The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
25 themes/skins/styles are now available to members. Check the select drop-down at the bottom-left of each page.
Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
By the way, why are you quoting someone associated with a murderous bastard like Tamerlane?
His grandson wasn't that much of a bastard. He was actually a pretty good scientist and mathematician, and helped to promote science (those words were printed on an observatory he created during his reign). He of course exploited the people in Central Asia, but pretty much all scientists and mathematicians back then were nobles, rulers, and the like.
But the reason I have that quote is not due to the moral character of Ulugh-Bug or his grandfather, but because I think what he said is pretty damn profound.
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-Bokonon
Look Jr! You haven't done any damn work in this thread, so save the last post for me first and then the very last post for Berzerker.
Originally posted by Ramo
That's irrelevant. I've never disputed that there was a large number of opium users. If anything, that'd hurt your point (the proportion of opium users among the poor must've been extremely large).
I have NOT seen the distibrution NUMBERS, but have seen the HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS which say that the distribution WAS across all classes.
And? I'm sure there are crack users among all social classes today. That doesn't mean that the distribution of users is uniform between rich and poor.
Well here is what happened. Cocaine was and is a drug exclusively used by rich people. (Hmmm, here is a drug that is unevenly distributed exclusively to RICH people ONLY. Now what does that do to your theory?) Crack-cocaine is a cheap form of cocaine that made it affordable to poor people. And hence this availability caused all sorts of problems in the inner cities during the mid 80s, #1 being crime. It was cited as an EPIDEMIC. The violence occured BEFORE any interdiction went specifically after crack.
Isn't that the whole point? You asserted you had this evidence. No wonder I couldn't find it.
No, the evidence I was referring to SPECIFICALLY is NUMBERS on aggregate opium usage. The HISTORICAL accounts all say that it was spread across all classes.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln
Fine. But you have to adequately respond to this first.
Well here is what happened.
How does that relate to what you quoted?
It was cited as an EPIDEMIC. The violence occured BEFORE any interdiction went specifically after crack.
I'm not that young. We didn't suddenly start interdicting crack in 1993.
Hmmm, here is a drug that is unevenly distributed exclusively to RICH people ONLY. Now what does that do to your theory
I specifically mentioned that the poor would overwhelmingly use drugs unless the drug is prohibitively expensive. Cocaine is prohibively expensive, opium obviously was not. Simple isn't it?
No, the evidence I was referring to SPECIFICALLY is NUMBERS on aggregate opium usage. The HISTORICAL accounts all say that it was spread across all classes.
That doesn't mean anything. I've never disputed that rich people used opium. But not as high a rate as the poor. You need numbers if you want a real analysis.
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-Bokonon
Originally posted by Ramo
How does that relate to what you quoted?
Just a nice little history on crack-cocaine and its usage compared with cocaine.
I'm not that young. We didn't suddenly start interdicting crack in 1993.
No we didn't. Those interdiction efforts started years earlier, but, started to pay off in the late 80s and early 90s.
I specifically mentioned that the poor would overwhelmingly use drugs unless the drug is prohibitively expensive. Cocaine is prohibively expensive, opium obviously was not. Simple isn't it?
Maybe you did. But in the opium case specifically, the accounts all say it was evenly distributed across classes. By the way, I have also seen many cases where middle or upper class people become impoverished, where the drug habit destroys their life and drains their money.
That doesn't mean anything. I've never disputed that rich people used opium. But not as high a rate as the poor. You need numbers if you want a real analysis.
Roland and el freako would be proud. But there's also this thing called historical observation and another thing called empirical analysis, as well.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln
by the way, Berzerker, David Floyd, et. al. You'd have a field day with the gang at CGN. The discrepencies between our views are minute in comparison to some of the regulars there. You'd love some of the posters, complete authoritarians We'd be fighting on the same side for once
"Chegitz, still angry about the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991?
You provide no source. You PROVIDE NOTHING! And yet you want to destroy capitalism.. you criminal..." - Fez
"I was hoping for a Communist utopia that would last forever." - Imran Siddiqui
Now, what's this I hear about a problem with libertarians?
"I'm a guy - I take everything seriously except other people's emotions"
"Never play cards with any man named 'Doc'. Never eat at any place called 'Mom's'. And never, ever...sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own." - Nelson Algren
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." - Joseph Stalin (attr.)
