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Samizdata quote of the day “Whenever someone complains that libertarians are just pie-in-the-sky utopian (or distopian) intellectuals, just ask them again about the real world consequences of the War on Drugs, and see who gets all pie-in-the-sky right quick”.
Randy Barnett.
Mr Barnett clearly did not get the memo from former UK prime minister Tony Blair that all that talk about liberty was so 19th Century, dahling.
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Perfect. Just perfect. It’s posts like that one that keep me coming back to Samizdata. Thanks Johnathan.
Ditto.
I don’t know many libertarians that are pie-in-the-sky, just reasonable enough to know that sometimes the “cure” is worse than the disease.
Of course it’s those with the “cure” that point the fingers at libertarians, even as the evidence mounts against them. And then there’s the lemmings who support them in their endeavors, again despite the mounting evidence, because doing nothing scares them more than the manifest failures that surround them. And who is pie-in-the sky or who has their head in the sand?
Put another way, libertarians are perfectly aware of the evils and threats of the world, but swinging wildly in the dark until you collapse in a heap of exhaustion isn’t much of a solution, it accomplishes nothing and leaves you weaker when the threats do manifest themselves.
The point that antilibertarians fail to understand is the following:
It is not lack of honesty, or lack of abilty, or lack of hard work among political leaders that leads to the failure of their policies.
For example, President Calderon of Mexico is an honest man – and a man of high ability and a very harding working man.
And thousands of Mexican soldiers and others are the same (contrary to the negative image of the world has of them) – and they have died fighting the drug gangs.
Some have had their heads slowing cut off – and given their foes nothing but contempt and defiance in the last words.
There is no lack of courage or effort (or ability) here.
So why is prohibition not working? It is because the idea itself is mistaken.
Also take the example of the world financial crises.
Contrary to the propaganda line of the left the Bush years have been years of a great INCREASE in regulations and in the bugets and staff levels of regulators.
True many of the top financial people in government (such as the head of Federal Reserve Board – and the head of the New York Fed, who is now Comrade Obama Tres Sec) are scum – but it would have made no difference if they were not scum.
Let us say that they were angels from above – and that they (and the F.C.C.) had captured Mr M. and Sir Alan S. (and all the rest) and put them in prison.
In the best “Officer O’Reilly” way (and, no doubt, Bill O’Reilly would have done just this – he is an honest cop type).
The great financial crises WOULD STILL HAVE HAPPENED.
Because it was based on the totally legal (in the sense of government statutes) increase in the credit money supply by the Fed and its (also totally legal) magnification by the fractional reserve practices of the banks and other such.
Only libertarian “dogma” could have stopped the crises happening.
And only libertarian “dogma” (let the bankrupt banks go bankrupt, and vastly CUT government spending and deregulate labout and other markets to mitigate the effects of the economic collapse) can do any good now.
Those who reject libertarian principles as “ideology” or “dogma” not only have no understanding of how economic problems occur, but have no idea what to do about them.
Good intentions and even being generally a decent conservative type of guy (such a Bill O’Reilly of Fox News) is simply not enough on its own.
Or in short:
“Practical” people are not really practical.
This is probably a bit late to have much interest.
Here is a societal problem that could probably be managed through use of a social institution solution.
That solution could “take the money out of the trade” (or at least most of it) and leave “free” choice for personal activities – such as driving, drinking, engaging in various crafts and trades, etc.
License the users – a simple one time registration fee.
To be able to POSSESS certain substances the individual must be registered.
Draconian punishments (graded by substance) for possession if NOT registered.
Next establish government (preferably by states) licensed facilities which will be granted the sole authority to distribute specified substances. Some states still have “State” Liquor stores. State run would be preferable, but well regulated licensed facilities could do.
Keep or adjust the present prescriptive uses as exemptions.
A central purchasing body will handle all purchases and imports (traffic & transfers) starting at growers’ or chemists’ points. Any producers (within jurisdiction) not licensed get the draconian too.
The Purchasing Authority establishes its power in foreign sources (such as the sole purchaser of Poppy and the largest buyer of first level refined Coke) eventually shutting out all other buyers, but offering a sustainable living to growers and producers (subject to constant, gradual adjustment that will lead to conversion of activities).
