The Republicans had proposed the Cut, Cap and Balance bill into the Senate, where it failed today as predicted. The Act would have cut federal spending $111 billion in 2012, capped spending at 18 per cent of GDP by 2021 and would also have authorize a $2.4 trillion increase to the debt limit after Congress passes a balanced budget amendment. The Senate cannot originate any bill regarding revenue or taxes, and thus any new proposal would start in the House of Representatives. Any such bill would have to be passed in the House by next Wednesday to give it enough time to go through the Senate.

The President and the Speaker of the House John Boehner have been in talks, but have come to another standstill. The Republicans want reductions in spending, but the Democrats are unwilling to agree to that without also increasing taxes and ending tax breaks for wealthy Americans. Democrats are worried that massive cuts to spending would gouge social programs that they have championed and hurt the elderly. The Republican Party seems that it is being guided by the Tea Party faction, which of course is opposed to any
taxes at all.

To make matters worse, those seeking re-election are trying to win over voters as the primaries loom on the horizon. No one on either side wants to sacrifice their ideals this close to re-election and risk it being easily recalled by those who refused to be swayed. If moderate Republicans give in to the Democrats it could spell the complete takeover of the GOP by the Tea Party faction. This stubbornness may be the cause of the next global recession.

If a law is considered jus cogens it means that it cannot be violated anywhere in the world, no matter what the laws of a country may or may not say. These peremptory norms can be reached through a number of rather unclear means, such as UN convention or simply through world public opinion. For example, genocide is a jus cogens offense as declared by the UN Convention on Genocide, and slavery is considered jus cogens simply because everyone thinks that it is wrong. As well, any law or treaty that violates these norms is void under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

These laws can be prosecuted anywhere no matter which country the offense was committed in. They can be violated by states but also by individuals. Generally more serious offenses are tried by the International Court of Justice. However, there are disagreements over which norms can be considered jus cogens and whether or not a specific case violates them. States often decide these questions for themselves.

However, these lofty ideals are only sometimes put into practice. This is most shown through the fact that torture is considered a jus cogens offense and yet many torturers are never brought to justice, namely because many of them are state-sanctioned. Enforcement of these laws tells us less about the moral and legal background of a cause and more about the convenience and timing for political regimes.

This goes a long way to show the voluntary nature of international law. States only do what they believe is necessary, and get away with most things because there is no enforcement. Laws in society are considered binding when they are enforced by some higher authority than ourselves. If there is no one guaranteeing that a law is followed, it is not really a law at all. Countries can try and enforce international laws against other countries, but they may do so only when it suits them. This inconsistency is as bad as no enforcement at all. Some countries that have a lot of clout in the world such as the United States and China can do what they want, without any repercussions. In 2003 when America wanted to invade Iraq they asked the UN Security Council to approve the invasion. When they did not, the U.S. went ahead and invaded anyways.

What one can take away from this discussion is that international laws create a nice reason for charges to be made when it is convenient to do so. Otherwise there would be no avenue of recourse against those who commit crimes outside of a country’s jurisdiction. The unfortunate fact is that the ‘international community’ is not making as much progress as it appears or as one would hope. The voluntary nature of international law is winning out over the idealism of jus cogens laws.

Starting in 2006, and continuing through the 2011 elections campaign, Canadians saw for the first time serious attack ads coming from the Conservative Party. These were followed, no less, by similar responses from the Liberals and NDP. These attack ads take comments out of context and target personal traits and faults in MPs and party leaders. Mostly, they are a tool of fear-mongering politicians to convince voters that the world will end if the other side gets into power. Attack ads are the sign of weakness of a party (and I am pointing fingers at all Canadian parties here), they are done based on a fear that when policies line up there will not be enough to differentiate one from one’s opponent.

Harper has also rebranded the entirety of government, in Conservative blue. He has replaced the Canadian government with the Harper Government, a salute to American-style administrations. The Conservative Party runs as Harper’s party, and it works. He replaced the budget with Canada’s Action Plan, which is really not much of a budget at all. At least not if you look it up. Getting specific information out of the Canadian government is like pulling a lion’s teeth.

The Conservatives even managed to stay in power after convincing all of Canada that he was elected Prime Minister by the people and that a coalition would circumvent Canadian laws. He wasn’t and it didn’t, but that didn’t stop him from saying it and from people believing it. The last time I checked, the Prime Minister of Canada was the person with the confidence of the most MPs in the House of Commons, not the person that Canadians ‘elected’. This is not the United States. A coalition could have, and would have, represented the 66% of Canadians who did not vote for the Conservative Party. But Harper was able to convince the public that it was not in their best interest, even if they voted against him, to have a cooperation of interests governing the country.

The part that scares me the most is the movement of the Conservative Party from being fiscally conservative to socially conservative. This is the same movement that is occurring in the American Republican Party, with the growing support around the ‘tea party’. The untendered fighter jet program smells distinctly like favouritism. It also marks a junction between the idea that Canada is a peace keeping country and Harper’s vision of Canada as a more involved and powerful global actor. The Conservative’s ‘tough on crime’ increase in the number of prisons in Canada makes zero sense when you look at the declining rate of crime in Canada. Harper’s past comments on social issues like abortion and same sex marriage can only lead one to assume that he is in fact a social conservative and his policies can only lead one to assume that he is a fiscal idiot. Canada’s weathering of the fiscal crisis is in no small part thanks to Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada.

The Canadian government is at a crisis point. Each of these actions has pushed us closer to the laughable politics of the United States. If no one stands up for the Canada they want to see, we will be stuck in the Canada that Harper wants to see.

If stripped down to simply an economic concern, the argument for decriminalization and legalization of marijuana and other narcotics is rather compelling. The costs inherent in criminalization of drugs are vast and not fully comprehended. They have become hidden parts of other, larger expenses, and it is difficult to determine exactly what portion of a cost results from drug use and how much from related sources. Costs involving a direct burden to the taxpayer include healthcare, enforcement, judiciary, and corrections. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse estimated in its 2009-2010 annual report that over $40 billion is spent purchasing illicit drugs or trying to enforce narcotics laws every year. Related costs to society can include damage to property or physical harm to citizens from petty and organized criminal activities. Because drug use has been pushed for the most part to the fringes of society, it has also been pushed to the fringes of public spaces; users in high-risk groups tend to frequent less than desirable, unsanitary areas where the scarcity of clean needles increases the chances of infection and illness. Intravenous drug users in particular are at risk for blood borne illnesses such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis. Drug use and addiction alone play a role in the creation of many of these conditions, but the social marginalization of drug users has the consequence of increasing the absolute number of users affected by them. Many users who escape the reach of the law are often nonetheless helped by social workers paid or subsidized by various levels of government.

The costs of enforcing current laws too are large, imposing administrative and fiscal burdens and on society. In Canada the RCMP covers all areas of law enforcement, from counter-terrorism to traffic tickets, an enormous personnel and administrative challenge. There are almost 70,000 active police officers in Canada, with expenditures totaling over $12 billion in 2009. These numbers include municipal and provincial forces other than the RCMP, yet only two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have provincial police forces. In 2009 across Canada there were 97,666 violations of the Controlled Drug and Substances Act of which a quarter occurred in British Columbia, a province without a provincial force whose largest city is an international seaport. Although these violations represent approximately 4% of all crime in Canada, drug violations still number more than all the homicides, attempted murders, sexual assaults, robberies and thefts over $5,000 combined. Police forces in Canada deal with 2,437,299 criminal violations a year and respond to many more calls than that. As well, only the RCMP deals with CDSA violations, even in places like Ontario where there is a provincial police force. The RCMP is overloaded with all of its obligations, and the unevenness of enforcement has led to proliferation of the drug trade as people are able to evade detection for long periods of time.

There are also the costs of the crimes that are committed in relation to the drug trade and are funded by the drug trade. Because individuals involved in the commerce of illicit substances do not have recourse to the law to the maintain standards similar to legal commerce, they commonly resort to violence, blackmail, murder, and related felonies in order to impose a tolerable regulatory order. As well, the marginal disutility of committing a crime goes down as a person commits multiple crimes. That means that an individual is more likely to commit a second, often more serious, crime such as burglary or assault once they have committed the lesser crimes of drug trafficking or possession. The competitive nature of the sale and purchase of drugs thus combines with their illegal status and the legal system’s punitive approach to drug possession to cultivate a subculture encompassing a wide variety of related criminal activities.

