I stumbled on this quite by accident on the newsgroups.  Someone, posting as Annie, has been kind enough to translate an interview with Nobel Laureate (economics) Milton Friedman.  The interview was apparently first published in 1992, but I think it is still quite worth reading and referencing.  So I will reproduce the post in it in its entirety here.

Several people have requested that I post a translation of the Spiegel
interview in full:

“The drug war is lost”
Interview with the American Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman on
the legalization of the illicit drug market

Der Spiegel, 14/1992

Spiegel:  The United States puts out 12 billion dollars a year on its
all-out war on drugs, but victory seems farther away than ever.  Why is
that?

Friedman:  Why is it that the socialist government of the Soviet Union
was a disaster, and the GDR just as unsuccessful?

S:  We actually wanted to talk about the American drug-politik…

F:  …that carries all signs of a socialist program.  If a private
program falls apart, brings losses, then there’s lots of people losing
lots of money. Therefore they have a great interest in ending such a
program before it leads to ruin.  However a government, whose program
fails, must neither admit failure nor pay out of its own pocket.

S:  Is the anti-drug program, therefore, always going to escalate?

F:  The reaction to failed government programs is always the same:
People say it must be made only a little bit different, a little bit
bigger, a little bit more expensive.

S:  Since when have we seen this tendency?

F:  The War on Drugs was began with Richard Nixon in 1969.  That project
failed, but was put on the back burner for the next 17 years.  The War
on Drugs was started up again by Ronald Reagan.  He expanded it, especially
in Florida, but he couldn’t win, either.  Then came Mr. Bush, who declared
total war and appointed with much fanfare a drug czar named William Bennet.
S:  Who was in office for only 20 months.

F:  He stepped down after he told the whole world that the measures he
initiated had been a total success.  But that wasn’t the case.  Back in
1972 I predicted the failure of the Nixon Administration’s anti-drug
programs and recommended the legalization of all drugs.  I’ve not had
any indications that I should revise the judgements I’ve made at that
time.

S:  You share these opinions with former Secretary of State George Schultz
and columnist William F. Buckley.  They belong to a small group of
conservatives…

F:  …that group isn’t so small anymore; I’m not a conservative anyway,
never was one.  A conservative is someone who wants to leave things as
they are.  That’s not what I want.  I am a liberal, in the classic
European meaning of the word.

S:  Very well.  As a liberal, you recommend the legalization of drugs.

F:  I am against the prohibition as we have it and plead therefore, that
drugs be dealt with in just the same way alcohol and tobacco are.

S:  Which are legally for sale.

F:  With certain restrictions.  Alcohol can only be bought by persons of
a certain age, not during worship times and some places only from particular
government-run stores.

S:  Are these restrictions too broad for a free-market economist?

F:  It would be better to have the free market do the regulating. It can,
but it should not, be the role of the government to sell hard drugs, any
more than it should be to run a lottery or to promote gambling.

S:  Many states see a good source of income in that.

F:  That’s true unfortunately, but the state shouldn’t have any function
in a free market.  It should stick to a democratic and political direction.

S:  Implicit in the legalization of the drug market would be a change
in the corresponding laws.  Which of them do you expect to change first?

F:  The main problem is to clean out Congress, and then the leave the finer
regulations up to the states themselves.

S:  Who should produce the drugs?

F:  Those who can do it best — the pharmaceuticals industry.

S:  But they would only reluctantly produce products which cause addiction.

F:  What kind of nonsense are you telling me?  A big portion of the
pharmaceuticals on the market are addictive.  There are people who are
addicted to Aspirin, dependent on sleeping pills or won’t get by without
pain relievers.

S:  Where, in a legalized drug market, would the pharmaceuticals industry
obtain the necessary raw materials?

F:  That would be regulated by the free market.

S:  Can you imagine poppy fields in Kansas and Marijuana farms in
California?

F:  Why not?  Marijuana cultivation still goes on despite massive
eradication programs of the Marijuana Cops.  Marijuana plays a key roll in
the U.S. drug politik.  Although not a single case is known of a Marijauan
overdose leading to death, and dozens of scientific studies support
Marijuana as harmless, the War on Grass has been declared.

S:  Has the price of Marijuana gone up according to the laws of the
freemarket?

F:  Yes.  Compared with other drugs, Marijuana got to be considerably
more expensive, and cocaine and and then crack got to be cheaper.
The drug prohibition pushed the consumers from one harmless drug to
a very, very dangerous one.

