some of you. But I'm too lazy* to do it over, so please check it out.
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I can't understand your logic here. If "the evidence, then, can be taken to show either that the agencies were totally ineffective or equally that they were extremely effective", what is the basis on which "I think the FDA's efforts, in particular, were highly effective and unquestionably beneficial"?
Judging by a search on Google Scholar, it appears that none of the good studies are webbed, and that the stuff you find online is mostly think tank publications -- useless for anything but preaching to the choir. I would have to go back to the library and do a decent literature search, which is more effort than I am willing to invest in this thread at the moment.
I disagree. The "empty, meaningless statement" is when you talk about people who want to do drugs, without acknowledging that "wanting" depends on what people are willing to give up to do drugs.
Regulation has the effect of changing the cost of buying and selling in the market that's being regulated. From the buyers' and sellers' point of view, it makes no difference if you have an unregulated market where you pay a $1000 tax for each ounce of hashish you sell, or whether you pay a $1000 fine. What matters, at least on that level of approximation, is that you have to pay those $1000. Therefore, from an economist's point of view, the difference between an unregulated market with a tax and a regulated market is smaller than it may be from a jurist's point of view.
Everything you say above could be true. But even if it is, it would not change an economist's prediction of what happens after legalization. The prediction is the same whether you attribute the observation with price elasticity of demand or price elasticity of supply.
That is true, but neither would governments work. The main underlying reason is that in any given real-life situation, there is only a few ways of acting rationally, often just one. By contrast, there is a nearly infinite number of ways in which people can act irrationally. Hence, the assumption of irrationality, even if true, does not allow you to predict anything. The assumption of rationality does. So under a realistic view of how people are -- sometimes they're rational, sometimes not -- you will end up predicting some random distribution around the rational outcome. An extended defense of the rationality assumption in economics can be found in the first chapter of David Friedman's Price Theory textbook.(Under the heading: "Why economics might work") My point is, assuming (some) rationality is a precondition for any social system to work.
The case for libertarianism rests on the assumption that people act more rationally when they spend their own money (as in the market) than when they spend other people's money (as in government, more rationally when they spend it on themselves (as in the market) than when they spend it on other people (as in government). The case for small government rests on differences in rationality, not on its absolute value.
In the classical liberal tradition, there is a long line of authors who have argued that small government is a good idea precisely because people get things wrong pretty often, and precisely because information costs are often high. A full account of this tradition would probably outwear your patience, so I will just point you to Spencer (1853) and Hayek (1945), which I consider the most important ones.
That is a fine theoretical argument, but it implies the assumptions that a) rational voters aren't facing strong incentives to be ignorant about it, or not to vote at all; b) rational politicians aren't facing strong incentives to redistribute wealth from dispersed interests to concentrated interests; and c) rational bureaucrat does not face strong incentives to maximize their agency' budget, no matter what voters want or politicians say. Unfortunately, all three assumptions are false.
On the practical side, I would submit that my grandfather, a German classical liberal who couldn't keep his mouth shut (some things do run in families) made experiences after 1933 which would lead him to disagree. I cannot give a full account without triggering Godwin's law, but suffice it to say that the thugs who did it had the blessing of the common consensus and did represent the "aferage of society's intelligence, decensy and willingness to destroy -- the latter of which was considerable. I appreciate that you offered the opinion "somewhat tentatively" though.
That was my idea. It is full of examples why politicians aren't necessarily better than the mafiosi they regulate. At least the mafia would let you have a drink in the 20s, and didn't mind you protesting outside the Democratic convention in 1968.
True. Of course, the same is true for the heart attack patients who died for lack of beta-blockers while the FDA was busy for 10 years considering the pharmaceutical companies' application. As I said, I'm not claiming that a nightwatchman state would bring us to utopia -- only to a better state than the one we now have.
Did you guys know There's another topic that asks;Marijuana-legalized or not?
Now the problem is I thoght I gave a pretty thoughtful answer, and fact-based answer....
