Friday, January 4, 2019

Part II: How To Actually Solve A Problem, and $ave Billion$





















As promised to Borepatch, reference is made to our prior modest proposal, found here,
and formatted in conformity with his suggestion.

Rule #1: Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish?

1. Upon initial conviction, drug addicts will have six months to go cold turkey from drug use. They will have a daily set of additional painful welts to remind them of the error of their ways. They will experience misery previously known mainly to inhabitants of the Gulag Archipelago, while cleaning the society they once befouled, and in conditions of extreme discomfort and utter disdain, while learning the salutary habit of honest daily work, possibly for the first time in their lives. This will drive home the point that they're not special, crime brings punishment, and that they've been very naughty, and no one thinks it's funny nor cute any more.

2. The second offense will drive the point home for the slow learners.

3. The third offense will acquaint them with the down-home penology of the Chateau D'If, and remove them forever from society, as if they had never been born. In some, it may induce madness, and in others, self-destruction, but in either case, under conditions of the society's complete and utter indifference, and mainly serve to bolster the population of pelagic predators and scavengers.

4. Those who harm others will be given the benefit of an immediate appeal to the highest court known to humankind, that of the Eternal Judge. A future lifetime here on earth, committing literally hundreds to thousands of additional predations and offences will be obviated.

5. Recidivism in case #3 or #4 will be 0%, in perpetuity. Lesser cases will obtain the cleanest streets and smoothest roads anywhere on the planet, while successfully inducing a non-zero number of miscreants to abstain from further experimentation with illicit mind alteration, acquainting them with the strict loving discipline of their missing or misguided parents, and freeing an unlimited number of persons from generations yet to be born from any further consequences from such foolish life choices.


Rule #2: Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1?:

1. Under Case 1, the chance of re-offense drops to once every 181 days.

2. Under Case 2, the chance of re-offense drops by another 181 day period.

3. Under Case 3, the chance of successful lifetime cessation of the behavior reaches 100%.

4. Under Case 4, the chance of re-offense drops to 0% in perpetuity.

5. To be sure, chain-making will and stripey pajamas will become viable industries, and ankle calluses will become a social stigma. But most drug users will be located either in a small, dark cell; at the end of a chain; or in Potter's Field, and certified to be performing useful work in the best case, and no further mischief, to anyone in society, in the worst case.

6. Like that formerly offered by pirates and highwaymen, military and police forces will be assured of a constant, if dwindling source of target practice, whilst the merest appearance of drug use domestically will become societal anathema. This may cut into rock music somewhat, but the foremost practitioners of same are getting pretty scarce and long in the tooth anyways, and no form of music stays in vogue forever.

7. Traffic will be lighter, enforcement costs will drop, and the only needles found on city streets will those from sewing enterprises. Police, fire, EMS, hospitals, jails, courts, prisons, and mortuaries will deal with a fraction of their former volume in drug cases. Vigilance will always be necessary, but the expenditures and excesses seen in recent decades will recede into history, and the commensurate reduction in expenditures will be a welcome civic relief. The military will no longer need to screen ten or twenty applicants to obtain one person who can pass a urinalysis screening.

8. You will see vastly fewer addicts in society, and if you see one today, you can be assured you won't see them tomorrow. There will be roughly as many active junkies in Central Park, NYFC, for example, as there currently are elephants living in the trees there. The incidence of Hep C in society will drop to that of polio, and the only crap found regularly on sidewalks in Frisco, L.A., or San Diego will be from pigeons.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Monopolies are like patents, an act of the legislature which says free trade will not be allowed to offer a product or service.

Monopolies produce high prices and bad service, in every subject matter area. No exceptions for electricity, water, sewer, retirement savings, healthcare, garbage pickup, courts, prisons, police, armies, or roads.

Borepatch's "we're better off without 'government' doing that" argument applies to every single part of government.

The people who like government, because they're getting paid by it, or they enjoy using it to oppress people they despise, or they feel panic without their security blanket, will never have an honest discussion about government's track record.

You cannot vote yourself free any more than you can drink yourself sober. What does work is disobeying in large groups. You see how well recent additions to gun registration and prohibition is working.

Borepatch, I realize you're fighting a spam problem, but registering our opinions in the google social credit scoring system is not a win. What would East Germany have done with that data?

Aesop said...

