>it's kind of amazing how little has actually changed since those laws were put in place.
Given there's a lot of bureaucratic inertia and jobs at stake here, and:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
...is it really so surprising?
This aspect of human nature is not isolated to the Drug War. Jaime Escalante was possibly the best teacher in America, and demoted because his success threatened the jobs of others-1
What about the never ending wars for profit? Wolf Blitzer at CNN tells us it's a moral problem for the US to stop funding war because a lot of jobs will be lost-2
The problem is that if we are to truly care about human dignity and equality, we need to fundamentally change the way in which we approve of jobs without critically looking at what they actually produce. This isn't just isolated within the economy of the War on Drugs.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
We live in a society that puts people on an economic treadmill for their entire life. The government gives incentives for getting into debt - guarantees on student loans, mortgage interest tax break. We have property taxes in most states, so you always have a bill to pay even if you never borrow.
Then people come along an propose things like basic income which can't work (I'll do the math for you one of these days since nobody else has). What they really want is to offset the costs of basic existence. I believe those costs could be lowered if the government would focus on that instead of profits and GDP.
Given there's a lot of bureaucratic inertia and jobs at stake here, and:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
...is it really so surprising?
This aspect of human nature is not isolated to the Drug War. Jaime Escalante was possibly the best teacher in America, and demoted because his success threatened the jobs of others-1
What about the never ending wars for profit? Wolf Blitzer at CNN tells us it's a moral problem for the US to stop funding war because a lot of jobs will be lost-2
The problem is that if we are to truly care about human dignity and equality, we need to fundamentally change the way in which we approve of jobs without critically looking at what they actually produce. This isn't just isolated within the economy of the War on Drugs.
1-reason.com/reasontv/2017/08/22/stossel-government-run-schools-crush-in
2-https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...