Prices are plunging on the black market, as producers and distributors get more efficent .
Via Freakonomics:
Brian Palmer of Slate reports that cocaine prices have dropped significantly in the past three decades due to economies of scale. As drug traffickers have become more organized (in processing, transport, and retail networks), the price of cocaine has plunged:Note well: The government wants to stop cocaine from coming into the country, yet the price keeps on falling. Government wants to boost energy production, yet oil prices continue to climb.
Since [the end of the 1980s], the price has dropped...down to approximately $140 for a gram of pure cocaine in 2007. (That’s almost 80 percent less than it cost in 1982.)
There is a huge misconception that government can do what it sets out to do. In fact, central planning doesn't work.
Perhaps of interest is the price in Central America, specifically Costa Rica. $20 a gram is not uncommon.
ReplyDelete"There is a huge misconception that government can do what it sets out to do. In fact, central planning doesn't work. "
ReplyDeleteA little thought experiment:
What makes you think "government" wants energy prices to fall?
What makes you think "government" wants drug use to lower?
What makes you think "government" education programs aren't achieving their ends?
What makes you think that the wars in the middle east aren't successful?
The missing picture is the end game. Without that piece of information, it is not easy to judge any of the above.
That is certainly the conspiracy theory view which is false. Otherwise central planning does work and the soviet union fell simply because some elitist wanted it too. Not buying it.
DeleteGovernment is excellent at enriching the oligarchy at the expense of society at large. What is impossible for government to do is to benefit society at large.
DeleteThe Soviet Union indeed fell, but the KGB is still running Russia under their new name of the FSB, with former KGB spy Vladimir Putin being the current Prime Minister and the former President of Russia.
Anonymous is correct in the above. On the matter of the intensive conditioning of the public by government to recoil from conspiracy charges which inculpate it (while at the same time accepting the mendacious, anti-veridical and self-serving conspiracy theories the government promulgates), the following passage by Prof. Murray N. Rothbard is quite edifying:
""
It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any "conspiracy theory of history"; for a search for "conspiracies" means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds. If, however, any tyranny imposed by the State, or venality, or aggressive war, was caused not by the State rulers but by mysterious and arcane "social forces," or by the imperfect state of the world or, if in some way, everyone was responsible ("We Are All Murderers," proclaims one slogan), then there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, an attack on "conspiracy theories" means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the "general welfare" reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions. A "conspiracy theory" can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the State's ideological propaganda.
""
(From Prof. Murray N. Rothbard, "The Anatomy of the State," Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought, Summer 1965, pp. 1-24. Reprinted in a collection of some of Rothbard's articles, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays [Washington, D.C.: Libertarian Review Press, 1974].)
The inherent, unchangeable nature of government is colossal conspiracy. Recall that a conspiracy is simply when two or more people take part in a plan which involves doing something improper to others (of which plan may or may not be kept secret, i.e., secrecy is not a necessary component for actions to be a conspiracy). The mere fact that governments set for themselves legal double-standards is alone quite enough to logically demonstrate that governments themselves consider their own actions improper (i.e., if their same actions which they do to others are done to them they regard it as a crime). Thus, the conclusion that government itself is the largest conspiracy to ever exist or that could ever exist is logically unavoidable.
For extensive documentation on the globalist oligarchy and their self-termed New World Order world government and world religion followed by massive population reduction for the masses and immortality through technology (i.e., transhumanism) for the elite (their "end game", as Anonymous put it), see Sec. 8.2: "Ponerology Vis-à-Vis Politics" of my following article:
James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), April 9, 2012 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything
Robert, obviously this is what happens in depression like conditions like we have now.
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting! Just out of curiosity, what are the consumption rates these days? Are more or less people using cocaine these days? If demand is up, and prices down... well that would be extremely awesome. Not because people are using coke, but because of the ''gov sux'' fact.
ReplyDelete"...$140 for a gram of pure cocaine in 2007."
ReplyDeleteStart a-snortin', morons! That's only three time the price of gold by weight!