No we didn't. Those interdiction efforts started years earlier, but, started to pay off in the late 80s and early 90s.
Which makes it that much harder to isolate the affect of crack and its interdiction without taking into account the biases Berzerker and I brought up.
Maybe you did. But in the opium case specifically, the accounts all say it was evenly distributed across classes.
1. Do you have the quotes asserting something to that effect? I haven't seen anything about an even distribution of opium users across classes.
2. Do you think there might be biases seeing as how the observers tended to be rich and would therefore overestimate the effect of opium on the rich?
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-Bokonon
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln
OK Berzerker. I'm going to give one more explanation of why the prisoner's dilemma is a problem for Libertarians. If you can't provide a decent and thoughtful response then that's your fault and I won't bother further unless someone else wants to reply properly.
________
The prisoner’s dilemma is an hypothetical example which is meant to illustrate what can be referred to as, “collective action problems”. These are situations in which the incentives which motivate individual decisions lead to outcomes that are worse for everyone; these are called, “perverse outcomes.” A “perverse outcome” is called so, because it comes about when people acting entirely reasonably produce a completely ridiculous outcome.
Here’s an example of a relevant prisoner’s dilemma. Violent crime has risen slightly in my neighbourhood; this means that I am now at a greater risk of being killed. Like every other sane person I want to minimize the prospect of being killed so I decide to get a gun. I reason in this fashion: if I get a gun I am better able to protect myself and am less likely to be a victim of a violent crime. I am also more likely to kill someone else by mistake if I have a gun than if I don’t – so I will be safer if I have a gun, but others will be slightly unsafer. Now, for the sake of argument let’s agree that this is true (ignoring the evidence that shows that people are more often killed by their own guns than they kill criminals) and watch what happens when everyone in my neighbourhood realises this.
From this setup there are four possible outcomes:
1) I buy a gun, no one else does. Result: I am safer; everyone else is slightly less safe.
2) No one buys a gun. Result: the situation stays the same.
3) I don’t buy a gun, everyone else does. Result: I am less safe; everyone else is slightly safer than me.
4) Everyone buys a gun. Result: everyone is less safe.
What’s best for me in this situation? Well (1) is obviously the best for me since I am safer. It is better for me than (2) because I am safer in (1). But (4) is also better for me than (3) since I am safer if (4) is the case than (3) because I’m the only one who has no gun.
So if I want to make things better for me, I ought to buy a gun. This is because I have no control over what the others do and I am better off in both cases where I buy a gun whether the others do or not. But if everyone reasons this way, everyone will end up with (4) which is obviously only third best from my point of view. (2) is clearly the second best for everyone, yet the best that we can hope for unless no one else buys a gun. (2) is the reasonable solution – if we didn’t all refuse to buy guns then we would get (4), which is a perverse outcome.
So we all ought to behave altruistically and choose not to buy guns. Why won’t this happen in a voluntary system? Well it is clear that everyone has an incentive to buy a gun, unless we can trust that others won’t (i.e. we can be sure they won’t).
So how much blind trust can we place in other people – it varies. Quite a lot if we know them very well or we live in a small community where we have to deal with them all the time. Not very much if we live in a city of millions because we just don’t know these other people and they don’t know us. The hard line communist system failed for this very reason – each person had an incentive to free ride because they couldn’t trust that others would work hard if they did – so hardly anyone worked as hard as they otherwise would have. Capitalism doesn’t suffer from this problem because if I slack off, I’ll get fired. It also fosters competition because there are incentives to work harder and no “free rider” disincentives – that is: my working harder isn’t penalised by the free riding of others (not if there is no taxation anyway) because If I work and others don’t, they can’t free ride off me: that is, they can’t hope that everyone else will work hard while they don’t because even if this was true, they would end up poor.
And this brings us to my second point. The prisoner’s dilemma explains how markets work (this isn’t my example, but I like it). In other words this shows that people don’t trust each other in the way that you say they do. If your “social sanctions” worked as well as you think, we would have no markets.
This is because a market creates a kind of prisoner’s dilemma. Let’s say I want to buy a new coat. There are many other coat-wanters and right now only so many coats. So the following dilemma occurs.
(1) I buy a coat, everyone else waits. Result: I pay full price, everyone else waits for the sale.
(2) Everyone else tries to buy a coat, I wait. Result: no coat for me.
(3) Everyone tries to buy a coat. Result: the coats sell out at full price.