Show your work.
Illustrate the benefits of anarchy, using any of recorded history.

Best wishes, and have fun storming the castle.

And free trade is shorthand for racing to the bottom, and bringing the entire world the minimum wage in Botswana, with the environmental quality of China and Chernobyl.

Anonymous said...

Two things people miss when discussing "savings" from legalizing drugs, contradicted by the post-Prohibition period:

1) They assume that the government, no longer needing the personnel and arms to prosecute the war on (intoxicant of choice), will fire/reassign the people, sell/destroy/mothball the weapons, and put the money into the General Fund. No way, governments don't DO that, they'll find some other windmill to attack. What happened to all the g-men after the repeal of Prohibition? Did they all become mailmen? Or did they find some other laws to enforce?

2) They likewise assume that the people formerly profiting by illicit trade in (intoxicant of choice) will now become fine upstanding citizens, get jobs at Walmart, and give up their lives of crime. Prohibition may have cause a huge surge in Organized Crime here in the US, but it's repeal just led them into drugs/prostitution/gambling. so the drug dealers will stop selling pot/cocaine/heroin and start selling the stuff that's still illegal. Just like legalizing prostitution wouldn't eliminate illegal pimps, it would just ensure his girls would all be 10-16 years old (or younger). This also leads to point 1 above, there will still be enforcement.

So there won't be much savings of either money or tyranny resulting from legalization of drugs, and that's even before the idea that the illegal manufacturers will make it cheaper than the legal ones (lacking both taxes, and the quality controls that also figure heavily in legalization). Moonshine still exists in some parts of the country for a reason.

I think where we've gone seriously off the rails in the War on Drugs is that we've eliminated the social pressure NOT to be an addict. When I was a kid my next-door neighbor was a serious drunk, he'd go to the local joint three blocks away, and a couple hours later come home blind shitfaced (driving too, he hit every pole in those three blocks multiple times). His wife asked my Mom and Dad to PLEASE get him inside the front door so the neighbors didn't see him passed out on the front stairs, it was a source of shame for her. Now you see junkies in the subway and they're told it's not their fault, it's a disease. Yeah, Foster Brooks was a comic figure, but the REAL town drunk was a social outcast, at best a figure to be pitied, more typically a subject for derision.

Mark D

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

Aesop it is weird how many of your viewers forgot the simple notion that government is terrible at running a business and managing our lives. The old saying, "Ask the native americans how that worked out for them", comes to mind. The funny I read a long time ago was how the white man screwed it up for all of us. Native men used to hunt and fish all day and at night well you know. Look at the male specie now. Betting on paramutual racing, government said gonna raise revenue. Casino's, government said gonna raise revenues. Lottery, gonna raise revenues for the schools and not one of the three made half their projections when promoting them. I voted for none of them as my Dad said the wrong people will be at those places spending their grocery money. Think people how broke our government is. The states and cities are broke as well.

ADS said...

off topic but relevant to your blog: Possible ebola case in Sweden. https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/01/04/patient-placed-in-quarantine-after-suspected-ebola-case-in-sweden/

Borepatch said...

We're moving in the opposite direction - Trump's reform of prison sentencing may or may not be a good thing but that's what's happening. I can imagine what would happen in Baltimore/Chicago/Newark/St. Louis when the executions of a disproportionately high number of black men start. Talk about burning down the village to save it, boy howdy.

Anonymous said...

From your blog to God's monitor.
Boat Guy

Aesop said...

@ADS
Already noted.

http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/01/state-of-blog-and-whatever.html?showComment=1546608918058#c1974838672767284018

"Vomiting blood is a sign of a multitude of illnesses, not just Ebola.
And with EVD, it's a late sign.

BTW, Burundi, where the patient was, is some 200-300 miles and two borders from the current outbreak.
Possible, and explosive if true, but currently, long odds.

I'll wait for confirmation on that one, all around.
"

Anonymous said...

Aesop,

An idea if you would be amenable to it: A topic specific sticky post or someplace on your Blog whereby your readers could drop links for you regarding Ebola.

I for one highly value your review and analysis of this issue, and I think that I am not alone with that perspective.

(Re. Ebola...Sort of like the Ricola Swiss horn, only accompanied with projectile vomiting?)

Aesop said...

WRSA has that exact meme occasionally.

