Argiculturally speaking, marijuana is no more expensive to produce than wheat. Wheat is currently $316 per metric ton. I don't think marijuana is that cheap. But it could be, if produced locally.
Being illegal to sell, and smuggled across a border, does increase the price.
I'll certainly cede to you that it could be cheaper if produced in the US legally. But I suppose my beef is the requirement that it be produced internationally while illegal, and produced locally when legal, when it seems that the optimal course would be importing it when it's legal. In addition, one of the biggest non-moral(my body my choice and etc.) tool used to try and persuade governments to legalize is the potential tax base created by legalizing and tacking on a "sin-tax". Sin-taxes are most assuredly not levied on food and living supplies(like, say, wheat). Try and compare it to tobacco.
Specifically: all other things being equal, a smuggled, illegal firearm will be more expensive than that same firearm if it manufactured and sold legally in the US.
The problem, as I see it here(and above), is that you're creating a false dichotomy. There's two variables here: legality, and production locale. When comparing legal vs illegal, illegal will always be more expensive(while invariably fueling organized crime); production locale works off of a variety of factors, but typically less developed=cheaper to produce(favoring importation rather than homegrowing).
The government wouldn't pay importation prices or taxes, either.
Unless you're suggesting that the US gov't would take over the production of marajuana, methinks there's something screwy with that statement. Government doesn't pay taxes on things they create, but they sure do levy them on producers.
Eliminating guns would limit the possibility of gun violence. Although this fact applies to all guns, I was referring specifically to automatics and machine guns, which I think should be outlawed.
Largely due to the impracticability of implementing such a lawat this time, I'm not in favour of outlawing all guns.
I'm going to take this moment to parrot the genie back in the bottle quote, and then I'm going to ask: if it's impractical to implement now, when will it be practical? When the military will have been operating on DEWs and production of modern firearms has been defunct for 50-100 years?
Smuggled marijuana is more expensive than when legal and grown locally. The same is true of smuggled firearms and those manufactured locally.
One of the factors that helps to make illegal firearms cheaper in the US is their use in murders. Criminals have at least some knowledge that guns can be traced to the crime scene, so they'll get rid of it. Such killers use a gun they purchased illegally, fence it, and purchase another. Supply of guns is kept up partially through this method. Link here showing the relative ease and competitive costs of obtaining an illegal firearm.
Smuggled marijuana is more expensive than when legal and grown locally. The same is true of smuggled firearms and those manufactured locally.
Any evidence for this? Marajuana cropand other drug crops are typically bought at(to Americans) dirt cheap prices straight from the farmer. Most of the prices are then inflated to make things profitable for the middleman, in this case the cartels. And individuals selling in an organized crime group often work for less than minimum wage(see Freakonomics, chapter called "Why Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms"). I dunno. Cheap importation prices, complete tax evasion, and paying less-than minimum wage all sound like good reasons why illegal drugs might potentially be cheaper than legal pot.
The fact is people are being replaced by machines everyday with no jobs or future work for those being displaced. That cant be economicly sound no matter how you cut it.
Well, ordinarily I'd say that these lost jobs would eventually* be far and away replaced by the industry, but I have no idea what industries you're talking about in present day society. Can you give me some examples? And technology as a whole hasn't all of a sudden appeared out of nowhere, it's been around for as long as mankind has tried to solve their problems. So I've gotta ask; what examples of history can you give for technology ruining the economy by depleting jobs?
*Again, problems with short-term, as far as the luddite fallacy goes.
We dont need new technology, we need more jobs.
Best way to make jobs is to ban cars, trains, and gasoline. With that out of the way, there'll be plenty of jobs for people. Can you imagine the sheer amount of carting and shipping that'd be required to keep large cities like New York running? You'd probably have as many jobs as you'd ever need.
Our population grows at about +8%-10% every 15 years.
6.9 billion (now) +8% every ten years or so for 270 years = nearly 22 billion.
My problem with overpopulation theories is that it assumes that mankind is the civilizational equivalent of an idiot walking into a glass door, picking himself up, and doing it again and again. While I do believe that population has quite a ways to go before it peaks, most developed countries have negative/close to negative population growth because the "price" of having a child only increases as development increases. As the world becomes even more populated, I think we will see some trends toward fewer children per household, or even marriages w/o children*. And even then, with agricultural technology improving as it has been, mass starvation is still a long ways away.
