Checking in From Kyiv
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:19 AM

The stop in London on the way to Kyiv afforded an opportunity to scour British papers for vice policy stories. The Guardian more than met its responsibility, in part through this offering concerning an alcohol harm reduction program in Kenya. The idea is to fight alcohol problems by ensuring a steady supply of, well, cheap beer. Yes, a major alcohol producing firm is a proponent of the idea, but it is far from crazy. The underlying notion is that many alcohol problems come from informally produced (hence untaxed) high-potency alcohol, which when consumed can both bring on drunkenness quickly and (through adulterants) wreak havoc upon drinkers. Kenya has engaged in what appears to have been a successful experiment of providing a cheap (untaxed but formally produced) beer, "Senator Keg". The beer is available only in kegs, so is sold by the glass, not in bottles or cans. And it has established itself in the Kenyan marketplace; whether this establishment has come at the cost (or benefit) of reduced hooch consumption is not really addressed in the article.

Some policy pundits, particularly those who (unlike Vice Squad) oppose higher alcohol taxes (in the US, that is), like to quote Thomas Jefferson: "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap." Adam Smith expressed similar sentiments.

Labels: alcohol, harm reduction, Smith, taxes

 
Porn Past Peak?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:25 AM

In Book I, Chapter 10, part 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith noted that in advanced states of society, hunting and fishing become recreations, and that people "pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity." As a result, it is hard for a person to make a good living as a professional hunter or fisher: "they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime."

The Smithian logic seems to have been brought to bear upon the pornography industry. The New York Times on Saturday noted that in dollar terms, sales and rentals of porn movies fell some 15 percent between 2005 and 2006. The internet, which provided a great boost to the porn marketplace by easing home consumption, has progressed to the point where it has also simplified the amateur production and distribution of porn -- and many people are now pursuing porn supply as a pastime:

“People are making movies in their houses and dragging and dropping them” onto free Web sites, said Harvey Kaplan, a former maker of pornographic movies and now chief executive of GoGoBill.com, which processes payments for pornographic Web sites. “It’s killing the marketplace.”

The 'traditional' porn producers are responding, according to the Times article, both by focusing on quality and by sophisticated marketing to lure consumers. Recall also the New York Times Magazine article from a month and a half ago that suggested that niche production was another method for earning money via internet porn.

Of course, the decline of barriers to entry into the porn business might be bad for the profits of traditional professional porn suppliers, but it is good for porn consumers, who have a wide variety of free and low-cost porn products available over the web.

Labels: internet, pornography, Smith

 
Finland, Alcohol, and Adam Smith
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:04 PM

Finland rightly feared cheap booze from Estonia, and countered with a significant cut in the domestic alcohol tax. The cheaper alcohol (which would have occurred in any case, either through domestic sales or from Estonian imports) brought more alcohol-related problems. But is this a temporary phenomenon, a binge when the price of alcohol falls, followed by the re-imposition of the previous level of sobriety, such as it was? "Finns drank less alcohol on average last year for the first time in a decade, as the novelty of Baltic 'booze-cruises' to buy cheaper liquor abroad faded..." Don't get too excited: Finns still drink 11 percent more alcohol than they did before Estonia joined the EU.

Adam Smith would have predicted the binge and the sobering, perhaps even a more widespread sobriety, judging from his words in Book IV, Chapter III, Part II, of the Wealth of Nations:

...if we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the wine countries are in general the soberest people in Europe; witness the Spaniards, the Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France.... When a French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon malt, beer, and ale to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety.

Labels: alcohol, Estonia, Finland, Smith, taxes

 
Off Topic: Adam Smith, Advisor on the Russian Transition
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:44 PM

I finally posted a working paper on SSRN.com. (Somehow, some other papers came to their attention but I had little to do with that.) It's just a short essay that looks at what Vice Squad hero Adam Smith (not to be confused with Vice Squad heroes J. S. Mill and Clarence Darrow) has to say about the ongoing Russian transition. I suspect that the essay isn't journal-appropriate, though it certainly runs counter to the stereotypical take on Smith's views. Anyway, please tell all your friends about this exciting new download opportunity.