(4) No one buys a coat. Result: the price of coats drops down until the coat store has a sale.
Now, from a consumer’s point of view (4) is the best. It would be better for us consumers if we all waited. But this depends on everyone else behaving altruistically. Since no potential coat buyer wants to be out of luck, there is a massive incentive to break ranks and buy. The more you wait the more likely you will get a cheaper coat, but the greater the risk of getting no coat at all. So what happens is that people try to have the best of both by hoping that the price goes down while keeping an eye on the supply – in this way prices are set.
There is a similar pressure to break ranks acting upon the coat shop owners. They could try to trust each other, but then they might get left with excess stock: thus a price cutting war begins until every one of them has no stock left.
Market behaviour is the central reality of societies like ours and markets work at setting prices because people can’t trust the behaviour of others when there are incentives involved. I don’t think a clearer illustration could be found that voluntary social sanctions just don’t cut it (look at the way companies undermine unions by offering better conditions to the first workers to break a strike – and notice how often it works. Unions only stay in existence because governments allow them the legal right to coerce workers – that’s why the bosses want voluntary unionism, they know it won’t work well).
There are many other examples than guns and markets. Littering is a good one. It is best for me if I get to litter and no one else does. But then everyone will litter, unless they can trust others, which they generally can’t. So this is why we have the state. What the state does is coerces us into taking the second best options in cases which would otherwise lead to perverse outcomes. The odd thing is that most of us don’t mind being altruistic if we know that everyone else has to do it as well. Thus we avoid the perverse outcome and everyone gets the second best outcome from their point of view instead of the third best.
What does this have to do with voluntary taxation? Well I said that a voluntary tax system encourages people to not pay unless they can trust others. And I think I’ve shown that the most pervasive force in our society, the market, shows that we don’t. So there will good reason not to pay.
Now your objection is that social sanctions would mean that non-payers would be ostracised. The problem with this is that social sanctions create a prisoner’s dilemma since there is an individual economic benefit to dealing with the people who are the object of the sanctions and sanctions only work if most people enforce them. Look at the case:
(1) I break the sanctions, no one else does. Result: I am better off and the sanctions work.
(2) No one breaks the sanctions. Result: the sanctions work.
(3) Everyone breaks the sanctions: Result the sanctions fail.
(4) I keep to the sanctions, no one else does. Result: I am worse off, the sanctions fail.
Only if I can trust everyone else to apply the sanctions in the first place will (2) happen and the sanctions work. But that won’t happen.
Now here’s the killer: you are wrong because you said that sanctions would work and this is tacitly agreeing that people would not pay a voluntary tax. You can’t have both: either people are altruistic enough to ensure that tax is paid and sanctions need never be applied; or tax is not paid and the sanctions won’t work, since the reason the tax isn’t paid is the same reason that the sanctions fail (i.e. it is a collective action problem).
His grandson wasn't that much of a bastard. He was actually a pretty good scientist and mathematician, and helped to promote science (those words were printed on an observatory he created during his reign). He of course exploited the people in Central Asia, but pretty much all scientists and mathematicians back then were nobles, rulers, and the like.
Since when is making a scientific dicovery an excuse for exploitation? With that kind of logic, you can say great things about Nazi vivisectioners. You need some mat time. Wrestling dropout. AP weenie.
The prisoner’s dilemma is an hypothetical example...blablabla
[/b]
You are wasting your time here. These libertarians here are not Milton Friedman. They are pretty juvinile in their econ knowledge. Sometimes they even say stuff that is anti-libertarian without knowing it.
Come over to the econ-weenie thread! (GDP/EBITDA thread).
Since when is making a scientific dicovery an excuse for exploitation?
Didn't say it was. The fact that he was a scientist and a promoter of science makes the quote more authoritative.
I guess I'd prefer that the quote came from someone like Kepler (who was a pretty cool person BTW, in contrast to ****** like Newton), but refusing science, music, literature, etc. because their creators didn't fulfill one's idea of moral behavior seems pretty stupid to me.
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-Bokonon
A bit touchy there, aren't you? Coming from the guy who accused me of being bad-mannered too.
If two are worse than one, and three are worse than two, and generally speaking, x+1 murders are worse than x murders, then, by the power of mathematics, 10 million and one murders are worse than 10 million.
Which is why I made the assumption you'd murder 10 million to prevent the murder of 10 million and 1.
