I have a relatively new YouTube channel and have begun posting videos semi-regularly. I did two this week; here’s one of them. This is the only time I’ve spoken in any detail about the war on drugs.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/17037/futility-and-the-war-on-drugs/
Futility and the War on Drugs
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Short. Concise. Right to the point. Great job summing this issue up in 6 minutes. Let’s hope this gets a lot of hits.
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As someone who remembers at least their photography and TV & film electives from back in high school, I would suggest, resources permitting, that you record your future talks in the style of giving oneself an interview. That is: somewhat off center (to the left or right, your choice there), facing at about a 25-45 degree angle towards whichever direction faces the center of the field. Staring straight forward as when making eye contact with someone can be taken as formal and authoritative, which works to the benefit of a news anchor or reporter but is usually a bit forceful for opinion-oriented applications. Placing yourself off center and breaking eye contact implies more casual conversation with a less personal third party, a context which I think would make viewers more comfortable with hearing your views.
You might also want to consider zooming in to focus more on your head and shoulders than the rest of your body. Shooting much of your torso, especially from a head on position such as this, is reminiscent of amateur webcam replies (though it seems you benefit from much nicer than average recording equipment compared to them) and harder to take seriously. I think this along with the above tweak could stand to considerably improve the effectiveness of your presentation.
And of course, your content is certainly more than satisfactory. The mention of just how many different people went into the case of the homeless man stands out as a particularly telling and insightful as the inefficiency inherent to enforcement of drug prohibitions. I just felt that I noticed your overall presentation first and what you had to say second.
I appreciate the feedback. I always find those quasi-interview poses fake. I myself prefer someone who just looks at me instead of pretending to be interviewed. Moreover, I find amateur webcam replies to be exactly the opposite: far from focusing on the person’s entire upper half, it’s some guy’s face hunched over the webcam built into his laptop. I much prefer my relaxed presentation at my desk to that.
I personally think the way you are doing it is great. But I think this comment, “is usually a bit forceful for opinion-oriented applications” may be about a difference in culture. I know when I make a stand on a position is one of the times I’m definitely making eye contact and looking at who I am speaking to. If it’s small talk/etc. then I don’t usually do that (but then again, I find small talk annoying generally)
It’s a personality thing, too. Some people are naturally passive or submissive and find themselves uncomfortable making eye contact. This is the origin of averting your eyes when meeting with a person of high rank, eye contact indicates a sense of equality and people more prone to following or taking orders naturally find it difficult to keep eye contact.
The more dominant and assertive people would view the interview-style approach to be a weakness and subconsciously dismiss the speaker’s words by assuming he’s inferior since there isn’t any eye contact.
The reason I was taught to do so in the above fashion owes itself to how speaking on TV (and via extension any recording), has very little to do with speaking to another person face to face. Any conversation you could have with a viewing audience is inherently one-sided. You have complete control over the subject for the duration of the recording, already a very assertive position. By yourself speaking to a camera there’s no one to receive input from, so you create context via visual cues to try to emulate the scenarios where you would speak to someone in that fashion.
To provide some examples. You wouldn’t really have a conversation with someone where you stared directly at them and spoke to them without expecting any response from them. This is the sort of context reserved for things like lectures and briefings, with one designated speaker addressing a designated audience. It puts the speaker in an elevated, authoritative position, which is why you see it used a lot on the news and during public service announcements (You may remember that Barack Obama would often face directly forward during his announcements during the 2008 campaign, cementing his status from the get go via this context). This works to the benefit of speech intended to be fact more than opinion (and yes, even libertarian political theory counts as opinion; never commit the conceit of simply assuming your opinion is fact for your audience), since by having this much control over the “conversation” by default it can come off as beating the audience over the head with your opinion, not that I’ll say this is what happened in this case.
In comparison the quasi-interview approach, as Mr. Woods refers to it as, arguably does more to emulate the context of having a regular conversation with another person by downplaying the inherently one-sided nature of speaking to a camera. By superimposing a false third party as the center of the speaker’s attention, even though the audience knows they’re the ones being spoken to they don’t bear the brunt of this lecture-esque quality directly. It’s “fake” yes, but so is the conversation you’re trying to have with the audience, so I wouldn’t be too fast in ruling out such methods simply for lack of authenticity.