The costs of housing someone in a correctional facility vary, but are substantial. The cost to house a federal inmate is $323 per day, while provincial facilities cost $162 per day. Prisoners are kept in federal facilities if their sentence is longer than two years and a provincial facility if their sentence is shorter than two years. These costs include facilities, food, correctional officers, clothing, administration fees, cleaning, bedding, and other miscellaneous items needed to house an inmate. A six-month sentence costs taxpayers approximately $28,000 in prison costs alone, significantly higher than the minimum annual wage of $16,640. The seven-year maximum sentence for possession of a schedule I substance would cost approximately $825,000 in correctional costs alone.

Because drugs are made so expensive by the black market, users who struggle to control their habit can fall into poverty. Often it is these users who will commit income-seeking crimes – robbery, breaking and entering, carjacking - to fund their habit when a conventional job fails to do so. While there are no reliable data on the motivation behind criminal activity, there can be little doubt that the criminal justice system bears the economic costs of crimes that might otherwise not be committed if an initial action, such as the purchase or use of a drug, action were not regarded and punished as a crime.

However, the marginal disutility of committing crimes goes down the more times a person commits a crime, whatever that crime is. If someone is buying and using drugs, which is illegal, they will have fewer scruples with breaking other laws. The graph below shows how the disutility of committing crimes is dramatic for the first crime, but is lessened for each crime as the number of crimes increases. That is, the disutility is divided over the number of crimes committed and the higher the number of crimes, the lower the proportion of the disutility is attributed to each crime. Therefore, the deterrence factor present by the threat of being caught is radically diminished.

With all of this money spent on enforcement of narcotics policies there is little left over for two of the four pillars of drug reduction strategies, prevention and treatment. What money remains goes to programs that are poorly conceived and never evaluated, such as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) program in the United States and Canada. The resources are often not utilized effectively, which could have a negative rather than positive impact on youth and users. The D.A.R.E. program is expensive, costing more than $700 million a year across North America. One study found that, while marijuana use fell slightly with exposure to the D.A.R.E., use rates of many other categories of drugs such as alcohol, cigarettes, stimulants, hallucinogens, and sedatives are actually higher. Programs such as this are continued because they are politically symbolic of the attempt to stem drug use and they reassure the public that something is being done.

Canada has had four phases in its drug strategy, which started in 1987. The first phase, between 1987 and 1992, was funded with a total of $210 million. The second phase, from 1992 to 1997 was supposed to receive $270 million yet received only half of the funding due to review. In 1997 the program was renewed but only the enforcement portion was funded, at sixty-five percent of its previous level. The program received funding in 2003, gaining a further $245 million over the next five years. In 2008 the Canadian government committed $30 million over a five year period for new funding for youth drug prevention and $100 million to the Treatment Action plan, while also committing $102 million over a five year period in new funding for the Enforcement Action plan as part of the National Anti-Drug Strategy. This latest program is now directed fifty-four percent towards prevention and treatment with forty four percent directed at enforcement, which represents a shift towards a more enforcement-centered approach.

Prevention and treatment are more likely than enforcement to minimize drug use. This is because drug use is usually a symptom of other problems, such as exposure to violence, poor family attachment, and mental disorders. Drug use acts as a positive reinforcement, and when there are few other positive reinforcements it can become the driving force in someone’s life. When the influence of other positive reinforcers is minimized or difficult to attain the impact of drugs can be considerable and once its dominance is established it can be difficult for someone to break the cycle. This is why environmental factors such as boredom, poverty, unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, social interaction and familial instability can help determine drug use and abuse. Dealing with these factors could be much more effective than enforcement in minimizing levels of drug use in a society.

The costs of drug rehabilitation vary from program to program depending on the kind of drugs that a patient was using as well as the kind of treatment being used. Outpatient treatments cost far less than programs that require patients to stay at a facility, both in terms of materials at the facility and time for the patient to be away from their life and job. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the United States estimates that the mean cost per outpatient treatment cycle was, in 2002, was approximately $1,169. However, actual costs vary widely, with the minimum treatment cost being $188 and the maximum being $12,650. Outpatient methadone treatments are more expensive than other drug rehabilitation programs, with a mean cost of $6,048. Non-hospital residential programs are more expensive than most outpatient programs, with the mean cost being $3,132. The mean cost day of any of these programs is still far less than the costs of a day in prison mentioned above. This study indicated that the mean cost of a day in rehabilitation was $62.10 per day for nonhospital residential programs, $10.32 per day for outpatient methadone treatments, and $9.17 per day for non-methadone treatments. Although these numbers are concrete, it is difficult to estimate how long a specific person requires in rehabilitation, what kind of treatments and supervision they need, and ultimately how much each individual case will cost.
The daily and total costs of treatment are vastly lower than those associated with prison sentences, even those in provincial prisons. These dollars are also more effective in stopping the negative externalities that accompany drug use and the drug trade. Prevention and treatment are more likely than enforcement to minimize drug use. This is because drug use is usually a symptom of other problems, such as exposure to violence, poor family attachment, and mental disorders. Excessive punitive action does not lead to lower recidivism rates, just as enforcement through the criminal justice system does not address the underlying problems that are associated with drug use. Therefore, the costs of drug enforcement by the criminal justice system are reoccurring, whereas costs associated with treatment and prevention may only be paid once or twice.

When drugs were criminalized there formed a black market, or ‘underground’ system of supply-and-demand for narcotics, which is dangerous for many reasons. These black markets developed because demand for drugs on a whole is relatively inelastic, with some drugs acting as substitutes for others.

This means that no matter how much money is invested into enforcement of narcotics laws, unless police can catch every single person who uses or sells illicit drugs, the amount of drug use will not change significantly. The only thing that changes with increased enforcement is that police are able to catch more of the people violating the law and thereby increase the case-load of the justice system. The continuous rise in violations after 1997 can be attributed to major changes to the Canadian Drug and Substances Act as well as increased enforcement. This increase does not lower the number of users, it just raises the number of users that are caught and charged.

This has been demonstrated in Portugal, where drug use did not rise significantly after the country decriminalized street narcotics. In fact, in some categories of drugs use decreased. This demonstrates that enforcement of prohibitive regimes does not stop people from using drugs, and could possibly increase the number of users, as those who want treatment are too afraid of the possible repercussions of coming forward.

When demand is elastic, making something illegal acts as a “risk tax” and therefore increases its price, forcing the quantity demanded to decline. This has the same effect as lowering the supply of a given good.
When demand is inelastic, it does not change even when prices rise dramatically. This would suggest that, if a policy’s goal is to decrease use in a population, criminalization is ineffective. Instead, it makes the production and sales of drugs more risky, but also more profitable to those both willing to take the risk and to protect or extend their share of the market. This increases, rather than decreases, the number of people involved in the drug trade. A more innovative approach to supply-reduction would be to make drugs cheaper to obtain, as fewer people would be inclined to participate in the drug trade. This would cut profits for individual drug dealers as well as organized criminal units who depend heavily on drug sales to fund their other illicit activities. While a comprehensive approach would legalize non-medical drugs and regulate their price, a reduction of the “risk tax” currently inherent in the drug trade would at the very least reduce the attractiveness of the trade.

As previously noted, prohibitive regimes push producers to create products that are more compact, to facilitate transportation that eludes detection. This means that drugs are often more concentrated and more potent, and it makes overdoses more likely. It also means that despite low initial investments into the production of drugs, costs to users are inflated to compensate for the risk factor posed by law enforcement in distribution. This in turn either creates or increases the instances of income-seeking crimes such as robbery and breaking and entering. It also makes narcotics production and trafficking an attractive area of commerce for both small dealers and organized crime. In ways that recall the experience the prohibition of alcohol, in other words, the regime of criminalization of non-medical drugs prompts a variety of innovative responses that create new criminal activity and increase, rather than reduce, the health risk to users at end of this complex and unregulated market.

If illicit drugs were to be decriminalized and marijuana was to be legalized, the government would have another source of revenue and additional fiscal resources to devote to the prevention of substance abuse. BC Business, a magazine, has estimated that the British Columbian marijuana trade brings in about $7.5 billion a year. Taxes alone could bring in upwards of an additional $900 million towards provincial and federal budgets. The industry could employ upwards of 250,000 people, including many unemployed forestry workers. Not only would legalization reduce costs associated with illicit narcotics, taxation of marijuana could increase the tax base and help to pay for other programs that do not currently have enough funding.

