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I'm not so sure Capitalism is the correct term for this (it's the most misused "'ism"). If there was a free market for drugs (legalization), I suspect we would
by cpursley 9y ago
I'm not so sure Capitalism is the correct term for this (it's the most misused "'ism").
If there was a free market for drugs (legalization), I suspect we would not be in a crisis.
- dahdum 9y ago"If there was a free market for drugs (legalization), I suspect we would not be in a crisis." If not in direct crisis we'd always be on the knife's edge of one.
- CalChris 9y agoYes. I think a better term here might be corporate personhood, where corporations have some of the rights that people have while shielding their owners from liability.
- cpursley 9y agoHum. Looks like "corporatism" is a thing: https://www.wordnik.com/words/corporatism https://www.wordnik.com/words/corporatism
- CalChris 9y agoYeah, I was thinking about that but I think corporatism is an effect of corporate personhood. If we're talking about root causes, I think it's the rights we attach to corporations.
- azernik 9y agoThat first definition is actually not the definition in political science circles; there, it refers to the view of society as a collection of associations ("bodies", corpora), which form the metaphorical organs of the "body" that is society. This is a term created by advocates to promote it, and so does not denote necessarily a system that undermines the public interest; the first definition I see of it is the Catholic Church's one in the late 19th century as a "system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest". If this sounds kind of creepy and dictatorial to you, you've got a good head on your shoulders. This semantic distinction is important because a lot of modern leftist rhetoric about fascism is based on a misinterpretation of the term as used in current academic literature and in Fascist ideology of the 1920s and 30s. A defining feature of fascism is corporatism, but this does not mean the unbridled power of big business corporations and certainly is not a good description of current American society. Rather, it refers to the way that undemocratic systems co-opt the organized associations that represent interest groups ("civil society" in current political science literature). See for example the way that the Chinese Communist party traditionally ran the only trade unions, women's rights organizations, etc. in the country; or the way that the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls replaced the Scouts and Wandervögel in Nazi Germany; or the way the Italian Fascist regime ran the economy through a council of hand-picked, compliant representatives of employers and workers. In essence, civil society is transformed from a way for groups to band together and advance their interests, into a transmission belt for the state to control those groups. For more on this topic, including non-Fascist uses of the term, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
- debacle 9y ago> it's the most misused "'ism" Right up there with socialism, ironically. There needs to be a trendier name for regulatory capture.
- WalterSear 9y agoAll truly free markets are eventually for sale, by definition.
- dredmorbius 9y ago"Capitalism" is a label that's come to mean numerous different things to numerous different entities. But some mix of laissez-fair, small-government, complete reliance on decisionmaking at the individual level (except where corporations can impose their preferences over individuals, communities, regions, states, nations, or globally), very strong defences of some kinds of property rights, and an exceptionally high level of un-accounted externalties, seems to capture much the flavour.
- agumonkey 9y agoDrug and free market seems like a nasty bet IMO; too much money, too much immaturity and decrease of rationality. My bet is that most 80% of the time it will degenerate into gangs and cartels.
- Pxtl 9y agoLegalization eliminates the gangs and cartels. The problem is that it makes abuse and misuse into a public health crisis. There are no more gangs of liquor runners - instead we have InBev. People don't go blind from bad bathtub brews anymore, but they kill themselves with overconsumption or even kill others with driving drunk. So legal opioids would presumably mean the same: more abuse, more misuse, but safer and without the cartels.
- cpursley 9y agoI don't understand. What purpose would gangs/cartels serve if drugs were brought into the general legal framework?
- agumonkey 9y agoI spoke to fast, you and your sibling were right.
- Pxtl 9y agoThat's the scary question. Legal opioids would flood the street with cheap, safe (comparatively speaking), legal morphine. What's worse? Morphine flooding a our society as a recreational drug? Think how easily highschoolers can get beer and cigarettes, but with opioids... But our current approach has lead to the widespread adoption of the cheapest, most concentrated, and most dangerous opioid imaginable: Fentanyl. This which has rapidly become the continent's foremost public health plague as it kills a terrifying number of people every year. Would freely available morphine or heroin be better?
- rconti 9y agoSeems like we've already got "how easily highschoolers can get beer and cigarettes, but with opiods". They're doing a lot of the overdosing.