Joe, I supposed that such a situation would be no different than what we have now, and that violence would remain a major tool used between market competitors. If the government were involved, however, it would have a major military competitive edge and it could be a non-profit agency. The point is to drive narcotics out of the business realm, and in so doing remove it as a force in the political realm. What am I missing?
As I said, "that the various government agencies were not completely successful in stemming the rise of illegal narcotics doesn't necessarily mean that they were ineffective." The evidence for that, I contend, is ambiguous. The evidence for the effectiveness of the FDA in controlling dangerous pharmaceuticals is, on the other hand, unambiguous.
Clearly, "wanting" is not the same thing as "doing" or "having." If I want a new car but cannot afford it, my inability to pay for a car does not erase my desire for it. Likewise, if I suddenly become rich and can afford to buy that car, that doesn't mean that I suddenly want it more than I wanted it before, it just means that I now have the ability to fulfill that desire.
Only if the illicit trade was regulated by fines alone. Then you would be correct. But the illicit trade in narcotics is not regulated solely by fines (at least not in the US), with the possible exception (in some jurisdictions) of marijuana usage (but not sales). As long as imprisonment is a possibility, your example of "fines = taxes" doesn't work.
It may not change the prediction, but it changes the explanation of the cause of the observed behavior. And if the economists' prediction is being used by policymakers to decide on a way to change the behavior, then it matters a great deal if the economists are right or wrong about the cause.
But then we have to remember that rationality is, at most, a heuristic device. The problem with many economists (and, I would add, many political scientists) is that they assume rationality in the course of making the prediction, but then forget that rationality was just an assumption when they advocate policy based upon that prediction.
I see absolutely no reason to assume that people are more rational when spending their own money or spending money on themselves. Indeed, I would suspect that the exact opposite is true.
I'm not sure I understand your point here. If you're suggesting that people, in government or bureaucracies, fight for what they perceive to be their own self-interests (identified with the interests of their particular governmental agency), then I do not quarrel with you. Of course, libertarianism is premised on the assumption that individuals also fight for their own self-interests, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
The nightwatchman state is probably a more congenial choice for people who are risk-averse, as opposed to those who are risk-neutral or risk-tolerant. And I think that's the case: people, on the whole, are risk-averse. They are happier with foregoing an opportunity to get more if it means a reduced chance of getting less. So people are happier with an agency that may prevent a few life-saving drugs if it means preventing a lot more life-threatening drugs.
You may be surprised to learn that for the purposes of this thread, that's consistent enough with my opinion. I think the FDA does a pretty good job at telling pharmaceutical wheat from pharmaceutical chaff. My problem is mostly its power to proscribe the purchase of chaff by people who want chaff, not wheat. The FDA may well be doing a good job on pharmaceuticals because of its competence, and a bad job on recreational drugs because of its power to enforce its judgment against people who disagree with it.
If we were discussing this in a philosophical context, I would grant you this point. But instead, we are discussing it in the context of predicting what would happen if drugs were legalized. In this context, demand curves, supply curves, and prices have proven much more useful than guessing what motivations may lurk inside people's minds.
Literally, that is true. But again, literal realism is not the point in this context; the point in this context is to predict what happens. And for the purpose of predicting what happens, it is a reasonable approximation that imprisonment is just another cost. This (opportunity-)cost is higher for richer people, and if there was an interesting difference between rich offenders and poor offenders, I would grant you the point. But there isn't.
If the demand for marijuana is more responsive to a price increase than the demand for crack is, one can safely assume that it is also more responsive to an increase in prison terms, or an increase in the likelyhood of getting caught, or an increase in anything else that might deter consumption. I would also venture to guess that the elasticity is the same in either case: If, for example, a 2% increase in the fine cause a 1% decrease in consumption, I am confident enough to predict that a 2% increase in a comparable prison sentence would cause a 1% decrease in consumption too. The same logic applies to production.
Come to think of it: On what empirical basis are you predicting that the quantity of drugs sold will surge greatly after legalization? On social problems, it is always easy to find imperfections in the other side's data and models. But what's your data? What's your model? If you have stated it, I confess I have missed it.
