I'm not saying phosphorus should be legal or illegal, but at some point "it's just a packet I sent on the internet" or "it's just a PDF I sent to someone overseas" or "it's just an element" misses the point. In most democratic countries there are procedures for getting what you need if you what you're doing is fundamentally good. Nuclear power plants get uranium. Science researchers get viruses. Anti-virus vendors get malware. A certain degree of limiting the power of individual actors is wise.

The ones after 1970 were like "hey, watch salt dissolve in water."

https://archive.org/details/GoldenBookOfChemistryExperiments...

With high explosives, governments tend to go so far as to require a licence for handling. Fine for breaking that is enough of a deterrent. It's relatively easy to acquire, because otherwise that makes explosive use rather tricky to monitor.

Sales and widespread manufacturing is regulated separately.

Easier and cheaper to get than CFC gas license. Or the general chemical laboratory license required to do such experiments like synthesis. (You can go to a lab and practice there, with supervision. Much less silly, more expensive.)

They're of course limited by volume, just so you don't go building unlicensed rockets and mines.

To give an example with current technology, drones are being regulated now and likely will get remote off switches one day that police can trigger, but for that regulation to be effective, self built drones have to be under a similar regime... so maybe in the future it will become illegal to own innocous drone parts without a permit, etc.

Do we want to distribute science kits that allow people to play around with viruses? Sure, most viruses are affecting bacteria and playing around with them is fun, but if you can also change their genomes with those kits, some idiots might use them to make a superbug.

Your rights end where mine start.

Let’s be real here: a mathematical majority is unable to afford flying anyway. This freedom people ramble on is really economic dominance of the majority for minority benefit.

Stop living in an emotional clean room. The literal world doesn’t have to give a shit about your bubble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...

in all seriousness, I think it's worth drawing a distinction between laws that prohibit actions that actually harm people and laws that make life easier for law enforcement. sidestepping the controversial issue of drug policy itself, the manufacturing of drugs is the problematic behavior in the phosphorus example. the controls on phosphorus itself are just to make enforcement easier. we should look on the latter type of laws with great skepticism.

this is not to say I feel fully comfortable with private citizens enriching large amounts of uranium, but to as great an extent as possible, people should be free to do stuff that doesn't actually hurt anyone. imo that's a key aspect of what we call a "free society".

Unless you’re the individual and you aren’t malicious, you just want some glassware.

I think your approach that people should be kept in a sandbox until they can prove to the state that they are “fundamentally good” is a terrifying one.

I doubt you're advocating for unrestricted access to nuclear bombs any more than 3pt14159 is advocating for restricting access to table salt (and I haven't seen 3pt14159 suggest glassware should be restricted either.) The question, then, is where to draw the line. It can be terrifyingly low, it can be terrifyingly high.

Restricting glassware does seem pretty absurd on it's face to me, although I'm only hearing one side of the argument so far. Phosphorus - that can be dangerous in large quantities even if you mean well. Neither I nor the fire department will be terribly amused if you warehouse large quantities of it in a residential neighborhood. Small amounts - sure, don't write laws that let you throw the book at people for small scale hobby chemestry.

Even nuclear material in some quantities can be fine. We certainly shouldn't arrest people for the americium-241 in their smoke detectors either.

This is precisely what other states do. Remember for a moment that nations are fictions, and jurisdictions are fairy tales. How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon?

Your regulation can not extend to the whole planet, and therefore someone you don’t know and don’t regulate will always have access to the highest levels of destructive technology you can’t keep a total secret, which is why the Teller-Ulam work is still classified.

I just don’t see the distinction. If others who ignore your proposed restrictions and regulations having nuclear weapons is such an existential threat, should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club?

I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is. Humans don’t somehow suddenly become calmer, smarter, or more rational simply because they are wearing uniforms.

> should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club?

Oppenheimer and Einstein spent a lot of their later lives trying to keep people out of it, so I think you'll get a lot of answers of 'yes' to that.

I'd generally agree, but I happen to be from the USA - and my government spends an outlandish amount of money on military and diplomacy and geopolitical manuvering - which while perhaps not having the rigorous structure and definition of "regulation" - serves much the same purpouse.

Casting all this effort aside as mere fictions falls flat.

> should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club?

I'll ask a better question: are "we" trying to kick people out of the nuclear club?

Yes. In fact, "we" succeeded in doing so with Ukraine. "We" are certainly trying to keep countries like Iran and North Korea out of the nuclear club - with diplomacy, bribes in the form of economic aid, sanctions, bombs, assassinations, the works.

"We" don't have total control, but regulations don't exert total control either. They are fictions of law that influence results but do not have the binding rigidity of a mathematical proof. They are flawed and imperfect, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly help and has no impact on the real world.

