The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah, that law is bonkers. Blood alcohol of .14 is a couple drinks (some variation between people, of course). The body does process some of that over time, but at most bars/night clubs anybody that isn't a designated driver will tend to go above that. That's completely asinine. That's the kind of "rule" where you can selectively enforce it against businesses you don't like and mostly look the other way.

I would understand if someone who is obviously in bad shape/borderline alcohol poisoned were being given more alcohol. A law along those lines makes sense, because at that point a person is defenseless and can be harmed even if nobody is driving. But penalizing the server for blood alcohol levels where many people can act pretty normal? That's a joke, except it isn't funny since it's actually codified law.

Like blaming gun manufacturers for murder, blaming servers for routine levels of intoxication when something goes bad is a farce. They are both false attributions of cause, and laws that inform penalties for that are unethical.

 

[Birdjaguar]

How would you penalize DWI violators?

 

[El_Machinae]

Ah yes, this is also the scenario where two people get drunk and you get a "Shrodinger's rape", where by that rationale the person is both raping and being raped, at the same time, because they're drunk and can't consent.

You can always retroactively consent. You only run into trouble with the above if one person does and one person doesn't (and the double-weird of 'both regret' is definitely a divide-by-zero outcome that's a consequence of this setup). Oh sure, the person who retroactively consented has incentive to lie, but that's a function of practical features rather than the underlying principle.

It's a punnet square: both consent. X does and Y doesn't. Neither X and Y do. I like how you object to this AND object to being responsible for giving someone too-drunk more drinks.

I've seen the game-theory on this at bars, it ends poorly. I'd rather the weird divide-by-zero above than the alternative.

but my discussion in this thread is also about *shouldness*

That's fine, and I understand. But in the case you're objecting to, you're literally disagreeing with qualified judges in very different Common Law jurisdictions throughout the world. Your 'should' is incorrect, unless hubris gets in the way of your understanding why you're wrong. You're not the lone prophet in the wilderness here, some Cassandra cursed by the gods to be the only person who sees the truth. People vastly more qualified than us have figure this out quite awhile ago, independently and under different Constitutional/Legislative backgrounds.

Surprisingly, if you give someone mind-altering drugs after they can no longer consent, you're responsible for your own behaviour.

 

[Samson]

It won't let me copy paste.

What is going on there, and what is the point when you can just save as.

Spoiler The relevant bit more because they tried to stop me than anyone should read it :

15.10.51.11 SALES TO INTOXICATED PERSONS:
A. No licensee shall sell, serve, procure or aid in the procurement of alcoholic beverages to an intoxicated
person if the licensee knows or has reason to know that the person is obviously intoxicated.
In addition to other commonly recognized tests of intoxication, a blood alcohol content level of .14 or higher on breath or
blood test taken not more than one and one-half hour or ninety minutes after sale, service or consumption of alcoholic
beverages shall be presumptive evidence that the person was intoxicated at the time of the last sale.

The blood alcohol level is .14 for DWI it is .08

Page 5 details penalties for overserving.

https://www.nmrestaurants.org/wp-co...E2017-Revised-4_25_17-and-5_30_17-website.pdf

Interesting. 0.08% BAC, or as it is quoted in the UK 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood is about 2 pints (for a big man I think), so 0.14% is about 3 pints? Has anyone ever been refused for anything like that? I know I have had many times that and not been refused.

How would you penalize DWI violators?

By penalizing drunk drivers.

Surely you cannot expect a bartender to not serve people enough to get over the drink drive limit. Designated driver is a thing, if you could not get over the limit at a bar then it would not need to exist.

You need "do not serve a drunk" laws to prevent alcohol poisoning and so bar staff has an excuse for not serving bad drunks. To expect them to do anything about drunk driving is delusional. To punish bar staff because one of their customers got behind the wheel is lawfare against bartenders.

 

[Birdjaguar]

NM has had a significant DUI problem and server laws have been a help in keeping it under control. Drunk drivers are notoriously irresponsible and repeat offenders. How would you penalize them?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How would you penalize DWI violators?

How is this question relevant to anything in the past page? We were talking about the sellers, not the violators.

You can always retroactively consent.

Perhaps, but it is not reasonable to say the reverse is true.

You only run into trouble with the above if one person does and one person doesn't (and the double-weird of 'both regret' is definitely a divide-by-zero outcome that's a consequence of this setup). Oh sure, the person who retroactively consented has incentive to lie, but that's a function of practical features rather than the underlying principle.

