Free Market, Free Will, and Bad Decisions
The Marijuana (Hashish) Dilemna
The truly free market features an expansive notion of marketable products. Therefore, laws which restrict the availability of products goes against the free market, and reflect some priority other than economic prosperity.
The truly free market requires the distribution of good information as to the attribute of products, and the rational consumer who actually makes decisions.
On the other hand, Marijuana is a blight product, which turns a mans mind into a wasteland, and his productivity into an empty desert.
The obvious problem with government restricting this lousy product is that the government becomes corrupted by the process of enforcement. Just because people should not use Marijuana doesn't mean the pathetic government should divert valuable time and resources stopping them from doing it. Any government which puts any kind of significant effort into the process of stopping people from ingesting things that they intend to ingest invariably become corrupt and oppressive.
A more fundamental issue has to do with the difference between not having the opportunity to do something, and between having the opportunity, and deciding not to. Not having the opportunity results inexperience in making good choices. A society which cultivates ignorant, inexperienced citizenry will see its prosperity whither away faster than the enfeebled mind of a pot smoker.
On the other hand, a society which gives its citizens the opportunity to self harm, and accepts the right, and actuality, of citizens harming themselves, will also benefit from having informed, intelligent citizens, and will look forward to a prosperous future.
The United States now has 500,000 people in jail due to Marijuana related crimes- one in every 400 American citizens. This is the sign of ailing nations, with an incompetent government.
By the opposite token, there are other cultures in the world that seek to take away the rights of its citizens to try wasting substances, and the opportunity to reject these through personal experience, rather than as a result of submitting to the dictates of the bully.
The tendency of a government- any government- to seek to regulate a generally harmless- if wasting- substance implies the illegitimacy of that government. A government exists to serve the people... but if the government exhibits a bizarre fixation on limited irrelevant pursuits... spending state resources of honest citizens on its own pathological obsessions... than that government cannot effectively serve the people. The citizens that government was supposed to protect will inevitably suffer.
With respect to the United States, I say this as a citizen not to condemn my own government specifically, but to raise awareness of citizens everywhere... that even if you believe, like I do, that Marijuana wastes human potential... the governmental demand upon its citizens not to use Marijuana implies a complete loss of function by that government... an attempt at distraction from more fundamental issues of facilitating the opportunity of its citizens to achieve its potential.... this way, when you see a politician talking about a "war on drugs" or a "religious imperative" to protect our youth from drugs, you will immediately recognize the lie. Our governments do not in any sense protect the citizens... they exists, in their current form, only to take, and retain, privilege for their own agents, who are themselves half the time hopped up on cocaine...
The citizens will make bad decisions, but, on average, they will make better decisions than the government wants to make for them...
