We are Doomed! DOOOOOMMED I say!

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choff
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Post by choff »

According to 'Freakonomics' the criminal underclass failed to emerge because birth control/abortion was made available to underclass women starting about then.
CHoff

Diogenes
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:
young hoodlum criminals emerging in the mid to late seventies
They didn't emerge. They were created by government.

You are absolutely right. They were created by Government, and outlawing dangerous drugs did not have one f*cking thing to do with it. It was that f*cking War on Poverty that created the criminals. If YOUR theory was correct, we would have seen a massive spike in crime back in 1914 when we first banned drugs. Nope, the spike in crime occurs once the children of the "War on Poverty" grew old enough to become juveniles.


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MSimon wrote: Prohibition does that you know. You want a thriving criminal class? Enact a prohibition. The more prohibitions the more criminals.

No, just pay women to have babies without fathers. Simon, here you are trying to divert the blame from where it really belongs, and place it on the enemies of your pet project.
MSimon wrote: With enough prohibitions everyone is a criminal. Which is exactly what the power and control freaks want. No better way to subjugate a population than with criminal law that makes everyone suspect.
I might as well just repost what i've already said on this subject. See below.



randomencounter wrote: The status quo of outlawed drugs has the USA with the highest percentage of our adult population incarcerated of any "civilized" country. If that isn't an imposition on the personal freedoms of *every* American then we are already slaves in fact if not in name.
There are more factors than just drugs at work regarding the stat you cite. Simon is always saying that the sole cause of crime is drug prohibition, but I point out that the "War on Poverty" (16 trillion dollars spent thus far) is far more responsible for the damage. (1964)

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What do you suppose happens when you let the government pay for the consequences of free sex for everyone? You end up with Women run households (paid for by government) with half a dozen children growing up without a father.

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What do you suppose happens to children allowed to grow up without discipline? (Since August 20, 1964)

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Hmm... 1964 to 1980? That would be about 15-16 years old when incarceration started really taking off. Sounds about right to me.



randomencounter wrote: If someone is stealing to support their drug habit they are already committing a crime they can be convicted of and imprisoned for. If they commit assault because they are drunk or high the same thing applies.

Would you steal for food? Their craving for this stuff is worse than hunger.

randomencounter wrote: Freedom includes the freedom to be a stupid shit and ruin your life.
Spreading AIDS ruins the lives of others, not just YOUR life. Same principal with drugs. Using involves other people, and puts them at risk for being caught up in it too. It only takes once to transfer the disease.

I know people who started drugs via social pressure, and subsequently ruined their lives because of their addiction. The injury to others is getting them to try it. Once they try it, the Chemical bonding does the rest.


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It only takes once to transfer the disease.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

Double post. Ignore.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Well I seem to recall Nixon declaring a war on Drugs in '72 at a cost of $100 million per year. It took a few years to ramp the numbers up to get a serious effect.

And there are historical precedents. Look at what Alcohol Prohibition did to incarceration rates. It was a serious drain on the budgets of the States that got involved.
Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; crime increased and became "organized"; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. No measurable gains were made in productivity or reduced absenteeism. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition.

Those results are documented from a variety of sources, most of which, ironically, are the work of supporters of Prohibition--most economists and social scientists supported it.


http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa157.pdf
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Economics works against prohibition. Demand is fairly inelastic. It does not respond much to price. What happens in such a situation?

You take drugs and dealers off the market by enforcement efforts. The price goes up. They become more profitable to sell - new dealers enter the market who would not have been enticed at the old profit margins. Or given the old level of competition.

Dealers also recruit customers. "Push" because of the profits. Countries that legalized use (Portugal is our prime example here) have seen use rates decline because pushing declines. Prohibition is a vector for the spread of drugs.

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Before Prohibition and the Harrison Narcotics Act (1914), there had been 4,000 federal convicts, fewer than 3,000 of whom were housed in federal prisons. By 1932 the number of federal convicts had increased 561 percent, to 26,589,and the federal prison population had increased 366 percent.[44] Much of the increase was due to violations of the Volstead Act and other Prohibition laws. The number of people convicted of Prohibition violations increased 1,000percent between 1925 and 1930, and fully half of all prisoners received in 1930 had been convicted of such violations.

Two-thirds of all prisoners received in 1930 had been convicted of alcohol and drug offenses, and that figure rises to75 percent of violators if other commercial prohibitions are included.[45]

The explosion in the prison population greatly increased spending on prisons and led to severe overcrowding. Total federal expenditures on penal institutions increased more than 1,000 percent between 1915 and 1932. Despite those expenditures and new prison space, prisons were severely overcrowded. In 1929 the normal capacity of Atlanta Penitentiary and Leavenworth Prison was approximately 1,500 each, but their actual population exceeded 3,700each.[46]

To some the crime wave of the 1920s remained a mere "state of mind" due mostly to media hype. For example, Dr.Fabian Franklin noted that according to one measure, crime had decreased 37.7 percent between 1910 and 1923.However, the apparent contradiction between the media hype and Franklin's declining crime statistic is resolved by the realiza- tion that violent and serious crime had increased (hence the media hype), while less serious crime had decreased. For example, theft of property increased 13.2 percent, homicide increased 16.1 percent, and robbery rose83.3 percent between 1910 and 1923, while minor crimes (which were large in number) such as vagrancy, malicious mischief, and public swearing decreased over 50 percent.[47] Even Franklin had to admit that the increased homicides may have been related to the "illegal traffic."

