State Marijuana Laws Moving Towards Legalization

From USA Today:

Attorney General Eric Holder last fall announced that raiding medical marijuana facilities would be the lowest priority for U.S. law enforcement agents — a major shift that is spurring many states to re-examine their policies. The American Medical Association recommended in November that Congress reclassify marijuana as a drug with possible medicinal benefit.

At least 14 states this year — some deeply conservative and Republican-leaning, such as Kansas — will consider legalizing pot for medical purposes or lessening the penalties for possessing small amounts for personal use. Fourteen other states and the District of Columbia already have liberalized their marijuana laws.

This is all to the good, of course. But it still bothers me that reasons like "pot is no worse than alcohol" are usually the only  justifications offered for  legalization. Why not argue that a government-issued uniform, shiny badge,  and nightstick don't absolve cops from the moral law the  rest of humanity is bound to? "Legalization" of victimless crimes is more properly understood as forbidding our "protectors" from  grabbing, shackling, and kidnapping  innocent people whose habits politicians disapprove of.

Mainstream Economics

This clip from The Onion in 2008 really sounds like any mainstream media conversation about the economy. 

Public Diplomacy: Foreign Intervention Part II

A Senate hearing on Wednesday, March 10^th, “The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy,” explained quite well where our diplomatic priorities are regarding what Senators in the Foreign Relations committee called, “Public Diplomacy.”

Chairman Kaufman explained that there is a need for the United States to “promote soft power” to the outreach of foreign populations. Essentially, public diplomacy is the act of one state influencing the culture of another by means of television, religion, radio, or internet; it is influencing another state by any means other than the military or hard power. At face value, this sounds wonderful. At least our government is no longer resorting to the dropping of bombs in foreign countries as an act of negotiation. 

Senator Wicker testified and noted that the Federal government has spent $10 billion on public diplomacy since September 11^th, 2001 and plans to spend another $7.5 billion over the next five years. The plan was to target Pakistan and work with USAID, the same government agency operated by Stuart Bowen, in sending internal aid and internal educational benefits to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Capitalism vs. Free Markets

Anyone who has seen any of my YAL posts on capitalism or economics probably knows that I'm a big fan of the left-libertarian/mutualist school of thought.  We of this mindset always try to ask the question:   Are capitalism and a free market necessarily the same thing?

While I greatly appreciate the Austrian School of Economics, in particular its views on business cycle theory, monetary policy, and government, I break from Austrian theory on the historical development and current nature of capitalism.  For example, I take issue with Ludwig von Mises's claims that the industrial revolution was such a wonderful thing for the common people.  He writes in Economic Policy:

All the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled.

Well, China's population has increased at a faster rate over the past 50 years than the United States,' so I suppose that this "single statistic" must mean that China has been a better place to live during this time.  I think we all know this is not the case.  Hence the falsity of the idea held by many capitalists that "growth" is always an ultimate good.