But I didn’t provide my input on this as to criticize Mr. Woods’s work or message. It’s his YouTube channel and he can use whatever methods of publicizing himself he feels are best for his purposes. I only thought to share what I felt proved most effective in terms of presentation, based on what I know.
I generally consider myself somewhat passive, and also sensitive to how things are presented, and I’ve just watched this video and find his style very appropriate and not intimidating. In my mind he is putting forward his position in a direct manner, and not imposing on me at all. I don’t think an off-center approach would be appropriate.
100% in agreement Mr. Woods. Every time I heard GWB talk about “compassionate conversatism” this issue would pop into my head immediately. Where are all these compassionate people on both sides (not the libertarian one obviously) of the political spectrum?
It’s very difficult to be compassionate by force. Whenever force is involved, it ceases to be compassionate.
You have it exactly right, Tom. The war on drugs, in particular the Latin American part of it, involves huge expenditures of US resources with no real results. It also involves significant loss of life on the part of the local military, police, and civilians in those countries. All this because some politicians decided to embark on an impossible mission of eliminating certain substances by force. It’s disgusting.
Does it make the government more powerful to fight a war on drugs or is it actually making it weaker ?
What does the government win by fighting the war on drugs ? What are it’s motivations ?
Huge amounts of financial profits for themselves, friends, and associates. In addition to political power and contributions to election campaigns.
prisons = profits. The ‘war on drugs’ is itself a multi-billion dollar industry with massive amounts of entrenched interests that directly and indirectly profit from it.
I just realized that the war on drug (users) is very similar to IP laws: They crack down on people doing peaceful things with their own property, justify reduction of liberty in order to search people on suspicion of it, seize property due to it, reduce availability of the product so that suppliers can charge a price many times what the market would otherwise provide it with, people everywhere ignore the law.
“What does the government win by fighting the war on drugs?”
Power. The WOD (I include the Roaring 20′s and the banning of liquor in this) has been a great sledgehammer for smashing apart the Bill Of Rights.
Look at the recent court ruling where the Judges now say it’s legal to bash someone’s door down if an officer thinks he hears someone trying to dispose of illegal narcotics. Flushing your toilet before answering the door is now probable cause enough for a warrentless search.
The WOD serves the same purpose that “Spy Mania” did in the USSR during 1960′s. The state amasses huge personal armies of heavily armed “protectors” and gobbles up wealth (for their own benefit) at an alarming rate all the in the name saving the nation from a vastly overblown threat.
The WOD is like the WOT. It can never be won and the state will never stop demanding more resources to fight it.
I have always found it amazing that people are ready to pay huge sums of money to poison themselves with drugs and that other people are willing to risk their lives and freedom to sell those drugs.
How can a highly controversial and high risk “commodity” be so lucrative ? Anybody who would try to sell drugs would get into trouble on both sides of the law, there is huge huge risks involved in drug trading and people do it anyways.
I don’t know who’s more stupid, the government for fighting a war on drugs or the people for buying and selling drugs. We’re talking poisonous health destroying stuff here. There are things more important in life like food, clothing, shelter etc.
It’s absolutely incredible that there are billionaire drug lords. And most of drug consumption is for social reasons, to fit in, and not even for the drug’s effects. Those who take illegal drugs to alleviate pain are actually rare.
Someone should invent a drug free and legal way to fit in that would be even cooler than drugs despite the fact that it would not be forbidden.
Something that there should be no reason to crack down on and something that there would be no reason to look down on.
The guy that will find a better alternative to drugs, one that will be impossible to make illegal and one that will be even more “cool” and “fit in” than drugs will make a fortune.
People like the drugs. They like what the drugs do and how they make them feel. It’s not always just about being stoned either. Some drugs are performance enhancers of various different stripes.
Basic supply and demand economics. Making drugs illegal does nothing to stem the public’s appetite for drugs, however it does induce artificial scarcity. The better the enforcement gets the more profitable it is to be a drug dealer.
However most businessmen are not interested in engaging in such high risk activity so the people that are generally failures at life… people that are stupid, violent, have pathological personality issues, etc etc. are willing to risk it for the profits they can make. They can make much more money violating the law and providing black market services then they ever would if they had to compete with legitimate business men.
With huge risks come potential for huge profit.
Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jung
Simply smuggling marijuana he was able to make about 250,000 dollars a month. That’s 1970′s dollars. Later on when he moved to cocaine he was able make upwards of 10′s of millions of dollars with a single run across the border. He didn’t sell it or really buy it. He just provided transportation.
Go to Miami sometimes. Look at the large buildings. Many, if not most, of them were built using money from drug trafficking.
Oh, and not everybody gets caught.
Different people have different priorities.
Also not all of them are life destroyers. Many of them have very little to no detrimental effects on a person’s health as long as they are kept in moderation. Many drug users are extremely highly functional.
Go to a board meeting of any top fortune 500 company. Depending on the age and geographical location I can pretty much garrantee you that between 10 and 30% of people who own the corporations are significant recreational drug users. Cocaine, Majaruana, prescription drugs, etc etc. Society is littered with them. You wouldn’t know looking at them, but quite often that stiff shirt 50 year old with a wife and 3 kids is literally taking a quick hit of pot in the parking lot before he walks into the corporate offices. All levels of society. CEOs, Vice Presidents, Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Policemen, Business men, Mayors, Taxi drivers, house wives.
Hell… President Bill Clinton, President George W Bush, and President Barrack Obama have all smoked pot. Bush was even a admitted cocaine user. People have spent a decade in jail for less then that. They have all probably done drugs harder then that.
All neighborhoods, a cities, all walks of life, all levels of society. I am not joking and I am not exaggerating. This is very literally the truth. Drug use is as American as apple pie. I don’t think that this is a good thing. It’s probably not. I don’t do it. But I know people that do. Plenty of them function far better in society then I do.
This is why the war on drugs is so sick. It’s completely and totally hypocritical. Completely brutal abuse of power and fraud at all levels of the legal system.
“Hell… President Bill Clinton, President George W Bush, and President Barrack Obama have all smoked pot. Bush was even a admitted cocaine user. People have spent a decade in jail for less then that. They have all probably done drugs harder then that.”
hmm… Honestly, I don’t think this is a good argument for ending drug prohibition
“the people that are generally failures at life”
The fact that they are making profits, isn’t that an indication of success as opposed to failure ?
Isn’t that just a tainted and biased value judgment to think of people who don’t go the mainstream way to be “failures” ?
Real failures at life are people like me who are unemployed, don’t have a business, can’t make an honest buck, can’t even make an illegal buck and who refuses government handouts because of libertarian principles. I don’t know how I will survive.
But after readin Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job, I know how I will NOT survive. I will not survive by getting a job or employment, that’s certain.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/
I don’t know how I will survive but it is certain that I no longer want to have any kind of employment or jobs.
I hate the low wages, tax paying, loss of freedom and all the other negatives involved with employment. That’s not a way to survive. You don’t survive if you have to poison your soul in order to nourish your body.
Also, just to add to Nate’s comments: The very fact that drugs are banned encourages their use. There is a sort of mystique that comes with any sort of banned substance people are attracted to. It’s not just in substances either, anything that is banned or discouraged becomes the proverbial “forbidden fruit”, whether its speeding, having illicit relationships, or consuming banned substances.
This especially has relevance because consider that cocaine, heroin, opium, etc were all legal a hundred years ago. Some prominent authors of the period consumed them, but I have never heard of widespread abuse by the population at the time, despite being able to buy cocaine from Sear’s and Roebucks catalog (google it, I’m serious!).
Yup.
Fireworks use in Massachusetts, where such use is totally banned – huge. So huge that the cops can’t even begin to crack down on it, and they don’t even bother trying much of the time.
Fireworks use in New Hampshire, where only some of the bigger stuff is banned – minimal.
I live in El Paso TX across the border from Juarez MX where the majority of the killings are going on over control of the border corridors. The reason people sell drugs- EXTREME profit. A low level street dealer can make $5-10 thousand a week. The actual traffickers or “narcos” in charge of moving kilos through the border check points make $500,000 a month…easy.
That kind of money even makes me want to start wearing white linen suits and brush up on my spanish…
Maybe some kind of iphone app that would send special electric shock waves to the brain to simulate the effects of coke, marijuana, ecstasy etc. And would sell for $0.99 a “dose”, LOL
The effects would last as long as the waveform is applied to the skin and would cease as soon as the application is stopped. No overdose and no addiction.
When drugs will go digital, it will save the day, LOL
I bought a Ricky Ross joint straight from the Port of Miami.