Labels: Smith

 
You Know Things are Not So Great...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:31 PM

...if your country gets its smuggled goods from Iraq. But, well, that's the way things are in Iran, according to this AP story at Boston.com. Smuggled good of choice: alcohol:

For the past three years, Farshid Karimi has earned his living smuggling goods and dodging border guards.

The 23-year-old was drinking a cold beer at an Iraqi bar on a recent evening, taking a short break before carrying 60 bottles of whisky into Iran. With his baggy, Kurdish-style pants tucked inside his socks so he wouldn't trip while climbing the region's mountains, Karimi had already carried his load two hours.

The risks are considerable:

''I am afraid of encountering Iranian soldiers who would chase me and might shoot at me for carrying liquor,'' he said as he sipped his beer. ''Or I might wander on the road and end up stepping on a land mine'' left over from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Is the risk worth it? Adam Smith thought that smugglers were not exactly rational: "The most hazardous of all trades, that of a smuggler, though when the adventure succeeds it is likewise the most profitable, is the infallible road to bankruptcy. The presumptuous hope of success seems to act here as upon all other occasions, and to entice so many adventurers into those hazardous trades, that their competition reduces the profit below what is sufficient to compensate the risk." Karimi has had to deal with the risks in most unpleasant terms:

Alcohol is illegal and considered sinful under Iran's strict Islamic laws. Lashing is the usual punishment for drinking in Iran and traffickers can end up in prison.

Last year, Iranian soldiers caught Karimi in a border ambush. He was jailed for one year and given 80 lashes in public. His back was covered in blood and he could not sleep on it for a month, he said.

I understand that in barbaric Iran, alcohol is not the only illegal drug. But what other goods are so unavailable in Iranian towns near the border that the goods have to be smuggled from Iraq? The linked article mentions plates, cups, china, tea, sugar, and rice.

Labels: alcohol, Iraq, Smith

 
Off Topic: Is Protectionism Immoral?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:27 PM

Like many, probably most economists, I generally do not support protectionist measures. But I don't share economist Steven Landsburg's take on protectionist policies, which he presented in Slate in support of his decision to vote for President Bush next week. Here's an excerpt:

If George Bush had chosen the racist David Duke as a running mate, I'd have voted against him, almost without regard to any other issue. Instead, John Kerry chose the xenophobe John Edwards as a running mate. I will therefore vote against John Kerry.

Duke thinks it's imperative to protect white jobs from black competition. Edwards thinks it's imperative to protect American jobs from foreign competition. There's not a dime's worth of moral difference there. While Duke would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of skin color, Edwards would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of birthplace. Either way, bigotry is bigotry, and appeals to base instincts should always be repudiated.

Would one be a bigot to discriminate in favor of one's own children versus strangers? One's neighbors? When is discrimination arbitrary, and when is it not arbitrary?

Adam Smith, of course, addresses these issues, in Part VI of Theory of Moral Sentiments. Chapter 1 of Section 2 of Part VI (whew) is entitled "Of the Order in which Individuals are recommended by Nature to our care and attention," and Chapter 2 is entitled "Of the order in which Societies are by nature recommended to our Beneficence." Smith notes that it is only natural that we prefer ourselves and our relations to strangers. A man's family consists of those who "are naturally and usually the persons upon whose happiness or misery his conduct must have the greatest influence." Further, our own, and our family and friends', happiness is tied to our country -- and it is within our country where our conduct has the greatest influence. The interests of our country, therefore, are near to us both from self-interest and our "private benevolent affections." And this is fine. "That wisdom which contrived the system of human affections, as well as that of every other part of nature, seems to have judged that the interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted by directing the principal attention of each individual to that particular portion of it, which was most within the sphere both of his abilities and of his understanding."

Anyway, like Smith, I am generally against protectionism. But I don't think that it is immoral to prefer the interests of people in your own country to those of people elsewhere -- even though, like Smith, I would hope to be generous towards all people, and not envy improvements in the well-being of foreign nations.

[Update: Professor Landsburg is guest-blogging at Marginal Revolution this week and reprises his comments there. The Agitator took favorable (?) notice of Professor Landsburg's sentiments.]

Labels: free trade, Smith

 
Adam Smith Censored? [Updated!]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:26 PM

[Warning: this post is off-topic (viceless)!] One of the links on our sidebar is to the blog of the Adam Smith Institute, a British thinktank that espouses free markets. They have a moderated comments section; you can post a comment, and if it passes muster, it will eventually appear. I have commented on a couple of prior posts, and my comments received the necessary imprimatur.