After all, 10 million will die no matter what I do, but if I do the killing, then I've saved someone.
Which makes you a mass murderer. The fact someone else would murder 10 million and 1 won't change that fact.
From the victims' point of view I also make the better choice because, other things being equal, the odds of becoming a victim are slightly less likely to die if I kill 10 million: because 10 000 000 / P is less than 10 000 001 / P (P being the population at risk of death.)
I'd play the lottery instead.
A strange view of morality would be one that preferred a worse outcome to what it admitted was better one: in other words, Libertarianism (or at least on David's view of it, which secretly smuggles a religious doctrine in the back door).
Could you murder 10 million people to prevent someone else from murdering the same 10 million and one more?
"Do Libertarians think that rights-violations are bad because they cause loss of liberty; or do they think that loss of liberty is bad because it is caused by rights violations?"
There's a difference? Since liberty and rights are synonymous, both are bad, you can't violate one without violating the other.
"Do Libertarians think that the correct explantion of the badness of murder is that violating the right to life is bad because it causes death; or because death is caused by violating a right?"
The right to life stems from life itself, they too are synonymous.
And another thing, you seem to be behaving as if I were making some arcane, evil and impractical criticism of Libertarianism when the same criticism goes for any other rights based moral system.
And what about other allegedly moral systems?
For example, Liberals are committed to the value of tolerance.
If we were to understand this according to David's model then I could never ever act intolerantly. But there is a problem which every liberal state has had to face: intolerant people. If we tolerate the intolerant and the intolerant affect the lives of others then we are compromising the value we originally placed on tolerance. In fact, if we understood rights as David understood them and behaved that way, we may well end up with a society ridden with intolerant people whom we have to tolerate to avoid being accused of intolerance. In other words our committment to tolerance, David style, is compatible with the existence of a largely intolerant society
Which is why I'm always amused by liberals preaching tolerance one minute, then condemning others for being intolerant the next. But we have the right to be intolerant in a libertarian system, you've just shown a contradiction with liberalism, not libertarianism.
But that's not what Liberals want - they say they want a tolerant society.
What they say and do are two different things.
Similarly, if Libertarians want a free society in which there are a minimum of rights violations, they had better be prepared to violate the rights of a few bad people or face the prospect of a free society going down the tubes - and that's not what they want.
Sheesh! Are you still claiming we have a right under libertarianism to violate the rights of others? You'll have to clarify what you mean by "bad people"...
OK Berzerker. I'm going to give one more explanation of why the prisoner's dilemma is a problem for Libertarians.
*sigh* ~400 posts after you made the assertion.
If you can't provide a decent and thoughtful response then that's your fault and I won't bother further unless someone else wants to reply properly.
Somehow I suspect my reply won't be found to be decent and thoughtful, but we'll see.
Here’s an example of a relevant prisoner’s dilemma.
That's what I've been asking for.
Violent crime has risen slightly in my neighbourhood; this means that I am now at a greater risk of being killed. Like every other sane person I want to minimize the prospect of being killed so I decide to get a gun. I reason in this fashion: if I get a gun I am better able to protect myself and am less likely to be a victim of a violent crime. I am also more likely to kill someone else by mistake if I have a gun than if I don’t – so I will be safer if I have a gun, but others will be slightly unsafer. Now, for the sake of argument let’s agree that this is true (ignoring the evidence that shows that people are more often killed by their own guns than they kill criminals) and watch what happens when everyone in my neighbourhood realises this.
Excuse me, but those stats asserting that more people are killed with their own guns includes suicide. And where is this stat? If no guns existed, hangings et al would increase and liberals would be complaining about people having ropes and knives. Also, your PD ignores that while there might/will be a slightly higher incidence of homicides due to mistakes, there will be less crime overall if criminals fear your armed neighborhood, and they do. That's why they usually try to avoid cops...
From this setup there are four possible outcomes:
1) I buy a gun, no one else does. Result: I am safer; everyone else is slightly less safe.
2) No one buys a gun. Result: the situation stays the same.
3) I don’t buy a gun, everyone else does. Result: I am less safe; everyone else is slightly safer than me.
4) Everyone buys a gun. Result: everyone is less safe.
Your PD assumes criminals behave exactly the same regardless of whether or not their potential victims are armed. They don't...During the LA riots we saw film of armed storeowners standing guard. Guess who's stores got looted?