Well, maybe my fault was that I didn't make my complete case before letting you cross-examine me. This particular armchair policy maker supports the legalization of drugs because a) he predicts that the increase in the quantity traded will be modest, and much more modest for hard drugs than for soft drugs. b) he assumes the harm from someone taking drugs is suffered mostly by this someone. A public good problem exists here, but its extent is modest. c) There is a great amount of crime committed for the sole purpose of being able to buy, and being able to sell, illegal drugs. This crime is almost exclusively a consequence of the drugs being illegal, and not of them being illicit. Hypothetically, if the federal government chose to criminalize insulin the way it criminalizes heroin, we would observe criminal behavior among insulin dealers and diabetics very similar to what we now observe among crack addicts and crack dealers. This class of crime is a public problem and victimizes mostly people who neither consume, nor produce, nor trade drugs. d) As a consequence of the "war on drugs", state and federal courts have permitted the executive to erode people's civil rights and due process rights, as long as the erosion happens on the claim of fighting that "war". This erosion of civil rights is significant and growing. Contrary to the claims of the executive, it affects the rights of everyone, not just the bad guys.
What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't minimum wage policy or rent control depend on a realistic prediction about how many people will actually end up having well-paying jobs and affordable housing under different policies? Why shouldn't antitrust law and patent law be evaluated by a realistic prediction of how big a problem monopoly power is, how much the proposed antitrust law is likely to do about it, and how many inventions will actually be made under this copyright law vs. that copyright law? And why shouldn't anti-drug legislation depend on a realistic assumption about the quantity of drugs actually sold? Since you repeatedly expressed your dislike of Richard Posner on this board, I assume you have a better way of evaluating laws. I'd love to hear it.
If you truly believe this, please feel free to PM me your credit card numbers. I shall be happy to spend your money for you, and by your own account you can expect me to do it more rationally than you would.
The point is that under certain conditions, what people do when they pursue their own self-interest also maximizes the general welfare. In most situations, markets approximate those conditions more closely than political processes -- even imperfect markets like 19th century railroads, and even decent political political processes like 21st century American democracy. (No, wait -- make that late 20th century American democracy.) It takes a HUGE public good problem to override this general rule. National defense, law enforcement, and courts are probable candidates. Municipal services may be. But little else is.
Was "risk-averse" a typo for "risk-seeking"?
As I understand them, the advocates of a more patronizing government are arguing that the nightwatchman state imposes excessive risks on risk-averse poor people for the benefit of risk-seeking rich people who want to "get more".
Social insurance, consumer protection agencies, and paternalistic drug laws certainly seem to be created with the claim that they will reduce risk, not increase it. Anyway, I don't understand your argument that "people are happier with an agency that may prevent a few life-saving drugs if it means preventing a lot more life-threatening drugs." In a nightwatchman state, nobody has to produce or buy the life-threatening drugs if he doesn't want to, so why not have it both ways?
Thomas wrote:Literally, that is true. But again, literal realism is not the point in this context; the point in this context is to predict what happens. And for the purpose of predicting what happens, it is a reasonable approximation that imprisonment is just another cost. This (opportunity-)cost is higher for richer people, and if there was an interesting difference between rich offenders and poor offenders, I would grant you the point. But there isn't.
According to whom?
I think your confidence is misplaced. I'm not convinced that people view time in jail as somehow equivalent to a monetary fine, or, if they do, that we have any kind of dependable calculus for translating money-into-time. But if you have any studies that show a correlation, I'd be happy to look at them.
Furthermore, I see no reason to believe that there is, currently, no unmet demand for illegal narcotics, so I assume that this demand, once freed from the restrictions of drug prohibition, will evoke a corresponding supply (that's basic, Adam Smith economics).
Any belief that drug usage would remain constant after legalization rests either on a fundamental misunderstanding of an unregulated marketplace or on what I would consider to be an unrealistically optimistic view of human nature. Not surprisingly, I think libertarians suffer from both of these problems.
(c) It is unquestioned that there is a large amount of crime associated with narcotics prohibition. But then there is also a large amount of crime associated with the prohibitions on extortion, contract killing, fraud, and other illegal activities. In order to justify eliminating the prohibition on the activity, one cannot point to the crimes that are attendant upon that prohibition, since the crimes are a predictible consequence of the decision to prohibit the activity.
