Regulating virtue and vice

Calling for the regulation of activities that are vices isn’t particularly popular these days. You’ll usually be thought of as some sort of right-winger or religious fundamentalist. At least that’s the case in tech circles.

Although there have been some interesting bits in the news lately:

• Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake from the Atlantic
• Hard drugs illegal again in Oregon from the Washington Post

This raises the uncomfortable thought that a laissez-faire legal approach to social vice only works in conservative cultures. What’s often lacking in many left-leaning accounts of how everything is better in Northern Europe is just how big of a role the remnants of the conservative Protestant culture plays.

I also suspect a lot of mainstream people intuitively know this, and this partly explains why people are willing to vote for right-wing parties they mostly disagree with.