So if I want to make things better for me, I ought to buy a gun. This is because I have no control over what the others do
You have more control over what criminals do to you and others if you are armed. Remember Luby's Cafeteria? A guy drove his truck through the window and started shooting people, and one lady inside saw her parents murdered. She was a gun owner, but the gun was in her car because it wasn't legal for her to keep her gun in her purse. The media in this country will throw out bogus claims about more people being killed with their own guns, but they don't tell us how often crimes are thwarted by armed citizens.
So how much blind trust can we place in other people – it varies.
I trust my armed neighbor more than a burglar.
And this brings us to my second point. The prisoner’s dilemma explains how markets work (this isn’t my example, but I like it). In other words this shows that people don’t trust each other in the way that you say they do. If your “social sanctions” worked as well as you think, we would have no markets. This is because a market creates a kind of prisoner’s dilemma. Let’s say I want to buy a new coat. There are many other coat-wanters and right now only so many coats. So the following dilemma occurs.
(1) I buy a coat, everyone else waits. Result: I pay full price, everyone else waits for the sale.
(2) Everyone else tries to buy a coat, I wait. Result: no coat for me.
(3) Everyone tries to buy a coat. Result: the coats sell out at full price.
(4) No one buys a coat. Result: the price of coats drops down until the coat store has a sale.
Now, from a consumer’s point of view (4) is the best. It would be better for us consumers if we all waited. But this depends on everyone else behaving altruistically.
Why is that altruistic behavior, people wait for sales out of self-interest after placing values on the worth of waiting in exchange for paying less. Those that can afford to pay more might not wait and those who place more value on what they can afford wait for the sale.
Since no potential coat buyer wants to be out of luck, there is a massive incentive to break ranks and buy. The more you wait the more likely you will get a cheaper coat, but the greater the risk of getting no coat at all. So what happens is that people try to have the best of both by hoping that the price goes down while keeping an eye on the supply – in this way prices are set.
That's how the market works. Hell, that's just about how every economic system works. Why is this a PD and why does it apply only to libertarianism? If there are not enough coats for everyone, not everyone will be able to buy a coat. Your "PD" ensured that some people would be without coats. If half the people get their coats and half wait for a sale, how is everyone worse off? You said a PD was a situation where people act out of self-interest and everyone is worse off as a result.
Market behaviour is the central reality of societies like ours and markets work at setting prices because people can’t trust the behaviour of others when there are incentives involved.
It seems to me incentives are about making behavior more predictable.
I don’t think a clearer illustration could be found that voluntary social sanctions just don’t cut it
Excuse me, but how does buying or not buying a coat involve social sanctions?
There are many other examples than guns and markets. Littering is a good one. It is best for me if I get to litter and no one else does. But then everyone will litter, unless they can trust others, which they generally can’t. So this is why we have the state. What the state does is coerces us into taking the second best options in cases which would otherwise lead to perverse outcomes. The odd thing is that most of us don’t mind being altruistic if we know that everyone else has to do it as well. Thus we avoid the perverse outcome and everyone gets the second best outcome from their point of view instead of the third best.
I already told you "litter" would be illegal in a libertarian system. Why you keep trying to trot this dead horse around is a question I can answer but you wouldn't consider it decent and thoughtful.
What does this have to do with voluntary taxation? Well I said that a voluntary tax system encourages people to not pay unless they can trust others.
Having the service encourages them to pony up even if there are some people trying to free ride. If there are 50 people in my community and 5 don't want to pay for a local sheriff and 45 do, will the 45 just say, "to hell with it, we won't have a sheriff"?
And I think I’ve shown that the most pervasive force in our society, the market, shows that we don’t. So there will good reason not to pay.
Then no one would have funded the American Revolution, much less actually fought the war. You keep ignoring that paradox just as you keep ignoring the implications of your argument - that voters would simply do away with all taxation.
Now your objection is that social sanctions would mean that non-payers would be ostracised. The problem with this is that social sanctions create a prisoner’s dilemma since there is an individual economic benefit to dealing with the people who are the object of the sanctions and sanctions only work if most people enforce them. Look at the case:
(1) I break the sanctions, no one else does. Result: I am better off and the sanctions work.
(2) No one breaks the sanctions. Result: the sanctions work.
(3) Everyone breaks the sanctions: Result the sanctions fail.