Yesterday I saw this post arguing against interest-rate ceilings. I sent a comment that pointed out the irony, in that Adam Smith himself favored interest rate ceilings! I included the relevant passage from Volume I, Book 2, Chapter 4 of the Wealth of Nations:

The legal rate...though it ought to be somewhat above, ought not to be much above the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent. [when market rates are 3-4 per cent], the greater part of the money which was to be lent, would be lent to prodigals and projectors, who alone would be willing to give this high interest. Sober people, who will give for the use of money no more than a part of what they are likely to make by the use of it, would not venture into the competition. A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it.

Anyway, my comment has yet to be posted, of course. Surely ASI will want to remedy this extremely serious oversight, no? Remember what Adam said in The Theory of Moral Sentiments: "Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it." [Update, September 16: Feeling a bit guilty for my snarky post. The ASI kindly sent along an e-mail explaining why the comment wasn't posted -- it was accidental -- even though they certainly didn't have to post the comment in any case and also didn't have to take the time to send an explanation. Good folks, those ASI-ers. It was me who was being unjust, and hence threatening societal destruction. Sorry.]

Labels: Smith

 
The Charms of Collective or Vicarious Punishment
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:03 PM

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith notes:

That the innocent, though they may have some connexion or dependency upon the guilty (which, perhaps, they themselves cannot help), should not, upon that account, suffer or be punished for the guilty, is one of the plainest and most obvious rules of justice

Plain as that rule of justice might be, it is frequently violated in vice policy. Today's Chicago Tribune (registration required) brings word of one such violation from the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Town rules make it illegal for someone under the age of 21 to be in the company of others under 21 who are drinking. That is, you can be fined not only for underage drinking, but for NOT drinking, too, if you are with other kids who drink. Good Samaritans who drive home their drinking friends are thus put at risk.

Victimless crimes tend to breed such unjust laws precisely because there is no obvious standard for the appropriate amount of punishment that should accompany a victimless crime. (For a good discussion of this theme, see Roger Pilon's "Can American Asset Forfeiture Law Be Justified?," 39 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 311, 1994.) The extent of moral fervor, then, becomes a major determinant of punishment -- and hence the extent of criminalization as well as the punishment for victimless crimes varies significantly over time, as the moral fervor shifts. Why does the moral fervor shift? Because the activities are themselves morally ambiguous, combining elements of pleasure and wickedness. (On this theme, see Jerome Skolnick's "The Social Transformation of Vice," Law and Contemporary Problems 51 (1): 9-29, 1988.)

Labels: alcohol, Chicago, policing, Smith, teens

 
More Cruel and Unusual Punishments For Drug Offenders
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:38 PM

I have argued again and again that there should be no criminal penalties for mere possession of personal use quantities of drugs, though I don't oppose on principle criminal penalties for trafficking or sale. (In most circumstances I would oppose such penalties on cost-benefit grounds, but I do not generally view them as prima facie unjust.) But even accepting the validity of criminal penalties for certain drug transactions, the penalties cannot be very severe: even a year in prison for one relatively small drug buy or sale is close to unjust from my perspective. Perhaps you are willing to punish drug transactors more severely than I am. How severe are you willing to get? Two recent stories of insanely severe penalties for drug offenders have surfaced. The first is actually an old story, though updated at Drug WarRant: a fellow, a youthful trouble maker, it seems, matured to the point where he was married with a son, and had not been arrested for 14 years. He bought a pound of pot, and received a life sentence -- he has served about 15 years so far. The second comes out of Thailand, though the result is similar: a 19-year old Briton who presumably tried to smuggle 3,400 ecstasy tablets into Thailand last year has been rewarded with a life sentence. And the sentence really is a reward, a bonus for his guilty plea: had he not pleaded guilty, he could have faced execution.

Adam Smith, on a smuggler: "a person, who, though no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so."

And more Smith: "An injudicious tax [or prohibition!] offers a great temptation to smuggling. But the penalties of smuggling must rise in proportion to the temptation. The law, contrary to all the ordinary principles of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it; and it commonly enhances the punishment too in proportion to the very circumstance which ought certainly to alleviate it, the temptation to commit the crime."

