Saturday 17 March 2012

The Failure Of Prohibition And Those Who Argue For It

Considering we have seen some truly daft claims by statists and prohibitionists recently that free markets and libertarianism are promoted solely because of self-interested corporations throwing big bucks around, it's worth pointing out the end product of their dogmatic insanity.

Violence and increased anti-social costs.


Now, apart from laughably trying to imply that libertarian think tanks are funded by illegal drug cartels, I'd love to see how Learn Liberty's common sense above can possibly be explained away by mere adherence to their paymasters.

Instead, it would seem to confirm Kristian Niemietz's alternative (and sane) theory.
Rather than the donors determining the contents of think tank publications, the contents of think tank publications could determine the donors. But that would be boring, wouldn’t it?
Indeed it would.

As well as taking away the dummy-spitting panacea of the prohibitionist to cry "but they're paid!" every time they encounter a debate where the opposition is making a better argument.


6 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

But the prohibitionists really are being paid by large supermarkets, big pharma, the government and so on.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Quite. Hypocrisy is not a strong enough noun.

Jay said...

Hyperhypocrisy is word, I believe.  Better?

Jay said...

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hyperhypocrisy

Sam Duncan said...

Niemietz's piece is excellent.

“...do you remember the last time a company founds its offices vandalised by a group of pro-capitalist activists?"

Heh. Statism always comes down to force and violence. “Democracy” is just the mob* in suits and ties.

*In both senses, now I come to think of it.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I like that. Duly noted :)