Skip to main content

I Predicted This in 2010!


A study of FBI crime statistics released last month has found that marijuana legalization is decreasing violent homicides related to the illegal drug trade in U.S. border states.

In this article I talk some about the study and link to an article I wrote in 2010 in which I predicted this would be the outcome of legalizing marijuana by thinking about the problem of drug related violent crime economically.

When we think economically about tough social problems, it can reveal truths that are counter to intuition.

Popular posts from this blog

Obama keeps pushing the bipartisan religion of interventionism

Michael Scheuer is deadly accurate - foreign interventionism is a bipartisan religion (or disease, whichever you prefer). Too often, I believe, Americans think about Washington’s interventionism only as the actual physical intervention of U.S. military forces abroad in places where no U.S. interest is at risk. That activity certainly is intervention, but President Obama’s despicable decision last week to have his administration leak intelligence claiming that Israel has concluded an agreement with the government of Azerbaijan to allow its use of Azeri airfields for an air strike on Iran is just as much an unwarranted intervention by the United States government. Readers of this blog will know that I carry no brief for Israel, that I believe it is a state that is irrelevant to U.S. national interests, and one whose U.S.-citizen supporters are disloyal to America and involved in activities that compromise U.S. security and corrupt the U.S. political system. That said, Israel — l...

Ron Paul’s Devious Plan to Steal the Presidency

This is an absolute hoot! Ron Paul hating Republicans are in panic mode. The website Hillbuzz.org includes in its blogroll Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Conservatives4Palin. Hillbuzz is so utterly revolting that I may just have to subscribe to its updates. Up until yesterday, I really hadn’t taken the Ron Paul campaign very seriously. Most non-Paul voters probably felt like I did, and laughed him off as that “kooky Uncle” who didn’t have a chance in hell to win the Republican nomination for President. Well, I’ve changed my mind. Big time. Yesterday I attended the Republican organizational convention for my Senate district here in Minnesota, and what I witnessed was an organized take-over of our nomination process by Ron Paul cultists. They came to this convention with the sole intent to take over as many of the delegate seats as they could, and sadly, they succeeded. Read the rest here Hillbuzz 

How Thorough a Brainwashing

Saw this on Facebook: Left this comment: It's more thorough of a wash job than that. They don't just believe they are not brainwashed, the question has never occurred to them and as long as they keep reading TIME and watching MTV, it's *impossible* for the question to occur to them. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it. EDIT: And one more thing-- don't ever stop considering what questions it is currently impossible to occur to you . This is what I've been thinking about a lot lately and I'm worried just how large and numerous my own blindspots are. The only solution is to be as intellectually curious as possible. To learn voraciously. To read things that challenge us. To read things that are hard for us to understand and then try to understand them. To expose ourselves to ideas far removed from our present culture and place on the timeline. Read old books. Read foreign books. Turn off the TV. You have already absorbed its biases and blindspots. ...
–––As Featured On–––