The State Store prices will be set lower than “street” prices, and will be continually adjusted down.
There will be provision for “addict” classes (special licenses), with cost reductions.
Well, that’s a beginning – it could certainly be refined.
Oh for fucks sake!
Stop titting about!
Legalise them all.
And throw in comments about the War on Poverty! Glad to see that all the beggars and poor people have been shot or liberated! No such thing as poverty any more! When is Poverty Victory Day? I must have missed it on my calendar.
And when is get off your arse
and take charge of your own life day,
Nuke?
On your 18th Birthday, RAB!
When you are supposed to be an adult, and can vote, and stuff.
If you want a day to celebrate individuality, then the 1st day of April, any year, is a good time to be different.
As a practical matter just how are drugs like heroin, crack and crystal meth among the hard drugs supposed to be legalized in practice? Under this libertarian model how does one get to acquire these drugs in the first place? Does one simply go to Boots or a Walgreen’s in the US and simply buy them over the counter?
If not, then how? Do we go to a friendly physician and ask for a prescription for the above mentioned drugs? And are the these drugs supposed to be paid for by private health insurance or the Nanny State? And when seriously addicted and incapable of working are the junkies going to be supported by the Nannie State and supplied by the State all of their drug needs and wants since the poor dears are now incapable of supporting themselves? Are the friendly physicians going to get a blanket immunity for prescribing the drugs to the addict? And when the addict is seriously injured from these drugs is the taxpayer obligated to support their medical care as well?
Seriously whacked out individuals tend to do stupid things like committing all manner of serious crimes. Is the state going to prosecute and imprison the addicts who were ever so easily given access to the drugs by the State? It would seem that the State as the chief drug pimp would bare the bulk of the responsibility for creating this drug addict dystopia under legalization. Is that a desired outcome, the State as the Chief Drug Pimp and Pusher? Perhaps the status quo is the the realistic best possible outcome available to society. While I agree that imprisoning casual users is both evil and stupid, the reality is that most people imprisoned for drugs are imprisoned for selling drugs, poison to other people’s children and frankly I say fuck em. Its not like selling hard core drugs became a serious crime last week. They knew what they were doing and they took their chances and they lost.
Cubanbob
Are you going to tell us that the current policy of prohibition is a wonderful success? Do you think there are no improvements to be made?
Sure, they’d be some coststo decriminalising, but we would also gain in the number of nonprisoners, less prisons, less over-all costs. And we would be reducing the scope of the state in our lives, and giving it less excuses for other grabs for power (We need more power to win the war on drugs!, etc.)
Nuke your premise is unprovable. The discussion isn’t mild drugs like marijuana but rather the hard drugs like heroin, crack and crystal meth. Emptying prison cells? Drug addicts don’t hold regular jobs, they commit crimes for a living, not very likely that legalization will reduce the criminal population. Your assuming without any basis that the fact that drugs are illegal is no deterrent at all to a large number of people from using them at all or for using them on a regular basis.
Most people are law abiding the majority of the time. A significant number of people do not use these drugs simply because they are illegal. What people forget is while we can all agree alcohol prohibition was a failure while it was in effect there was a marked decrease in alcoholism and overall crime compared to the period prior to prohibition and to the period after its repeal. Why would legalizing hard drugs be any different in comparison to alcohol use related crime and the overall drug addiction rate? The overwhelming majority of alcohol users are not addicted and can responsibly consume alcohol. The majority of gamblers are not hard core degenerates but simply people having a bit of fun with a vice. How many casually heroin users, crack heads and crystal meth freaks do you know of? Does society really need to encourage the creation of more of these addicts?
While making gambling illegal does not eliminate all gambling and it certainly does not help the criminal element involved in gambling it is also provable that legalizing gambling not only increases the overall amount of gambling but increases the number of gambling addicts and does not fully eliminate the criminal aspects of gambling. It does however make the State dependent of gambling revenues, another junkie created so to speak and does little to decrease illicit gambling, if anything it creates more degenerate gamblers and the social pathologies that come from that. Do we need another reason to make the State dependent of hard drug taxes? If cigarette smuggling has become such an enormous source of revenue to criminals due to the heavy taxation of tobacco do you think heavily taxing hard drugs will somehow have a magically different outcome? Same criminals will be profiting in the end and what what will be the State’s legitimacy in prosecuting them? Muscling in on their turf? Sounds like gang warfare among competing gangs.