I'd be fine with the post/bulletin board, right up to where I'd have to delve into learning to fiddle around with the blog widget technology to make it happen.

I'm not averse to learning new tech skills, I've seen me do it, but I am great at putting off such tomfoolery and prestidigitation with the keyboard until it cannot any longer be avoided.

So I wouldn't be holding my breath on that, at least not in the short term.

Anonymous said...

Off topic, but have you seen this?
www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/751455/ebola-europe-sweden-contamination-emergency-room-enkoping-uppsala

I always thought just about everything bad that could happen in the world would occur in W.Europe first, giving us more of a sporting chance.

Ned2

Anonymous said...

I sorry/not sorry for changing the subject. (You can delete my comment) someone in Europe is suspected of having Ebola. Looking forward to your next post on the subject.

Anonymous said...

Illustrate the benefits of anarchy, using any of recorded history.

There are about 3,000 counties in the US. How come government won't allow even just /one/ county to be free of monopoly, some piece of desert in flyover country, to serve as a bad example? Because everybody knows that when you stop draining blood with leeches, nearly all patients do better.

And free trade is shorthand for racing to the bottom, and bringing the entire world the minimum wage in Botswana, with the environmental quality of China and Chernobyl.

In the long term, there is no way to avoid Darwinian competition with other human beings. In the short term, you can erect an iron curtain and try to force your Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to be self-sufficient. That just means your country falls behind and collapses. Historically, all the richest places are hubs on trading routes, like Venice and New York. Historically, the maximum of free trade produces the maximum of wealth and lifestyle. Do you want to live in North Korea, or South Korea? East or West Germany? Hong Kong or China? There is no policy middle ground where a moderate amount of protectionism produces more wealth than no protectionism. The border to the US should be a museum exhibit, just like the Berlin wall. What do you think is the policy goal of Bitcoin? Today, gun control is being disobeyed; tomorrow it will be taxation, and that will be the end of the age of governments.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp wrote: "Ask the native americans how that worked out for them"

After president Andrew Jackson ethnically cleansed the Indians down the Trail of Tears, he gave them a universal basic income to finish them off. Socialism is a Skinner box to block the fundamental economic lesson that humans produce most of their value by making themselves useful to others. In England, the Anglos given socialism such as council houses (section 8) and the dole (welfare) become soccer yobs, and behave like Americans in the inner cities.

horsewithnonick said...

Negative for Ebola - in fact, negative for yellow fever, dengue fever, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and Rift Valley fever, all the usual suspects.

Westside Dano said...

Rac Report, I'm lovin it!

Baldrick said...

Probably took a lot of aspirin or Advil, or has a bad ulcer. "Man has ulcer, was in Africa. World flips out."

Another good reason for good old fashioned cordon sanitaire ;) Less panic.

AB.Prosper said...

12:35 the US was a top tier economy in the 20's and 30's and only brought down because of bad banking practices stacked with a natural disaster.

That economy was 93% domestic at the time. A few fixes would have settled the problems but people who are benefiting from the system can't change the system very easily.

When you have a continent sized Republic with a homogeneous or nearly so population you don't need much trade or benefit from closed markets for all the reasons our host noted.

Anyway as for for Darwinian Competition , horseshit. The satanic logic of that view is genocide of all other cultures.

Human's cooperate far more than they compete and get richer in so doing. However cooperation has scaling limits that need to be respected. KISS is good advice anywhere and the number one thing in KISS is to take care of your own,


To something Mark D said, well yes but the US is in the words of Giovanni Donnato a market with a society. Its not a society with markets. Its not possible to apply social pressure in many areas at all.

The way to restore that ability is get leftists out of any power. end easy divorce, punish out if wedlock birth, and reduce diversity. A little morality and church going would also benefit things but that requires institutional reform of churches which is beyond the purview of the State.

A homogeneous people with an agreed upon moral culture can create social pressure, We don't have that and so all we have are force based solutions which are costly , trillions thus far and seem to be limited in effectiveness.

This is why the war on drugs is such a failure, a lot of people want drugs and a market with a society will provide them as it is its nature, Commerce Uber Alles

Baldrick said...

In the 20's we were exporters. We had the largest manufacturing system in the world. Sure we bought a lot of that stuff domestically, but my great-grandfather would not have been overseas working for Standard Oil and establishing the American Club in Hong Kong if we were entirely domestic. As far as I know, the only genocide that happened in China at the time were the Japanese around Nanking, massacring Chinese people.