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa157.pdf
The homicide rate in the US peaked around '92 and has been dropping since. What changed? Policing. Police no longer take down whole gangs. One such whole gang raid happened in my town in '86. The murder rate spiked for about 6 months. It got the people in my town very upset. An FBI spokesman actually told our local paper that this was to be expected.

Now the police focus on only the most violent members of a gang and leave the rest alone to ply their trade.

In essence the police surrendered in the war around '92. The gangs had won. And the murder rate declined back to more usual levels over the next decade.

The Drug War has been lost for 20 years. All that is left are the interest groups (gangs, cartels, police, criminal "justice") who support prohibition because without it they will be out of jobs. Of course such jobs are socialism in action and a dead weight loss to society. We might as well hire the people involved to shovel dirt with spoons.

Is a further drop possible? If Colorado legalizes we will begin that experiment. I expect an initial spike in crime and murder followed by a gradual decline as joining a gang no longer is as profitable as it once was. People will get training in more useful pursuits as those pursuits become relatively more profitable. The training academies for criminals will decline.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

hanelyp
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Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:50 pm

what war on drugs?

Post by hanelyp »

http://abcnews.go.com/US/operation-dot- ... Hti2Va0Jq5

"'Operation Dot Com': Sting Reveals Drug Dealers Openly Advertising on Craigslist"

If there were a competent war on drugs, that dealers and junkies were afraid of, I don't think they would be advertising on a public forum like that.

paperburn1
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Location: Third rock from the sun.

Post by paperburn1 »

MSimon wrote:


The homicide rate in the US peaked around '92 and has been dropping since. What changed? Policing. Police no longer take down whole gangs. One such whole gang raid happened in my town in '86. The murder rate spiked for about 6 months. It got the people in my town very upset. An FBI spokesman actually told our local paper that this was to be expected.

Now the police focus on only the most violent members of a gang and leave the rest alone to ply their trade.

In essence the police surrendered in the war around '92. The gangs had won. And the murder rate declined back to more usual levels over the next decade.

The Drug War has been lost for 20 years. All that is left are the interest groups (gangs, cartels, police, criminal "justice") who support prohibition because without it they will be out of jobs. Of course such jobs are socialism in action and a dead weight loss to society. We might as well hire the people involved to shovel dirt with spoons.

Is a further drop possible? If Colorado legalizes we will begin that experiment. I expect an initial spike in crime and murder followed by a gradual decline as joining a gang no longer is as profitable as it once was. People will get training in more useful pursuits as those pursuits become relatively more profitable. The training academies for criminals will decline.



I will call BS on that, most moved from Rockford to Freeport so they could continue to get benefits and ply there trade. Now Freeport is a dangerous town after dark and in the 80s you could walk anywhere without the threat of being molested.
(figure it out yet Simon)

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »


Controversial Interview Exposes 5 Signs Stocks Will Collapse in 2013






http://www.moneynews.com/Outbrain/inter ... ce=taboola
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

ladajo
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Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Post by ladajo »

Well, that certainly could suck for me.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Teahive
Posts: 362
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 10:09 pm

Post by Teahive »

Unfortunately that article reads like a sales pitch right from the beginning.

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

Major Bank, Economists Agree: Market Collapse Will Strike in 2013
Economist and NYU professor Nouriel Roubini has said in recent interviews that there is a chance that an economic “perfect storm” will devastate global markets in 2013. He points to a worsening eurozone crisis, a hard landing for the Chinese economy, and a war in the Middle East that could push oil prices above $200 a barrel.

Agreeing with Roubini’s worrisome outlook is billionaire Jim Rogers. In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Rogers says regarding 2013, “You should be very worried, and you should prepare yourself.”
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/MKTNews/Market ... z2IdUfeH9k
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

We Are All Going To Die From Inflation Says Bill Gross


There may be a natural evolution to our fractionally reserved credit system that characterizes modern global finance. Much like the universe, which began with a big bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but is expanding so rapidly that scientists predict it will all end in a “big freeze” trillions of years from now, our current monetary system seems to require perpetual expansion to maintain its existence. And too, the advancing entropy in the physical universe may in fact portend a similar decline of “energy” and “heat” within the credit markets. If so, then the legitimate response of creditors, debtors and investors inextricably intertwined within it, should logically be to ask about the economic and investment implications of its ongoing transition.

http://pointsandfigures.com/2013/02/03/ ... ill-gross/
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

Argentina freezes prices to break inflation spiral






http://www.myfoxny.com/story/20958959/a ... ion-spiral



Yeah, that's gonna work.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

williatw
Posts: 1912
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:15 pm
Location: Ohio

Post by williatw »

Why are the feds loading up on so much ammo?


http://news.investors.com/politics-andr ... chases.htm


In a puzzling, unexplained development, the Obama administration has been buying and storing vast amounts of ammunition in recent months, with the Department of Homeland Security just placing another order for an additional 21.6 million rounds.

Several other agencies of the federal government also began buying large quantities of bullets last year. The Social Security Administration, for instance, not normally considered on the frontlines of anything but dealing with seniors, explained that its purchase of millions of rounds was for special agents' required quarterly weapons qualifications. They must be pretty poor shots.

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