The proposition that society as a whole would have less costs by legalizing drugs is not at all supportable. Nor is the proposition that legalizing hard drugs would lessen the power of the State logically compelling since the additional crime and pathology resulting from greater drug use is precisely the kind reasoning for the State to expand its reach.
Finally you side step the question of how in a practical sense are hard core drugs supposed to be legalized and controlled? Yes there are significant costs in the current system and yes there are serious abuses and yes things can always be done better but no one as yet provided a credible and practical alternative to the current system bad as it is. Please do try and offer a credible alternative.
In the mean time I still say fuck the the clowns who peddle poison to other peoples children.
Nuke lets get the war on poverty ended first before we tackle the war on drugs. Just imagine if the US were to cut the 500 billion per year spent on the entitlement programs add in the farm subsidies and the union scale subsidies and by God you have Obama’s spedulous program each and every year until the end of time. Except that cutting all of this out and really lower taxes on the net tax payers really would be a true stimulus package until the end of time.
Besides people on the dole have dead end lives with no real energy to improve themselves (not true in all cases but apparently in the majority of the cases) and to quit the life style attitudes that keep them on the dole. Empty wasted lives lead to people drugging themselves up and in turn leads to more State dependence as well as drug dependence. A vicious circle indeed.
I’m not a prude, I like getting a bit happy with a good bottle now and again (at home or with designated driver) along with a fine cigar and have partaken of the weed in my youth and have lost a few bucks in Vegas so I am no fundamentalist do-gooder. But not everything is or ought to be permissible and hard core drugs are one of those few things that should not be permissible.
Nuke lets get the war on poverty ended first before we tackle the war on drugs. Just imagine if the US were to cut the 500 billion per year spent on the entitlement programs add in the farm subsidies and the union scale subsidies and by God you have Obama’s spedulous program each and every year until the end of time. Except that cutting all of this out and really lower taxes on the net tax payers really would be a true stimulus package until the end of time.
Besides people on the dole have dead end lives with no real energy to improve themselves (not true in all cases but apparently in the majority of the cases) and to quit the life style attitudes that keep them on the dole. Empty wasted lives lead to people drugging themselves up and in turn leads to more State dependence as well as drug dependence. A vicious circle indeed.
I’m not a prude, I like getting a bit happy with a good bottle now and again (at home or with designated driver) along with a fine cigar and have partaken of the weed in my youth and have lost a few bucks in Vegas so I am no fundamentalist do-gooder. But not everything is or ought to be permissible and hard core drugs are one of those few things that should not be permissible.
I fear you may have missed the point of my last post Nuke.
What a person decides to put into their body should be a matter for the individual, not the State.
Back when the Brontes were writing their novels and Conan Doyle was writing Sherlock Holmes, all drugs were legal. Yes you did just go down the Chemist and get whatever you wished.I dont remember reading about the complete collapse of society, in fact Britain was at it’s peak of prosperity and power.
The war on drugs is entirely morality driven. Someone decides(usually a religious person) that sobriety is the natural state for human beings, and will go so far as to lock you up for your own good, if you dare to try to alter your conciousness.
As we all know Prohibition in the USA single handedly created organised crime. The demand was so huge and the profits so great, that the likes of Capone became so rich and powerful that they ended up corrupting the whole political system.
I have said it before and I will say it again, legalise them and let the market take care of it.
If it turns out so be a disaster, all you have to do is criminalise them again.
Oh and there seems to be some rash generalisation going on here as to the nature of drug addiction. Not all drug addicts commit crimes.