S:  Would you make a legal distinction between, for example, cocaine
and marijuana in a free-market drug economy?

F:  I would treat they just the same as alcohol and cigareettes.  It’s
no crime to buy Schnaps, but it is to drive drunk.  It would be the same
with drugs.

S:  To use the alcohol market as an example:  Do you see “Light Heroin”
or a “Cocaine for Beginners” in special displays in your drugstores?

F:  Why not, we also have Light Beer and low-alcohol Wine.  For both of
those there’s a public market.  In this discussion, though, there’s one
thing you shouldn’t forget:  the real winner in a legalized drug market
is the consumer.  The legal drugs would be much cleaner, their active
ingredients indicated on the side of the package, the dangers of overdose
given also…

S:  …and the number of addicts will rise steeply, my friend.

F:  There’s not one single empirical study to support that argument.
The opposite is the case.  The cessation of alcohol prohibition led
to no increase of alcohol consumption in the long run.  Actually the
number of alcohol-related deaths fell, because the products were cleaner.
And since Marijuana was legalized in Holland, Marijuana abuse has gone
down, and similar data comes out of Alaska, where for one year now the
possession of Marijuana for personal use hasn’t been punished.

S:  Such arguments seem not to impress the drug warriors.

F:  Admittedly, other arguments are much stronger.  It’s safe to say
that the American inner cities are going down the drain as a result
of the current drug politik:  10,000 surplus deaths in the drug world
every year, the prisons are overflowing, and there’s little time left
for the sentencing of other crimes.  That’s happening apart from the
fact that the number of non-drug related crimes is rising.  Or it’s
It’s almost impossible to name a single positive result of the war
on drugs, and I haven’t even touched on the affects on Peru, Columbia,
and Panama…

S:  …where the Bush Administration has expanded its anti-drug war to.

F:  A completely unjustifiable undertaking.  We’ve destroyed these lands
with our own own soldiers, helicopters, and SWAT teams just because we
couldn’t enforce our own laws at home.

S:  The legalization of the American drug market would have considerable
economic consequences for countries like Columbia and Peru.

F:  Assuredly.  With our politik we’ve left these states to the production
of agricultural products like marijuana and coca, which go against their
long-term interests.  If we were to legalize the consumption of drugs
tomorrow, by tomorrow afternoon the price of Cocaine would drop like a
rock.

S:  And 10,000 people would lose their jobs.

F:  Be careful when you talk about unemployment.  What the farmers in Peru
get for their coca leaves they can’t distinguish from what they’d get under
a legalization.  I would rather have the farmers stay in business so they
can put the raw ingredients up for sale at some reasonable price like our
farmers.  The ones who will lose their jobs will be those who earn massive
profits from the drug trade — the members of the cartels, the smugglers
and the pushers.

S:  Also standing to earn is the state, which would tax legal drugslike it
does alcohol and cigarettes.

F:  Sure.  Though giving the state a new income source is not my intention
when I advocate legalization.

S:  Since the decade-long War on Drugs has brought no visible success, does
it follow that powerful people in and behind the political scene are gaining
money and influence by preventing its success?

F:  There exists every conceivable reason to believe that people who earn
money from the drug market will do everything they can to ensure their
source of income.  This is no example of a conspiracy theory, but the
forseeable relationships of members of a certain branch of industry.  That
pertains to the drug baron no differently than automobile tycoon.

S:  Wouldn’t legalization also bring dismay to the professional prosecutors?

F:  The prosecutor and the prosecuted have a common interest in the
drug war.  Prohibition assures a good livelihood to those who prohibit
the drugs and to those who deliver the drugs.  That also goes for the
prosecutors.  Their estates are being well-furnished, their incomesraised.
Fame and good careers are assured for them.

S:  Now that is starting to sound like a conspiracy theory.

F:  Not necessarily.  The [“pits”] of corruption are documentable and
growing.  You can be sure that when there’s a big pot of gold out there,
that there will be people who want to have it and who will put all other
interests aside to get it.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be preparing a presentation for a middle school class here in Switzerland, where I will try to present the a rational response to the  “Piracy is Stealing” propaganda machine.  I’ve created an “Ask Slashdot” submission, to try and gather some good ideas/inspiration/references/facts and figures.  I didn’t write the blurb very well though.  Anyway, I’d appreciate any comments, tips, and citations anyone has.

G.

