"should alcohol be banned?"

Or cars. Or roads. Or hammers. Or any other ingredient in the process.

Useful tools like speech and hammers are equally useful for anyone and for any purpose. Fire, electricity, sharp saw blades, the wheel, money, intelligence, good looks, encryption, math, can all be used for good or bad, and there is no way to change that and seperate the utility into only utility for good.

It's misguided to try to address the misuse of a tool by controlling the tool instead of the weilder.

It just becomes a little easier to pick on something like alcohol or guns because you can say they "obviously duh" aren't useful tools or necessities like vehicles or electricity, so it's ok to act like they are somehow less inanimate or neutral or useful than other random equally special purpose things, and easier to evoke emotional reactions about them whether from puritanism or fear, than say, paint thinner or construction tools. And most people will buy that more than any academic arguments, and numbers matter more than academic reason.

So we control speech. And on private platforms, which is all platforms, they can. And only the worst a*holes and the dopiest hippies complain about it.

No, but if that drunk driver was driving drunk and targeting the loved one of a politician because someone else incited them by outright lying, then maybe you'd have something to discuss here.

We have many curbs on alcohol. Many to prevent situations like you describe. Maybe it is responsible to also limit speech especially when it can cause harm.

Who do you trust to define 'harm'?

I certainly don't trust governments, whether they lean left or right, as they all have heavy biases and big money influencing decision making.

Step one, get rid of the money in politics. Step two, solve people's problems.

Aside from this particular assault which obviously is harm and curbing assault in general should be a priority. How does one distinguish preemptively which speech will cause harm and in what form such that it can be mitigated?

That is an interesting point. But maybe we don't even need to preemptively define harmful speech. You could just say people are responsible for what they say and if somebody then harms someone based on what you said (and it was untrue), you have responsibility.

It would certainly reduce the chance people would say unsubstantiated and harmful things if it was enforced.

I think I agree on principle, but I think in implementation this becomes particularly difficult. To use a silly example, if two people are having ramen at shop and person A says, "oh man, I think this ramen is making me sick" and person B, feeling that their friend A has been hurt by the ramen maker hucks a brick at the ramen shop window late at night and is caught. Where does the blame start and stop, the person who said it? The person who interpreted it and acted in a way they thought was justifiable (for whatever internal reason)? I think the issue with speech, especially mass broadcasted speech is that there are two "rational" parties involved.

I hear what you are saying. I think this class of problem is one that the legal profession have solved mostly . Their solution is the "reasonable person" test. Would a mythical "reasonable person" believe what the person said.

Btw we aren't discussing what an unreasonable person might do with that information, just whether or not a reasonable person might believe what has been said or understand it a certain way.

We can definitely solve for the egregious cases though and we can solve those before getting too hung up on the tough ones in the middle.

And just to be clear. You are always permitted to say true things. It's only when you say false things that we need these curbs. What I'm really talking about is curbing "false speech".

> If the loved one of a politician was severely injured because of a drunk driver should alcohol be banned?

Bad example. We do limit the consumption of Alcohol and also Driving because of the possibility of Drunk Drivers.

I do not think it is a bad example though. Breaking into someone's house and assaulting them with a hammer is already illegal.

I wasn't aware this was part of a larger pattern of assaults on politicians in the US. Link?

See January 6th for examples of recent political violence

Or just advertising for inebreating products?