Economics

Who Will the Cartels Support?

This entry was posted in Drug Laws Economics Libertarianism on by

Via Eugene Volokh I see that Jesse Walker at Reason picked up on the absurdity of hastert’s fantasy about George Soros:

In addition to being baseless, Hastert’s accusation doesn’t even make sense. Drug prohibition acts as a price support and a barrier to entry; it helps the cartels maintain their market position. They’re about as likely to fund a legalization campaign as they are to give Denny Hastert an all-expenses-paid vacation in Bermuda or — as long as we’re throwing around groundless insinuations — a free sex tour in Thailand.
Well, on this latter point Jesse misses the mark. The cartels are quite likely to include these types of gifts in their funding, direct or otherwise, of those congress critters who support their market position, i.e., who support ongoing drug prohibition.
Update (9/3): I see that Mark Kleiman picked up on this thought from one of his readers.

Drug War Result

This entry was posted in Capitalism Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Enforcement Libertarianism US Foreign Policy War on Terrorism on by

Science and the market are hard at work in the drug war:

DRUG traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia�s drugs industry.
Why was it worthwhile to traffickers to spend �60,000,000 on this effort:
Such an investment by drugs traffickers is small compared to the earnings from what is the most lucrative business on earth. Traffickers can produce a kilogram of cocaine for less than �1,500. That kilogram will sell in Miami for �14,000, in London for �34,000 and in Tokyo would bring �50,000.
We can all thank the articial pricing created by ongoing domestic and international terrorist activities conducted by US and foreign governments for what promises to be a substantial improvement in both quality and quantity of cocaine on the market.
Via Jacob Sollum at Hit & Run.
NB: At the moment �1 equals $1.79

A Plan

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Economics Election 2004 Federal Government Federalism Libertarianism on by

w and his administration are not well known for providing comprehensive public policy plans for public discussion and possible action. For instance, regarding the economy the bush buzzward is ownership. See here and here. There is not much depth and from a planning perspective these appear to be more like action items without any overall strategy direction. And looking deeper on the bush campaign site finds more of the same kind of thing.
Tyler Cowan proposes a somewhat expanded plan for bush (I presume he’d like kerry to adopt it as well)and does include at least a bit of overarching vision in his 12th point:

Get on TV and tell the nation that a free economy is a critical source of our strength. Tell them you mean it, and then mean it. Economic growth is the greatest long-run gift we can give to the world.
The rest of the list is incomplete but, for the most part, a great start toward implementing the proposed vision.
To all of this Ideablog says:
Big problem: it’s politically impossible.
To which I say, well, that’s ok. What is impossible today happens tomorrow but only if you start talking about it.
This is why, whether you ultimately agree point by point, you should go read Cowan’s proposal, think about it, talk about it, discuss your alternatives, refine it, and go at it again, and again, until we get it closer to right.

Now This is Broadband

This entry was posted in Capitalism Culture Economics Internet on by

Not DSL, not 3 Mbps cable. Nope, this is broadband:

Cairns, North Queensland, Australia, July 6, 2004 – ResearchChannel, an industry leader in Internet distribution of quality content, demonstrated the first successful transmission of full bandwidth High Definition (HD) 1080i video between two desktop computers using high speed networking technology at the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) conference in Cairns, Australia today. Conference attendees were treated to three HD video clips streamed at a sustained data rate of 1.5 gigabits per second. (emphasis added)
And, I think, this is exactly what big media and big cable are afraid of and why we haven’t seen a more agressive roll out of broadband services. Heck, even 100 Mbps full duplex would open the door to massive disintermediation of the media industry.
You might want to check out the huge amount of educational material available to be streamed at the ResearchChannel.