As a whaling family earlier, we exported a LOT of whale stuff to Europe also. (Some whales were massacred in the making of the whale stuff.) Worldwide trade is a fact and has been forever (see: every large prosperous civilization ever). It's HOW the trade is done that's the question. NAFTA is not free trade. Offshoring everything is not free trade. Other countries have to abide by the rules also, and they're not.

Anonymous said...

AB.Prosper writes: However cooperation has scaling limits that need to be respected.

Can you give me a concrete example of these scaling limits to human cooperation? Buying stuff from China seems to be working pretty well.

Anyway as for for Darwinian Competition, horseshit.

Sorry, God made this natural law just as he made gravity. It is a feature of what humans perceive as the universe they live in.

The satanic logic of that view is genocide of all other cultures.

Not necessarily, but I am keeping careful track of who is writing power fantasies about watching addicts die in front of them.

Baldrick writes: Other countries have to abide by the rules also, and they're not.

If other governments are making their taxpayers subsidize something for export, then don't interrupt your competitors in the middle of making a mistake, just buy the cheaper thing from them. Your domestic workers aren't locked into working only the trade their grandfathers did. You are assuming a British noble/peasant medieval guild nastiness is the only possible arrangement of production.

AB.Prosper said...

3:48

Trade with China has largely been a disaster for the US and the ecology of the planet as had NAFTA. A better example would be BREXIT. The UK voted to leave the EU because they didn't want to take orders from Germany via Brussels. I can't count how many civil wars , insurrections and so one were fought because of scaling, that is someone wants to rule people that are not his and enough people get angry. The major part formation of the US was built on this premise , since the British system couldn't scale to give the US representation, it had to go.

As for trade, broadly few people interact directly with foreign merchants but you'll see strife at any point in which foreign or non rooted interests impact people's ability to make a living

If I lose my job to the Philippines I am not going to take that well. I'm going to resent it a lot even though I personally like the Filipino people. When enough people do, you get strife or forced change, c.f President Trump's promises on trade. This effect is lowered when the people who get you job are in say Texas which is part of the same nation

Limiting and controlling trade build stability and prevents a lot of arbitraging wages or avoiding cleanup costs for dirty processes

Anonymous said...

I asked about examples of cooperation/trade, which means voluntary behavior. You gave me examples of politics/representation/voting/rule, which is the opposite, involuntary behavior done under threat of murder. That's a different subject.

broadly few people interact directly with foreign merchants

Lots of people buy stuff on ebay that is shipped from China. Please show me how, if more people buy stuff from foreign merchants on ebay, the trading volume hits some form of scaling limits on this cooperation. Let's suppose on Monday, 300 million Americans buy a US flag from a Chinese manufacturer. What bad thing happens when 300 million do it vs. when 30 or 3 million do it?

Limiting and controlling trade build stability

That's not stability, that's stagnation. Arbitraging wages is unavoidable. If a government builds an iron curtain high enough, the whole country falls behind the rest of the world and loses a war. You are claiming you prefer the approach of North Korea, East Germany, and the USSR.

Aesop said...

And what happens to the entire country when the average wage here is inevitably the same as it is in Botswana?
When a Big Mac costs $1, but you only make $5 a month, cui bono?

Your "solution" is that everyone should be Venezuela, or Zimbabwe, and like it.

The problem with that is we're not, and we have skills and resources.
Those, and the fruits of them, properly belong to the citizenry here, not merely to the corporations who can exploit them and legislation to the greatest profit.

If the latter, then kindly tax them for everything solely via import/export tarriffs, like we did successfully and prosperously for 126 years, and repeal the XVIth Amendment.

At that point, China and WalMart will be paying those taxes, and no one will be able to afford their shit, because it'll cost more than domestic-made tsotchkes.

Progressivism is the turd in this punchbowl, and ever was.

"Free" trade is simply a dodge concocted to keep American workers paying all the bills, corporations exporting the jobs, and importing the profits.
Everyone but you is on to that scheme.

QED

waepnedmann said...

Your proposed solutions to the drug problem we have as a nation and a culture would work. Quickly ending the drug problem.
The implementation of those solutions are a fantasy unless we enter a period of anarchy.
Why we do not want to go there you have so ably explained.

