When All Drugs Are Legal, Privacy Policies Won’t Concern Us
Sounds like a strectch, I know. But I started thinking about it when an NPR piece mentioned how National Guards on the US border did nothing to lessen the US demand for illegal drugs.
Everyone’s got an agenda, churches, states & even companies. Facebook’s agenda is to gather as much info as it can about it’s 560M+ users that can be leveraged into lucrative relationships with advertisers. Your info, as a Facebook user, becomes the networks info to share for targeting, etc, at a cost. More users, means more info, which means more revenue. Besides, your info is the least you can pay for this wonderful service they’ve created that let’s you keep in touch with friends and family. It’s not like you have a phone, or email or anything like that.
The government’s agenda isn’t so simple. At its core it’s about keeping the US a float and in power. That means keeping people employed, having rules in place that keep society in order, and always having the upper and on other countries.
The US demand for drugs has made warzones out of more than a few beautiful countries. We’ve got the problem, but they pay the price. You want aid from the US? Then we better be convinced that you’re doing all you can to be sure our citizens aren’t getting the drugs they want, and you have. We don’t want anything else you produce, but it’s pretty here. Keep the peace so we can visit and you can serve us while we sun. WTF?!
Who wants to be a servant instead of a salesman? And as our nation’s capitalist mindset spreads, how are we going to convince countries that they shouldn’t supply our demand? Especially when we don’t have any lucrative alternatives to offer besides tourism. A recession hits and countries depending on tourism are crushed. Vacations are canceled and everything grinds to a halt. A recession hits and countries depending on drugs are only slowed. Like a beer, the person who normally buys high-grade will downgrade to something cheaper — but still make a purchase.
[this was published before it was done on 5/29 because the iPhone thought I hit publish.]
Just think about the taxes money we could get from countries who wanted to import their now illegal goods, and from the stores that sold them.
Unfortunately none of this will ever happen. It’s too much of a perfect world scenario. (I’m not advocating that something like Meth be legalized, there’s really no benefit in that for anyone but biker gangs.) It would call for people to be responsible, kicking their habit all together or practicing the restraint necessary to be a functioning user. It would damn near stall the prison industrial complex, as fewer and fewer inmates would find themselves behind bars on possession charges. It would eliminate underground economies in disenfranchised communities. And who knows what more than half the rappers who claim to be drug kingpins would talk about then.
Like I said from the start, the connection between the legalization of drugs and social networking privacy policies is a stretch, but there is a link. The more information we share the more valuable the internet becomes. It’s like instant crowd sourcing about every element of our lives with little effort. But that’s another perfect world situation.
For some reason, makes me think of “everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.”