Intoxicants can act as substitute goods for each other – that is, if a person cannot obtain one good, they will use a substitute good. It has been suggested that alcohol and marijuana are substitute goods for adults. Adults use more alcohol than marijuana because marijuana is illegal and they can attain alcohol legally. This would account for why it seems that that a greater proportion of young people use marijuana. Simply, if they are going to be doing something illegal, they might as well get the drug that they want. Studies done in the 1980s showed that for each youth that did not drink due to higher drinking ages there was a one-for-one increase in the amount of marijuana consumed. For this group marijuana is their first choice of drug. Because what they were doing was illegal, whether or not they were consuming marijuana or alcohol, they will choose the drug they most prefer. An econometric study done by Frank J. Chaloupka and Adit Laixuthai found that youth in states where marijuana was decriminalized were less likely to consume alcohol and less likely to drink heavily. They also found that prices of alcohol affect consumption of marijuana and vice versa. This strongly suggests that alcohol and marijuana are substitutes, and that dangerous binge drinking can be linked to marijuana criminalization, as intoxication rather than casual consumption is the motivation for use.

Because drug prohibition makes illicit narcotics more expensive, poorer users will resort to cheaper substitutes when they cannot afford to pay for their drug of first choice. These substitutes can be much more dangerous than the drugs they replace. Such is the case with powdered cocaine and crack, or freebase, cocaine. Because crack cocaine is produced by adding virtually anything to expand the volume of the crack, users often do not know what exactly they are ingesting. Crack cocaine also comes in varying strengths, making overdose a very real possibility, as users cannot gauge the potency of what they have taken by physical volume. Crack cocaine is more addictive than pure cocaine, but there are other dangers from consumption methods, such as needles or pipes. Pure cocaine use does not involve as many dangers, because it is generally snorted directly and unadulterated by other chemicals. It is therefore easy to see how substituting crack cocaine for pure powdered cocaine has exacerbated the delivery methods inherent in substitute drug abuse.

On one hand, people have the right to personal autonomy. If we do not allow individuals autonomy we cannot say that they are morally responsible for anything that they do. Without autonomy a person cannot retain their dignity as a human being, and without their ability to determine their personal behavior people cannot be considered to be free in the customary sense of the liberal-democratic heritage. In Canada this heritage is expressly acknowledged by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which in §.7, guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the security of persons. There is, however, a limit to what the Charter provides, and as a society we give up parts of our liberty for rules to help protect us from the actions of others. The question is where to draw the line in surrendering aspects of our freedom. It is useful here to consider the “harm principle” that is inherent in §.7 cited by the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, where he stresses the economic and moral autonomy of the citizen from the state. As long as a citizen is in their right mind, and their actions are not harming anyone but themself, they should be allowed to do whatever they want. This would include the use of drugs. As much as the state would like to protect everyone from everything, including harm inflicted by the use of drugs, prohibition goes against the principle of individual liberty and thus impinges on fundamental rights.

A hard paternalist would argue that all people should be protected from harm, even harm they inflict on themselves, and that people who are not informed about their choices should not be allowed to make them. Children should be protected by the wisdom of their elders, just as those who cannot make decisions for themselves should be protected by those appointed for such purposes. Yet if we stopped every uninformed person from making a choice we would limit the number of people consuming any number of items, including over-the-counter drugs, and could by similar logic stop much of the population from voting in any election.
A soft paternalist would also insist that some groups of people are more vulnerable to the pressures of their peers or more easily suggestible in general. These people need to be protected, since without protection they could hurt themselves even without meaning to. This is more or less how many of our laws work today – persons under a certain age are not allowed to consume alcohol or tobacco because we believe that they have neither the foresight nor experience to decide whether the risk of using these drugs outweighs the utility or pleasure derived from them. In this way the government influences decisions without substituting itself for the decision-maker, based on an implicit understanding that prohibition will often be violated without sanction but also on an assumption that the deterrence provided by possible punishment will hold abuse to an acceptable level.

A classical liberal argument maintains that when government prohibits outright certain products and activities, it is treating mentally-competent adult citizens as children and denying them an inherent right to self-regulation. If the government wants to continue to prevent healthy, sane adults from putting drugs in their bodies, it should also extend such concerns to other areas, such as preventing people from having too much sugar or fat in their diets, which leads to obesity, risk of heart disease and other deadly health complications. The government would be more effective in reducing drug use if it took a stance more like that taken to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked. This has been accomplished through prevention campaigns, regulation, dissemination of information about side effects, and increasing taxes of tobacco products. While some people still choose to smoke, many more have quit or chosen not to start. Public opinion has shifted from thinking that smoking is ‘cool’ to thinking that it is dangerous, repulsive and stupid. What is more, these people take steps to quit by themselves without being coerced by the government or anyone else to do so.

Today almost every area of life has some sort of regulation governing what we can and cannot do or under what conditions it can be done. More often now Parliament is passing inchoate laws, i.e. laws proscribing conduct that has the possibility to lead to harm. The difference between a regular law and an inchoate law is thus: a law preventing assault stops the obvious and direct harm that comes from violence against another person, while an inchoate law, such as that against driving under the influence, prevents behavior that can lead to but does not always lead to harm to others. An argument put forward by Douglas N. Husak is that we have entered into a state of overcriminalization, whereby the purpose of the criminal system has shifted from punishing offenders for the harm they have done to preventing future harm that could possibly occur by criminalizing the behavior that could lead to it. The justice system of many advanced democracies has become something of a nanny to individuals, trying to keep them safe from harm by any means necessary. This has made the legal system and judicial process large, slow and very costly. More importantly, our system now uses severe punishments routinely, without understanding of how much these sentences affect lives and future conduct of those it convicts.

Sentences for drug offenses are grossly out of proportion to punishments for other crimes. For instance, in cases where possession is treated as an indictable offense, possession of a schedule II substance (in excess of 30g of cannabis or 1g of hashish) carries the possibility of five years in prison. This is the same maximum sentence set for assault or assaulting a police officer. It is hard to accept that possessing approximately an ounce of marijuana holds the same danger to society as committing assault. Trafficking in schedule I or II substances carries a maximum of life in prison, a punishment higher than theft over $5000 (10 years maximum), use of a stolen credit card (10 years), breaking and entering a non-dwelling building (10 years), perjury (14 years), or sexual assault (10 years). Trafficking of any amount of cocaine or heroin, or more than 30g of cannabis or 1g of hashish has a harsher sentence than rape. One might argue that this simply means that the penalties for rape are too low, but that would spark a debate about the entire criminal code, which is not the aim of this article. However, the practical utility of incarcerating non-violent criminals for periods longer than the sentence given individuals whose menace to their fellow citizens has been established by due process is, at the very least, highly questionable; the fiscal burden of their lengthy incarceration alone makes a strong case for revisiting the logic of these laws.

One thing to consider when reviewing sentences is the reality of the punishments. Ten years is a long time to spend locked up in jail, deprived of family and friends. It puts strains on families by taking parents away from children, spouses away from each other and breadwinners away from those who need them. Time in prison is a hard thing to bear, and it mixes violent felons with non-violent inmates, drug users with non-drug users and criminals with people who simply made mistakes, until they all come out resembling one another. Prisoners can come out of jail with disrespect for authority, a lack of self-worth, and newly-learned anti-social behaviors along with newly-acquired criminal skills. Jail is not a rehabilitative place but a place of punishment, meant to visit hardships on inmates as they have done so on society.

There are also many other ways that a person’s freedoms are impeded once they get out of prison. There are many studies showing that those who are given prison time as a sentence can often develop psychological damage, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), alienation from the population, emotional distancing, social withdrawal, diminishment of self-worth, and dependence on institutional structure and contingencies. Someone with a criminal record has a very hard time travelling abroad, obtaining and holding a job, and therefore attaining a standard of living for themselves and their dependents. The social stigma that comes from having been in jail can be crippling.

Mill writes that the only reason that can be given to interfere with the liberty of a person is to prevent harm to others in the society, that “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” This concept rejects the idea of legal paternalism as a legitimate reason to intervene in the affairs of others. Mill reasons without individual autonomy one’s peculiar characteristics could be swept up in the uniformity that democracy tended to encourage. As well, he maintains that only through making one’s own decisions that a person could develop into a proper individual, and that a government’s main goal should be to “promote autonomy by ensuring that it could be maximally exercised.” He therefore concludes that the “only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Mill does not assert that harm must be prevented, only that it can be in this context. In this way the harm principle is a necessary, but not sufficient, reason for legal enforcement.
Mill felt that governments should not punish people for committing ‘victimless crimes,’ the responsibility of proving that a law prevents an action that violates the harm principle being with the government enacting said law. That is, the government must prove that it is in fact helping society by limiting actions with a specific law, rather than opponents of a law having to demonstrate that the law does not work. The harm principle is meant to defend against the tyranny of the majority, and to prevent that majority from imposing their morality on minorities in the population, as the legal application of the majority opinion may be revealed, upon closer examination, to do the greater damage to liberty.

