Tag: Mexico

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard

Oil’s Bad that Ends Bad

Mexico, oil, nationalize, socialism, neoliberalism

Sometimes socialism seems reasonable.

Emphasis on “seems.”

Take natural resource socialism. Ores and oil are “just there in the ground” and “belong to everybody.” So it “just makes sense” that “the people” should “own” the mining and drilling and refining industries, and run these operations to share the profits to help “everybody,” not just a few.

The Mexican government bought into this back in 1938, when it nationalized the U.S.- and Dutch-​based oil companies. Today, the industry is under-​capitalized, its equipment old and inefficient. Mexico itself is a mess. The government is corrupt and the people far poorer than would have been the case had they not bought into the nationalization mania.

The cause of the problems should not be in dispute. “By cutting off Mexican oil exploration from foreign investment and foreign know-​how,” Ryan McMaken writes in an interesting analysis, “the Mexican state has only succeeding in making the Mexican oil industry less efficient, and less capable of taking advantage of the natural resources in Mexico.”

Which is why the government has been making tentative “liberalization” moves, de-​monopolizing Pemex, the government’s oil outfit.

Unfortunately, though the damage done by bad government policy and monopolistic privilege is everywhere to see, many people (especially intellectuals) in Mexico blame “neo-​liberalism” and non-​existent “free markets” for rising prices and the specter of economic collapse.

Once bitten by the natural resource socialism bug, it’s apparently easy to dismiss evidence. Or the common-​sense notion that government over-​reach has made the mess they now struggle with.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Mexico, oil, nationalize, socialism, neoliberalism

 

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Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Peace Dividend

legalization, pot, marijuana, crime, drug war, illustration

Has the War on Drugs actually, finally, made some progress?

Well, yes … but, really, no.

“Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-​long drug war couldn’t,” explains Christopher Ingraham in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, “taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels’ profits.”

Certainly “legal marijuana” is not the drug war. It’s that war’s antithesis.

Let’s recall, too, that legalization didn’t come about after five decades of drug war failure because politicians came to their senses, admitted their mistakes and advocated a different approach.

Instead, frustrated citizen leaders teamed up with successful entrepreneurs to launch ballot initiatives, allowing voters to directly decide the issue.

Domestic production isn’t driven merely by Colorado, Oregon, Washington State and the other Washington, the nation’s capital, where voters fully legalized possession. Marijuana for medical use is legal in 23 states, including California, where most domestic marijuana is grown. In these states, pot is widely prescribed.

Thus, a quasi-​legal domestic marijuana industry was created. Lo and behold, now pot produced in the good old USA is outperforming pot grown south of the border.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) acknowledges that U.S. marijuana is being illegally smuggled into Mexico. (Maybe the smugglers will pay for the wall.)

On the other hand, what does it matter that the Mexican drug cartels are losing market share to non-​violent American businesses?

Well, those cartels have waged a war with the Mexican government killing more than 164,000 citizens between 2007 and 2014. Less profit to fuel the Mexican drug lords in that bloody war is more for our peace and security.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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legalization, pot, marijuana, crime, drug war, illustration

 

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national politics & policies political challengers too much government

The Monkey on Their Backs

The “war on drugs” is not a mere metaphorical war, like the “war on poverty.”

The biggest problem with the term is not the subject, but the object: Our forces don’t shoot at pills and pipes and chemicals and syringes.

They shoot at people.

Sometimes dealers. Often just users. Too often innocents … “collateral damage” in a war that seems never to end, because impossible to win.

But if the war seems bad in America — now a land with the world’s largest gulag — it’s far, far worse in Mexico, especially since President Felipe Calderón turned the military on his own people, in the vain hope of subduing the drug traffickers.

What did he get for his efforts? Blood, death and terror.

The body count is over 50,000.

I’ve long advocated drug legalization. I don’t need to elaborate the reasons, not after 50,000 deaths have been weighed in on the pro-​drug war side, but I probably should mention a few notions that the drug-​war mentality suppresses: individual responsibility, a rule of law, and peace.

In America, our politicians slowly awake to the truth that killing people to prevent them from ruining their lives with drugs is a fool’s mission. But few yet commit to actual change.

In Mexico, on the other hand, the top three candidates to replace Calderón — whose service is limited, by law, to just the one term — go a step further: All agree that the drug war has to be scaled down.

Little talk, so far, of legalization, but hey: The addiction to war is a tough monkey to shrug off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.