(4) I keep to the sanctions, no one else does. Result: I am worse off, the sanctions fail.
Only if I can trust everyone else to apply the sanctions in the first place will (2) happen and the sanctions work. But that won’t happen.
Obviously free riders won't apply the sanctions to themselves, therefore the sanctions don't need everyone to apply them, just a large enough percentage.
Now here’s the killer: you are wrong because you said that sanctions would work and this is tacitly agreeing that people would not pay a voluntary tax.
That isn't what I said, tacitly or not. I never said people would not pay a voluntary tax. I said most would and their disgust with those that don't would translate into discrimination which is an incentive for them to pay too.
Ted -
That's not true, I cited the figure at 2,000,000 ADDICTS, and that's across ALL classes. One article even put that number at 30 million. But I think the 30 mil is an exaggeration.
Two million for what sized population?
Assuming the stat is correct, we would assume that drug usage as a percentage has never changed. Like ever.
Why? The judge who wrote the article gave 3 years - 1914, 1979, and the year of publication. If the stat is right, it doesn't mean drug addiction rates always remain the same, just that it's the same for those 3 years which include years when drugs were legal and when they were illegal.
But where is Ramo's regression analysis with all the "proper" variables.
I explained that already, You don't need that analysis when compiling raw data about the percent of addicts in a population. You do need a more in depth analysis if you want to understand why addiction rates fluctuate within a segment of the drug using population. If the number of morphine addicts was higher in 1865 than 1860, we'd need to examine what happened in the intervening years. In that case, the US Civil War.
Of course, I will still offer the hypothesis that crack-cocaine consumption and violent crime are very much symbiotic.
To a degree, sure. I have to believe 1 million people using crack will commit more crime than if the same people/population wasn't. But because of the drug war, we don't know how much crime is caused by black market forces. Crime increased dramatically under alcohol prohibition, but there was supposedly less alcohol consumption...
Regarding the decrease in violent crime, yes, one part of that is in fact that most of the worst offenders (crack dealers) were either thrown in jail, others were killed off. However I still feel that interdiction efforts to break the backs of some of the dealers has had a huge impact on the situation.
That's a tricky proposition since more than a million people are in jail and roughly half are in for drug violations. It would seem obvious that jailing these people would reduce all crime, but if drugs were legal, drugs would no longer be a crime leaving us to research those actions that are crimes regardless of the legal status of drugs, like homicide. And the relevant question becomes, not if jailing 500,000 drug law violaters reduced homicides, but if the homicide rate is higher with drugs being illegal or when drugs are legal.
From those stats, it's clear homicide rates are much higher when drugs are illegal. Realizing a small decline from an already high rate is not evidence of success when the rate was much lower when drugs were legal.
In LA for example, some of the gangs have made a comeback because the CRASH units aren't out there intimidating them. (That's only one factor but the CRASH guys certainly have a big impact). I'm sure you remember the purpose of CRASH when you were here. Basically they go out and harass gang bangers to keep them off the streets.
I was watching a forum put on by the Clinton Administration on C-SPAN. A sheriff from a small town in Nevada was complaining that violent drug gangs had begun setting up shop in his town. His experience was not unique, all across the country this phenomenon was happening. Why? Because drugs are illegal. Handing over such a large market to criminals will only cause the criminals to expand just as the Mafia used alcohol prohibition to expand their activities.
The violence occured BEFORE any interdiction went specifically after crack.
The violence occured within a black market, we don't hear about shootouts between Miller High Life and Budweiser over marketshare. The interdiction may have lessend crime after a while, but it escalated crime first. Sociologists (I know, link? ) I've heard explain how interdiction can cause even more crime. The cops go in and break up the dominant gang and a vacuum is created for competing gangs try to take over the market. But again, the relevant question is whether or not the homicide rate was higher before the drug laws or after. Btw, it is noteworthy how drug prohibition led to crack - the poor man's cocaine. Interdict cocaine and drive up the price, and the market finds a way to provide the cocaine in another, cheaper form. Pot interdiction under Nixon led to more heroin and cocaine production and smuggling.
GP -
They are pretty juvinile in their econ knowledge. Sometimes they even say stuff that is anti-libertarian without knowing it.
Hmm...looking at your post I see no proof for your assertions, how mature...
Roland and el freako would be proud. 
But there's also this thing called historical observation and another thing called empirical analysis, as well. 
Tweet
Comment