Wat betekent het om te zeggen 'dit moet verboden worden'?

Ik hoor nogal vaak 'x moet verboden worden' om allerlei zaken waarvan ik niet goed kan begrijpen dat dit verboden moet worden. Als iemand tegen mij zegt: 'x moet verboden worden' dan is mijn intuïtieve reactie: indien iemand x aan het doen is, mag er (proportioneel) geweld gebruikt worden tegen zijn persoon om er voor te zorgen dat dit stopt. Bijvoorbeeld: indien je zegt 'een roofoverval/verkrachting/moord/diefstal moet verboden worden' dan zeg je 'er mag (proportioneel) geweld gebruikt worden om te zorgen dat iemand geen roofoverval/verkrachting/moord/diefstal meer pleegt. En daar ik mij perfect in vinden.

Maar laten we dat nu eens doortrekken naar sommige andere zaken. 'Het moet verboden worden om in een café te roken.' Dan zou dit betekenen dat indien een café-eigenaar iemand laat roken, dat er dan agenten binnen mogen komen in het café om te zorgen dat de desbetreffende roker verwijderd wordt (of stopt met roken). Als je zegt dat het maken van pornofilms verboden moet worden, dan moet er elke keer als een hoop mensen (vrijwillig) met elkaar omgaan om een pornofilm te maken, dat er dan agenten mogen binnenkomen om met gebruik van (proportioneel) geweld ervoor te zorgen dat deze film niet meer gemaakt wordt. Natuurlijk gaan sommige mensen hierop zeggen 'dat is toch evident'? En deze blogpost is niet zozeer om te overtuigen wat de onzin is van de redenering om pornofilms te verbieden, maar simpelweg om concreet te maken wat het betekent om te zeggen 'dit moet verboden worden!' Zeker in de discussie over drugsgebruik is het onzinnig: als je zegt dat drugsgebruik verboden moet worden, dan betekent dit dat je geweld mag gebruiken tegenover iemand die drugsgebruik. Maar hoeveel geweld zou je dan gebruiken opdat het 'proportioneel' is? De normale betekenis is: tot dat het slachtoffer in kwestie geen onrecht meer ondergaat, maar die vraag is nogal moeilijk te stellen bij een slachtofferloze misdaad.

'k vraag mij af of het gros van iedereen die zegt dat dit of dat verboden moet worden, stil staat bij de essentie van wat ze zeggen, i.e. indien iemand dit doet, mag er geweld gebruikt worden tegen die persoon. Want het is immers iets compleet anders om te zeggen 'ik zou liever niet hebben dat veel mensen dit deden' dan te zeggen 'dit moet verboden worden!' Ik denk dat veel van het eerste geframed wordt in terminologie van het tweede.

Overzicht argumenten tegen drugsbeleid

Op de blog van division of labour, door Art Carden.

Last week, I spoke to a class at Idlewild Presbyterian Church on the economics of drug prohibition. My notes are below the fold.

Drugs: Should They Be Legal or Illegal?

One of the most important principles in economics is the law of unintended consequences, and one of the most important implications of careful economic reasoning is that many policies have effects that are exactly the opposite of what their proponents want. To cite just a few examples, rent controls reduce the stock of affordable housing, minimum wages reduce opportunities for the poor, and laws against “price gouging” slow the pace of recovery from natural disasters. What you intend to do by enacting policy and what you actually do by enacting policy are often two very different things. The war on drugs is another example. Here, I’m going to discuss four key propositions. Drug laws are counterproductive, drug laws are costly, the drug war is a source of numerous violations of human rights, and there are far more effective alternatives to prohibition if we really want to reduce drug addiction.

I. Drug laws are Counterproductive.

1. As of 2004, there were approximately 1.2 million arrests for possession of an estimated 28 million drug users; further, many “possession” arrests occurred because people were arrested for other crimes.
2. Drugs are stronger and more dangerous precisely because they are illegal. This is explained by the fact that low-potency drugs become relatively more expensive to supply when enforcement increases. The demand for narcotic effects is extremely inelastic; as we ramp up enforcement, people come up with newer and better ways to serve the demand. One way they do this is by increasing the potency of the product. The drug war is an arms race in which “mutually assured destruction” is not a threat that prevents conflict, but a part of the process itself.
3. Innovation has outpaced enforcement. Drugs--particularly strong drugs—have gotten cheaper, all else equal: the real price of cocaine fell from $450 per pure gram in 1981 to $100 in 1996, according to Miron and Zweibel. In his 1991 book The Economics of Prohibition, Mark Thornton reports that between 1974 and 1984, for example, the relative price of cocaine fell.
4. The problems we associate with drugs are a result of prohibition, not the drugs as such. The drug war is a classic case of confusing correlation with causation. We see crime. We see drugs. We assume that drugs are causing the crime. However, the fact is that it is the prohibition that causes the crime, not the drugs themselves. For example, medical problems with heroin are usually a result of the fact that the drugs are adulterated, not from the drugs as such.

II. The War on Drugs is Costly and Destructive.

1. Drug laws create crime. It has been argued that people who are on drugs will be predisposed to commit crimes. The data suggest, though, that there is a net increase in crime as people seek to feed their habits.
2. The ability to evade drug detection is a complementary skill to being able to evade punishment for other crimes. Therefore, the illegality of drugs increases the rate at which other crimes are committed.
3. Places with strong enforcement will tend to have greater homicide rates. Miron (2004) estimates that eliminating drug prohibition would reduce the US homicide rate by about 25-75%.
4. The drug war is in part responsible for accelerated HIV transmission in the 1980s. One way HIV was transmitted was through the use of dirty needles. Injectable drugs like heroin deliver more narcotic punch per gram than smokable drugs like marijuana or snortable drugs like cocaine.
5. Parts of the US-Mexico border are war zones because of the drug war.
6. The enormous profits that can be had in the illegal drug trade can be (and are) used to fund terrorism. The profits are not because of the drugs per se. They are because of the fact that drug peddling is extremely profitable precisely because it is illegal.
7. Drug laws have reduced the industrial use of hemp and hemp derivatives and have substituted synthetic fibers, etc. for hemp derivatives in various production processes. Hemp could have also been a paper substitute; Mark Thornton points out that the Dupont Corporation had a patent on a wood pulp paper process that could earn higher incomes if hemp were outlawed.

