On The Prohibition Of Psychoactive Substances

Posted: 9/17/2017

Introduction

This is a work in progress. I am still trying myself to understand the issues involved. This article will most likely be amended, revised, updated as time goes by.

Some Reasonable Assumptions About This Subject

Here is preliminary, tentative list of statements probably most reasonable people can agree on:

1. There will always be people attempting to try psychoactive substances in one form or another. The genie is out of the bottle presumably since homo sapiens came on the scene
2. The more than one hundred years of international prohibition of psychoactive substances has failed not unlike the alcohol prohibition in the U.S.
3. Minors should be protected and not have access to such substances or only under very restricted circumstances
4. Some other areas may also have to be restricted as far as consumption is concerned: military service, driving a vehicle, employment come to mind
5. In the name of individual liberty nobody should be prevented from taking such substances or trade or produce such substances
6. Individual responsibility demands that under the influence of such substances your responsibility and culpability to prevent harm to others or damage is greatly increased. Harsh punishment should follow if this great responsibility is neglected
7. Individual responsibility demands that those who become dependent or addicted to these substances seek immediate help and do everything possible to overcome or cope with the addiction
8. Given today’s advances in science and technology, it is much easier to prove if a person has been under the influence of such a substance  
9. Education and informing the public about the pros and cons of such substances would be much better without prohibition. People could learn how to responsibly take such substances etc.
10. It is probably one of those long held myth that the widespread availability of such substances would destroy a civil society (like Sodom and Gomorrah). The long life of this myth could be attributed to Big Government interests of power and control over its subjects
11. Big Government in many Western countries has allowed for one psychoactive substance to be widely available, i.e. alcohol. This is clearly not enough. Further it is an inherent contradiction to allow one substance, but to prohibit essentially all the others irrespective of potency or addictive potential
12. We know that the arts have benefitted from artists taking psychoactive substances

The Curse Of Prohibition

Here is a list of the many terrible side effects of the aggressive prohibition:

1. The known and suspected medicinal properties of psychoactive substances were not scientifically researched and applied prevented and inhibited by prohibition. Only today are we perhaps at the cusp of successfully breaking addiction
2. Medical treatment options were not fully developed as they could have been. Without prohibition we could have offered much better treatment alternatives decades ago
3. A totally unnecessary promotion of  a very lucrative crime and its attendant negative effects and issues thanks to this prohibition. Not to mention the corruption and other subversive effects that come with this crime.

Why Was Stalin Never Indicted As A War Criminal And For Crimes Against Humanity!

Posted: 9/17/2017

Trigger

Today, I saw a Facebook posting by Lawrence Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education wherein he mentioned that the Soviet Union invaded Poland on this day in 1939, i.e. 9/17/1939. Nazi Germany had only invaded Poland 16 days earlier, the official beginning of World War II.

I knew, the Soviet Union invaded Poland as well not long after Germany and that the Soviet Union also committed horrible atrocities in Poland during their occupation. I totally forgot or I never realized how soon the Soviet Union invaded as well.

The Infamous Ribbentrop Molotov Pact To Divide Poland

This pact is also known as the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939. The treaty included a secret protocol that divided territories of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Romania, into German and Soviet "spheres of influence".

In November of 1939, based on this pact, Stalin invaded parts of Finland. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania.

This infamous pact and the infamous secret protocol were known to the West even before World War II ended.

Stalin’s Numerous Crimes Against Humanity

Here is a very short list of crimes against humanity by Stalin:

1. Show trials against opponents
2. Holodomor (Ukrainian famine)
3. Horrible labor camps for opponents and dissidents
4. Forced resettlement of various peoples

The Cold War Could Have Been Much Shorter

I would squarely blame Truman and Churchill for failing to indict Stalin for his many crimes. Instead these two leaders of the Western world preferred to be in a coalition with Stalin way beyond the defeat of Nazi Germany and to let Stalin get away with murder. Charles de Gaulle should be mentioned here too.

Not to indict Stalin was a major blunder of the Western leaders even at a time when the U.S. had absolute military superiority thanks to the atom bomb. The Soviet Union never thanked the West for that.

Cheap, Effective Cancer Treatment

Posted: 9/13/2017

Cancer is history within the next 10-20 years! Mark my words!

Today, I read Researchers Use Unexpected Tool in New Cancer Treatments A team of Duke University bioengineers developed a new ethanol gel that showed 100 percent cure rate in its small experiment. The new type of cancer treatment could save lives of those unable to afford traditional surgeries.

This cancer treatment is referred to as ethanol ablation. The ethanol gel is injected into the cancerous tissue (in this case “squamous cell carcinoma … in a hamster model”) and voila!