Mill thought that this principle was absolute even in case of intoxicants such as alcohol, which one can use as an analogy to how Mill might have reasoned about narcotics. Mill felt that consumption of alcohol should not be punished, although violent acts committed under its influence should be, as such acts do harm to others. The act of being intoxicated does not of itself harm anyone other than the individual who is intoxicated. For example,

“If… a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a family, becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to his family or creditors, not for the extravagance.”

For the legal system the morality of the use of intoxicants is beside the point. Civilized societies commonly regard a broad array of behaviors as immoral yet do not impose legal sanctions against them. Nor, by Mill’s logic, does the harm that comes to the consumer of alcohol or narcotics justify a violation of their freedom, as people have the right to do what they want to their own bodies.

Although Mill was fighting for less regulation on the individual, his principle worked too well, and has essentially collapsed under its own success. There has been a notable shift in how policies are defended. Instead of focusing on the immorality of pornography, homosexuality, and prostitution those who wish to create prohibitions look to the harms that are caused by the acts themselves. This argument has also typified the shift in the debate over decriminalization, with the focus moving towards the harms that drug use does or does not cause society. This means that the harm principle does not serve its original purpose, as inconsequential harms are now discussed as part of these debates. It also does not instruct one on how to compare different harms, as there is little of the traditional opposition over use of the harm principle that used to typify what has become known as the Hart-Devlin debate. This has disarmed progressive arguments for decriminalization of any number of things. It has been illustrated in the context of narcotics decriminalization, as proponents of relaxing drug laws argue that the current prohibition causes more harm than it stops, even as opponents argue that even greater harm would be caused by decriminalization.

This does not mean that the harm principle cannot be used to defend decriminalization or legalization of narcotics. But it must be used in pragmatic terms. Weighing measurable harms for and against criminalization would be a way to do this. It is through a cost-based analysis that moral considerations, whether disguised as practical concerns or not, can be removed from the equation. As well, it must be remembered that the harm principle is a necessary but not sufficient condition for criminalization. There must be a method set out to determine which harms should be considered and how to measure them against each other. But above all there must be a weighing of evidence among the various aspects of the debate, which did not happen in the Supreme Court during the constitutional challenges in the 1990s.

If the Canadian government were to apply the harm principle it would be difficult to prove that current narcotics policies protect society sufficiently to validate infringing on individual rights as much as the current laws do. This would mean proving that the use of narcotics by some is significantly detrimental to the general population. The government would also have to demonstrate that its policy is not based on moral objections to narcotics, but prevent real harm from occurring and thus have a utilitarian benefit to society.

Some were in part a response to a political backlash against the import of foreign labor. Following an influx of Chinese labor in the mid-nineteenth century there was a downturn in the number of jobs available, because Chinese laborers without families could work for lower wages than Canadians. They were in effect prohibited from bringing women over from China by the Chinese Head Tax levied between 1885 and 1923 of $50, which they could not afford to pay. This was done to protect white laborers, but it did not slow the immigration from China, just limited it to mainly men. These same workers brought with them opium, which they had become accustomed to smoking in China. Opium use had become a problem back in China after two ‘Opium Wars’ with Britain in 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 where British merchants imported mass amounts of Indian opium and the British government forced the Chinese government to let them conduct free trade throughout the entire country. It is only natural that use would follow immigrant labor, especially in large communities of mainly men.

In 1907 there was a large demonstration against Asian immigrants in Vancouver, to which Mackenzie King, then Minister of Labor, felt there must be a response. There was also an element of appeasement involved, as China was at the same time trying to stamp out the internal opium trade, and both Canada and the United States wanted to nurture favorable trade relations with the East. Because there were also fears that opium use would spread from Chinese to Canadian workers, King’s legislative response was the Opium Act, 1908 which “made it an indictable offence to import, manufacture, offer to sell, sell, or possess to sell opium for non-medical purposes, but prohibited neither simple possession nor use”. This act was repealed for an even harsher version in 1911, after a large black market for opium appeared, which included new punishments such as whipping and deportation as some of the penalties for violation of the law. It was revised in 1923 to include other drugs, such as morphine, cocaine and cannabis. These changes were consolidated in the Opium and Narcotics Act, 1929.

The increased media attention on drug use in the 1950s, when in fact drug use was declining, resulted in the Narcotics Control Act being passed in 1961. This attention came from the rise of the idea in the United States that the high rates of addiction especially in minority groups were not attributed to flaws in the U.S. system but affected by circumstances outside American control. Therefore, once the United States had acted against drugs at home, the problem would be solved provided that foreign governments did as well. Following World War II the United States exercised extraordinary diplomatic influence, especially over its wartime allies and new multilateral institutions, resulting ultimately in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs passed by the United Nations in 1961 and ratified by Canada that same year. This international treaty was the result of an effort to consolidate the various international treaties concerning narcotics that had been passed previously. It was also an effort to include new drugs such as cannabis, and synthetic opioids. By signing this treaty Canada has been required to enact laws that implement its provisions. This change made narcotics laws wider, encompassing for the first time cannabis as well as drugs that have effects similar to the drugs already under control (e.g. synthesized drugs). This was also the first time that narcotics had been laid out in a schedule system, which has been followed to the present day.

Along with Canada’s legislation on illicit drugs there are three additional international conventions of which Canada is a signatory. The UN’s Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs brought together the various pieces of international legislation that had been enacted before. It also expanded the scope of drugs controlled under international law, adding substances such as cannabis. Additionally, it allowed the World Health Organization and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to add, remove and transfer drugs between the act’s schedules. This act was supplemented in 1971 with the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which added psychoactive drugs such as amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and other psychedelics that had not been developed at the signing of the Single Convention. Additional enforcement measures were laid out in the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances in 1988. This treaty mandated cooperation for international drug seizures and provides a legal basis for extraditions. These treaties require signatory countries to enact legislation based on the contents of each convention. Thus, the foundations of Canadian narcotics policies have been strongly influenced by international laws and conventions in an effort to suppress the international drug trade rather than by legislative or regulatory responses to any national problem with the use or abuse of drugs. These pieces of international legislation have ever since been instrumental in shaping Canada’s narcotics policies.

The Le Dain Commission from 1969 to 1972 published two reports, an interim report on non-medical use of drugs and the final report on cannabis. The interim report outlines different classes of illicit drugs, their use across Canada as compared to use of licit drugs and alcohol, as well as some causes as to why drugs are used. The interim report also identifies the lack of information about non-medical drug use and the lack of dissemination of information as two of the biggest problems facing narcotics policy makers as well as drug users. It additionally identified negative responses such as moral condemnation from government officials and other individuals to drug use as one of the problems facing policy makers. In conclusion the interim report recommended that non-medical use of drugs should be controlled but not be condemned in principle, and the extent to which drugs are controlled should be based on their relative potential for physiological harm to the user. In other words, it advised that the Canadian government regulate rather than prohibit the use of non-medical drugs. The final report of the Committee, simply titled Cannabis, had more than 12,000 Canadians from all walks of life participate in the fact finding. The main conclusions of the Committee were that prohibition against cannabis should be reformed, specifically that possession and personal cultivation should be legalized and that other crimes such as trafficking and production should be penalized by no more than five years of prison time. Nothing was ever done to implement these recommendations.

Many parallels can be drawn between the current prohibition of narcotic drugs and the prohibition of alcohol in Canada and the United States in the early twentieth century. Although prohibition was enacted in both countries, Canada repealed the laws by and large in the mid-1920s. The situation that arose during the Prohibitions era, especially in the United States, was very similar to the current state of the drug prohibition. The Temperance movement dating to the early nineteenth century used much of the same rhetoric that opponents of decriminalization use today, arguing that alcohol, mostly beer and wine, was inherently addictive and directly related to social problems such as poverty, unemployment, crime, mental illness, and business failures.

Under Prohibition, the consumption of alcohol nevertheless skyrocketed. Organized crime activity rose, with bootleg alcohol being produced and imported across Canadian-US and Mexican-US borders. Because violators were breaking one law, they were more likely to resort to activities such as violence and murder to protect their stake in the black market alcohol trade against the predations of competitors in the supply and sale of illegal substances. This also precipitated the rise of hard liquor as a substantial portion of overall public alcohol consumption. Although before Prohibition most people drank beer and wine, both were bulky and hard to transport. It was therefore both safer and more profitable for bootleggers to transport hard alcohol, which was worth more at much smaller quantities and easier to hide. This led indirectly to an increase in health problems such as cirrhosis and death, as people overindulged in a variety of more potent alcoholic beverages. There were also deaths from people drinking adulterated industrial alcohol. Prohibition worked far less as a method of controlling alcohol consumption than regulation has since its repeal. In some instances, in fact, the regime led indirectly to higher instances of addiction along with the attendant social consequences. The supply and sale of alcohol was a major factor in the spread and sophistication of organized crime and many legislators were afraid that the entire justice system was facing an imminent collapse as a result of a broad yet unworkable regime of prohibition.