Just as it's unrealistic to perfectly enforce all regulation, it's unrealistic to completely disarm the world, even if we sorely wanted to. So we focus on forcibly disarming those whom we believe to be the worst actors and the most unstable regions of the world, under the pretense of harm reduction (not harm elimination), and negotiate with others in mututal disarmament and observation treaties to ease tensions and reduce (but not eliminate) the chance of accidents. Imperfect, but realistic.

> I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is.

I think you've got me pegged as more cautious than I am when it comes to the possibility of industrial or nuclear accidents or terrorism. I might've been asking for that by mirroring your "terrifying" wording. Either that or you're rather on the extreme end of the political spectrum yourself, in favor of deregulation, as I believe I'm less cautious than the average voter on that front, and believe my government to generally be overreacting on behalf of the voters. (Which isn't to say you're wrong, merely that I'm unconvinced.)

I think you're also more worried than I am about the risk of government intervention infringing upon civil liberties. Which isn't to say I'm unworried - in fact, it's the very thing I worry about the most when it comes to the aforementioned government overreaction. But I'm not quite to the point of "no regulation is good regulation", which you're somewhat coming across as.

EDIT: Aww heck, let me explicitly answer this too:

> How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon?

Simple: I kinda half maybe partially trust my government, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust the next country over, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust their military personel before giving them access to nuclear weapons.

It's not perfect, but it's kinda half maybe partially better than nothing.

If we gave Johnny down the road nukes without vetting him at all, I bet that'd make a lot of countries nervous. Nervous enough to try and pressure us socially and economically into doing so. Maybe even enough to try and interfere with our elections, or use their own bribes, or assassins, or ...

In said license you get to specify maximum radioactivity and amount of material as well as means of disposal, processing and storage. Includes auditing. Paperwork, but not that hard to meet - pertains to every x-ray machine out there. Kind of like ISO certification.

If you're trying for something big, sure, you won't get it without good reason.

Combined with explosives license, you can actually have a nuclear bomb. Just tiny and exploded in very controlled conditions.

Big amounts and processing hardware are big deal.

It can very easily cut both ways, and lead to very fundamental rights which we hold dear being infringed upon. The more indirect the level of control, generally the greater the potential for abuse or de facto banning.

The best regulation is the one we don't have to make, because we can manage to work it out between one another. This has the bonus of not sending a message to our descendants that we do not care for their eventual civil liberties, and what they do given they will be in a far better position to utilize them then than we are today.

Is it, perhaps, illegal for them to even tell you?

Even if he were the Secretary of Defense, he would have no weapons. They merely command people who command other people who have such weapons.

You don’t know the names, plans, or motivations of any of those people.

This isn't even academic, a maniac killed 36 people like this in Japan last year.

If the point is being missed, then what is the point being missed? What does regulating small amounts of phosphorus actually accomplish in a society where gasoline is available in every neighborhood?

in general, I don't think citizens should have to answer "why do you need this?" to the government, but you're not really comparing apples to apples here.

Phosphorus and gasoline even share the same potential for substance abuse. Just as you can make meth from phosphorus (apparently) you could huff gasoline. I wouldn't recommend either, but you could. Both can be used for arson, and both can be used as drugs. One you can buy anonymously in large quantities with cash in literally every neighborhood in the country.

I don't know what that endgame looks like, but I'm not a fan of it.

That makes me wonder, if nuclear bombs were deregulated, who would actually be rich and stupid enough to actually construct their own? Larry Ellison maybe? Probably not even him.

Now, yes, regulating tiny amounts of phosophorus might be a bit much. But I'm pretty sure you'd object to an unregulated chemical plant next door - those things can be dangerous even with well trained, well meaning personel. The question, then, is where to draw the line, not if it should be drawn at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Animation_arson_attack

When holding out the kyoto animation studio tragedy - are you sure you're not arguing for better fire codes and gasoline regulation, rather than the deregulation of phosophorus? You're certainly not making a good argument for deregulating gasoline entirely, if that's your intention. Yes, an arsonist can get their hands on enough to do damage. Suggesting we remove all those pesky regulations so they can trivially get a gas tanker and drive that into a building - making it easy for them to cause an even larger tragedy - certainly doesn't follow as a logical conclusion, nor does giving them ready unregulated access to potentially more dangerous materials:

https://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/1337 https://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/11498

...which would allow them to do more damage, or shrink their packages, or maybe just delay detection and reaction to their actions. Gasoline has a distinctive smell that would make me curious/cautious. What does phosophorus smell like? I could see myself mistaking someone spreading it out for someone spreading fertilizer or something, at least until the point it starts spontaniously combusting.