As I have noted elsewhere you can be abrasive, but you are also a clear-thinking excellent communicator.
Thank you for your well thought out posts.

Aesop said...

{blink}
Abrasive? Moi? You jest, surely.

Illegal aliens entering by the thousands every day, and no end in sight?
Homeless people in hordes shitting on the sidewalks and dropping their drug needles everywhere?
Drugs imported here by the metric fuckton, and despite all the consequences following like night after day, people calling for less restrictive efforts?
No harsher enforcement attempted, nor even contemplated?

How are we not already in a state of anarchy every bleeping day???

And now we've handed the House, and government's purse strings, to the biggest bunch of unredeemed morons and communists on the planet?

People will stand around and watch you fail for a certain span, and then get tired of it, wade it, and sort things out, and they won't give a wet fart for the mess or body count when roused to that point.

We are very nearly to that moment.

Sh*t is about to get real.

Anonymous said...

And what happens to the entire country when the average wage here is inevitably the same as it is in Botswana?

That will not occur. You are repeating economic hoax stories, which have been concocted to scare you into acting against your own interests. Very broadly speaking, the worker's wage ends up negotiated to be a percentage of the value he creates. Industrial economy workers create more value per hour than goatherds, because they use power tools. Labor saving devices make the blue collar worker richer. Both when he uses a power drill on the job, and when he uses a washing machine at home.

Any worker who can use a power drill on the job can probably build a washing machine at home from junk, if he doesn't have the cash to buy a premade one. That is how the industrial economy is bootstrapped from nothing in the first place. There is so much metal and knowledge that anyone in the first world who wants a tractor, to farm to feed themselves, can build one. Unless government stops him by bleeding off the value he creates at gunpoint, which they call "taxes".

When a Big Mac costs $1, but you only make $5 a month, cui bono?

That only happens in Botswana because they choose not to build an economy with heavy industry and high energy use. The Global Warming hoax story is in part designed to get first worlders to surrender their high energy use, and thereby become poor, whereupon they will no longer be competitors to the elites.

Now, suppose Botswana decides to get their industrial act together, like Japan did with cameras and radios, and as did South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and China. That's fine too. Now both America and Botswana have a first world standard of living. Botswana improving doesn't ruin America. Everyone we will stop burning the coal to make air pollution and instead fission the Thorium in it. That will work for a hundred years while we figure out fusion, and we have a whole ocean of Hydrogen.

That tariff story is economic hoax; read _How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes_ by Peter Schiff. Also put a copy of _The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism_ by Bob Murphy in the bathroom to read in pieces, it's funny.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X
https://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Capitalism/dp/1596985046

Aesop said...

I've read the PIG guide to Capitalism; like all in the series, it resides on my shelf.

Tell your theory about economic hoax stories to the 90M long-term unemployed, who've been out of work so long they've stopped looking for jobs, and the government has stopped counting them. their jobs were all shipped overseas by all that wage-lowering you think isn't happening.

Then look up "Rust Belt", and get back to me.

And those labor saving devices do Jack and Shit for the industrial worker when he's lost his home, because unemployed >99 weeks.
Because the steel he used to make is now being rolled in people's Number 39 Steel factory of Xinjiang, by workers making 4¢/hr, and happy to get it.

Botswana, lacking actual capital, can't build a factory to have that industrial economy, and even if it did, has neither oil, gas, nor coal to run it.

TANSTAAFL, Charlie.

And the tariff story is economic history.
Boom and bust happened under both economies, and continue today.Bbut lacking a central bank and fiat currency, they couldn't paper over their downturns with inflated debtbux worth nothing unlike we can, which steal from everyone foolish enough to save pieces of paper worth less every day, rather than buy tangible assets that don't depreciate, like specie or land.

Botswana improving is impossible until energy becomes free, and they learn to live in the 21st century instead of being stuck in pre-literate tribalism.
I.e. never.

Africa Wins Again.

Anonymous said...

Tell your theory about economic hoax stories to the 90M long-term unemployed, who've been out of work so long they've stopped looking for jobs, and the government has stopped counting them. their jobs were all shipped overseas by all that wage-lowering you think isn't happening.

