Drug Dealers Are Worse Than Drug Addicts

 

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We know that drugs are bad, but we treat drug dealers worse than drug users for a reason. That reason is that they do the lion’s share of the damage, they pedal the product, get people hooked, make it more available, and are therefore far more responsible for the problem. This is why law enforcement place stricter boundaries around drug dealers than even on drug users. To limit the damage that is done. 

This does not mean the drug user isn't an issue, they are. Their inability to control their addictions causes many flow on effects in society. But their issue is solved far better by cutting the drugs off at their source. Stop the dealers, or place stricter boundaries around the dealers, and you limit the damage of the drugs.

There are many bad illegal drugs. But legal drugs are far more readily available and far more accessible and far more accepted, therefore they cause a much larger problem. Legal drugs are ruining people in large numbers, because of how easy they are to get.

And the most powerful of all these easily accessible drugs is debt. Debt is ruining people, ruining families, ruining communities and placing the entire national economy in trouble. And yet we allow the drug dealers - the banks and credit card companies - to run around Scott-free pedalling their drug even to people who are proven and known addicts for debt. We shame the people addicted to the debt and who cannot control it, but the drug dealers live in mansions paid for by addictions that are destroying our society.

If you want to solve a drug problem, you have to stop it at its source: the drug dealers. You have to find a way to limit their ability to get people hooked on their product. Because of the addictive and destructive nature of debt, banks should not be allowed to lend as much as they do. So how do you solve this issue?

Well, historically many societies found that the best way to limit what could be lent, was to make sure you had regular debt forgiveness events that were society wide. This put restraints on lenders that in turn put the brakes on how much borrowers could get access to. Something very important for a stable economic system.

So, if you enshrined in to law a regular society wide debt forgiveness, the banks would get really serious about lending far less, because the cost of lending would be too much. They would risk too much if they lent too much. Whereas under our modern system they risk far less, and therefore are far more willing to lend large amounts.

The person who has too much debt and cannot pay their debts because they were covetous has been foolish, no doubt, they've done dumb things. But the society that let's their dealers run around with little restrictions is even more foolish. Because it places the foundation of your economic system into the clutches of those who are the least willing to be wise with their money. It’s one thing to criticize the excessive borrower, it’s another kind of foolishness to allow them to have so much access to debt in the first place.

It is good to see that the media is broaching this topic, and it is even better to see them speaking to intelligent economists like Steve Keen, who understand the dangers our debt based society faces. You will never get rid of credit completely, and therefore you will never get rid of debt completely, but it was once well known how we should deal with it. You need to restrain it with regular Jubilees. Our society is learning again the hard way why.