moves to kill Bobbie
> Consider drug addicts. One of my good friends died of an overdose last year, and all of his friends including myself had tried for years to get him to quit. No luck. If someone's closest friends can't help them, what makes us think the government will be anymore effective?
The government's much greater resources and number of full-time professionals at its disposal is one reason to think they might be able to do things an addict's friend could not.
Doubtful. It's not that they don't want to help them, but more that there's simply not much government can do.
Consider drug addicts. One of my good friends died of an overdose last year, and all of his friends including myself had tried for years to get him to quit. No luck. If someone's closest friends can't help them, what makes us think the government will be anymore effective?
In fact the government has tried through the "war on drugs". You can disagree with the means of the war, but the intent was to help society and the people most vulnerable in society by eliminating drugs through force.