1.     Think Twice about This Vice?

2.     A Not-So-Divine Comedy, Part 7

3.     Announcements

4.     Fun Facts about Massachusetts

5.     The Flashback Quarterback:  Sigh, not Again!

6.     Beware and Share:  Why Is Nobody Asking the Right Question?

7.     About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Think Twice about This Vice?  

[As you read this, note that the part in italics was written in British English, whose spelling of certain words differs from that of American English.]  

In last week’s community lesson, we looked at personal desire, that is, our penchant for vices, and cooperation, that is, our willingness to pay taxes.  We noted that government found itself in a moral morass, because legalizing vices in order to collect taxes might do more harm than good.  

However, according to the view below, the good of legalizing a particular vice outweighs the harm.  

…A pragmatic argument against criminalising drugs is that criminalisation creates vast rents and encourages criminal entrepreneurs to use violence, intimidation, bribery, extortion and corruption to extract these rents. Another pragmatic argument is that it is pointless to waste resources fighting a war that cannot be won. The losing war on drugs wastes resources that could be used to fight terrorism and other crimes.  

Another important argument for legalising, in particular, all cultivation of poppy and of coca (and their illegal derivatives) is that this would take away a vital source of income and political support for terrorist movements, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (Farc) and various paramilitary groups.  

The United Nations estimates that opium production in Afghanistan grew to more than 6,000 metric tonnes last year with a value exceeding $3bn. It is the origin of more than 90 per cent of the world’s illegally consumed opiates.  

A significant portion of the profits flows to the Taliban, who act as middlemen in the opium business.  They combine extortion and threats of violence towards the poppy farmers with the sale of protection to these same farmers against those who would destroy their livelihood, mainly the Nato allies and the Afghan central government.…  

“Legalize Drugs to Beat Terrorists,” Financial Times, August 7, 2007.

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2007 by a local nonprofit organization.  

1. Legalizing a vice reduces which of the following problems?

(a) Bribery.

(b) Extortion.

(c) Corruption.

(d) Violence.  

2. Where does the Taliban get some of its funding?

(a) New Jersey casinos.

(b) California casinos.

(c) Opium in Afghanistan .  

3. What alternatives to the legalization of drugs might be effective?

(a) Segregation of users and vendors from nonusers, with government watching over users and vendors to ensure that terrorists not make an income.

(b) Paying farmers to grow alternative crops.

  No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
William Jennings Bryan, 1860 – 1925,
an American lawyer, statesman, and politician, three times the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.
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Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest [sic] of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
John Maynard Keynes, 1883 – 1946,
a British economist whose ideas, called Keynesian economics, had a major impact on modern economic and political theory, as well as on many governments’ fiscal policies.  

So far, we have noted many deficiencies in the capitalism which we practice.  The purpose behind such a look is to encourage thought and action about how to make capitalism work better.  So we look at more deficiencies.

The libertarian view is appealing.  Who would not like to follow his or her wishes unencumbered by government regulation?  But the libertarian viewpoint is inherently contradictory.  

It is natural under capitalism to accumulate more wealth once a person has wealth.  We see this in the United States.  You have heard something like, “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.”  At the same time, getting richer means that the wealth has to come from somewhere, so, unless our society be generating a huge volume of wealth to divide up among everyone—which is not happening—the rich are becoming richer at the expense of others in society.  So, unencumbered by government, a libertarian might accumulate much wealth at the expense of others.  But at some point those others would want some of that wealth, and might take it aggressively, violently.  So, the libertarian would have to spend time guarding his wealth;  he would have to use his wealth to pass laws or to hire private security.  This means that some, if not many, people in a society would lose freedom or the society would birth classes with different privileges.  One might interpret this as extreme freedom in one aspect of life having to be balanced by limited freedom in another aspect of life.  

Yet, events might go in a different direction.  A libertarian might so exploit others that the others rally to pass laws limiting the libertarian’s activities;  hence, the source of government regulation.  

Interestingly, for a libertarian to accumulate wealth would necessitate a large number of consumers buying his products or services.  But the consumers would need money to do so.  From where would that money come?  From laws which would distribute money to consumers from the taxation of the libertarian’s profit or from the printing of money.  Even in the latter case, a libertarian might not be left unaffected;  his wealth might be devalued.  

Is there a solution which would permit a libertarian to live her life as she desires?  We could segregate people into those who are by nature competitive and happy to be so, and those who are by nature cooperative and happy to be so.  The libertarians would be among the competitive.  But if they chose to pursue wealth, they eventually would look for new markets, including the people who were cooperative by nature, which means that libertarians would have to trespass.  This might now be happening under the label of “globalization.”

Five hundred fifty-two original documents pertaining to the Salem witch trials of 1692 have been preserved and are still stored by the Peabody Essex Museum.  [Would the files on the Guantanamo detainees find their way into this museum one day?]  

Boston built the first subway system in the United States in 1897.  

Norfolk County is the birthplace of four United States presidents:  John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and George Herbert Walker Bush.  

There is a house in Rockport built entirely of newspaper. 

The Fig Newton was named after Newton, Massachusetts.  

The visible portion of Plymouth Rock is a lumpy fragment of glacial moraine about the size of a coffee table, with the date 1620 cut into its surface. After being broken, dragged about the town of Plymouth by ox teams used to inspire Revolutionaries, and reverently gouged and scraped by nineteenth-century souvenir hunters, it is now at rest near the head of Plymouth Harbor. 

1891:  the first basketball game was played in Springfield.  

The American industrial revolution began in Lowell . Lowell was America’s first planned industrial city.  

Founded in 1636, Harvard was the first college established in North America.    

Glaciers formed the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard during the ice age.  

The first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in Plymouth in 1621.  

The official state dessert of Massachusetts is Boston cream pie.  

Charles Goodyear in Woburn first vulcanized rubber in 1839.  

Elias Howe of Boston invented the first sewing machine in 1845.  [Does anybody know whether the industrial revolution in America began with the sewing machine?]