The political argument made for repealing prohibition was made against the backdrop of the Depression. The anti-prohibitionists said that repealing the law would “provide jobs, stimulate the economy, increase tax revenue, and reduce the “lawlessness” stimulated by and characteristic of the illegal liquor industry.” The Depression undermined support from large employers and the economic elite, as they had thought that prohibition would increase workers’ productivity. Social problems were not alleviated by prohibition and many became more pronounced as the Depression went on and riots started to become commonplace. The political elite felt that while they could not stop the Depression, they could do something to help raise morale and show that the government could be responsive in at least one way. As time went on more influential economic and political leaders came to support repeal until it was enacted in for 3.4% alcoholic beer in 1933 and in full in 1934.

One of the principal reasons for opposition to regulation of alcohol was that people felt that creating a system to regulate it would be too complex an undertaking and that it would not work. Although they were correct in one respect – it was a massive undertaking to create liquor regulation – the critics were wrong to say that it could not be done. Both the United States and Canada were able to fashion working alcohol regulations that are not only comprehensive, but that are for the most part obeyed and thus more effective in containing the aggregate consumption of alcohol. One does not often notice the many layers of restrictions imposed on those businesses holding liquor licenses but these regulations are not seen as especially restrictive by customers.

Regulation has in other words been more effective than prohibition in curbing alcohol consumption. It has succeeded in turning alcohol use from hard liquor back to beer and wine and tempered use in general. It also moved alcohol from the margins of society to an invisible thread in the fabric of Western life. The repeal of prohibition brought the alcohol industry into the economic fold, and ended the lawlessness that led to violence, the development of crime syndicates and the corruption of public officials. By investing the leaders of the alcohol industry in maintaining law and order regulators were able to ensure that the new regulations would be followed. It accomplished for government a critical goal that any regulatory regime seeks, namely to make an industry a co-regulator of a popular activity and thereby to lighten the direct regulatory burden of the government.

As the current prohibition of illicit narcotics is in many ways so much like that of former prohibition of alcohol, one can draw simple provisional conclusions as to what might be done to reduce the abuse of non-medical drugs along with related criminal activity. While some of the problems that society experiences come directly from drug use, many others are consequences of prohibition itself. The very act of prohibition pushes drug commerce and society outside the law, creating problems in the areas of health, organized crime, petty crime, and corrections. These problems are nearly identical to those faced during alcohol prohibition, and it stands to reason that they may be mitigated in similar ways by decriminalization or legalization.

The latest version of drug prohibition is regulated by the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, 1997 which stands as Canada’s legislative implementation of all United Nations conventions against illicit drug use. It details eight schedules of substances that are controlled. Schedule VI is divided into two classes of substances considered to be precursors for production of illicit narcotics. These schedules are used to simplify the various punitive sentences associated with different classifications of materials for different offenses. For example, in cases of possession Schedule I substances carry a maximum of seven years imprisonment whereas schedule III substances carry a maximum of three years imprisonment.

The current laws prohibit possession, trafficking, production and exportation, with sentences ranging from a $1000 fine and maximum six months in jail to life in prison. Although the substances are too numerous to be listed exhaustively here, this act controls and prohibits, and is not limited to, the following: Coca and its derivatives, Ketamine, Opium poppy derivatives, PCP, Methamphetamine, Codeine when not in a medicine with at least two other active ingredients, Cannabis in all its forms, LSD, GHB, Mescaline, Quaaludes, Barbiturates, Anabolic Steroids, Acetone, Ethyl Ether, Hydrochloric Acid, Red Phosphorus and White Phosphorus. This list is far from complete yet illustrates how extensive the act is.

Canada has perhaps one of the hardest ideological landscapes to unmask, as the three major parties all have similar platforms. As Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said of the Canadian Liberals, “We are the extreme centre, the radical middle.” True liberals believe in small government, laissez-faire economics and oppose any measures which unnecessarily limit the freedom of the people. Liberalism was supposed to advocate for the rights of the individual to act as they see fit, and to protect the autonomy of the person. If you look at the Liberal Party of Canada, which has implemented measures such as universal health care and student loans, among other things. I am not saying these are not good programs, but they are definitely not liberal. In fact, they are more socialist than anything.

The Chinese Communist Party falls into much the same boat. While they masquerade as communist, the Chinese economy has become increasingly capitalist. Capitalist activities are supposed to be anathema to communism, and yet the Chinese think they have found a way to balance both worlds. What they have really created leans more towards a warped version of fascism than anything else. Everything is controlled by the state and some people are mandated by the state to do certain jobs, but there are also those who are able to operate with limited amounts of freedom economically. This has made China the powerhouse it is today, but makes it increasingly difficult to fit its ideology into a specific box.

Germany lived through a bout of this, with the National Socialist German Workers Party, otherwise known as the Nazi party. Rather than being socialist this party was in fact one of the models of a fascist regime. Instead of improving life for Germans through social programming and income distribution the Nazis gave money to the wealthy that they took from those that they imprisoned. Most Germans saw little to no change in their lives other than an increase in currency stability. The party was concentrated on the war effort for most of its existence, and ended up worsening people’s conditions of living as an expense of its agenda rather than making them better.

The moral of the story is always investigate the tenets that a party builds its platform on, rather than relying on the name they choose to market themselves with.

Turkey’s culture is very different than the rest of the European Union. While there are significant Muslim populations in many countries in the EU, none are predominantly Islamic, as Turkey is. Often the EU is referred to as the ‘Christian Club’. The culture, the language and the social structures of Turkey are far more identifiable with the East than with the West. This is interesting, as Turkey is actually the most secular state in the vicinity of the European continent.
Although Turkey is a rich country in comparison with the Middle East, it is in fact rather poor compared to countries within the European Union. Turkey has a really low income per capita, and as such could bring down the general per capita income of the EU significantly because of the number of citizens.
Turkey also has had to address a number of human rights violations both within the military and in the constitution. There are many different things that are still sore points for Turkey with the rest of the EU, such as extending rights to minority groups within Turkey as well as the topic of the Armenian genocide, which Turkey still refuses to acknowledge.

Many different countries and politicians are opposed to allowing Turkey to join the EU. Many will cite the fact that Turkey will not recognize Cyprus, a current European Union member, as a country. This is because of the long standing dispute on Cyprus over government, which is currently made up of Greek Cypriots despite the large Turkish minority on the island that is economically isolated. They also bring up the fact that the military has a long tradition in Turkey of appropriating power after elections that did not go the way that the military thought they should or when the government has seemed to abandon their secularism and role in promoting Westernization.

What many politicians are afraid of is power in the European Union shifting if Turkey were to join. Because of the size of the country Turkey would have more seats in the European Parliament than most if not all others, and that would make them a heavyweight in negotiations. This would shift the power into Turkey’s hands and away from the rest of the European powers who currently wield it. Another way that they could exert influence would be in the mass immigration that would probably happen from Turkey to the rest of the EU if the borders were ever opened. They fear the immigration because it will bring Islamic traditions to their countries as well as destroy the heritage and culture that exist elsewhere in the EU.

Because its’ application to the EU is progressing so slowly, Turkey has slowed its reforms that need to be made to comply with European Union standards. Instead, Turkey seems to be pursuing its relations with countries in the Middle East, such as Iran and Syria, more that those with Europe. This may be due to the current government being pro-Islamic, even within the secular framework of the country’s constitution. In turning its attention towards the Middle East, Turkey seems to be reestablishing its roots in Islam, which bothers the ‘Christian Club’, especially in France, where President Sarkozy said that “Turkey has no place inside the European Union” . This sentiment has been echoed around Europe by many different governments and populations in surveys, but for every country that opposes Turkey’s accession to the EU there is a country that supports it.

Turkey is the love child of European and Islamic culture, and often both criticize Turkey for being more of one side than the other. The treatment of Turkey in its bid for European Union membership has been in some instances fair (as with the human rights violations) and unfair (in the discrimination against the Islamic population). The longer that the EU holds Turkey at bay the less Turkey is going to want to join the Union, although Turkey will never give up its bid to do so. Having Turkey as part of the Union would very beneficial to the EU, as it would bridge the gap between Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East. It would also serve to help the European Union become more accepting of different cultures and religions, both from without and within individual member countries. Unless the politicians who hold the reins to the EU acknowledge their prejudice against Turkey and actively try to change, Turkey very well may never become part of the European Union.

