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From: fagin@ucbvax.ARPA (Barry Steven Fagin)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Drugs are sold in a free market?
Message-ID: <5406@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 10-Mar-85 17:48:18 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.5406
Posted: Sun Mar 10 17:48:18 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 05:00:47 EST
References: <679@ccice5.UUCP> <325@mhuxm.UUCP> <8274@watarts.UUCP> <787@topaz.ARPA> <703@ccice5.UUCP> <644@mhuxt.UUCP> <712@ccice5.UUCP>
Reply-To: fagin@ucbvax.UUCP (Barry Steven Fagin)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 32
Summary: 

In article <712@ccice5.UUCP> rdz@ccice5.UUCP (Robert D. Zarcone) writes:
>> 
>>      Notice that he said "In a free market".  The sale and distribution of
>> drugs can hardly be thought of as "free market" conditions.  Notice that
>> if there *were* a free market for drugs, the price would fall so far that
>> dope dealers wouldn't be making big bucks.  Even drugs like nicotene and
>> alcohol are heavily taxed and controlled by the big G.
>> -- 
>> Jeff Sonntag
>
>I don't want this to sound insulting Jeff, but if you don't believe that
>drug dealing isn't a "free market", you don't seem to know much about it.
> (text saying that what we have basically is a free market in drugs...)

This was an incredible posting.  How can anyone possibly maintain that
the free market operates in the buying and selling of narcotics?  Perhaps
the laws of supply and demand hold here; where there's a demand
there'll be a supply.  But where's the competition?  Completely absent,
since drug production and distribution is controlled by monopolistic
organizations who use violence to keep out competitors and to gain
new markets.  What matters it that the risk involved may be low?  As
long as legitimate businesses are forbidden by law to sell narcotics,
we'll never have a free market.  

Surely even posters out there who think drugs should be illegal will
agree that the free market doesn't apply here.  Someone should explain
to the author the difference between a free market and a black one.


--Barry
-- 
Barry Fagin @ University of California, Berkeley