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Comment by feralchimp | Hacker News Reader

The most interesting point in this article (for me) was the argument that disruptive market pressure from methamphetamine (in particular, low barrier to entry on the production side) didn't just show "War on Drugs" activity to be ineffective; it showed it to be orthogonal to meaningful consequences.

Production by cartels outpacing interdiction by law enforcement isn't nearly as convincing as an argument for ending WoD activity. On the contrary, it's something that WoD hawks can point to and say "See? We need more [crazy expensive/attractive-nuisance-for-thugs resource X]!"

Modest proposal: The U.S. needs a Manhattan Project for weed/coke/heroin poppy production. Legality of demand isn't required; production just needs to completely undercut the market value of weed/heroin currently imported to the U.S. (or exported from Afghanistan, for example).

Beats subsidizing corn for ethanol, at least.

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Ending the WoD?

That's only what, about one-third to one-half of all law enforcement (and the prison system)?

Do you realize how many jobs there are at stake here.

Of course I've got my tongue in my cheek, but you do see the problem with the problem of ending the war on drugs?

> Do you realize how many jobs there are at stake here.

Of course. Do you realize how many more people are saddled with the cost of providing those worthless jobs[1]?

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parable_of_th...

the problem with externalities is that the people who don't pay their costs have little incentive not to simply leave them off the books.

I don't think that argument holds so strong.

Cops don't just get fired when crime goes down. The number of police employed is pretty flexible, you can keep them on if you want. There are plenty of good uses for police.

I think what's more is that police can use their time for more productive uses.

Solution: anyone who is going to lose their job because of the end of the war on drugs just continues to receive their current salary until their Social Security retirement age, regardless of whether they take a new job or just stop working. It's the only way you'll get buy in from the lower levels of the prison-industrial complex, and ultimately cheaper than continuing what we have now.

> It's the only way you'll get buy in

I don't agree. What you propose would stop the growth of the industry; who in the industry would agree to this, except the very lowest bottom-of-the-barrel employees, like the night-time guards?

Make them do some other type of gov't job. Post office, making roads, whatever. Paying them to sit on their butts - no thanks.

It's better than paying them to ruin other people's lives.

Theirs a similar problem with putting in a flat tax. You'll have lots of accountants and their employees being out of work.

Well, except for the part where calculating income is still as difficult as it was. Somehow, I don't think the piecewise linear function that is progressive taxation is the cause of the difficult parts of the tax code.

It's going to take a lot of LEOs to guard the Manhattan Project weed/coke/heroin territories we instantiate in states that begin with the letter 'I' or 'N'.

"Territories we instantiate in states"? What are you talking about?

What is with the first person plural? The only way "we" are doing this is at a national level. On the other hand individual states could decide for themselves (assuming they can get around federal jurisdiction) but they would certainly not have it done to them.

I will skip over the "instantiate" word choice...

Explain?

I can never tell if people are using "modest proposal" the way it's supposed to be used (highly sarcastic) or the way they think it's supposed to be used ("in my humble opinion"-esque): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

> Modest proposal: The U.S. needs a Manhattan Project for weed/coke/heroin poppy production. Legality of demand isn't required; production just needs to completely undercut the market value of weed/heroin currently imported to the U.S. (or exported from Afghanistan, for example).

> Beats subsidizing corn for ethanol, at least.

I'm a bit confused by this. Are you suggesting the US produce "weed/coke/heroin poppy" to undercut the cartels? And somehow distribute the manufactured product to users? I've got no problem agreeing with your ethanol joke... but just to be sure, you think the US should produce and distribute drugs, including heroin and cocaine, which are highly, highly addictive?

The US already does produce and distribute illegal drugs. They just do it in secret. If you think I'm crazy, just search for: CIA Cocaine. They've actually been caught red-handed a few times.

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