No, you definitely run into trouble when both people give drunken-non counting consent in the moment, then one of them attempts to retract it after the fact too. In a thread about this long ago, someone said "if you are too drunk to give consent, you are too drunk to rape". Maybe that's functional, but it also implies intoxication far beyond a blood alcohol of 0.14...

I like how you object to this AND object to being responsible for giving someone too-drunk more drinks.

I am against letting people ingest drugs and then foisting the responsibility of their actions onto others after doing so. Their actions are still their own. If they don't like that, don't ingest drugs.

Obviously, this is assuming the drugs were known/taken willingly in the first place. If someone gets drugged w/o their knowledge or similar crimes it's different.

That's fine, and I understand. But in the case you're objecting to, you're literally disagreeing with qualified judges in very different Common Law jurisdictions throughout the world.

Some of those judges, sure (I doubt judges 100% agree on it). Probably even the majority of them. But I'm also disagreeing with SCOTUS when I call non-conviction forfeiture a due process violation. I'm sticking to that conclusion as well, I don't care what authority/knowledge they supposedly have.

People vastly more qualified than us have figure this out quite awhile ago, independently and under different Constitutional/Legislative backgrounds.

And usually they get it right, while sometimes they get it wrong. Somehow, I strongly doubt I'm the only one who sees "the truth" wrt my opinion on false attributions. And I know for a fact I'm not wrt forfeiture.

Surprisingly, if you give someone mind-altering drugs after they can no longer consent, you're responsible for your own behaviour.

Surprisingly, the law in question sets a value where people routinely understand information, process it, and make decisions while apparently acting normal or close to normal. It also upholds many transactions they make in that state, though not all transactions. But that law, as written, casts doubt that this particular one was written up by people "vastly more qualified than us". Though that's only if we take their motivations for making it at face value...sometimes this stuff does exactly what is intended, but what is intended is not the stated reason for making it.

NM has had a significant DUI problem and server laws have been a help in keeping it under control. Drunk drivers are notoriously irresponsible and repeat offenders. How would you penalize them?

The same way you penalize crime generally, including penalties for repeat offenders.

 

[El_Machinae]

If they don't like that, don't ingest drugs.

How about don't give people drugs if they're beyond the ability to consent? It's you giving the drug, afterall. You're responsible for your own behaviour (despite your desire to deny that). Obviously, if they forcefully try to take drugs from you, self-defense laws kick in.

My formulation doesn't absolve the drinker, since liability can be shared. Your formulation is how we get date-rape. So, in this case, I'm right and you're wrong.

Now, I know you're willing that other people pay a high price for your freedoms, but in this instance you're just incapable of formulating a rules-set that isn't easier to game and doesn't lead to more victims.

 

[Samson]

NM has had a significant DUI problem and server laws have been a help in keeping it under control.

Do server laws do this? In that do you actually get refused more than 3 pints in the bar? I have drunk in many places including in the US (never been to NM though) and never been refused. If it actually happens it must have a massive effect on the culture, if you cannot go out to get drunk in a bar does everyone drink at home or something? How does society function without somewhere for people to go and socalise as they get drunk?

How would you penalize them?

In the UK when I was starting out driving it was serious penalties and lots of enforcement. As in the police would stop lots of people at kicking out time, if you have any alcohol in your breath (by a breathalyzer) you will be taken to the station and blood tested, and if you are over even slightly you will lose your licence for a minimum of 18 months, and you will have to retake your test and your insurance will be 10 times higher than it was before. A generation of that and it is socially unacceptable such that people do not do it even now there are hardly any actual police on the roads.

 

[Lexicus]

You need "do not serve a drunk" laws to prevent alcohol poisoning and so bar staff has an excuse for not serving bad drunks. To expect them to do anything about drunk driving is delusional. To punish bar staff because one of their customers got behind the wheel is lawfare against bartenders.

Hard disagree, like BJ said it gives bartenders an excuse not to serve people they know are problem drinkers.

 

[Samson]

Hard disagree, like BJ said it gives bartenders an excuse not to serve people they know are problem drinkers.

I am not sure what the difference is between my "bad drunks" and your "problem drinkers". Are you putting "people who are known to drive drunk" in that class?

 

[Lexicus]

I am not sure what the difference is between my "bad drunks" and your "problem drinkers". Are you putting "people who are known to drive drunk" in that class?

Not really, I'm more talking about people who are known to cause problems inside the bar. There is probably a degree of overlap between them and drunk drivers though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How about don't give people drugs if they're beyond the ability to consent?