Your attempt to distinguish between "illegal" and "illicit" drugs is a weak attempt to provide a rationale for eliminating the prohibition based upon the type of drug, but that contradicts your premise that drugs should be made available to consumers regardless of the dangers that they pose.
(d) This is a problem that can be remedied by political means short of drug legalization.
I have a much better way of evaluating laws, but I'm not sure if this is the place to discuss them.
Thomas wrote:If you truly believe this, please feel free to PM me your credit card numbers. I shall be happy to spend your money for you, and by your own account you can expect me to do it more rationally than you would.
Are you the government?
That's not how I understand the concept of the "nightwatchman state." But then that may simply be a definitional misunderstanding.
The night watchman state or the minimal state is the state with the least possible amount of powers; these powers cannot be reduced any further without abolishing the state altogether and instituting a form of anarchy. Typically, a night watchman state would consist of the bare minimum that is required to uphold the law: the police, the judicial system, prisons and the army. The only roles of a night watchman state are to protect individuals from coercion and theft, punish criminals, and defend the country from foreign aggression; it does not provide any other services beyond those. Hence the historical 19th century liberal term for a "night watchman" state, which sleeps until someone's individual freedom has been violated.
joefromchicago wrote:According to whom?
According to my personal judgment of what's interesting enough to be worth discussing in this context. One can only address so many complications at once.
If I remamber correctly, such studies are summarized and cited in Michael Tonry (Ed.): The Handbook of Crime and Punishment, Oxford University Press (2000), as well as Gary Becker: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, Columbia University Press (1974) I don't own a personal copy of either book, so cannot cite you the specific article. For what it's worth, Becker's Essays are a Nobel-Prize winning piece of economics. That may not be good enough to impress you, but it was good enough for me.
No disagreement in principle. The question is, how much will it increase? What is your basis for assuming that the increase will be more than modest, and that the increase will not be mostly in the softer drugs?
The fact that you think so is indeed unsurprising. I am surprised and delighted, however, that you are bashing a strawman here -- for it was never my contention that drug usage would remain constant. My contention was that it would remain modest, and more modest for hard drugs than for soft drugs.
You are comparing apples to oranges. I do not consent to be contract-murdered, extorted, or defrauded, and criminalizing those activities increases the amount of crime by barely more than the number of acts newly criminalized.
By contrast, when I grow some, buy some, or sell some weed, I do so voluntary, interacting with consenting buyers and sellers. Criminalizing this doesn't only have the intended effect of making drug production, drug trade, and drug consumption illegal -- it also increases the frequency of already existing kinds of crime such as murder, armed robbery, bribing government officials, and so forth. Why shouldn't the fact that a law predictably increases the amount of real crimes committed, count against passing the law?
I am sorry you find my argument weak -- especially since my argument was that there is no relevant difference between heroin criminalization and insulin criminalization with respect to the extra crime the criminalization creates. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the claim you are attacking.
joefromchicago wrote:(d) This is a problem that can be remedied by political means short of drug legalization.
Then why hasn't it been? If i responded to one of your points by saying, "this can be remedied by the free market", you wouldn't be satisfied.
For the same reason, I am not satisfied now. The consequences of dealing with problems through government have to be predicted, not assumed -- as do the consequences of dealing with them through the free market.
joefromchicago wrote:I have a much better way of evaluating laws, but I'm not sure if this is the place to discuss them.
I'd be happy to discuss them elsewhere whenever you have time and interest.
joefromchicago wrote:Are you the government?
No, but I can start one up on some lonely island if it makes a difference to you. Anyway, the point you were replying to was about spending money on oneself vs. on others, and ones own money vs. other people's money.
It's a plant...well a weed! It grows naturally from the ground. I sometimes think the governemt is overstepping its oundaries when it tells us what we can and can not do with a plant.
Sorry, I wasn't asking who found it to be interesting, I was asking who found it to be true.