Such a system, of course, suggests that capitalism doesn’t work — or at least that it doesn’t work quite as intended. The government intervenes in the free market to tell the free market how to remain successful, decide what its future direction should be, and tells it that it will replace the position of the financing establishment and provide capital to meet its goals (so long as it does what the government wants). All because the company fits under the all-too-familiar guise of “too big to fail” — why, exactly, General Motors is too big to fail (even if we were to strategically intervene and have it fail gracefully) is somewhat unclear.

The company, which employs 250,000 people worldwide, came into trouble in late 2008, announcing sometime in December that it did not expect to survive past 2009 with the current funding. Discussion of bankruptcy, particularly that of Chapter 11 filing rose heavily, while the rest of the auto industry — especially Chrysler LLC — upheld similar suffering. The U.S. Senate voted against any form of bailout package — an idea for recovery supported by both then-President Bush and President Obama. Despite the legislative process rejecting the idea, President Bush approved a bailout plan for General Motors near the end of December, offering General Motors and Chrysler a cumulative $13.4 billion in financial support from the Treasury’s allocated Troubled Assets Relief Program, as well as an additional $4 billion for the future.

General Motors went on to declare the near largest loss in the history of automobiles — $31 billion. Market conditions showed gigantic losses for the entire industry, though none even remotely incredible as those of GM; Toyota marked its first loss in the history of the company. This wouldn’t be the first time for General Motors to grossly under perform the rest of the industry, however — in 2005, one of the best years for automotive sales ever — General Motors posted a $10.5 billion loss (Toyota posted a $2 billion profit in the same year).

Yesterday, the Obama administration’s restructuring plan called for Rick Wagoner to immediately resign.

It’s not that the U.S. automotive corporations didn’t keep up with the times, or didn’t build cars people wanted — quite the opposite is true. Western world energy policy has historically been low-cost gas: which encouraged people to want to drive larger more powerful vehicles, with little regard for environmental language and the gas costs associated — then, a number of events in recent years have caused both a market shift in gas prices and a social shift in environmental consciousness, effectively debunking the entire business plan. Overseas automotive manufacturers — who probably had the advantage of an earlier shift (or even a non-existence to begin with) away from larger cars, have successfully competed with all the new U.S. regulation and other legislation; though many jump quick to the subsidies which state-level governments have provided to these companies in recent years to attempt to spark interest in domestic production, indeed roughly $3 billion in tax breaks and subsidies have been provided over the last decade.

A UCS USA report said that while the company sells 23 distinct models which get better than 30 miles per gallon (highway), this number counts hatchback, sedan and coupe models of each car as multiple models — when using the more fair highway/city blend the EPA recommends, Toyota becomes the winner and General Motors falls to second last. Even more environmentally dubious, measured using the city numbers — which General Motors does not market — the company holds the winning place for selling the most cars which achieve less than 15 miles per gallon.

While undoubtedly a superstructure and secular shift away from gas-guzzling Hummers towards the more environmentally conscious mindset is a factor, labour regulations have been equally significant. The United Auto Workers and the Canadian Auto Workers alike have hugely dependent and cumbersome contracts with the corporations, building webs of complicated contractual obligations creating higher overhead and management problems. Furthermore, a hyper-saturation of models, brands, and product differentiation has clearly created a web of distributors with higher costs and lower productivity than normal.

Today, it seems rather disingenuous for President Barack Obama to suggest that, in fact, the plans submitted by the automobile industry were no good, and to even imply that bankruptcy should be the current plan-of-action. Maybe it is politicking, maybe it is not — the public, or at least the political establishment outside the President’s office seems to be, in many ways, against the bailout; will the extension of the deadline for a second revised business plan allow the automobile industry to win the President’s affection and continue the bailing out? Only time will tell.

The plan as it stands today — assuming the new business proposals do not become reality, is for General Motors and Chrysler to both split in to two companies. ‘Bad’ General Motors, which would absorb all the troublesome assets and liabilities, such as health costs (for retirees — a problem within itself) and debts, and ‘Good’ General Motors, which would retain all the assets of value. A similar structure would be achieved with Chrysler, who, if all goes according to this plan, would be sold to Fiat SpA. It is likely that the ‘Good’ General Motors would be divided up between old creditors, current shareholders and current United Auto Workers members, in an effort to somewhat restore value to the shareholders who have been damaged as of late.

The Fiat deal, some industry analysts suggest, is at more risk than Chrysler would like shareholders to know: “We are pleased that Chrysler, Fiat and Cerberus have reached agreement on a framework of a global alliance, supported by the U.S. Treasury,” announced Chrysler followed shortly by a backtrack to “a number of ’substantial hurdles’ are still to be jumped” before reaching the final deal — the details of what these “substantial hurdles” are, is unclear at this point but most are confident that the deal will eventually be closed.

Additionally, the United Auto Workers union would be required to agree to a new contract under the new ‘Good’ General Motors, one where the monopoly power of the employees may result in suboptimal conditions yet again. Additionally, the retirees, who are currently dependent on General Motors for their health and living expenses, may find themselves dependent on a bankrupt ‘Bad’ General Motors for a long time while a buyer is sought for the assets which are left in the effectively defunct company.

It seems that the original aim of a revised business plan is one that has caused nothing but heartache and frustration for the officials on Obama’s team — saying today that they would in fact prefer to go ahead with the current plan. In an attempt to keep all the recent news and the support of a bankruptcy solution from catastrophically defeating the company, President Obama announced that warranties on vehicles made by General Motors and Chrysler, if the companies were to become defunct, would be guaranteed by the U.S. government.

GM’s trading 25 per cent down today, at $2.70 a share, while Fiat is down about 10 per cent.

Gold is often considered in this sense, a hedge against social and political pressures. Fears that currencies may depreciate, that political stability may fall apart, or that war may break out is likely to be demonstrated in the rally towards gold as investors desire to hold less of their country’s currency. With internationalization, this threat trades best on an international market, where all countries are seen as at risk; gold is likely to increase rather than alternative currencies. Investors trading on a short-term often consider working with gold to capitalize on its speculative properties, particularly those associated with the political pressures; one may see the price of gold rally during the face of political instability, and return to value during political stability.

The price of gold, however, it seems has never truly grown — which is sensible: unlike investments in other areas, gold represents no real growth. Purchasing gold does not rent the capital to a corporation who may research or produce something new, something of value. Purchasing gold does not earn itself a rent in anyway. In this sense, gold is a store of value — or at least it should be. If gold’s actual use, in production of electronics, computers, jewelery, medicine and other non-monetary uses were to change measurably, the value of gold, being a limited resource, could jump similarly: historically, however, few of these changes have been seen. The price of gold makes it unlikely that “accidental” uses of gold will be discovered, as there is often a cheaper alternative.

The World Gold Council, a collaborative funded by gold mining companies says that a number of research programs are ongoing examining further uses of gold in advanced electronics, fuel cells, cancer treatments and chemical catalysts and that roughly 40,000 patent applications have been granted in the last decade relating to technological use of gold. This group does, however, have a vested interest in both the real and perceived value of gold.

Gold’s current primary use in industry is in computers and jewelery. Being ductile and malleable, gold makes for an excellent material to work with to produce ornaments — historically, and still today, the biggest consumer of non-monetary and investment gold is indeed in jewelery, with India being the biggest area of the market (18% of global consumption).

The World Gold Council estimated in 2005 that the global supply of gold (as a flow) was about 3,860 tonnes; while the demand at market prices hit about 3,750. If this is accurate, the surplus of gold should mean gold, at some value level, is depreciating (or at least was in 2005; since then, a flock of investors towards gold — due to external forces — may have adjusted things).

The next paragraph refers to “1979 dollars.” The best way to understand this is to think about buying power rather than nominal money. If you’re not educated in economics or finance; simply consider 1979 dollars to be the same buying power today, in a previous year. These “1979 dollars” are calculated by discounting the U.S. Consumer Price Index across the 28 years between then and 2007.

Gold, today, is trading at about $930 U.S., arguably it’s inflation-adjusted value. Gold demonstrates itself to be a good investment in response to expected inflation — simply, it acts as an alternative store of value. If gold is held during periods of inflation, then cashed out at the ‘end,’ it seems to return roughly the same buying power. Investors who bought gold in 1979 at $473 U.S. an ounce would now have roughly doubled their money (though, a slight loss in 1979 dollars - roughly $303). The same investor who invested his money at 6 per cent per annum (if he could find it) would be left with $2,716.67 in today’s dollars ($887.74 in 1979 dollars). Investors who held their $473 in cash would now have about $154.57 in buying power. Perhaps gold should be considered a modern day currency — one resistant to the negative inflating effects of central banking and monetary control.

