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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: shades who wrote (47177)	1/17/2006 1:39:08 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

BWAHAHA - that was funny gpowell - I didnt know you had it in you! Oh it’s there, in nearly every post. Ok - turning plants and chemicals into weed, meth, ice, painkillers are very valued goods and services to many people. So much so several states are beginning to reflect on thier state laws regarding drugs. If the people want alcohol and meth to feel wealthy - should they not be allowed to have what they want in whatever quantities they want? Most actions by individuals produce both positive and negative externalities. The reason we are freer today than in 1916 is because the collective wisdom (read: “pretense to knowledge”) of the day was that a proper role of government was to ensure that all citizens produced positive externalities to the best of their ability. One of the ways this manifested itself in the US was the all draft army of WWI – one could not join the Army – you had to be drafted, as the state took it upon itself to decide where manpower was best applied. What made the early part of this century less free than today was the pretense to knowledge that the government had the correct incentives and the ability to acquire all the knowledge required to engineer a higher state of collective utility than individual action. Note that it is my thesis that this mindset lead directly to the great depression. It is no coincidence that Herbert Hoover was known as the great engineer. You might also want to review the actions of other governments of the world in the early part of this century. That being said, history provides us with a rich set of justifications for collective individual action, i.e. a role for government. If addicts were producing sufficient negative externalities from their choices then it is to be expected that some institution would undoubtedly move to minimize that impact. No - not that they exist - but that they seem to be growing in number among the children/teens of the small towns I used to live. Weed was much harder to distribute than the new designer pills - thats easy - easy to move, conceal, take - wrapping a blunt and smoking - that was time consuming and hard and troublesome. The delivery mechanism fundamentally changed drugs adoption rate in several of these towns amongst the youth. Example - there was a restaurant in one of these towns - texas roadhouse - most of the workers there used ex pills - for fun sometimes a gpowell type would come in and they would dissolve the pills into his drink or food. I’m guessing you are young, or have limited life experience. BTW, you should have asked how I could assert that wealth was increasing if wealth is subjective.