4 ms·

"assurances to please liberal or socially-conscious users, such as knowing that their opium is "fair-trade" and their cocaine "conflict-free"" - As gleeful as

by Aqueous 12y ago

"assurances to please liberal or socially-conscious users, such as knowing that their opium is "fair-trade" and their cocaine "conflict-free"" - As gleeful as I am that there might be a way out of - or at least around - the drug war, I find these assurances incredibly dubious with no actual regulatory or independent oversight making sure that the substances in question are actually fair trade or conflict free (and obviously there won't be any until the war on drugs ends and addiction is more sensibly treated as a health problem rather than a criminal problem.) There is also absolutely no way - by design - to tell that the person selling you these substances is telling you the truth. This is where a purely libertarian position tends to run into trouble. In a system where there are serious negative externalities involved (is the production of this drug causing environmental damage? is it causing innocent children to die? is it grown without pesticides? will it kill me?) you have absolutely no recourse to protect yourself or others especially if something goes wrong.

dmix 12y ago
Uh, the issues with marketing terms being inaccurate has hardly been solved by regulatory agencies either in mainstream business. Especially retail. I'm not even talking about dangerously mis-labeling products such as in the pharmaceutical industry which continues to happen every year [1] resulting in billion dollar law-suits, I mean terms like 'fair-trade' and 'organic' are mostly bullshit in every industry. I guess that aspect of these markets is more symbolic than a sign of concrete progressiveness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical...
- roywiggins 12y ago
  By and large, "organic" in the US is regulated and has a specific meaning. It's probably the only term that actually is, though. How heavily enforced this is, I don't know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#United_States_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#United_St...
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    Amusingly, that only applies to food afaik, meaning you are free to sell your "organic" sea salt without certification.
derefr 12y ago
I think the libertarian position is: 1. in a free market, 2. with seller reputation, 3. where the seller is the direct producer/grower/manufacturer, rather than the producer retailing through many false, reputationless identities, 4. "fair-trade" and "conflict-free" drugs will simply outcompete the other kinds. Which is to say, if the consumer is willing to pay $X, then any money $N used to pay for guards and guns and drug mules (the "conflict" part) is $N less available for actual chemists and equipment and materials. The guards and guns and drug mules are a sound investment for A. putting down rival operations to ensure a monopoly, or B. avoiding state action at scale, but if A is made impossible (by Tor) and B avoided by technological advances (running headless drug-manufacturing cells rather than a centralized organization), they cease to be rational investments. Without these considerations, "conflict" drugs would have either a higher markup (decreasing marketshare), or a higher ratio of fake/cut product--a lower quality--meaning a worse reputation for the seller (decreasing marketshare). The conflict-free drugs would naturally rise to the top of an efficient marketplace. The simplest comparison is another marketplace commodity which could, for all you know, be cut and low-quality all the time, but which very likely isn't: gasoline. Gas stations which sell at a higher markup go out of business. Gas stations which sell inferior product get a bad reputation, and go out of business. The market takes care of itself, without a regulator having to intercede at any point. (Commodities markets like this are in fact the shining example of where free markets are optimal for consumers, because they get very close to having the "complete information and distributed intelligence" that the Efficient Market Hypothesis assumes. The less commoditized the goods in a market are, the further from efficient it will be.)
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  But (3) is not the case here, presumably - I'd wager that most of the people selling, e.g., cocaine on Silk Road 2.X aren't harvesting the coca leaves themselves. I'm also not sure that (4) will out-compete the other kinds. That's assuming that consumers place a higher value on fair-trade and conflict-free than they do on getting a cheaper product. What if fair-trade-conflict-free costs 5x what the unverified stuff does?
  - baddox 12y ago
glomph 12y ago
It seems pretty implausible honestly. Most people order their stuff from people in the same country as them as otherwise it risks being caught at the boarder. This means the product is probably still crossing boarders in the same way it always has. And that generally means cartel /organized crime played a role. It seems far harder to believe that both fair trade sources and conflict free delivery systems sprung up than the idea that anonymous dealer is telling fibs.
baddox 12y ago
It always comes down to trust though, right? Well, unless you can physically travel and do an audit of the production chain in person, which the average customer cannot. So then your claim becomes that the "purely libertarian position" is less trustworthy than whatever alternative you are considering, which I presume is a government regulatory agency. That's certainly a plausible claim, but I think you would need to go into more detail about why you think the one is less trustworthy than the other.
declan 12y ago
> This is where a purely libertarian position tends to run into trouble You're right that outlawing free markets -- such as banning Politically Unpopular Drugs -- can cause problems for free markets. :) Similarly, if selling books becomes a crime, and you buy books on the black market, it may become more difficult to verify claims about the paper used in the printing process coming from renewable resources. The problem lies not in the claim about renewability, but in the underlying book ban. Perhaps we can conclude from this that processes relying on free markets may not work as well if markets aren't free? Remember that libertarians != anarchists; I've never seen a libertarian marching in the streets against laws in their state or province designed to prevent fraudulent claims about fair trade coffee or renewable forests.

