imported post
Task Force 16 wrote:
I don't know about everything Marshaul said, being the sole problem over here. It doesn't matter what country you want to look at, there's always going to be a small segment of any society that simply refuses to behave themselves. It's been that way since day one of mans history, and will continue to be that way until every last one of us is anialated from the face of this planet.
To think that it could ever be othewise is an eutopian fantasy.
There is a difference from utopian fantasy and a simple recognition that we have a higher murder rate than other first world nations. Flowing from this recognition should be the conclusion that there is something at play here other than the general and simplistic "some apples are always bad".
I've spent enough time around people involved with drugs (although not the MS types), and what I've seen isn't a whole bunch of bad apples, it's normal people driven to antisocial ends by poor incentives.
Sure, get rid of the drug problem, there will still be bad apples. But we'll have a murder rate that looks like the UKs, and other crime rates that look like what we have now.
There are whole communities where everybody is involved in the drug trade. It's way more than just a few bad apples.
Bad apples is when some punk robs a liquor store. Bad apples is not the endemic, systemic drug problem and associated violence we have in the U.S.
It's all about incentives. In fact, pretty much everything is all about incentives, whether one is concerned with government efficacy or aggressive pollution.
I tend to think that this is one of the big concepts that defines the modern libertarian, along with an adherence to the NAP: how do incentives fit into any scenario?
The world is not filled with evil people (I think being a libertarian implies this conclusion for most people). Though there are a minority of people who are evil, most people are self-serving but not genuinely anti-social, and will happily work productively in a cooperative society with division of labor if the incentives are right.
The incentives are all wrong for the indigent in a community where drug dealing represents $25k a week profit.
I'll point out that there is another, less "liberal" side-effect of drug legalization, which nevertheless goes right along with the libertarian notion of incentives: if you take away drug revenues, all those drug dealers will have had their income ripped from them with no control over the outcome.
Whether you think drug dealers are evil or just poorly incentivized, what better reaction that to take all their money?
If they've evil, it's a good punishment. If it's just bad incentives, now they've got an incentive to get a real job.
Hard work isn't as glamorous as the hip-hop lifestyle, but when it's their only choice I suspect will begin to see inner-city youths attempt to make something out of their lives.