The iPod already delivers digital drugs: music is the new socially-acceptable drug, perfect for blocking the world out as you walk around in it. I mean this somewhat seriously.
But I’m talking about using electric signals to stimulate neurons in order to simulate the effects of methamphetamine. You simply need to stimulate the dopaminergic regions which are close to the ears, plus the ears conduct electricity to the cerebellum easier than placing electrodes on the scalp. It might be very easy to do and the effects would last just as long as the waveform is applied and wear off immediately after the waveform is removed. No recurrence, no overdose, no addiction, no neurotoxicity.
Very very simple and easy to do.
I recently bought a Ricky Ross joint from Port of Miami.
Think of it this way … except for purely defensive wars fought against an entirely unprovoked attack, all wars are actually fought by a government against its own people, no matter who or what is the alleged enemy of the war.
Fighting a war allows the government to steal much more money from the public than it would have been able to otherwise. The government can enact much more strict surveillance of the public, both in the name of enhanced tax collection and in the name of vigilance against enemies within. Fighting a war brings out the most shallow, stupid and evil people in droves, and turns them into legions of unpaid, amateur propagandists advocating greater and greater government power (c.f. the Christian Right; and nearly every political blogger of any stripe). Fighting a war means untold billions of dollars put in the pockets of well-connected government contractors and financiers. It distracts the public from the incompetence and corruption of governments in matters of peacetime mismanagement.
In short, any war allows the government to grow massively in size and power. Until the time that a catastrophic military or economic loss occurs and the entire political leadership is wiped out or exiled or the country is liquidated, no government will ever again shrink to the same size that it was before the start of any war. Nearly every war of every kind is a huge benefit to the people who start the war and who lead it. For every war that wipes out the leaders who started it, such as the Nazis in WWII, there are probably 10 or 20 wars which only enhance the money and power of the warmongers. Starting a war of some kind is nearly always a winning strategy for any government. The more futile the war, the longer lasting and the more of a quagmire it becomes, the better it is for the political leadership. Permanent war means permanent profits.
If a government cannot position itself to be attacked by some other country or group, or think up a justification to attack another country, then it must invent some kind of enemy within and declare itself to be under attack.
The war on drugs is one of the most ingenious wars ever invented, because it can never be either won or lost, and because the nature of black markets insures that the government can actually profit from fighting on both sides of the war. The government can simultaneously attack drug manufacturers and smugglers *and* set up and protect their own manufacturing and smuggling operations *and* make another huge fortune from the banking and investment of the enormous profits generated by both sides. Win, win, win.
Another amazingly ingenious war is the one between the West Bank and Gazan Arabs, and Israel. Israel set up and controls a small, manageable prison camp or ghetto which is just powerful enough to constantly generate annoying, small-scale attacks, but which can offer no serious harm to the country as a whole and especially presents no danger to the leadership. The plight of these Arabs generates enough sympathy to maintain a larger belt of semi-hostile Islamic countries, powerful enough to scare Israelis and Americans into giving unlimited, unquestioning support to the Israeli regime, but weak enough to pose no serious threat whatsoever. It is not a war against the Palestinian Arabs or against Islam and it is not a war for Israel’s existence – that is just a ruse. It is a war against the Israeli public and against American taxpayers.
Why would the government sell drugs when it can tax the hell out of it’s own population, print money like there is no tomorrow and blackmail the rest of the world into paying tribute with it’s powerful military ?
With the trillions of dollars the fed dumped in the system, a few billions worth of drugs is not going to make any difference.
I am absolutely certain the government is not in this war for money, but rather for power and control and domination.
All war, whether at home or abroad, is ultimately for domestic control.
Gotta appreciate Tom Woods.
Way to go, Mr. Woods. You’re definitely one of the best out there, so please sell us more (preferably at a price of one or two clicks plus some bandwidth).
I bookmarked your YouTube channel and download audio files from your videos from time to time using YouTube mp3 converter http://videotomp3converter.com/ in order to discuss them with my collaboratives. I hope you dont mind. YouTube is blocked in our office…
Very good YouTube channel! I will definitely subscribe:)
I already subscriibed! Very good videos actually filled with sense.
This is such a smart and strong video here. I actually totally agree with your opinion on this topic. The entire speech of yours makes sense! Thank you for sharing this video.
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