The are willingly handing you money, and you are giving them a product. They can go into a gas station and buy alcohol, cigarettes, etc and harm themselves, and can't even ask for a refund after consuming them, despite this supposed inability to "consent". But if the bartender does it? NOPE, VIOLATION.

You are giving someone something they paid for, the exact same thing they previously paid for, with nearly identical visual cues and circumstances, with no knowledge of whether they have a designated driver/uber/taxi/whatever. I doubt even much better-trained people can possibly identify who is at 0.10 vs 0.20 blood alcohol 100 - 200 times in a row and not get it wrong several times (minimum). I don't think it's possible for bartenders, store clerks, or even police to simply look at someone and make that determination. The fact that police need to rely on tests to prove someone is above the legal limit is evidence for that. But bartenders don't have alcohol testing requirements, so how the hell are they going to sight-ID people who are .06 away from the legal limit 100s of times, per night? It's not happening. That law is fantasy land, constructed to punish people not for bad process, but for bad results (selectively). Maybe that was what was intended, maybe it wasn't, but it's what it does.

It's you giving the drug, afterall. You're responsible for your own behaviour (despite your desire to deny that).

For a person to be held responsible for an outcome, they must have a reasonable causal link to that outcome. If you sell alcohol to a minor or someone who can't make the transaction unassisted, there's a direct link. If you sell alcohol to someone who looks identical in every way to the last 150 people to which you sold alcohol, it is not competent to penalize you when they go do something bad later. They chose to ingest the alcohol, and they did the bad thing that the other 150+ people did not do. That's on them, just like it's on you if you force someone with alcohol poisoning to hit a beer bong while they barely know what's happening.

As Samson pointed out, designated drivers are a thing that people need. This implies a margin that human beings cannot discern reliably, and penalizing the bartender for a DUI is false attribution. The law might do it anyway, just like the law allows arbitrary things to be obscenity or arbitrarily allows banditry. Laws can be bad. But it's still false attribution, and that's bad.

Edit: I doubt bartenders see this enforced in most cases (it's borderline impossible), and this was probably written for other purposes. But it's still bad law.

 

[Samson]

Not really, I'm more talking about people who are known to cause problems inside the bar. There is probably a degree of overlap between them and drunk drivers though.

I think that is what I mean by "bad drunks", but I would guess in the UK they would not get thrown out until they were actually drunk. Are you saying that the bar should be able to selectively not serve them more than 2 or 3 pints? I guess it makes a certain amount of sense, though I always thing selectively applied laws are more frequently a tool of unjustified discrimination.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Server liability laws don't come into actual play unless a drunk leaves the bar and gets into a crash where people are injured or killed.

 

[El_Machinae]

And even then, the majority of them will be applicable in civil torts, where liability can be apportioned.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Server liability laws don't come into actual play unless a drunk leaves the bar and gets into a crash where people are injured or killed.

Which is arbitrary, and demonstrably bad process to boot.

But it is this way because servers cannot possibly sight-test the blood alcohol level of a large number of patrons accurately. That's not a thing humans being do. If you tell me you can reliably discern someone at .1 vs .2 blood alcohol just by looking at them for a brief period, with no priors, you are lying. Even if you're a police officer. Probably even if your sense of smell is two standard deviations better than normal. There's a reason they have tests for that.

Light weight people can get to .14 on two drinks. That law, as written, is bogus. That doesn't change the fact that it's law, but it nevertheless affixes blame in an unjust way.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well, I don't think more drunks on the road is a good thing and whatever we can do to reduce the number is a good thing. Cutting off drinks is a good step. You are entitled to your differing opinion.

 

[El_Machinae]

I support the legalization of rocket launchers, but not because of self-defense issues, so I voted 'other'.

Okay Igloo:
Do you honestly trust your fellow man enough to legalise rocket launchers?

It's a borderline call, but yes.

Well, I've never been mugged whilst carrying a rocket-launcher, so I don't know why you're down-playing its self-defense usage.

 

[IglooDame]

Well, I've never been mugged whilst carrying a rocket-launcher, so I don't know why you're down-playing its self-defense usage.

Oh, nice, that's some quality necromancy there.

 

[El_Machinae]

You were the first person that weird I met on the internet, so it really stuck with me! (And I came to CFC wanting to cure aging!)

Also, I'm giving the thread an opportunity to get back on track. Have you changed your mind since then?