*Both assuming that population has approximately peaked.
We can barely afford to keep up social services, schools, and healthcare right here in America. I highly doubt we will be cruising the universe a la Star Trek, or colonizing planets any time soon...if EVER.
Mankind has continued to make scientific progress almost continuously since the Industrial Revolution, times when very few people were formally educated and thought that the little things swimming in their water meant that it was healthy. I'm sorry, but those issues seem like complete non-sequiters to scientific development.
Personally, I see innovation and development outpacing the most serious problems that will arise, and if we can get a serious energy source and artificial intelligence, I don't think there's anything short of global catastrophe that man'd be unable to deal with(global catastrophe being sun explosion, meteors hitting the earth, and climate change, if it's serious enough).
The problem I have with new tech is it already has lead to over population problems and an increase in unemployment. There as a time when there was certain jobs considered 'high school' jobs such as landscaping and fast foods. Now thos high schoolers are competing with adults for those jobs because the job market just cant handle the amount of people looking for a job.
Certainly, people are out of work due to new technology all the time. There are problems with the idea that it's a bad thing to introduce the technology, but because I'm nowhere near as good an explainer as other economists, I'll just link you to the Luddite fallacy. Short term, it may be injurious, but adding transitional benefits and temporary subsidies to ease the transition have proven problematic(Luddism in England vs. Hand-looms in India).
There's also such a thing as jury nullification, whereby the populace, as represented by the jurors, refuses to pass a guilty charge on a law they believe to be unjust. It is very much a healthy part of the court system, allowing some representation by the people into the judicial process.
The landbase is obviously budget, at present I am unconcerned on that score. Biggest issue is it's inability to place real heavy threats quickly, so far as I can tell. Any comments and suggestions are much appreciated.
No, it's pretty definitely a racist epithet. Did you happen to read Webster's usage note?
I did not, but it seems to confirm what I have written. It is "an inflammatory racial slur ... expressive of racial hatred and bigotry." What I'm seeing is that racial =/= racist, rather that it is an expression that demonstrates a condemnatory attitude toward persons of black heritage, which does not necessarily mean that they believe their own race to be inherently superior.
We didn't "take it for granted." mrmaul558 and I discussed, in detail, when it was, when it was not, and how we both defined what a "racist word" meant to us.
Indeed, and I saw that. However, my qualm is not over whether it is racist/non-racist/it just depends, but rather between racist/bigoted, which AFAIK, has not been raised. The way I see it, racism is a whole... belief system, if you will, where the individual's race is seen as inherently better than another, while bigotry can be as simple as "doesn't like black people". I can see evident bigotry in the word, but none of the hallmarks of honest-to-goodness racial superiority. Maybe it's just because racism is a full-on worldview, whereas bigotry needn't necessarily be codified into a comprehensive system.
I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of "taking it for granted." You sure you read this thread?
Actually, now that I think about it, I may have been looking at the healthcare thread. My bad.
I have been pondering Stuffy Doll for a while. Don't think I'm going to, but it's a good suggestion.
I'm not really interested in Voltaic Key, as there are relatively few targets for it(Chalice, Myr, and Atlas are about it, as the Towers are a little expensive, even with the accelerated manabase). Candelabra is too rich for my blood, but I'm seriously considering Deserted Temple, maybe making Gargoyle Castle a 2-of and take out the Golem Artisans for it. Doubling Cube seems too much like a win-more, even though it's not. Really, my biggest problems are when I can't get the 'Post or 'Tron online and I'm stuck at 6 mana or so.
I've got a minor qualm regarding this thread. I've been reading it for a while now, and it seems that it's taken for granted that the epithet in question is "racist". Looking at the definition from Webster, the word is descriptive of the individual's race, not of the individual's inherent inferiority based on their race. I would say that, in it's commonly perjorative usage, that it is a bigoted word, rather than a racist one. I dunno, it sometimes seems that slamming someone with a racist tag is a method used to try and discredit people and the opinions they represent, specifically in other, much less civil, forums.