This leads us to the conclusion though, that gold truly has not appreciated in value. In fact, the original 1979 comparison suggests that gold may have lost about 170 1979 dollars of value (479 2007 dollars). This could simply outline inaccuracies of the CPI, speculation changing the value at the beginning or end of the measured period, or an increasing ’stock’ of gold — in fact, it’s likely this is the case: investors and financial analysts; such as Dr. Ray Jastrom, regularly publish analyses of the price of gold suggesting that in terms of real buying power, it has a fixed association with real assets over centuries.

Gold’s primary advantage in terms of speculative or inflation hedge investment, is that unlike other “real” investments (notably, real estate), gold is highly liquid. Selling a property, even at its “market value,” during an economic collapse may be difficult: selling gold likely won’t. Even in circumstances of absolute panic, gold holds its own. This still reaffirms the fact that gold is a fairly good store of value.

One analysis simply concluded that gold historically, forgiving improvements in production procedure (suits today are arguably much nicer than they have been in the past) that an ounce of gold would always buy a nice suit and a pair of shoes. This seems to hold true today, as it does historically. The question we are left with at this point; is that if all this is true, what explains the up-shoot in gold prices (to what would be inflation-adjusted prices) after 2002? Did a shock in political stability (9/11-related, perhaps) cause the market to speculate above value, or simply to readjust to what value should’ve been all along; or has inflation actually determined “what value should’ve been” as something growing rapidly over the last decade?

Obama’s rhetoric is where he shines: outspoken, charismatic and confident, his speech glows with believability, trust and rapport — an attribute of little real value, but one that is keeping the masses cool headed while being deceived and lied to about the true achievements of the new ‘great leader.’

Examining the budget, we find nothing but talking points and buzzwords, little real effort to address the credibility or chaos of the modern day republic. We see no real analysis of where funds are needed and where they are not, no new responsibility in terms of spending our federal funds, and no attempt to truly restore financial discipline from the government. Running on an air of “responsibility” at both the personal and public levels, and covering the budget with the line “A New Era of Responsibility,” there’s a lot of rhetoric, and CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE buzzwords, but little in the way of substance. Finally, to keep on the peoples’ good side: taxes will not cover the spending — yet again — not that it really matters, at least economically.

A ballooning $700 billion deficit (roughly 5 per cent of the GDP and 6 per cent of the total debt), a contracting economy and general economic waste should raise the question: where is our responsibility. Small, manageable government advocates, even those that many write-off as “crazy” or “insane,” due to their extreme beliefs — such as Ron Paul — see almost no press time. Even during the elections the amount of press time paid to the libertarian advocate for the Republican party was higher than ever — yet still only a tiny fraction of the total time, even compared to the extent of his support.

What a “responsible” Obama would be doing — even still could, and should be doing — is sitting down and conducting a solid analysis of where money is deserved. Not where it has historically been allocated; not where there are people dependent on it now; not where people feel they’re entitled to it for no rhyme or reason; but where it is deserved. He should then publish a public report, outlining where, and why — with sound economic principals and reasoning, the state should be intervening. This analysis should consider important factors such as long-term incentive reductions seen by taxation, government reallocation and the securing of economic rents for private entities — then this should be opened up to wide-scale public debate; perhaps the Internet is a good forum for this, some innovative form of adequately moderated crowdsourcing may be the solution at this point.

It would also be respectable and responsible for Obama and his economic advisers to stop pretending there are no other schools of economic thought on the matter. It’s obvious that most citizens don’t understand economics and have no desire to: factors are too deep for many, too complicated for some, and simply uninteresting for most. People don’t want to talk numbers: they want to talk food, consumption and wages. This makes it wholly unfair to talk about ‘economic truths’ and ‘educate’ the public on how providing stimulus will fix all the problems. Economists all over greatly disagree about the causes, effects and solutions in a recession and the solutions we’re employing today contradict with about half of them; if what economists call “long run aggregate supply” has shifted backwards — that is, there’s less capital, labour or technology available in the market — rather than simply aggregate demand (the demand for the product being supplied across the whole economy) shrinking “temporarily,” even using the more common neoclassical economic models we’re going to find ourselves in a bigger mess by throwing money at the problem: not a smaller one. Forget using the more heterodox models; the results from these models are all over the place — some potentially credible, some not.

A responsible President would acknowledge the problems and changes that need to be made as America’s population ages — problems with social programs in general, and those connected to the elderly specifically. Problems with the new health care plans, and more so problems with the existing public pension plans. Problems that are likely to arise as firms cannot find enough good productive labour, or cannot afford to spend the money to keep productivity high enough to pay for the pensions they’ve agreed to. The current modifications to Social Security and other programs are not enough and most economists see this.

A responsible President would go ahead and address long-lasting leftovers in legislation which are still in effect today — no one would be starving without farm subsidies, in fact, the whole market would work a lot better. Everyone would be better off without rent subsidies and limitations — and economists by-and-large all know this, but it’s a hyper-politicized issue, associated with people who cannot afford to live where they’re living; but really, to be economically sound, they should move to a production center that they produce among the class that can afford.

Incentives and support for people to stay in areas with little to no business should be replaced with technological support and innovation or nothing at all — economists across the spectrum would agree that wasting labour in areas where they’re hard on employment, to the extent they need to rely on government handouts, is the same as having unemployed labour to some extent. A huge negative effect on the economy.

The President should be using his skilled rhetoric and charisma to educate the masses on these important issues — no doubt his economic advisers, at least to some extent, have explained these things to he and his decision making cohorts; whether they’ve done so adequately is a matter of controversy, but if reasonableness and fiscal responsibility is the goal: these are the solutions.

Furthermore, the Geithner-Bernanke economic duo seen as of late is making a fatal fault in accountable government. Rather than listening to the people or the political establishment, they, over-and-over again publish the same recommendations, propose the same solutions — with minor, irrelevant changes — to problems which the educated and knowledgeable few refute. Eventually, with enough changes and encouragements (in the case of the original TARP bailout; added tax breaks to convert some Republicans needed to make the bill pass) and enough propaganda these bills, recommendations, and so-called solutions eventually pass; despite the rejection in the first place.

We see this again and again with projects like the toxic bank idea. Few economists seem to really support the concept of a toxic bank — redistributing ‘bad’ assets from few to all just sounds like a way of reburdening the problem — a problem the scale of which has not been entirely understood. These bad assets (like say, AIG), the government says, are worth more than people are willing to pay for them and thus, good investments: how this is the case, no one really knows. This idea has been killed time and time again by both politicians and the loudmouthed minority, yet it keeps coming back in modified form, just waiting for someone to accept it as a reasonable solution: perhaps repeat exposure increases believability — and without this solution many, if not most, of those involved in the subprime and CDO fiascoes would be found insolvent very quickly: an issue no one wants to have to deal with.

Where ever you fall along the spectrum, unless it’s that of simply “big unruly government,” you’ll agree: there’s no “responsibility” yet.

This was not a recent interview — but interest in the story has picked up dramatically lately with the rise of Jon Stewart’s recent attacks on CNBC’s legitimacy both as a source of news and a source of investment advice — making comedic comparisons to Cramer’s embarrassed appearance on MSNBC’s The Daily Show to “[Cramer] having to watch me as his Bear Stearns advice wiped out my parents’ 401(k).”

Cramer made use of MSNBC and NBC’s other properties to call Jon Stewart’s show a “variety show,” which resulted in the creation of a Stewart-Cramer media personality war.

Jim Cramer’s techniques — many which fit under the umbrella of ‘fomenting’ or ‘enticing’ to some extent — are generally systems designed to modify how the public investors, feel the technicals and fundamentals of a company are doing.

“You can’t foment. That’s a violation… But you do it anyway because the SEC doesn’t understand it,” said Cramer speaking of his strategy of falsely presenting a stock as ‘down.’

Cramer spoke of making use of the media and news establishment to ‘report’ information about companies and encourage the development of stories which may not have hit significant coverage to build favorable reputations for his companies or stocks. Much of Cramer’s technique seems to involve using his exposure and influence in media circles — particularly his operation of the ‘adviser’ show, Mad Money — to create opinions which are complex enough the SEC cannot enforce them as strict fomenting.