“Ethanol kills several types of tumors by dehydrating cells and killing proteins. The process -- ethanol ablation -- already works pretty well on one type of liver cancer. ”

Best of all: “... treatments can come down to $5 per treatment. The success rates of current ethanol ablation treatments are equivalent to that of surgery.”

Misguided Critics Of Pearl Harbor Attack 1941

Posted: 9/9/2017

Trigger

In recent times, I have seen a number of libertarian articles quite critical of the Pearl Harbor Attack of 1941 and the subsequent U.S. intervention in World War II.

Here is one of them: Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy

Similar, critical articles come out almost on cue every anniversary of the attack.

Recurring Themes Of The Critique

Usually, we find following typical arguments in those articles:

1. The U.S. intelligence service was able to crack one of the Japanese government cipher codes
2. The U.S. first imposed severe economic sanctions on imperial Japan, which is for e.g. naive libertarians akin to an act of war
3. The Commander in Chief of Pearl Harbor (Husband E. Kimmel) and the second in command (Walter Short) were made scapegoats in the aftermath of the infamous attack

As far as the story of successful cracking of imperial Japanese cipher codes are concerned, the story is not that simple as you may guess from reading about it on e.g. the NSA Museum website:

1. It were the diplomatic messages not the military messages that the U.S. was able to read
2. Would it have been prudent to save Pearl Harbor, but jeopardize the capability to continue to read secret messages? What would you have done, had you been in the shoes of the decisionmakers at the time?

I don’t think, the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on imperial Japan preceded the brutal invasions and attacks carried out by the military of imperial Japan on its Asian neighbors.

That Kimmel and Short were probably made scapegoats was all too human in the face of such a devastating attack. Hopefully, one day a U.S. President will find the courage to restore these two officers.

An Inconvenient History Of Science

Posted: 9/5/2017  Updated/Revised: 12/3/2019, 5/11/2019, 9/9/2017

Update Of 12/3/2019

Just watched this very recommendable documentary on chaos theory by Jim Al Khalili: The Secret Life Of Chaos: Chaos Theory (Jim Al-Khalili). Among many other things, Jim pointed out that after Newton many scientists and others were convinced that the world and the universe operated like a very predictable mechanical clockwerk, cause and effect etc. Thus, humans would be able to become masters of the universe. Then came quantum mechanics and later chaos theory.

Rest Of Blog Post Before 12/3/2019

The All Present Demagoguery And Propaganda Of Science

On a  daily and very pervasive basis, science is frequently abused for political ends. Citizens are taken for fools and made to believe propaganda instead of science.

They famously say about statistics: 

1. You can only trust your own statistics (perhaps attributed to Winston Churchill)
2. There are lies, damned lies, and then there is statistics (perhaps attributed to Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain)

Something similar about statistics can be said about science as well. With science you can prove almost anything you wish to prove especially if it is politically expedient and generates lavish government funding for scientists.

Frequently, the use of scientific arguments is not much more than a pretense of knowledge or scientism. In some instances it is not much more than superstition dressed up as science.

The Global Warming Hoax

This is probably the biggest and most consequential science demagoguery the world has ever seen and suffered. It is incredible superstition revived on steroids! Fatalism and apocalyptic thought combined! Supposedly, 97% of all scientists agree we the citizens are to believe. The sooner this hoax subsides and vanishes, the better for humanity!

For brevity sake, I will not go here into any of the many controversies of this Global Warming disinformation. Some of it is covered on my blog. Suffice it to say, humans are still not capable of forecasting accurately our local weather for more than 24 hours, but Global Warming zealots want us to believe their computer models can forecast or simulate global climate for a hundred years. Simply Preposterous!

Geocentric Versus Heliocentric Planetary System

Most people are familiar with this famous case of erroneous science and with the courageous scientists involved in correcting it, i.e. Galileo Galilei and Nicolaus Copernicus. This case is probably taught in school in all Western countries.

However, what many people probably do not realize is that this was not just a singular aberration from an otherwise superbly working science. This story even reinforces the narrative that it was actually the dogmatic catholic church that opposed science and not leading scientists themselves for over several centuries.

In fact this is but one prominent case of hundreds of similar cases were prominent scientists of the day developed and fervently defended a wrong theory until they could not longer given the ever more growing, overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

History Is Littered With Defunct Scientific Theories

I will try to present here only a selection of once pursued, obsolete scientific theories. Wikipedia actually has an interesting compilation of such theories here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories

Here is the Wikipedia definition of a superseded scientific theory, which I agree with (emphasis added): “A superseded, or obsolete, scientific theory is a scientific theory that was once widely accepted within the mainstream scientific community but is no longer considered to be an adequate or complete description of reality, or is considered to be simply false. This label does not cover proto scientific or fringe science theories with limited support in the scientific community.”

