This is simply a feedback loop of self-justification. When markets ‘fail’, which of course they do all the time, you will say that they weren’t really “proper” markets.

If I want to think of a good argument against the workings of so-called “free” markets, I think a particularly good one is absolutely everything that has happened in the last twenty-five years.

While some people have a propensity towards alcoholism, alcohol isn’t inherently addictive. If you take enough heroin you become addicted, end of story. Not necessarily so for alcohol.

Having said that, most of the time I’ve known people who’ve screwed themselves up over drink or drugs, I’ve only ever felt that the drink or drug was the means – the drivers of their behaviour were something else. It’s like you might put guard rails up around a high bridge, but high bridges in themselves don’t cause suicidal impulses. That’s mainly why I think drug problems are really social problems in disguise.

As a market-anarchist, I would say that in time the market will regulate that quite well via all sorts of polycentric mechanisms.

After all, in a free market for this stuff who would want to take whatever sh*t the bloke on the corner of Balsall Heath Road managed to get from his dealer last night? Markets drive quality up and price down.

Oh come off it! If you want to see an absolutely free market in operation, the drugs trade is the ideal one. Because it’s inherently illegal it gains no advantage by following any guidelines over product purity etc, so people can cut products with whatever they want and pretty much get away with it. Providers will quite literally fight each other over territory.

And prices in no way reflect cost to produce. Skunk grown in a back-room lab over here is much cheaper to produce than going to all the effort of smuggling in some blocks of resin from the Middle East, but is of course much more expensive for those who want to buy it. This is one of the main, if not the main argument for ending prohibition on drugs. Try reversing your equation!

In the absence of a state molly-coddling us with regulation (which we can scarce believe anyway even now when regulation is so very onerous!) we should be more alert ourselves as to whether we were dealing with someone reputable and whose credentials could be affirmed

People who do fall into drug addiction are normally from the most vulnerable social groups, the people least likely to be equipped to do this, Are they just supposed to not count or something?

Also also…not to start a fight, but I just can’t believe that “markets regulating themselves” business, it sounds like question-begging to me. After all, how would we possibly be able to tell when they were doing it, you know?

It doesn’t matter that “we” know or not. Unless, like in the political system, you think you know better than the millions of other participants in the market and are control freaked enough to want that level of interference.

What matters in the market is that in any transaction both parties to it gain. If that is not the case then coercion is going on somewhere, and coercion/exploitation is an opportunity for someone else to make some money by not coercing people (eg undercutting the up till then sole supplier and so on).

And the state is the biggest cause of coercive interference in the free market.

Also, “quality” is subjective.

After all, in a free market for this stuff who would want to take whatever sh*t the bloke on the corner of Balsall Heath Road managed to get from his dealer last night? Markets drive quality up and price down. Perhaps insurance companies would not insure retailers for liabiility insurance if they refused to agree they would make sure they didn’t sell to children.

In the absence of a state molly-coddling us with regulation (which we can scarce believe anyway even now when regulation is so very onerous!) we should be more alert ourselves as to whether we were dealing with someone reputable and whose credentials could be affirmed by other agencies such as insurance companies protecting them from business risks, customer recommendation and so on.

I think I’ll just senselessly quibble with one or two incredibly minor points, if I may: I haven’t actually heard that tobacco’s more addictive than heroin, but only that smoking’s harder to quit than using heroin, and this has always made me sort of suspicious, that it’s always (in my experience) presented that way. I haven’t heard that addiction is stronger; I haven’t heard even that it is harder to kick. Just harder to quit. And I think that’s a big area to gloss over. Physically, the costs of quitting smoking are trivial, at their worst about as bad as a case of the flu, so I’m not sure the high rate of recidivism is best explained as a result of the addiction being stronger, instead of weaker, if you see what I mean. “I quit before, and it was easy — I’ll just smoke tonight, and then quit again tomorrow just as easily.”

I merely throw it out there; I don’t know much about what the claim is supposed to represent, and I definitely haven’t ever worked in any treatment centres, hospitals, or really anyplace else that’s healthcare related. I do know quite a few alcoholics, though, and I’m surprised to hear Andrew say that alcohol’s not physically addictive — because to these layman’s eyes, it sure seems like it is.

(If anybody wants to clarify all that for me, and has anything like the time, please feel free.)

And on what’s liberal and what’s libertarian…fascinating back-and-forth in the last few comments! But to my mind there’s no question that the legalization of various sorts of drugs would be far more “liberal” rather than “libertarian”, if only because legalization implies a regulated control of such substances rather than a simple forgetting about them. If growing and smoking pot was basically equivalent to growing and smoking tomatoes, as far as the law and the government was concerned, then okay: I could see the libertarian thing, because that would make the production of pot less regulated than the production of milk. And maybe I think the production of milk could be a little less regulated than it is, but I don’t think it ought to have no regulation at all anymore than I think pot should — even if the law says “grow it, smoke it, go nuts with it”, I still think that is something that the law should say…because I think both pot and milk differ from tomatoes in the same manner: And of course, God help us if we ever reach a state where they don’t differ from tomatoes in that way.

So I’m a liberal on it, not a libertarian. I do think everyone ought to be allowed to grow a few pot plants for themselves and their friends and neighbours if they’d like to — think they should be allowed to grow tobacco as well, for that matter — but I think it ought to be a specific permission: a right, not a freedom, if you follow my thinking.

If only because it’s already been legislated on! So unless we can ever in a practical sense ignore the existence of precedent, I think it’s got to be that way.