As you can see, I've gone Mono-Brown. It is somewhat budget, and shelling out for playsets of things like Powder Keg or Tanglewire is a little much. Meekstone is one option I'm seriously considering, seeing as weenie aggro can be outpaced with Tower of Eons and Rings of Brighthearth. Gargoyle Castle is very much a flavor choice(that's a tower, I don't care what the title of the card is), and produces bodies for Tower of Champions lategame, as well as interacts with Rings. Current candidate for omission is Golem Artisan. He can be helpful lategame, if I'm stuck with tons of mana and nothing to do with them, but mostly he sits there.
I was recently inspired by a comment on Gatherer about a deck based on the tower cycle from Mirrodin, called a Tower Defense deck. I've been brainstorming ideas for a little while, and what I've come up with is a colorless Locus/Urzatron manabase with a smattering of all 5 towers, numbers adjusted based on utility. As it stands, however, my defenses are terrible when I'm trying to set up my manabase, and the deck is very susceptible to to early aggro. Any suggestions for making this deck work better?
Mind making another little list towards the bottom of your decklist stating the number of sacc outlets? The Altars and Attrition are the obvious ones, but the outlets are all over the place(Perilous Forays in the ramp, Skullclamp in the card-draw, etc.). I've found that it really helps to know the number of sacc outlets in a deck that turns creatures into resources(I've built/helped build Teysa, Marrow-Gnawer, Sek'kuar, Bloodbond Rats, Ulasht, and Shirei). This deck looks like a ton of fun, and right up my alley, so knowing the sacc outlets would really help me with some brainstorming Savra.
I'll certainly cede to you that it could be cheaper if produced in the US legally. But I suppose my beef is the requirement that it be produced internationally while illegal, and produced locally when legal, when it seems that the optimal course would be importing it when it's legal. In addition, one of the biggest non-moral(my body my choice and etc.) tool used to try and persuade governments to legalize is the potential tax base created by legalizing and tacking on a "sin-tax". Sin-taxes are most assuredly not levied on food and living supplies(like, say, wheat). Try and compare it to tobacco.
The problem, as I see it here(and above), is that you're creating a false dichotomy. There's two variables here: legality, and production locale. When comparing legal vs illegal, illegal will always be more expensive(while invariably fueling organized crime); production locale works off of a variety of factors, but typically less developed=cheaper to produce(favoring importation rather than homegrowing).
Unless you're suggesting that the US gov't would take over the production of marajuana, methinks there's something screwy with that statement. Government doesn't pay taxes on things they create, but they sure do levy them on producers.
I'm going to take this moment to parrot the genie back in the bottle quote, and then I'm going to ask: if it's impractical to implement now, when will it be practical? When the military will have been operating on DEWs and production of modern firearms has been defunct for 50-100 years?
One of the factors that helps to make illegal firearms cheaper in the US is their use in murders. Criminals have at least some knowledge that guns can be traced to the crime scene, so they'll get rid of it. Such killers use a gun they purchased illegally, fence it, and purchase another. Supply of guns is kept up partially through this method. Link here showing the relative ease and competitive costs of obtaining an illegal firearm.
Any evidence for this? Marajuana cropand other drug crops are typically bought at(to Americans) dirt cheap prices straight from the farmer. Most of the prices are then inflated to make things profitable for the middleman, in this case the cartels. And individuals selling in an organized crime group often work for less than minimum wage(see Freakonomics, chapter called "Why Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms"). I dunno. Cheap importation prices, complete tax evasion, and paying less-than minimum wage all sound like good reasons why illegal drugs might potentially be cheaper than legal pot.
Well, ordinarily I'd say that these lost jobs would eventually* be far and away replaced by the industry, but I have no idea what industries you're talking about in present day society. Can you give me some examples? And technology as a whole hasn't all of a sudden appeared out of nowhere, it's been around for as long as mankind has tried to solve their problems. So I've gotta ask; what examples of history can you give for technology ruining the economy by depleting jobs?
*Again, problems with short-term, as far as the luddite fallacy goes.
Best way to make jobs is to ban cars, trains, and gasoline. With that out of the way, there'll be plenty of jobs for people. Can you imagine the sheer amount of carting and shipping that'd be required to keep large cities like New York running? You'd probably have as many jobs as you'd ever need.