One of the basic strategies of Cramer’s fomenting, he said, was, that in the situation a hedge fund (such as his own) was holding a short position in a company which reported excellent quarterly news, the fund would call up brokerage houses and either feed them bad news / blatant lies, or order a huge set of short sales — suggesting that investor confidence in the company was falling. The slew of bad news would create a temporary fall long enough for the manager to resolve his short position and conclude a tidy profit.

Cramer refused to talk about some of his techniques, saying he was “not going to say it on TV.”

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, said the CNBC reporters used this technique to spread lies and rumors about his company, combined with a slew of bad / false financial reports and analysis around the Internet and otherwise.

Many analysts are suggesting that much of the CNBC enterprise and Jim Cramer’s specifically success came from a strong understanding of how to control the system — control the news, you control the stock.

“We had it down to a science in 1992: my wife would pick stocks that technically looked ready to go up, or she would keep track of merchandise to see what was down to tag ends. She would then generate a list of stocks that could move quickly on good news. Jeff would then go to work calling the companies to try to find anything good we could say about them [...] we would load up with call options and common stock and then give the good news to our favorite analysts who liked the stock so they could go do their promotion. That would get the buzz going and we would then be able to liquidate the position into the buzz for a handsome profit,” said Cramer in his 2002 book Confessions of a Street Addict.

“What’s important when you are in that hedge fund mode is to not do anything remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view, that it’s important to create a new truth, to develop a fiction. These are all the things that you should be doing on a day-to-day basis and if you’re not doing it, maybe you shouldn’t be in the game,” said Jim Cramer in 2007.

Hedge funds, by many claims, exist simply to manipulate the market — promising much larger than “legitimately” achievable returns to their investors by producing market trends and actions that are less false or created. Hedge funds are currently unregulated in the United States, though a number of proposed bills (H.R. 3417 - Commission on the Tax Treatment of Hedge Funds and Private Equity; S. 1402 - Amendment of Investment Advisors Act of 1940; and S. 1624 - Amendment of Internal Revenue Code) as well as speculation in the Obama administration’s “confidence to financial markets” movements suggests that this may change in short order.

Stewart’s main critique of Cramer’s positions was that of Bear Stearns, a company Cramer suggested had strong fundamentals and was a great purchase in early 2008 — self-credited analysts such as Daily Kos question whether this was an attempt to pump up one of his positions.

The SEC’s Chairman, Christopher Cox, called for an investigation and a number of subpoena’s in to the collapse of Bear Stearns at which point Cramer joined the call for reform and investigation in to this short selling fomenting.

“Societies which admit private property — which is to say almost all and every society known up to the present — offer men two essentially different ways of acquiring wealth.” — Vilfredo Pareto.

From a purely business-economic perspective, the answer to this question is simple. The cost of preventing theft, on the margin will, at some point along the “enforcement set” become more expensive than the losses associated with it. Simply put, to prevent that last instance of any crime would cost more than it’s losses — at least for crimes where losses are easily quantifiable.

This is true over the entire set of quantifiable crimes; theft being the easiest to work with. Wal-Mart has long said to have an either unwritten, or highly confidential policy to not prosecute under theft under $25 — the costs and disadvantages of going through with prosecution is higher than the incentive which may be prevented.

Of course, these incentives are complex. If the fact that Wal-Mart doesn’t prosecute under $25 were to become public knowledge, stamped and confirmed policy, theft within that range would skyrocket — for any agent who’s morality does not prevent it, effectively there is no barrier to stealing things that are worth less than $25; everything under that price is priced out of the market — free. These incentives are what make this a complicated issue — at least from this perspective.

From a broader perspective, however, a more moral-economic perspective, we see a number of possible questions. Ignoring moral imperatives, the situation where the benefit to the thief could be higher than the loss to society, all things (incentives, overhead, and enforcement) considered. The situation arises where an actor has the infinite incentive to steal when, for instance, (s)he cannot afford the medication required to survive — the price elasticity (the change in demand with regard to any change in price) is effectively zero, but with no access to those funds even the most basic of economic theories falls apart. The assumption that an elasticity can be zero implies that an unlimited amount of funds can be accessed and that there is no income effect — in fact, there is an income effect, and it as such encourages theft. But is this theft suboptimal — morally, it may be right or wrong, that doesn’t matter — or does it create a situation where the benefit to society / the actor is more than the loss to society, and thus should be economically encouraged?

A paper by D. Usher in the Oxford Economic Papers, suggests that this is totally wrong. The ‘optimal’ amount of theft is 0, simply because any level above that induces unintentional inefficiencies in to the market — this is an interesting issue, and one that highlights what could be the problem of all of economics. Optimality is misdefined, misdirected and aims to complete a goal which may either be entirely nonsensical (NP) or simply unachievable. Perhaps even ‘efficiency’ in an economic sense introduces cases of inefficiency — to a point where the goal of efficiency is not a sound goal at all.

Usher’s paper posits that all forms of utility inefficiency — while not always definitively socially disadvantageous in themselves — including taxes, rent seeking, property rights, the free rider problem, etc. — can all be traced back to one commonality: theft itself or theft-like characteristics. The equalizing effects of theft, those outlined with the medicine example above, can be said to be true — but they create a solid, conforming and repeatable modification to the superstructure; a society without theft differs from a society with theft in that there’s loss and waste associated with preventing theft, there’s deadweight associated with the (otherwise productive) labour forgone by the thief (assuming theft becomes a full time job, rather than a ‘leisure time’ cost). There’s additional losses with regard to goods that might be destroyed by the thief (what Usher calls ‘non-clean theft’) and in the redirection of production towards goods which may be more difficult or less likely to be stolen.

Morally, much of this theft talk is unclear; as most of morality is. Is it ‘right’ for the man who is going to die if he doesn’t receive medication to die, steal the medication, or is it simply ‘wrong’ for the medication to not be available to him. Equality is an important issue in economics, arguably as important as efficiency, and certainly a factor which needs to be considered.

An interesting corollary to this, a study by Ned Carter of Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, reported quite successfully that certain advertising techniques and promotionary activities — including price reductions and increased exposure — may result in significantly increased theft while sales did not increase significantly for 4 of the 6 products. A report which suggests retailers are doing themselves no favors by increasing many of their current promotional techniques.

The Usher paper, titled Theft as a Paradigm for Departures from Efficiency was published in 1987 in the Oxford Economic Papers and further goes in to a mathematical decomposition of the theft issue, for those who are interested.

Basque nationalism has been alive for more than two hundred years, with justifiable right. The Basque region, which spans the Pyrenees between France and Spain, is home to possibly the least assimilated group of the Palaeolithic inhabitants of Western Europe. According to the most believed theory, while the rest of Europe was being assimilated into the Roman Empire, Basque society developed outside of its influence. They created their own language, Batua, which is still spoken by about 650,000 people, almost all of whom live in what is considered Basque country. The Basque people were largely autonomous until the French Revolution in France and the Carlist Wars in Spain at which point the governments of both countries took an interest in their rule.

Since the early 1800s there has been a significant movement towards an autonomous Basque region or for complete independence from Spain and France. As it currently stands, about 60% of those living in the Spanish Basque Autonomous Community want some sort of an autonomous state for the Basques, while only 25% want to see an independent country spanning the Spanish-French border. There has also been a movement away from living in the Autonomous Community in recent years. While there are about 2.1 million people living there now, over the last 25 years approximately 380,000 people have left the area, many of which have settled in other regions in Spain. One of the most cited reasons for this exodus has been the violent tactics used by ETA.

ETA was founded in August 1959 as a group that advocated for cultural traditions of the Basque people. It has since evolved into a paramilitary operation which has been responsible for an estimated eight hundred twenty five deaths, thousands of injuries and dozens of kidnappings since it first took a violent stance in 1968. Hundreds of members of ETA are currently imprisoned in France and Spain, and most countries, including all of the EU, Canada, and the United States consider them a terrorist organization. Between 1983 and 1987 a sort of war raged between ETA and Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion (GAL). GAL kidnapped, tortured and killed members of ETA, as well as their family members and even some people who had no connection to ETA. This war is what prompted thousands to flee the area. In 2006 ETA announced a ceasefire, which was subsequently broken in 2007.

After hundreds of years of repression and forty years of violence, the people of the Basque country are ready to try to come to a peaceful agreement. While a majority would like some sort of autonomy and recognition as a distinct people, they do not want this at the expense of the lives of their brothers and sisters. The history of the Basque people has been hard, but it is no longer the time to fight for things that they will never get. As a people they are free, they are prosperous and they are happy. Their children can learn in their native tongue, and no one tells them that they cannot have their culture. The Basques no longer have a cause to fight for. They are content with what they have as a people, and do not need anything more.