We could use a little of that Scottish enlightenment today.

Labels: Asia, drugs, sentencing, Smith, Thailand

 
Life is Elsewhere
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:17 AM

Vice Squad is off to a conference today -- carrying a not-
what-one-might-call-finished paper concerning Adam Smith --
and so blogging may be somewhat sporadic. Apologies to
the loyal Vice Squad reader!

Labels: Smith, solipsism

 
Persona Non Grata in Parts of Reno
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:15 PM

Nevada is a great boon to beleaguered vice policy bloggers. Since 2001, some
alleged prostitution law offenders in Reno have been given suspended
sentences in exchange for a guilty plea and an agreement to stay away
from the seedy side of town. The sentencing approach is called "vice
mapping," and it is now being extended to violators of alcohol and
panhandling codes, according to an article in the Reno Gazette-Journal.

A police officer claims that the program has reduced recidivism, and has avoided
shifting prostitution into other neighborhoods. Many of the prostitutes sentenced in
the vice mapping program are from out-of-state, and for them, at least, the creative
sentencing could be a very attractive option. That is, it might be an attractive option
in our nth best world, where we are happy to threaten our friends and neighbors
with jail if they engage in an explicit exchange of sex for some unapproved form
of consideration.

As it is Adam Smith week for me, let me note what Smith had to say about taxes so
excessive that they encourage smuggling. (The smuggling then encourages harsh
penalties -- and guilty pleas induced through the threat of harsh penalties? -- in a manner
addressed earlier by Vice Squad.) At any rate, our current vice prohibitions similarly
create attractive nuisances for police and inner-city youth and others:

"An injudicious tax offers a great temptation to smuggling. But the penalties of smuggling
must rise in proportion to the temptation. The law, contrary to all the ordinary principles
of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it; and it
commonly enhances the punishment too in proportion to the very circumstance which
ought certainly to alleviate it, the temptation to commit the crime."

Labels: policing, prostitution, Smith, taxes

 
Adam Smith on Alcohol
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:51 PM

Vice Squad has to prepare a paper for a conference next week; while
the paper has nothing to do with vice, it does have to do with
that ever-popular of moral philosophers, Adam Smith. So this time-out
from paper writing tonight elicits a post on Adam Smith's views on
alcohol policy.

In the Wealth of Nations, Smith argues for trade in alcoholic beverages
to be as free as trade in other commodities, although the purchase of
ale by workmen is "somewhat more liable to be abused" than trade in
other goods. He continues "Though individuals...may sometimes
ruin their fortunes by an excessive consumption of fermented liquors,
there seems to be no risk that a nation should do so." Further, "if
we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not
of drunkenness, but of sobriety." There is a transition problem,
however. Were you to introduce cheaper alcohol by eliminating taxes,
you might, "occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary
drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which
would probably soon be followed by a permanent and almost universal
sobriety."

Smith was no Puritan. In discussing beer taxes (according to
student notes that were later published as Lectures on
Jurisprudence), Smith noted that "Man is an anxious animal and
must have his care swept off by something that can exhilarate
the senses." Nevertheless, between the first and second
editions of the Wealth of Nations (with its famous butcher, brewer,
and baker), Smith deleted a reference to beer as a necessity of life!

Labels: alcohol, Smith, taxes

 
Victory #4
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:45 PM

"Holy Guacamole -- What a Drug Bust" That's the title of this story in today's Chicago Tribune (registration required: story available for 1 week).
Seems that 180 buckets of frozen guacamole each had a 2-kilo brick of cocaine hidden inside.
The (mythical?) monetary value attached to the total police haul of 310 kilos of cocaine
is $39 million. The four men arrested in connection with the bust each face a mandatory
minimum sentence of 15 to 60 years, according to the State's Attorney of DuPage County,
though this prosecutor intends to upgrade to charges that would make the minimum 30 to
120 years in prison. 26,000 pounds of guacamole also was sacrificed.

That should do it -- we have won the war on drugs! No more need we fear that some of our friends and neighbors might pursue their wicked and dangerous pleasure by consuming cocaine (or is it guacamole? Now I am confused.)

What was that again that Adam Smith said about a smuggler? Oh yeah: "a person, who, though no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so."

Labels: cocaine, Illinois, Smith