by Aqueous 12y ago

dmix 12y ago

Uh, the issues with marketing terms being inaccurate has hardly been solved by regulatory agencies either in mainstream business. Especially retail. I'm not even talking about dangerously mis-labeling products such as in the pharmaceutical industry which continues to happen every year [1] resulting in billion dollar law-suits, I mean terms like 'fair-trade' and 'organic' are mostly bullshit in every industry. I guess that aspect of these markets is more symbolic than a sign of concrete progressiveness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical...

roywiggins 12y ago
By and large, "organic" in the US is regulated and has a specific meaning. It's probably the only term that actually is, though. How heavily enforced this is, I don't know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#United_States_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#United_St...
- tedunangst 12y ago
  Amusingly, that only applies to food afaik, meaning you are free to sell your "organic" sea salt without certification.

derefr 12y ago

I think the libertarian position is: 1. in a free market, 2. with seller reputation, 3. where the seller is the direct producer/grower/manufacturer, rather than the producer retailing through many false, reputationless identities, 4. "fair-trade" and "conflict-free" drugs will simply outcompete the other kinds. Which is to say, if the consumer is willing to pay $X, then any money $N used to pay for guards and guns and drug mules (the "conflict" part) is $N less available for actual chemists and equipment and materials. The guards and guns and drug mules are a sound investment for A. putting down rival operations to ensure a monopoly, or B. avoiding state action at scale, but if A is made impossible (by Tor) and B avoided by technological advances (running headless drug-manufacturing cells rather than a centralized organization), they cease to be rational investments. Without these considerations, "conflict" drugs would have either a higher markup (decreasing marketshare), or a higher ratio of fake/cut product--a lower quality--meaning a worse reputation for the seller (decreasing marketshare). The conflict-free drugs would naturally rise to the top of an efficient marketplace. The simplest comparison is another marketplace commodity which could, for all you know, be cut and low-quality all the time, but which very likely isn't: gasoline. Gas stations which sell at a higher markup go out of business. Gas stations which sell inferior product get a bad reputation, and go out of business. The market takes care of itself, without a regulator having to intercede at any point. (Commodities markets like this are in fact the shining example of where free markets are optimal for consumers, because they get very close to having the "complete information and distributed intelligence" that the Efficient Market Hypothesis assumes. The less commoditized the goods in a market are, the further from efficient it will be.)

pavel_lishin 12y ago
But (3) is not the case here, presumably - I'd wager that most of the people selling, e.g., cocaine on Silk Road 2.X aren't harvesting the coca leaves themselves. I'm also not sure that (4) will out-compete the other kinds. That's assuming that consumers place a higher value on fair-trade and conflict-free than they do on getting a cheaper product. What if fair-trade-conflict-free costs 5x what the unverified stuff does?
- baddox 12y ago

glomph 12y ago

It seems pretty implausible honestly. Most people order their stuff from people in the same country as them as otherwise it risks being caught at the boarder. This means the product is probably still crossing boarders in the same way it always has. And that generally means cartel /organized crime played a role. It seems far harder to believe that both fair trade sources and conflict free delivery systems sprung up than the idea that anonymous dealer is telling fibs.

baddox 12y ago

It always comes down to trust though, right? Well, unless you can physically travel and do an audit of the production chain in person, which the average customer cannot. So then your claim becomes that the "purely libertarian position" is less trustworthy than whatever alternative you are considering, which I presume is a government regulatory agency. That's certainly a plausible claim, but I think you would need to go into more detail about why you think the one is less trustworthy than the other.

declan 12y ago

> This is where a purely libertarian position tends to run into trouble You're right that outlawing free markets -- such as banning Politically Unpopular Drugs -- can cause problems for free markets. :) Similarly, if selling books becomes a crime, and you buy books on the black market, it may become more difficult to verify claims about the paper used in the printing process coming from renewable resources. The problem lies not in the claim about renewability, but in the underlying book ban. Perhaps we can conclude from this that processes relying on free markets may not work as well if markets aren't free? Remember that libertarians != anarchists; I've never seen a libertarian marching in the streets against laws in their state or province designed to prevent fraudulent claims about fair trade coffee or renewable forests.