3 ms·

are you commenting only on the source (or rather the source's financial backers) or did you actually find some fault with the article?

tw04 10y ago
There was no hidden agenda. If I was trying to refute the article or the findings I would have. I think the criminalization of marijuana was and continues to be ridiculous. I was simply making the point that the Koch brothers support of marijuana should not give anyone the illusion they're fighting for the little guy.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I agree, the Koch brothers are not motivated by compassion for the poor. However, they are motivated to act in opposition to some of the activities of government that are massively harmful to the poor. I don't think we need to accept the _entire_ agenda of the Koch brothers in order to appreciate that sometimes they're doing the right thing.
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  Are you claiming that regulation exists to help the little guy, and all deregulation is the work of oppressors? Consider the work of the Libertarian Party to, for example, free people to braid hair without requiring a year of training to get a license. Or consider that big corporations love regulations as a way to put barriers in the way of competitors. That's the whole point of the economic idea of "rent seeking", and what public choice economists are talking about when they refer to "regulatory capture". Or for another example, consider that the despite pandering by politicians, economists pretty consistently agree that the minimum wage causes unemployment - the only controversy is by how much. And the origins of the minimum wage came during Jim Crow, when it was first conceived as a way to price minorities out of the job market. So it's silly to say that libertarian's opposition to government regulation is obfuscation to cover screwing the little guy.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    Ha, economists agree is the best troll I have ever heard. There are enough different schools that many economists disagree about anything. Regulatory capture is a different beast from actual regulation. It is what happens when corporations get to stack the government against everyone else via all sorts of lobbying and economical pressure. Regulation now, that is a good thing, which happens when credible issues are detected. Drug prohibition is more law than regulation - there was no real issue with abuse of THC originally. If the issue was, say, low quality or highly addictive drugs, which also damage life, then the proper regulation would be to apply correct scheduling. THC and likely MDMA should probably barely make it to schedule III. (With additional control due to abuse.) There are known medical uses of those and proper guidelines for dosage. (Former is used for pain in cancer patients and more, latter an adjunct in psychotherapy and for recurrent migraines.) Reclassified alcohol would be on the order of schedule II and tobacco as schedule I, with pure nicotine in schedule III. On the other hand, something like GHB would remain in schedule I or less likely move to schedule II, as there are much better and safer hypnotics. Etc. and more. Instead of public safety, someone made "potential to abuse" a priority, based on no or scant data, suppositions and politics. Random crisis handling, where no crisis is present. Making these drugs correctly and usefully regulated should be the main aim of the DEA.
    - CWuestefeld 10y ago
      Regulatory capture is a different beast from actual regulation. It is what happens when corporations get to stack the government No. You do not understand the concept. Regulatory capture can happen even with the purest of intentions. The problem is that for effective regulation, you need experts. Where are you going to get experts, if not people who have experience in the industry? The problem with this is not that they may try to corrupt the process, favoring their former employer or whatever (although that is also a potential problem, but that's outright corruption, not "regulatory capture"). The thing about people from the industry is that they have a set way of looking at things - they're going to have a hard time "thinking outside the box", and because of the very fact that they spent so much time gathering their expertise, they're going to have a world view in which that area is more important than it probably is to the rest of us. With people that are used to thinking about the system in a set way, and who think it's more important relatively than other things, the flavor of the output regulations is going to tend to be to reinforce the way the industry does things, you'll rarely get something that really pulls the industry out of problematic ruts. From what I've read, the Navy actually recognizes this problem in their nuclear fleet, and so refuses to use nuclear experts from the power generation industry. Being the Navy, they can afford to train their own experts, but this obviously can't scale to every place in our lives where regulation shows its face.

tw04 10y ago

There was no hidden agenda. If I was trying to refute the article or the findings I would have. I think the criminalization of marijuana was and continues to be ridiculous. I was simply making the point that the Koch brothers support of marijuana should not give anyone the illusion they're fighting for the little guy.

metaphorm 10y ago
I agree, the Koch brothers are not motivated by compassion for the poor. However, they are motivated to act in opposition to some of the activities of government that are massively harmful to the poor. I don't think we need to accept the _entire_ agenda of the Koch brothers in order to appreciate that sometimes they're doing the right thing.
CWuestefeld 10y ago
Are you claiming that regulation exists to help the little guy, and all deregulation is the work of oppressors? Consider the work of the Libertarian Party to, for example, free people to braid hair without requiring a year of training to get a license. Or consider that big corporations love regulations as a way to put barriers in the way of competitors. That's the whole point of the economic idea of "rent seeking", and what public choice economists are talking about when they refer to "regulatory capture". Or for another example, consider that the despite pandering by politicians, economists pretty consistently agree that the minimum wage causes unemployment - the only controversy is by how much. And the origins of the minimum wage came during Jim Crow, when it was first conceived as a way to price minorities out of the job market. So it's silly to say that libertarian's opposition to government regulation is obfuscation to cover screwing the little guy.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Ha, economists agree is the best troll I have ever heard. There are enough different schools that many economists disagree about anything. Regulatory capture is a different beast from actual regulation. It is what happens when corporations get to stack the government against everyone else via all sorts of lobbying and economical pressure. Regulation now, that is a good thing, which happens when credible issues are detected. Drug prohibition is more law than regulation - there was no real issue with abuse of THC originally. If the issue was, say, low quality or highly addictive drugs, which also damage life, then the proper regulation would be to apply correct scheduling. THC and likely MDMA should probably barely make it to schedule III. (With additional control due to abuse.) There are known medical uses of those and proper guidelines for dosage. (Former is used for pain in cancer patients and more, latter an adjunct in psychotherapy and for recurrent migraines.) Reclassified alcohol would be on the order of schedule II and tobacco as schedule I, with pure nicotine in schedule III. On the other hand, something like GHB would remain in schedule I or less likely move to schedule II, as there are much better and safer hypnotics. Etc. and more. Instead of public safety, someone made "potential to abuse" a priority, based on no or scant data, suppositions and politics. Random crisis handling, where no crisis is present. Making these drugs correctly and usefully regulated should be the main aim of the DEA.
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago
    Regulatory capture is a different beast from actual regulation. It is what happens when corporations get to stack the government No. You do not understand the concept. Regulatory capture can happen even with the purest of intentions. The problem is that for effective regulation, you need experts. Where are you going to get experts, if not people who have experience in the industry? The problem with this is not that they may try to corrupt the process, favoring their former employer or whatever (although that is also a potential problem, but that's outright corruption, not "regulatory capture"). The thing about people from the industry is that they have a set way of looking at things - they're going to have a hard time "thinking outside the box", and because of the very fact that they spent so much time gathering their expertise, they're going to have a world view in which that area is more important than it probably is to the rest of us. With people that are used to thinking about the system in a set way, and who think it's more important relatively than other things, the flavor of the output regulations is going to tend to be to reinforce the way the industry does things, you'll rarely get something that really pulls the industry out of problematic ruts. From what I've read, the Navy actually recognizes this problem in their nuclear fleet, and so refuses to use nuclear experts from the power generation industry. Being the Navy, they can afford to train their own experts, but this obviously can't scale to every place in our lives where regulation shows its face.