janw@inmet.UUCP (09/28/86)
[michael@iris.berkeley.edu ] /* ---------- "The Worldwide drug double-standard" ---------- */ >In the United States, marijuana growers hide their crop in corn- >fields. In Tanzania, coffee growers hide their corn in coffee >fields (cutting down the less profitable, but exportable coffee >is illegal in Tanzania, due to Internation Monetary Fund [con- >trolled largely by the U.S.] restrictions on that country). Is >this an example of the "magic of the marketplace" (Ronald >Reagan)? I suppose it could be called that: all over the world, market forces create underground economies to mitigate for the evils of state interference. Tanzania is of course heavily regulated, with or without IMF- imposed conditions. It is only vulnerable to these impositions because it has to beg IMF for help, to save it from the disastrous consequences of its socialist policies. So this example is a double illustration of the advantages of the market (white or black) and disadvantages of statism. In the marijuana case, the market is violated not for the sake of socialism, but of state-imposed morality - another kind of idiocy, well-tested in the Prohibition days. Again, the magic of the marketplace reacts .