The One Good Thing to Come from The Drug War

AMC

Those who say nothing good has come from the War on Drugs have clearly not seen Breaking Bad.  In case you do not own a television or have internet access, in which case someone has printed this article out for you, Breaking Bad is the tale of a milquetoast high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking methamphetamine upon being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.  I just happened to catch the pilot when it first aired, and I have been hooked ever since.

I was fascinated by the character of Walter White from the beginning.  He is frustrated, not just with his cancer diagnosis but with his career and his ability to support his family.  We learn early in the series that he has a history as a brilliant chemist and co-founded a now successful company with this college roommate but left the scene before he was able to cash in.  After being presented with his terminal diagnosis and confronting the end of his life, the relative comfort of his mundane existence turns to the realization of his own untapped potential.  In his angst, Walter White becomes an entrepreneur.

He hooks up with a drug-addicted slacker and former student of his, Jesse Pinkman, who just so happens to also be throwing away quite a bit of potential himself.  The two develop a complicated, father-son (or at least uncle-nephew) relationship as they develop a drug empire based on super high quality meth.  Based on the pilot, I thought the show was going to be primarily a comedy, but the dark consequences of a life of crime spoiled the fun early and often throughout the series.  The remainder of the show has been a dramatic thriller, with Walt and Jesse facing down kingpin after kingpin while growing their business and keeping it a secret from Walt's wife and his DEA agent brother-in-law (did I  forget to mention that?).  

So Walter White becomes the bad guy, or at least that is the goal of the show's creators.  I have a difficult time seeing him as pure evil like so many others do who have commented on the show.  Of course he has committed crimes beyond retribution -- murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, grand larceny -- but, really, who started it?  Imagine if methamphetamine was not a controlled substance.  Walter would have developed his recipe, purchased his ingredients and started cooking.  Maybe he would have taken out a small business loan.  He would have documented and controlled his process and would have approached retailers with Heisenberg's brand, ultra-pure, blue methamphetamine.   Perhaps he would have negotiated a price and exclusive distribution deal with Walgreens.  I doubt at any point he would have had cause to murder any of the Walgreens executives, poison their children or dissolve any of their bodies in hydrofluoric acid.  There would be no violence, no suspense and thus no television show.  

But, as much as my heart wants to, I cannot let Walt off the hook.  Murder, whether to protect Jesse, his family or his empire, is wrong.  Still, at its core, the cause of the violence in the show is the War on Drugs.  If Walt sold his drugs to Walmart and CVS instead of Tuco and Gus, he probably would have lived happily ever after, or at least until the cancer killed him.  So remember: no war on drugs, no Breaking Bad and no destruction of the character Walter White.  

Penny4NASA Follow-Up

This thought came to me in the shower, as most good thoughts do, and I thought it was a shame I didn't include it in my previous post:

Consider for a moment the capital expended to mass produce the first automobiles.  Now think of how quickly they were adopted, how drastically they changed human activity and productivity and how unbelievably quickly they improved with respect to speed, mobility, style, reliability and efficiency.  All of that was produced with hard-earned capital, voluntarily given in expectation of profit, and a healthy dose of enterprising individuals employed for the same cause.  Now compare this with NASA's history.  The expenditure has been enormous, not to mention it was all taken by force, and the payoff relatively small.  The so-called "spin-off" technologies and secondary externalities created by the agency seem paltry compared to the advances in technology Ford alone developed.  I encourage anyone to look them up.  While you're at it, read Garet Garett's The Wild Wheel.

Freedom, Peace and Liberty - 1
Tyranny, Force and Plunder - 0


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Economy: Impossible

Chef Robert Irvine hosts a fantastically entertaining show on the food network, Restaurant: Impossible in which he attempts to turn around failing restaurants with a combination of customer-centric business savvy, a tremendous work-ethic, psychological counseling and a healthy dose of yelling.  To be sure much of the show is geared toward the theatrical, and the businesses are helped by an infusion of cash and at least a temporary bump from appearing on TV.  But the show illustrates a very important aspect of business - it's not all about the cash. Often the proprietors have poured copious quantities of their own money and time into the business only to fail due to their poor decisions, management techniques and food preparation.  Chef Robert provides something more valuable than capital or marketing; he provides entrepreneurism.  He roots out the structural problems in the business plan, or lack thereof, and attempts to fundamentally improve the way the restaurant treats the customer so that they may become profitable in the long term.

I would love to see the show's producers add another layer to the show by providing a subsection of the applicants with cash and free advertising by appearing on the show but with no advice from Chef Robert.  This "control arm" would provide a valuable insight into the application of "stimulus" without any intelligent market direction.  I have little doubt that the control group businesses would continue to struggle more often than not.

You may have guessed that I see this show as an allegory to our current economic struggles and the government's attempt to literally paper them over.  But let me stop you before you think that I am suggesting a layer of guidance bureaucracy atop the stimulus.  Besides the fact that any such bureaucrats are unlikely to have the skills or proper incentives to succeed in such an endeavor, there is already a much better structure in place to provide this market guidance - profit and loss.  When a business fails, the Chef Roberts of the world can take the capital that has been producing things people don't want to buy and apply their knowledge and skills to employ the capital in making things people do want to buy.  They will not always succeed, but they will certainly produce more wealth on the whole than we will by throwing money at bad ideas.

Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion—in the long run these are the only people who count . . -- Robert Heinlein