When politicians insist the ‘war on drugs’ is working, they’re just following majoritarian incentives

By David McElroy · June 2, 2011

I frequently tell people not to blame politicians for the problems they see in democratic governments. Instead, I suggest that they blame the voters, because the voters are the ones who insist that politicians lie to them — if they want to be elected.

There’s a new report from a group of “former world leaders” that admits that the “war on drugs” doesn’t work. (Download the full report here if you care.) Most people among my friends will look at this and think that it means these former world leaders are just being hypocritical to notice the truth now that they’re not in power, but that would be missing the bigger point entirely.

The real point is that human beings follow incentives. If a person has political ambitions, he can’t allow himself to notice the truth about the “war on (some) drugs.” If he understands the truth, he might accidentally say the truth — and telling the truth about something this emotional with the voters will result in his defeat. When you’re part of a majoritarian system, you have an incentive to agree with the voters, not seek truth.

It’s true that politicians carry out the will of the majority — at least a form of it that’s filtered through a bizarre and unseemly process. But it’s majoritarian ignorance and emotion that is to blame for the things that get carried out. Don’t just blame the politicians. Blame the statist system that gives the majority the power to force its will on the rest of us. Just changing the names and faces of the people operating the machinery of the state isn’t going to change anything.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

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