I didn't say wages wouldn't lower when 300 million persons receive competition from the rest of the 7 billion; I said wages wouldn't lower to Botswana levels because productivity won't decrease to Botswana levels. The worker who is not happy with what big corporations are offering him can always move to 20 acres with a mule and do a Joel Saladin. He can grow his own food and eat it, and build his own house from construction trash, and trade you fresh groceries in return for nursing care, and it doesn't matter what the Botswannian neighbor is making on the assembly line. Except Joel Salatin wrote the book _Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front Paperback_ because government has banned self-sufficiency. The reason only big corporations have good jobs is because legislators have constructed that fascist arrangement.

You've pointed out a real problem, but the problem is only a big deal because because legislators have banned the alternatives.

And those labor saving devices do Jack and Shit for the industrial worker when he's lost his home, because unemployed >99 weeks.

Why is his home so expensive that he needs to pay for it on a loan all his working life, threatening him with the loss of it during interruptions in cashflow? Because government says you cannot do anything that will lower housing prices. Government has told everyone that a house, a durable good, is supposed to increase in value over time instead of losing value as it wears out.

You've pointed out a real problem, but the problem is only a big deal because because legislators have banned the alternatives.

Botswana doesn't lack capital. Africa has the most mineral wealth, and the first world gives away engineering education and old textbooks to any Botswannians who ask for it. It's not a problem from lack of capital. Venezuela has lots of oil, but their shelves are bare because their legislators banned productivity.

Boom and bust is a creation of central banking and fiat currency. When queen Victoria was on the gold standard there was no business cycle. Central banking is an oscillator (makes more wobbly), not a regulator (makes flatter).

Anonymous said...

Here's an opportunity: become a founder of a nurse-owned hospital, and treat those poor outcomes which you say the doctor-owned hospitals like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma shuffle off to area hospitals. Don't hire a bunch of paper-pushers so your care is inexpensive.

Except ACA and other laws says that's illegal. Legislators have banned this attractive, practical approach. Legislators have banned all the attractive practical approaches, to push Americans down a Trail of Tears. Do the IRS worksheet to determine if you are an employee or a contractor, and you'll discover nurses are employed by the government.

The only remaining problem facing humans is government. The cause of government is most humans. The solution to government is technology. Today, government demands for gun control are being ignored in Connecticut, California, New Jersey, and Colorado. Which government demands will start being ignored next?

Aesop said...

You're speaking fluent bullshit again, and flying in with simplistic magic wand answers that overlook the wee problems of ground truth.

And when your wages are $0, they're already below Botswana levels, for 1/3 of the country here, and have been for years.

Nobody's buying a farm when they're living on food stamps and government cheese.

Anonymous said...

My $.02 given my experience with this crap.
On a grand jury, in a smallish county in the SE USA pop. ~85,000 we heard, over the course of 3 months, about 1000 cases. Easily 85 % were drug related. Easily 400 of these were simple pom, aka posession of mj, class 1,2, or 3 - 1st, 2nd or 3rd offense. Stupid shit like brothers smokin a joint in the projects. Arrest because there was shake in the car mats. After sitting there for a total of 12 days, I realized during the process that these simple pom charges were there to just feed the justice grist mill. There is real money (court fees, etc...) to be made from these minor offenses. The grand jury largely discharged these with votes of no bill so the charges were dropped. There was another class of,offenses that were either harder drugs - meth is big here, with growing influence of horse back on 2013 when this happened. The reset of drug related were either theft, burglary, robbery, or meth manufacturing and distribution.

So, mj just needs to be legal. Too many good medicinal uses plus I don’t think is causes as much social destruction as alcohol. Beyond that, make the rest illegal and grow the will to win the war. We can easily do it, but there is entirely too much money being made up and down the ladder - pols, banks, dealers, drug lords, popo, etc,,, all have their snout in this trough. We have immoral,people at all levels in charge of this shitshow, so we should expect nothing but a shitshow of performance. Real, moral individuals just are not interested in careers in government or “enforcement” so I don’t see this as a winnable war, due the the players involved. If you have “law enforcement” and “just us” departments who actively participate in civil forfeiture, why in the world would anyone think these immoral creatures would use the war on drugs as anything other than an enrichment opportunity? Justice is dead in this country, even if no one will admit it yet.

Anonymous said...

Real, moral individuals just are not interested in careers in government or "enforcement"

They vote, don't they? That's a management job. Voters are culpable for the politicians they hire. They could have voted for Ron Paul for president but they didn't.