Freedom Isn't Free...

Milton Friedman passed away yesterday. Most people don't know who he is/was and that's cool. What you should know is that the dude changed pretty much every universally held economic paradigm and we now operate according to his principals.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/milton-friedman-patron-saint-of-freemarket-economics/2006/11/17/1163266781427.html

Friedman was into free markets and the inherent freedoms that go along with them. I have argued for many moons that drugs (or some) should be legalized. For several reasons:

1) To shut up the people that only talk about that (thank you Ryan Conner)
2) To create a free market that will allow for real income
3) To eliminate the hypocrisy of having a substance be banned and fund places to help with recovery from the same banned substance
4) To eliminate an ENORMOUS % of crime in America
5) To make the product safer for those that choose to do it anyway
6) To re-allocated the huge amount of money spent each year attacking the supply (which is like a hydra; for every one head cut off, more will take its place); not to mention the danger we put service people in trying to fight drug armies
7) To reduce the power that corrupt, organized criminals have in Latin American countries where the drugs are sourced.

To recap: More $$ for the US, reduction in spending resulting in even more $$, reduction in crime while spending less resources to fight crime, increase in safety for users and general public.

Now, we will never see this. Not in many years anyway. The reason is that the 'moral arguments' won't go away. Kids laugh at the ads targeted at them as they smoke weed. I have never really done any drugs (at pot brownies a few times. A couple of those times were horribly ineffective) but I could have had I wanted to. The point is they are out there, they are accessible, they are dangerous, the country is losing money and people because we are fighting an unnecessary war (sound familiar?). Right now, the 'most free society in the world' as we purport ourselves to be is a hypocrite: Oh yeah, be free, pursue whatever you want...that is unless we find it objectionable (aka, boys can't kiss boys, don't smoke weed in your own home etc.).

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." -Thomas Jefferson