Well, at this point things are getting as bad as I figured they would.  The Lehman brothers are going bankrupt, and Merryl Lynch is being sold to prevent the same from happening to them.  The USD is at 1.1 CHF.  About a year ago I warned my relatives they should put some money in other currencies, since I figured the USD would tank to about even with the CHF when the sub-prime crisis finally hit.  I don’t think anyone listened to me, but at least I tried.    I remember telling Herta I estimated it as about 50% probable that the USD would hit about even with USD sometime in the next two years, and I figured about a 5% chance that it would hit a real crisis, like 0.2 USD to the CHF.

Well, my 50% probably hit right in the middle of the time interval I gave (back in May).  It’s crawled back up to 1.1, but now with the latest wave in the crisis, I’m thinking it’ll go down again.  Selfishly speaking, I hope it tanks quickly over the next week, so my money is worth more when I travel to the States.  And of course, it makes my student loans cheaper.

But the Lehman brothers going under is pretty scary.  This summer I was working for an investment compan in Zug (one floor below the Mark Rich group).  The lead investor was telling us the investment infrastructure was provided by said Lehman brothers.  Already then there was quite a bit of discussion about their troubles in the financial mags.  Someone asked if the company was concerned about the Lehmann brothers troubles.  The lead investor made the comment that “well, if the Lehman brothers go under we have a lot bigger problems than just losing our infrastructure” -> referring to the overall infrastructure collapse that would be caused by such an event.  That will now happen.

On the comforting side, the government is at least stepping in to regulate the collapse, to try and mitigate the repercussions.  Let’s hope it works.   And lets hope we can get the Republicans away from the controls come November.

Life has been very busy.

I picked up what may be the best training aid I have found to date:  “The Triathlete’s Training Bible” by Joe Friel.  It’s extremely well written and clear, and it touches on nearly all of the questions I have about training and recovery.  It’s so good I think anyone training seriously for anything, regardless of whether or not they have any interest in any of the triathlon disciplines, would benefit from reading it.  And of course it’s wonderful if you are training for any or all of the triathlon subsports.  It compiles a lot of information that is otherwise hard to find, or at least never synthesyzed elsewhere, to give the reader a better ability to coach him or herself.

A big issue in training is recovery time, and this is also true for fat-ass athletes like myself.  One point which is especially important for hobby athletes like myself is the problem of burning the candle at both ends.  I (and I don’t think I’m alone) have the tendency to think of my sports activities as fun and relaxind, something which I use to balance my work and intelectual stress.  Up to a certain point it works this way:  more sports means I’m able to work better and more effectively in an intelectual capacity.  It helps my mood, concentration and energy levels.  But too much stress, be it from work, personal responsibilities, trying to keep to my training plan, or even the purely physical stress of getting a bit rambunction on an exciting mountain bike ride, can tip you over towards that overtraining zone.  Go too far and the energy levels get low, recover time stretches out, and everything suffers.

On the other hand, you get your best performance if you regularly approach this overtraining level, without quite crossing the line.  Surfing the overtraining wave, but getting out before it crashes.  I’m not sure if Bettina and I are doing a good job of that, or a bad one.

Two weekends ago we did 1/4 of the Many-Hills show, a bike-marathon trail around Zurich.  We actually customize it a little, starting out at our home in Hirzel, biking down to Sihlbruck, following the traditional many-hills route over the Albis to the Uetliberg, and then taking the Uetliberg downhill into Zurich.  The last bit is total downhill candy, and primarily works out our finger muscles from all the riding the brakes.   We then take the train to Horgen, and ride over Horgen oberdorf back home to Erni.  This is maybe a little over 40km, and maybe something like 1200 m in climbing, but much of it is pretty steep, bringing our pulse rate about the 90% range.  So this compeletly kicked my but. Did a few easy workouts but I was still sore when  Sunday rolled around.

Sunday Bettina and I drove to Leukerbad, where we tried out the biking section of the Gemmi Triathlon.  I’m happy to report that our legs are up to the task.  Afterwards we hiked up in the mountains, camped out, had dinner, and hiked back down the following Sunday.

I’m always amazed out how a hike completely kicks our asses.  We both run, walk, bike and swim regularly, but strap on a backpack and hike 20-40 km with 1000-2000 m elevation, and man we suffer for days.  Today my legs finally feel somewhat normal, although my shoulders are still a bit sore.  But it was a beatiful hike, if a little stressy with the time constraints.   There was a good bit of scrambling and scary stuff, which was kinda fun.

I’m also happy to report that in the last year, while my weight has only dropped about 2km (from 92 kg to just under 90), my body fat percentage has dropped from 22% to just under 17%.    So probably by next year I’ll be back to my fighting form again.