III. The Drug War is a source of fundamental human rights violations.

1. Prohibitions infringe on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Implicit in prohibition is the idea that it is legitimate for one person to act as another's moral surrogate. Refusing others the right to make bad decisions degrades their essential humanity and makes them not a valuable entity for their own sake but a means to our end. Because I care about you and see that your humanity gives you intrinsic value and potential as someone created in the image of God, I will try to help you. When I try to force you to act against your will, I am treating you not as a human being with value to God but as a means to my ends. In short, I am treating you as my slave. Even in the language of economics, the "externalities" generated by drug use are pecuniary rather than technological.
2. To be created in the image of God means the right to be moral. I will quote my friend, former neighbor, and former Rhodes professor Tim Watkins: “Part of what [being created ‘in the image of God’] entails is the ability to make morally meaningful choices. The story of the Fall in Genesis is in great part about God allowing humans to make choices that are bad for them because without such freedom morality is a meaningless concept. Prohibition is the denial of moral agency.”
3. Many drug laws have racist origins and racially disproportionate effects. The war on cocaine was waged because people feared that blacks would substitute toward cocaine after alcohol was prohibited. Marijuana laws were, in part, discrimination against Mexicans. Opium and heroin laws were aimed at Chinese immigrants.

IV. Reducing Drug Use

I cannot stress enough that to claim “drug use should be legal” does not mean that drug use should be encouraged, excused, or overlooked. My argument is that the material, moral, and institutional costs exceed the material, moral, and institutional benefits. Our current strategy will not work. In the words of a former student of mine, perhaps we should stop fighting wars against abstract nouns. I would propose a three-pronged strategy that will require some difficult and probably politically unpopular decisions:

1. While the economic analysis might say "legalize everything," the economics also say "make people responsible for their own actions." Increase (substantially) the penalties for crimes committed while intoxicated. As Richard Posner has argued, the penalties for drunk driving are too low. While this won't eliminate completely crimes committed by completely intoxicated people, it will affect incentives at the margin and reduce the rate at which those crimes are committed. I once heard Adrian Rogers say that people who wish not to fall should avoid slippery places. Stronger penalties for crimes-while-intoxicated will raise the cost of putting oneself in those slippery places. Will crimes-while-intoxicated be eliminated? No. They will not. They will, however, be reduced by stronger penalties.
2. Remove barriers to economic growth. As people get richer, they are likely to demand fewer intoxicants. Second, as they have more opportunities, those who wish to fund their habits can do so in the legitimate labor market rather than by committing property crimes. Here’s a proposal based on good economics but that is difficult for a lot of people to swallow: repeal the minimum wage. It’s the main reason why unemployment among African-American youths is so much higher than unemployment for everyone else. Further, it has been estimated (by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh) that “foot soldiers” in the drug war earn maybe three or four dollars an hour with a near-certainty of winding up in jail or shot.
3. Education. A more effective strategy than supply-restricting prohibition is to try to reduce demand. The church’s role here is to be a beacon of hope, instruction, and support.
4. If the recent experience in Portugal—which decriminalized drugs in 2001—is any indicator, the nightmare scenario of widespread drug tourism and drug use won’t materialize.

In het licht van het rookverbod

Moet je zeker het artikel van Whitman & Rizzo eens doornemen.

De titel alleen al is heerlijk: Little Brother Is Watching You: New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes

Moet het zelf nog helemaal lezen (maar ze hebben al enkele onderdelen daarvan op de blogs gezet en het ziet er veelbelovend uit.)

Leukste quote tot nu toe gevonden:

The new paternalists claim to have found policy interventions that will make targeted agents better off according to the target agents’ own preferences. What they have in fact found is evidence of internal conflict in the target agents’ preferences, and then they have resolved the conflict in favor of the experts’ preferences.

Over het rookverbod zijn er, zoals altijd, een hoop non-argumenten. De meest idiote vind ik die van 'alleen domme mensen roken'. Zoals ik ergens anders al zei:

Waarom zouden mensen niet op de marge het belangrijker kunnen vinden om een sigaret te roken dan de negatieve (mogelijke) gezondheidseffecten die daarbij kunnen zien? Het is immers onzin dat mensen om gezondheid geven sine qua non; dus waarom is iemand niet weldenkend indien hij andere onderliggende marginale voorkeur heeft als jij?

En zo kan je natuurlijk systematisch het hele 'anti-rookverbod argumentatie' systematisch vernietigen, tot, uiteindelijk, het enige ware overblijft: ik wil niet dat er gerookt wordt, maar ik wil niet de noodzakelijke stappen ondernemen om uit een rokerscafé te blijven, dus ik wens via de staat de omgeving van mijn café te veranderen. (Een welgemeende fuck you naar de eigenaar van het café waar je zo graag komt.)

Link 1: Whitman legt de essentie uit van wat 'the new paternalism' is.
Link 2: How Paternalism Creates Gradient
Link 3: Hyperbolic Discounting
Link 4: Context Dependance
Link 5: Deferrence to authority
Link 6: Rent Seekers