How About Some Economic Theory?

If you want a long view on what went wrong with the economy and how to fix it, this is the most lucid account I’ve read yet.  It’s written by Simon Johnson, former head economist at the IMF:

In a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption—envelopes stuffed with $100 bills—is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding.

Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system.

Hey Paul Krugman!

An impassioned plea from the masses…

Halloosinatin’

I never tried the stuff myself, you understand, but I’m pretty sure I
knew some who did.

According to the US Government, illegal drugs represent the second largest business in America. If you add in federal, state, and local law enforcement, prison construction and supervision, rehabs, paraphernalia, and pop rocks, it may be the largest. What do we know about large industries and how they accept change? Ain’t gonna happen. Everyone has a piece of the pie and this is the one area of economic stability while all others are collapsing.

Decriminalizing drugs would force the police to deal with behavior rather than physical evidence. The hundreds of thousands of people employed at all levels in dealing shit would have to find something else (robbery?) to make their day. 90% of the drugs coming into the US flow through the DEA, US Customs, or the military. Of the small portion of seized drugs, 90% make it to the streets. Politicians make their careers being “tough” on drugs”. The prices stay high, the Mafia gets richer.

The idea that marijuana can be legalized and regulated and taxed is ridiculous. It ain’t Jim Beam. It ain’t Chateau LaFitte. Anyone can grow superb weed without even a green thumb. Decriminalization, however, would keep the profits in the hands of the little people. The ones who were planting small patches in backyards before John van de Kamp started sending paramilitary hooligans into their homes and drove the whole business into the hands of organized crime. Now we have hundreds of farms in our parks, warehouses full of growlights, and way more bribes for the Attorney General.

In the end, the problem is the same for any sensible reform, from stopping senseless wars to guaranteeing health care and civil rights for all. It’s easy to sell hate, fear, and greed. The trinity of conservative strategy for decades.

End of rant.

Surrender to the Drugs

The Economist reiterates their position that the War on Drugs is not helping developed countries, and is devastating developing countries.

Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Would you have used more drugs if they were legal?  Do you think your kids would, or would have?

Hell Street

I’m a sucker for these 3D chalk drawings!

Limbaugh=Gangster?

That was my thought, too, when I saw the video of him addressing CPAC: “I’t’s Tony Soprano, only fatter!”

Tuesday stunt

With unemployment up, I suppose we’re going to be seeing more of this sort of thing!

A Nation of Cowards?

I did wonder if Eric Holder was referring to blacks as well as whites when he said this.  Bill Maxwell gives his take:

I do not have a problem with what Holder said. I do have a problem, however, with what is not being publicly talked about in this controversy: On matters of race, blacks are cowards, too. We may be the worst cowards of all. First, we have perfected the crude art of controlling the terms of race talk. Second, we have developed various ways of avoiding and squashing the truth about our complicity in matters of race that are self-destructive.

I’m interested in your thoughts about this article.

J’arrive

Bonjour!

Afganistan

Anyone watch GPS?  Fareed gives us a tough question every week.  This week it was:  If the insurgency can never be defeated, then what is the United States doing in Afghanistan? What should it be doing?

This one is a little too tough for me.  The Taliban are really surging, and we seem to be retaliating by eradicating poppy crops & bombing civilians.  I’m sure we’re doing more than that, but I’m not sure what.

I really recommend GPS; way superior to any other Sunday news show!