Venezuela circles the drain

[MSimon]

http://www.samizdata.net/2014/08/venezu ... the-drain/

[Diogenes]

http://www.samizdata.net/2014/08/venezu ... the-drain/

And you are still trying to link that to drug prohibition? By the way, what are the laws regarding pot in Venezuela? Considering that they are an utter economic basket case on a rail car to H3LL, they must have Draconian laws against it's use.

[MSimon]

Prohibition is socialism for criminals. You know - alcohol prohibition caused an explosion of criminality and thuggery. And it died down when Alcohol Prohibition ended.

You still denying the obvious?

Oh. I forgot. The eternal. This time it is different.

Well yes. In a way it is. Alcohol doesn't cure cancer. Or stop epileptic fits.

[Diogenes]

Prohibition is socialism for criminals. You know - alcohol prohibition caused an explosion of criminality and thuggery. And it died down when Alcohol Prohibition ended.

You still denying the obvious?

Oh. I forgot. The eternal. This time it is different.

Well yes. In a way it is. Alcohol doesn't cure cancer. Or stop epileptic fits.

You can keep SAYING that Prohibition = Socialism, but I think most people dismiss that as a blatant non-sequitur.


The claim has never made any sense to me, and I suspect it has never made any sense to others as well.

[MSimon]

Prohibition is socialism for criminals. You know - alcohol prohibition caused an explosion of criminality and thuggery. And it died down when Alcohol Prohibition ended.

You still denying the obvious?

Oh. I forgot. The eternal. This time it is different.

Well yes. In a way it is. Alcohol doesn't cure cancer. Or stop epileptic fits.

You can keep SAYING that Prohibition = Socialism, but I think most people dismiss that as a blatant non-sequitur.

The claim has never made any sense to me, and I suspect it has never made any sense to others as well.

Well it is a price support for criminals. Just as alcohol prohibition was a price support for criminals. Or didn't they teach that where you went to school?

But hey - you might want to read this:

The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise by Milton Friedman

Well maybe not. No point in seeing how the other half thinks.

Prohibitions are price supports for criminals. In Russia the Mafia and the government are in cahoots. You think it is any different here?

[Diogenes]

Well it is a price support for criminals. Just as alcohol prohibition was a price support for criminals. Or didn't they teach that where you went to school?

Let us say for the sake of argument that what you say is true, that Drug interdiction is a price support system for criminals.



What then is welfare? I cannot fathom a bigger contributor to the creation of criminals than incentivizing fatherless homes.


So we spend 15 billion per year on the War on Drugs, but we spend 800 billion per year on the War on poverty.



Not only do we create far more criminals with that 800 billion, but the immediate cost is 40 times greater.



One would think that if you were HONESTLY concerned about criminals and money, you would be pounding non-stop on denouncing the War on Poverty.



Yet you can only seem to get into high Dudgeon over the piddling little War on Drugs. This implies that your motives are not consistent with your rhetoric.


And this is another reason why you are hard to take seriously.

[hanelyp]

How is adding to the cost of doing business "price support"?

[MSimon]

Through prohibition the government keeps the price of a commodity above the market clearing price.

Agricultural price supports do the same thing.

Hot house tomatoes sell for less than $10 a lb.

And D, I'm against welfare too. In fact they seem to work in tandem since black market money is off the books.

However, our biggest welfare burden is corporate welfare.

I'm willing to go after welfare for criminals first. It seems so pernicious. And there seems to be enough votes. 54% and still rising.

And don't forget the welfare for police aspect.

[MSimon]

Well you are a little off on the WOD spending. it runs about $75 bn a year. But no matter.

Every time you put a family guy in prison for a Prohibition crime you add a family to the poverty rolls. And he gets out of prison with a record. That keeps the family on the poverty rolls. They mostly never recover.

You are working very hard against what you favor. Why?

[Diogenes]

However, our biggest welfare burden is corporate welfare.

Huh? Like what? Farm Subsidies or something? (140 billion total budget for the Dept of Agriculture.) Even if you accept that as corporate welfare, how does it produce massive numbers of dangerous criminals? (For the record, I am against corporate welfare too.)


In regards to the rob them stab them shoot them rape them criminals, that is pretty much the byproduct of assistance to the poor. It is hardly a byproduct of "Corporate Welfare" regardless of how you define it.

[Diogenes]

Well you are a little off on the WOD spending. it runs about $75 bn a year. But no matter.

Every time you put a family guy in prison for a Prohibition crime you add a family to the poverty rolls. And he gets out of prison with a record. That keeps the family on the poverty rolls. They mostly never recover.

You are working very hard against what you favor. Why?

You are drawing unsupportable conclusions from dubious assumptions. Why?


You keep getting cause and effect reversed. People are going to prison because they were raised in fatherless homes. Fatherless homes were not created primarily by locking up drug addicts/dealers, they were created by allowing the Federal government to become the dominant provider for a major segment of the underclass.


It has allowed them to create children that would not otherwise have been created, and it allows such children to exist in the absence of a proper family home, and without proper instruction as to how they ought to behave.


It has incentivized the laziest and least productive among us to make ever increasing numbers of copies of themselves and it imbues them with their slothful ways.


I personally know many welfare families. What would be best for them, and best for the rest of us as well, would be to make it much harder for them to exist in a dependency state.


Benjamin Franklin pointed this out over 200 years ago.



"I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of
doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading
or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions
were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of
course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them,
the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

[MSimon]

Well you have designed a self perpetuating system. People go to prison because of fatherless homes. Fatherless homes are caused in part by sending men to prison for working in the black market. And the biggest fans of black markets? Republicans. With the stroke of the pen they can make vast swaths of society criminals. And then they can thump their chests and say "we are fighting the criminals with all the effort we can muster."

But OK. You like Prohibition. It probably earns you a good living. Good for your children eh? As long as you care nothing for other men's children. Is that really a good society though? Will it continue? I think not.

Alcohol Prohibition was a roaring success. For criminals and police.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

====================

Direct costs of around $80 bn. Of which $15 bn is Federal and $25 bn is State. The other $40 bn is lost taxes.

http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/file ... tionWP.pdf

No estimate of indirect costs.

====================

Your story is losing ground every year. This year it is 54% against you. By 2016 I estimate it will be around 58%.

And the Democrats are going to do their best to hammer you politically on the question. Why would you want them to do that? A good military commander does not fight on disadvantageous ground. Unless he has no other choice. I guess in your mind you have no choice. Go for it. As if you needed any more encouragement.

The R running for the Senate in Colorado is doing just that: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5570 Why? He wants to give his opposition a better chance? Good for him.

[MSimon]

The power of the state was termed in Roman times fasces. We call those who love the power of the state these days fascists. Well you earned it. And I hope it sticks on the Rs for 40 years.

[Diogenes]

Well you have designed a self perpetuating system. People go to prison because of fatherless homes. Fatherless homes are caused in part by sending men to prison for working in the black market.

You won't get off that "All roads lead to drugs" argument, so I have just been wasting my time.