As I see it, you base your belief that the rise in hard drug usage will be slight on the assumption that there is very little unmet demand for hard drugs.
To put it another way, once the state decides to prohibit some activity, it has already accepted that some additional amount of crime (above and apart from the prohibited activity itself) will be associated with that activity.
Governmental policies can be changed in democratic societies through democratic means. If a policy that you dislike has not been changed, that's as much an indication that the system is working as that it isn't. I don't need to provide some means of predicting policy change, any more than you need to provide some means of predicting price fluctuations. The mechanisms of democracy and the free market are the explanations.
I have some very definite opinions about Posner and the law & economics crowd,
But this thread isn't the place for that discussion.
Thomas wrote:joefromchicago wrote:Are you the government?
No, but I can start one up on some lonely island if it makes a difference to you. Anyway, the point you were replying to was about spending money on oneself vs. on others, and ones own money vs. other people's money.
We were discussing spending decisions in a governmental context.
The debate on the legalization of marijuana apart from this consideration would, therefore, be a debate on whether or not a controlled substance as an "entertainment drug" should be released from this status.
Any opinions on this?
It certainly seems to work for Vicodin. I frequently get spammed with e-mails advertizing it, so I guess that for some people, it is what you call an 'entertainment drug'. But I'm not aware that anybody wants to make the drug illegal for its legitimate medical uses.
To make it unlawful for its legitimate medical uses would be severe- argumentatively that is. Though some do persist in saying that even for medical uses THC has not been shown conclusively to be the only viable medical alternative for the patients in question, notwithstanding direct biochemical evidence on numerable cases of complete remissions of level four brain tumors. Some members of this troupe are in Washington. Fashion that...
Nice to meet you Thomas. May I ask where in Germany are you? I wish to study maths there one day- graduate work that is.
I don't know. I have neither looked for, nor run into, studies that tried to test the hypothesis. But the operative term in my contention was "interesting", so, having observed that the literature doesn't seem keen on bringing it up, as were neither you nor I, I concluded that few people find the difference interesting in this context.
My belief is that existing users of hard drugs won't be very responsive to price changes either way. They'll do whatever is necessary to get their fix, but not more. The reason I don't believe in a great inflow of new users of hard drugs is a supply side argument, not a demand side argument. Hard drugs are profitable for dealers because when the inelastic demand of addicts meets monopoly power on the supply side, that lets the supply side reap large monopoly profits. (The explanation for this can be found in any price theory book.) Because legalization would make it much easier for crack addicts to change dealers, addicting people to crack becomes a lot less profitable for its suppliers.
Fair enough. But why isn't the predictable increase in such crime an argument against the state deciding to prohibit the activity in the first place? Perhaps a somewhat ridiculous example will make my point clearer: We can predict that criminalizing insulin will turn some currently decent pharmaceutical companies into drug cartels, and will cause some currently decent diabetics to mug their neighbors for insulin shots. Why wouldn't this predictable consequence be an argument against criminalizing insulin? I would have said it's a pretty strong argument against it.
Sure. But when I observe that fundamental rights are being subverted under the pretense of fighting the war on drugs, that is an empirical reason to believe the democratic system is not working as specified; this cannot be refuted by contending that a democratic problem, working as specified, could fix the problem.
joefromchicago wrote:I have some very definite opinions about Posner and the law & economics crowd,
Is this a disagreement in basic philosophy or in partisan politics? To distinguish the two, do you have similar misgivings about liberal Law & Econ types such as Cass Sunstein?
As I said, whenever you're interested in having this discussion, I would be happy to have it elsewhere.
You mean, spending decision like the ones made in that context by this guy Or this one? Or this one? And you say that these guys and their decisions are an argument for having decisions made for you by the government rather than yourself? You are unafraid of tough sells, I'll grant you this. On the face of it, when I look at the bosses of the American government, the closest approximations to grown-ups are the ones presiding over institutions with weak democratic constraints on them, specifically Rehnquist and Greenspan. The ones under strong democratic constraints -- specifically Bush, Frist, and Hastert -- look like morons to me at best, catastrophes at worst.