Yet here you are, unscathed. Nobody has thrown gasoline at you yet, and probably nobody ever will. Why? It's not because of any gasoline regulations, nor because of your reaction time to smells, nor because of tanker truck regulations, or anything like that. The true reason nobody has lit you on fire yet is because there aren't really that many arsonists who want to light you on fire. That's it; it rarely happens because it's rare that anybody has the inclination to do it.

So how about phosphorus crime? Is that common? No, and I see no rational reason to believe it would be more common than gasoline attacks if phosphorous were as unregulated as gasoline. Even if phosphorus were unregulated, the market demand for it would be low and therefore few stores would sell it. Gasoline would remain the obvious accelerant for any would-be-arsonist.

So yes, there have been a plenty of phosphorous related crime.

Now, whether we should allow just about anyone to synthesize meth is a different and more pertinent question. Synthesis alone is not especially dangerous, illegal distribution is... and this ban was taken to curb it. It is not especially successful. (Also limits on saffrol and sulfuric acid for other drugs.)

In comparison, production of explosives is dangerous. Risks fire and explosions, therefore should not be done on a bench top by just about anyone. (And reason for limits on nitric acid.)

Chemical disposal is also a quite minor problem.

I'm more worried - although still rather relaxed - about accidents. I've caught a gas leak. I've walked up to a restraunt I frequent only to find the building condemed due to a nearby gas leak resulting in an explosion overnight, rendering the structure unsound. I've had insulation in heating ducts catch fire. I've had drunk neighbors in a shared apartment complex set their kitchens on fire as they've gone to sleep. I've helped stomp out grass fires caused by someone's discarded cigarette butts. I'm sure there's more I've simply forgotten. Again, no deaths, despite plenty of property damage and destruction.

> So how about phosphorus crime? Is that common? No, and I see no rational reason to believe it would be more common than gasoline attacks if phosphorous were as unregulated as gasoline.

I hear a lot more about war crimes involving white phosphorus than I do about war crimes involving gasoline, despite current regulations. Even if you're correct that civilian crime involving phosphorus wouldn't become as common as civilian crime involving gasoline, that wouldn't make any uptick a good thing, or even neutral.

Would you agree that nukes run afoul of that reasoning?

I can't think of any obvious examples of other materials that would be reasonable to restrict in the same way as fissile materials though. Those are kind of a special case where there aren't many uses for the material (power and bombs are basically the only uses I'm aware of for enriched uranium), and it's hard enough to obtain that trying to restrict it isn't entirely useless (unlike phosphorous, which you can buy in the grocery store in any box of matches). Chemical weapons I suppose.

Since it's an important example, I don't think it's a bad faith argument, but also note that an argument that restrictions on simple possession of one material without any proof of intent to use it for harm are justified doesn't mean that all such restrictions are justified. I think gp was arguing the "sometimes justified" case, not the "always justified" one.

Nope. I chose nukes because they were an obvious example of something that we didn't want just anyone to have within arms' reach. I didn't expect it to be subjected to the kind of criticism you're raising.

Man that's gonna surprise all the legal gun owners in Canada, the UK, Sweden, and so on.

[0]http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/Somalia-Constitution2012.p...

You touch on an good point: enforcement.

So far in human history people have been mostly tolerant of laws that were incompatible with their way of life because resources available for enforcement has been the bottleneck and most laws go unenforced unless people really want them enforced. For example, anyone who wanted alcohol during prohibition could get it, it was just a little more expensive and lower quality. Sure alcohol was illegal but it wasn't considered immoral by most so you only had to hide your use of it from law enforcement, not from society in general. We seem to be entering an age (at least in the west) where thanks to technology the bottleneck is politicians and police willingness to face backlash from the public. I'm not going to speculate on what the future holds but I fear that it will not be good if people grow accustomed to the government ratcheting up enforcement of laws that are on the books but currently rarely used.

Off the top of my head, the only nation that I know explicitly bans private ownership of firearms is North Korea.

Now, I a bit skeptical of putting Phosphorus into the drug law, it has too many uses and not too many inherent ills.

"Phossy jaw" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phossy_jaw

"'The Devil's element': the dark side of phosphorus" https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/oct/31/the-dev...

"White phosphorus 'burns to the bone'" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-368800/White-phosph...

Pretty sure the same is true for some of the other particularly WMD-able elements, but I'm not about to google them.

> I can’t believe I’ve been made to do this in order to get medical treatment.

No one made you break bad and then brag about it on the internet... Fabricating your own controlled substances is exactly why certain types of glassware are illegal.