Eric Sterling has a good piece at Forbes: The War On Drugs Hurts Businesses and Investors
This is something that we need to be getting on the radar more — the fact that the drug war actually hurts business, damages the labor pool, reduces productivity and buying power within the legitimate economy.
Every now and then we hear the government talk about the billions in “lost productivity” due to drugs, when in fact it is lost productivity due to drug policy.
It’s time for business to start grumbling about the unfair burden that the drug war puts on their ability to recruit trained employees, and increase productivity and profits, and how the violence and corruption of the drug war poisons the market.
That one rude gesture has cost you over $10k BigBro. Gonna cost a bunch more too. I will not contribute one cent to copykat clones of the regimes my grandfather served so valiantly against a century ago.
???
It has always been my understanding, that not everything believed a ‘free-market truth’ is freely marketable. Therefor, I have a solemn duty while standing to attention under my family’s flag – family motto: what doesn’t drive you crazy isn’t worth a wank – to avoid all beliefs that cause such severe emotional bondage, as to drive all involved to untimely and wrongly understood metaphors. So, If I may repeat myself: Unless you provide us all with a happy end, I will be forced to withdraw my appendage from your notorious bayoubrial, and seek my freedom elsewhere!
Yes.
A few years back, one of the (wholly interchangable) DrugCzars (when there’s been so many, how can this be a sign of success?) was threatening to close the Canadian border over the (FALSELY) ballyhooed ‘BC Bud”, he got schooled here and elsewhere about the economic damage that would happen in the US were that to be attempted.
(With no warehouses, most US companies only keep 3 days worth of stock on hand, and a border closure would result in massive losses on our side of the border, and the Canadians can sell their wares, elsewhere. Pull that stunt now, post-Meltdown, and America goes under, for good, maybe.)
And one more thing: it’s a hallmark of prohibs to try to dehumanize people. And this ‘productivity’ bit is a perfect example; reducing us to to the level of the machine, or worse, elevating it above us. As if people had value only in an industrial sense. Sure gives you a window into how they ultimately view their fellow citizens…
Sorry to confuse. I don’t enjoy trivial unwarranted harrassment on the roadways as I pry a few bucks out of the Linoleum Trade. You will not treat me like that ever again, Big Brother. 2 years out of business, how’s the revenue stream now? Ya eat yer own young, ya freak.
The essence of a good economy (and a good society) is the mutual trust, integration, and cooperation of as high a percentage of the population as possible. The drug war produces the exact opposite: distrust, segregation, and disenfranchisement.