America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman
Social media giants have bought our government, and are trying to bully Europe
I read the first paragraph of this article and I already think it sucks. If heroin was fully legalized, zero restrictions, we’d be much better off than the current situation we have right now with the war on drugs, fentanyl analogs, and xylazine. Full stop.
Second paragraph:
Heroin distribution and sales would quickly become a huge, multibillion-dollar industry. They would become a significant part of GDP, even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it. Given the increasingly naked corruption of U.S. politics, the heroin industry would be able to purchase massive political influence, enough to block any attempts to limit the harm it does — the harm it knows it does, because heroin industry executives would surely be aware of the damage their products inflict.
This is already happening. Who is this author and why is he so ignorant of the past few decades of opiate problems in the US? There is not a significant fundamental difference between heroin and any other opiate/opioid. I say this as someone who has experimented with many types of them.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article because he’s already demonstrated a head-up-ass perspective.
Paul Krugman is a nobel-prize winning economist who used to have a column in the NY Times. He has a relatively impressive record of predicting terrible things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
And while I certainly don't want to push back on the difference between heroin and other opium derivatives, it's worth noting that legally speaking they're both exactly as illegal when not used as prescribed for the treatment of pain or disease.
It's not a blog post about heroin or opiates, though, so quibbling over the imperfections of his analogy is kinda missing the point. Please give it another read if you have a few minutes; the analogy is fairly apt, though very depressing as an American.
Paul Krugman is a nobel-prize winning economist who used to have a column in the NY Times.
Aka totally discredited.
The "nobel in econ" is as much of a fraud as econ in general.
Anybody who knows this goofball knows not to listen to his crap.
Has this dude never heard of the tobacco, alcohol or gun Industry ?
He's talking about commercial heroin like it's some outlandish and unthinkable idea that a harmful thing would become a billion dollar industry
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article because he’s already demonstrated a head-up-ass perspective.
You do know that the entire rest of the article never mentions drugs ever again and you're getting needlessly spun-up about a metaphor for social media and you're just trolling, right?
No, I’m not trolling. Why would I believe this person to know what they’re talking about in a subject I don’t understand well, when I know they’re wrong about a subject I do understand well?
You do know that the entire rest of the article never mentions drugs ever again
Because the headline is clickbait bullshit.. because the author is a grifter.
If heroin was fully legalized, zero restrictions, we’d be much better off than the current situation we have right now with the war on drugs, fentanyl analogs, and xylazine. Full stop.
If we hadn't invaded Afghanistan and started importing heroin in bulk through Ahmed Wali Karzai's mafia connections, we wouldn't have tons of cheap heroin to hook people to begin with. Also, we did have fully legalized (functionally) zero restrictions opioids, back under Bush Jr.
That's what Oxycotin was.
If you want to describe the US as a criminal nacro-state, you can start at the Florida pill-mills that flooded the country with hundreds of billions of dollars in highly addictive prescription drugs and made the Sackler Family some of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Based on this I’m not gonna read the rest of the article
Who is this author and why is he so ignorant of the past few decades of opiate problems in the US?
The author is Paul Krugman, a little known economist, writes for the papers I think.
Sorry if I'm getting whooshed, but Krugman is an infamous economist. He takes really big swings and is sometimes incredibly wrong.
Another shill for the NYTimes... Check their op/ed pages. Full of worthless libs saying dumb shit.
I’ve heard the name before but I’m not super tuned into this area. The analogy just really struck out for me in the first two paragraphs, monumentally so. If he writes with this amount of conviction about something he clearly has no idea about, I’m not likely to trust anything else that he writes in the same article. It’s important to know your limitations.
Sackler heroin? ... Only if Bayer gives up the patent!
Freely available heroin is not a good thing. Drug addiction would get significantly worse. Decriminalize possession, criminalize distribution. That's a more balanced approach
They weren't saying it was a good thing, just that it would be better than what we have. Which is true.
Yeah because the tobacco, pain reliever, and social media industries clearly show how great and non predatory totally legal heroin would be.
Krugman is a worthless hack. Sensational headline with implicit endorsement of prohibition is a prime example.
Edit about the "nobel": Everybody who's talking about this "nobel prize". There is no nobel prize in econ. It's a phony award made up by bankers. That's how pathetic the pseudo-science of economics is. They need to make up their own fake awards for relevancy. So please don't tout the phony awards of this pseudo-scientists. I could make up an award for flat earthers but that wouldn't legitimize flat earthism.
(And even if there were a nobel for econ... Who cares about awards if the underlying "science" is still trash?)
Here's one of the best traders talking about the same issue:
https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=bMK8ct6ybjQ&t=1918
It's eloquent and funny at the same time.
I included a timestamp to jump (almost) directly to the most relevant bit (also 33m, but 31m sets up a better context for an extra 2min of time compared to going directly to the 33m mark). But the whole video is worth watching.
Yes, Krugman is a hack.
Being one of the best paid traders in the world does not necessarily qualify you to advise the government... There are plenty of morons who (for some time) are able to make a killing as a trader due to taking excessive risks and being sufficiently lucky for some stretch of time.
So it would be OK to hit the suppliers with bombs like the US does in South America?
Only if they attack unrelated people that the racist orange rapist doesn't like.
Damn Paul, from downtown!
I'm not sure heroine is the right sample, I know digital products cause addiction like heroine, maybe cocaine would be more realistic when talking about possible increase in GDP, with all that heroin around the US population would be wiped out in a couple of gen
It’s an analogy, the article is about digital privacy not drugs.
It doesn’t matter what substance he uses as an analogy because he’s talking about the dangers of pushing a dangerous product at industrial scale.
Well, didn't I say it was just the wrong analogy?
It actually mattes what shitty "analogy" he uses, because he's implicitly endorsing prohibition and its ongoing, extreme violence. It's a typical hegemonic tactic to normalize state violence. Dude is an alumni of the nytimes ofc. This is literally his whole career.
As well as just your average narco state. We love our drugs
The metaphor is a bit of a reach
The usual bullshit Krugman clickbait.
Seems like the Opium Wars all over again.
