Prompted by “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Marijuana and Taxes”: http://www.hightimes.com/read/everything-you-ever-wanted-know-about-marijuana-and-taxes
I needed to avoid writing today, because I have so much other work to do, but I simply couldn’t let this go.
Marijuana is easy to grow, and lots of people grow it. The legal system has been unable to control marijuana production under prohibition; they can’t control it under a ‘regulate and tax’ system unless they make the legal market more attractive than the illegal market.
Traditional political leftists champion the ‘tax and regulate’ mantra for promoting the direly needed end of the mass suffering by drug prohibition addiction (well, only in the case of cannabis — a plant for which, experimentally scientifically speaking, is harmless upon proper use). That’s great for those leftists, but does nothing outside of that political mindset — so persuasion is excessively limited to the detriment of those mass sufferers.
“They” are government and when they get in the way of overwhelmingly complex systems — things go (too often very) wrong. That’s due to conflicts of interest such as favoritism against public safety, and/or inevitable incompetence upon tinkering with overwhelmingly complex systems (like a child working/playing with a real car). Imagine if you had to consciously control your entire body right now. Trillions of cells are under your conscious command, so why are you reading this while chaos ensues?
Traditional leftists always turn to government to coerce solutions. The result is always some form of prohibition, which includes textured prohibitions in the form of complex regulations (mini-bans) that rigidly establish market force dams inevitably causing all sorts of abusive results.
The free market (economy) is an overwhelmingly complex system. Like the weather, it needs to flow freely by default.
You likely think the economy is doing well right now (especially if you get your economic news on television), but math isn’t on your side. Wild market fluctuations recently warn of repeating the 2008 problem. None of the solutions put in place (injecting unbacked currency with zero interest rates) has actually worked. The idea of artificially creating demand to grow the economy is an outright lie (GDP doesn’t grow merely by injecting more currency), and our society is at terrible risk these days of a serious credit bubble collapsing (why gold and similar precious metals — which have maintained steady value for thousands of years — has been bought to greatly raise their price).
Overwhelmingly complex systems are meant to flow naturally from worst through best. A government (to optimally preserve that flow) should only interfere when actual harm is done (unhealthy market buildup, environmental harm, etc.) Even then, however, everyone must understand that powerful private sector influence always compels government regulatory forces to excessively press upon small businesses (and consumers) without that influence — so really bad for the aforementioned “attractive” quality desired against the black market.
Cannabis can be grown in all 50 states. That means supply can easily far outweigh demand. That means prices from strong competition would plummet to non-black-market level (cannabis is not that expensive to grow and sell). That means people in poor neighborhoods who can greatly benefit from switching from alcohol (and other high-risk drugs) to cannabis for a vastly superior stress management tool are left to (once again) remain stressed out by high costs.
We live in a pros/cons reality. Every action is indeed an opposite and equal reaction (reality needs balance for stability). In economic terms, reality is like a balance sheet, so a gain somewhere must be offset by a balancing loss somewhere else. Economic tinkering is merely temporarily choosing who the winners and losers are. The tinkerers are apparently rigging the system for themselves (via outright fraud without prosecution nonetheless), and the “joke” is on global society when math (reality) inevitably trumps that lie.
Our government has no righteous business interfering in the cannabis marketplace. The plant is harmless upon proper use (education is the only proper solution on this front). Free market forces (not regulations ultimately benefiting “big marijuana”) would weed out the losers (those selling poor if not also harmful cannabis). The price for this wonderful plant would plummet.
Replacing prohibition addiction with textured prohibition addiction is obviously insane, so why the mass acceptance? Because the masses simply don’t care enough.
Christie fails to address the costs of prohibition and the monumental fact that prohibition preserves an illegal market that provides a steady, persistent and unrelenting supply of marijuana to the American public, particularly to underage users.
The prompting piece turns to Chris Christie — a man whom will not win the presidency by any sane assumption.
The conclusion by traditional leftists is prohibition is wrong, but textured prohibition (the only other solution to them) is right for some unsupported reason.
We need a real solution, instead of abusing cannabis popularity to force through the traditional leftist agenda to (among other serious disasters demonstrated all throughout history) corrupt cannabis legality.
That legality already exists due (factually speaking) to the blatantly illegal judicial redefining of the Commerce Clause — that redefining being the “legal” cornerstone of traditional political “progressivism” entrenched in “law”, so unethically ignored in favor of ‘tax and regulate’.
Tax revenue doesn’t grow the economy (too often quite the contrary). Increasing actual demand does. The cannabis (as part of the psychedelic) market offers ample opportunities for new demand (so creates many new jobs from new products and services), but illegal (in an uncorrupted judicial system) regulations are severely crippling that actual solution.
Government is still demonstrably the problem in this case, not the solution.
Reason abuse (too often forming law abuse) is the true scourge against public safety.
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
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