List of selected, superseded scientific theories (in no particular order, but these theories were very prominent in its time and tainted science for a long time):

1. Phlogiston (“a superseded scientific theory that postulated that a fire-like element called phlogiston ... is contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion”)
2. Spontaneous Generation (“The theory of spontaneous generation held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular”)
3. Miasma theory of diseases (“an obsolete medical theory that held diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (... "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air”)
4. Vitalism (“the belief that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things"”)
5. Caloric Theory (“an obsolete scientific theory that heat consists of a self-repellent fluid called caloric that flows from hotter bodies to colder bodies”)
6. Dalton’s Atomic Theory (atoms were considered as indivisible and indestructible)
7. Luminiferous Ether (“Luminiferous aether or ether ... was the postulated medium for the propagation of light.”)
8. Geocentric planetary system
9. Steady State of Universe theory (“In cosmology, the steady state model is an alternative to the Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe. In the steady state model, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter”)
10. Flat earth theory (“a modern misconception that Earth was believed to be flat rather than spherical by scholars and the educated during the Middle Ages in Europe”)
11. Preformationism (“a formerly-popular theory that organisms develop from miniature versions of themselves”, e.g. there is a little man (homunculus) sitting inside a sperm)

Do not fool yourself believing that some of these superseded theories are very old, predating modern science and therefore it could not happen anymore. This is plain wrong! E.g. the Luminiferous Ether theory was developed in the 18th and 19th century before it was refuted in the late 19th century; the Phlogiston theory remained prominent until 1780; the Miasma theory has ancient roots, but it was not abandoned until 1880s; similar the Spontaneous Generation theory, ancient origins, but was not put to rest until about 1859.

This inconvenient history of science should be taught much more widely! Scientists are only too human! Neither the pope nor scientists are infallible!

Beware Of Fallacy

Don’t fool yourself believing that today’s humans or scientists are so much smarter than their predecessors. We are not much more intelligent, but we have more knowledge! 

Few scientists truly stand on the shoulders of giants. Most scientists are anything but giants. To err is human (Seneca: “Errare humanum est”)! No exception for scientists!

Finally Outright Criminal Scientists

There have been examples in history, where scientists or medical doctors aided and abetted crimes:

1. Eugenics
2. Forced, dubious medical experiments e.g. during World War II by German and Japanese scientists and doctors

A Great Tax Reform: Voluntary Taxation By Lottery

Posted: 9/2/2017

Trigger

Recently, I came across this incredible article:

Early American Government Ran on Lotteries, Not Taxes

I was truly stunned by the content of this article. Anyone who follows my blog knows that I am strongly in favor of citizens and businesses to be able to choose voluntary taxation to fund most government expenditures (see my previous blog about voluntary taxation here).

Historical Examples

Based on the above article, who knew that (emphasis added):

1. “In the 17th and 18th centuries, lotteries were a thriving business, both public and private, and without them, early America couldn’t have been built.”
2. “... the first lottery used to raise government revenue and offer a cash prize was held in Florence, Italy, in 1530.”
3. “By the 1700s, lotteries were a popular way to raise money for all sorts of projects and were seen less as a sinful pastime than a civic duty.”
4. “In the early 18th century, The Independent reports, the Archbishop of Canterbury lent his good name to lotteries funding the British Museum and Westminster Bridge.”
5. “In 1776, the Constitutional Congress held one to benefit the soldiers of the Revolution.”
6. “Once the colonies won the war, the new states leaned heavily on lotteries to raise revenue, in part because they were not eager to tax newly independent citizens who’d just rebelled against taxation by a central authority. Lotteries funded the growth of the country’s earliest colleges, including the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), Dickinson College, Harvard, and Yale, of many, many churches, and of iconic buildings, including Boston’s Faneuil Hall, which needed to be rebuilt after it burned down in 1761.”
7. “But in the 19th century, the popularity of lotteries waned as they were haunted by corruption. It was easy enough to announce a lottery, sell tickets, and abscond with the money without offering a prize. In New York and Massachusetts, lotteries were banned in the 1830s, and later in the century most states followed suit.”
   [This seems to be more a problem of law enforcement and not of lotteries per se. I think, this was a cheap excuse or pretense to get rid of voluntary financing of government.]

To Those In Opposition Of Voluntary Taxation

I don’t think there are any compelling or convincing reasons not to return to lottery as a way to voluntarily finance most of government expenditures.

To those who claim only compulsory taxation of citizens and businesses is realistic or only compulsory taxation generates enough revenue (unfortunately, there are way too many making these claims) are detractors of individual freedom and are enemies of human progress.