I seem to remember Keith Richards being addicted to heroin. Now I suppose someone might think Jumping jack Flash a criminal act, but I’m not one of them.
cubanbob-
Do you have the proof that forcefully criminalizing what people put in their bodies is any better? Taking into account all the money spent on monitoring, investigating, arresting, jailing, trying, imprisoning, and “rehabilitating” people, taking into account the lives lost due to black marketeering, the overall economic loss to people who have their money taken to pay for the “war on drugs” – basically I mean EVERY cost as compared to the results of decriminalization?
You assert that everyone who takes hard drugs are always addicted and will become criminals. Is this ALWAYS the case? And if crimes ARE commited, perhaps we should wait until a REAL crime against someone else’s life or property occurs before we imprison them. Less secure? Very likely, but in the industry of trading liberty for security I’d rather err on the side of liberty instead of imputations that behavior X categorically leads to behavior Y which leads to unacceptable behavior Z. Once we venture out on such a path EVERYTHING a person puts into themselves – eats, drinks, injects becomes perview of the State. We already see the logic here in the US with BANNING of transfats (e.g the banning of foie gras, if not for other behavioral based reasons). Liberty goes up in smoke the more we allow inductive reasonings, and backward imputations of behaviors back to an act where noone else’s life or property are being directly threatened. Puritanical regimes have come and gone throughout time, and all sorts of behaviors have gone onto the State Evil List and yet vices continue apace and the rest of society largely goes as unprotected as before yet pays a large sum to the State for failure.
In a nut shell, drug use has been demonized to a point where the very act of ingesting a mood altering substance on the State’s Bad list is pure villainy (while those on the “go ahead” list are consumed every day without such villainy). Am I an advocate of taking drugs (hard or no)? No. I don’t take more than the occasional beer or wine. But sometimes I may finish a whole bottle myself. Am I evil? I could get in a car and kill someone.
In the end, vices are not crimes as is examined much better than I could hope to here
RAB, I think Cubanbob is a lost cause. He seems to think the status quo is the best of all possible worlds. He would probably have fallen for that line that once you go soft on ‘soft’ drugs, the crims will push the hard stuff, and everyone’s then a crack-head. This never happened in holland when they decriminalised marijuana, but that won’t stop him! Even if prohibition didn’t work for the Americans, he can get it to work! Instead of a failed lesson from history, he sees a challenge.
Cubanbob, my starting premise is- don’t call on the government until you’ve tried everything else! Not even then, if possible! Governments end up causing lots of problems, usually more than they solve. Here in australia, 2 years ago, the (Labor) states and the (Liberal) commonwealth couldn’t decide how to solve water rationing in our most populous states. The real problem was that the labor side wanted to leave it to fester, and help the Labor side win national power! Our water was subject to the electoral cycle, for point-scoring! If the governments had stayed out of it, business would have found a way to allocate resources, and quickly!
Good.
We are cool young man, and agree, but if you get snarky with me again, expect your arse to be kicked into the middle of next week. 😉
Cubanbob,
An Australian newspaper magazine once told us the story of an anonymous heroin user. Australia once allowed heroin to be sold as a regulated subscription job. This woman was then a heroin user, but could afford the price, and held down a steady job. Then the Australian governments cracked down on drugs whilst not bothering too much about alcohol, and heroin went underground and the price sky-rocketed. That’s when the stealing became part of the life-style of the average heroin user.
So decriminalising will lower the price so addicts won’t need to steal to get the amounts they want, and many of them will hold good jobs which can pay for their lifestyle.
You and I would both agree that it would be much better if nobody was addicted to drugs, or even attracted to them, but should an issue of personal morality be an issue that the government can turn into one of legality?
People who believe that legalization would be a disaster fail utterly at recognizing that the assumption of ceteris paribus does not hold for almost all parts of their arguments. They tend to be ignorant of all of the problems that Prohibition caused and of how it caused them, and of many other related manias, including the many-centuries-long witch hunts. Unless you have the time and they can at least transiently attain an attention span long enough to discuss the drug hunts point by point, the best you can hope to do is point at the drug-hunt consequences that were obvious decades ago and that are becoming so extreme a danger nowadays that they cannot be ignored much longer.
I say we need more of this.
I say we need more of this.
I prefer Alexander’s approach to corrupt officials: execute them. But jail’s a good start.