My problem with overpopulation theories is that it assumes that mankind is the civilizational equivalent of an idiot walking into a glass door, picking himself up, and doing it again and again. While I do believe that population has quite a ways to go before it peaks, most developed countries have negative/close to negative population growth because the "price" of having a child only increases as development increases. As the world becomes even more populated, I think we will see some trends toward fewer children per household, or even marriages w/o children*. And even then, with agricultural technology improving as it has been, mass starvation is still a long ways away.
*Both assuming that population has approximately peaked.
Mankind has continued to make scientific progress almost continuously since the Industrial Revolution, times when very few people were formally educated and thought that the little things swimming in their water meant that it was healthy. I'm sorry, but those issues seem like complete non-sequiters to scientific development.
Personally, I see innovation and development outpacing the most serious problems that will arise, and if we can get a serious energy source and artificial intelligence, I don't think there's anything short of global catastrophe that man'd be unable to deal with(global catastrophe being sun explosion, meteors hitting the earth, and climate change, if it's serious enough).
Certainly, people are out of work due to new technology all the time. There are problems with the idea that it's a bad thing to introduce the technology, but because I'm nowhere near as good an explainer as other economists, I'll just link you to the Luddite fallacy. Short term, it may be injurious, but adding transitional benefits and temporary subsidies to ease the transition have proven problematic(Luddism in England vs. Hand-looms in India).
12 Swamp
11 Forest
Creatures
4 Viscera Seer
4 Tukatongue Thallid
4 Viridian Emissary
4 Nest Invader
3 Pawn of Ulamog
2 Mitotic Slime
4 Quest for the Gravelord
3 Spawning Pit
4 Golgari Germination
2 Grave Pact
3 Death Pit Offering
The landbase is obviously budget, at present I am unconcerned on that score. Biggest issue is it's inability to place real heavy threats quickly, so far as I can tell. Any comments and suggestions are much appreciated.
I did not, but it seems to confirm what I have written. It is "an inflammatory racial slur ... expressive of racial hatred and bigotry." What I'm seeing is that racial =/= racist, rather that it is an expression that demonstrates a condemnatory attitude toward persons of black heritage, which does not necessarily mean that they believe their own race to be inherently superior.
Indeed, and I saw that. However, my qualm is not over whether it is racist/non-racist/it just depends, but rather between racist/bigoted, which AFAIK, has not been raised. The way I see it, racism is a whole... belief system, if you will, where the individual's race is seen as inherently better than another, while bigotry can be as simple as "doesn't like black people". I can see evident bigotry in the word, but none of the hallmarks of honest-to-goodness racial superiority. Maybe it's just because racism is a full-on worldview, whereas bigotry needn't necessarily be codified into a comprehensive system.
Actually, now that I think about it, I may have been looking at the healthcare thread. My bad.
I'm not really interested in Voltaic Key, as there are relatively few targets for it(Chalice, Myr, and Atlas are about it, as the Towers are a little expensive, even with the accelerated manabase). Candelabra is too rich for my blood, but I'm seriously considering Deserted Temple, maybe making Gargoyle Castle a 2-of and take out the Golem Artisans for it. Doubling Cube seems too much like a win-more, even though it's not. Really, my biggest problems are when I can't get the 'Post or 'Tron online and I'm stuck at 6 mana or so.
4 Cloudpost
4 Glimmerpost
4 Urza's Tower
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Gargoyle Tower
4 Walking Atlas
4 Palladium Myr
2 Golem Artisan
Other
4 Expedition Map
4 Everflowing Chalice
3 Rings of Brighthearth
4 Tower of Calamities
2 Tower of Champions
4 Tower of Eons
3 Tower of Fortunes
2 Tower of Murmurs
As you can see, I've gone Mono-Brown. It is somewhat budget, and shelling out for playsets of things like Powder Keg or Tanglewire is a little much. Meekstone is one option I'm seriously considering, seeing as weenie aggro can be outpaced with Tower of Eons and Rings of Brighthearth. Gargoyle Castle is very much a flavor choice(that's a tower, I don't care what the title of the card is), and produces bodies for Tower of Champions lategame, as well as interacts with Rings. Current candidate for omission is Golem Artisan. He can be helpful lategame, if I'm stuck with tons of mana and nothing to do with them, but mostly he sits there.