3 ms·

I wonder if the Netherlands would be a good place to experiment with the libertarian approach of just legalizing everything. Like, if the drugs are manufacture

I wonder if the Netherlands would be a good place to experiment with the libertarian approach of just legalizing everything. Like, if the drugs are manufactured in the Netherlands already, legalization won't change that. The hope would be that legalization would reduce the associated violence and corruption. You'd have legitimate, "above-board" producers outcompeting the assholes, with state power on their side. Just have to do it quickly before state power gets totally corrupted. I guess the best counterargument would be that export is the key issue, and receivers of Dutch imports would cut those imports off of if the Dutch aren't making even a token effort to restrict illegal-in-recipient-country drug smuggling.

rocqua 4y ago
> I wonder if the Netherlands would be a good place to experiment with the libertarian approach of just legalizing everything. No, for two reasons. First the political climate here is turning against legalization. We are pushing back on the free sale of weed, and production was never legalized, and attempts at legalizing production are consistently pushed back. Second, our production of non-weed is inherently criminal. Legalizing it will only give these criminal enterprises a legitimate facade. The production is part of a bigger criminal organization, so legalizing it won't actually turn them away from crime. The criminal organizations are not 'small time doing crime to pay the bills'. Our most notorious captured criminal was recently suspected to be attempting to hire mercenaries from the Balkans (I forget which country) to break him out of prison with a helicopter escape. That is intentional criminality.