EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

"But"

bombing him wouldnt have much long term impact either

Yeah, I don't think that addiction/recovery and 'people who love an addict' (shades of victims' rights ideology) should be a key part of drug policy given the state of law enforcement in the US. They go on to overdoses and fent and such but IMO that just highlights the fundamental flaw of (libertarian) decriminalization over legalization (and regulation). If heroin/coke users had regulated, legal avenues of obtaining their drug of choice fentanyl contamination from powder being cut on the wrong surface is minimized if not eliminated, same with overdoses related to unexpected strength of the product.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, May 11, 2024 5:16 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The guest is very pro legalization with regulation and very critical of libertarian decriminalization. That’s what a lot of the episode is about.

I’m also straining to see the victims rights comparison you are drawing tbh.

A third party's feelings (victims of crime, families of addicts) being used to determine public policy is a poor idea in general.

The guest's references to legalization and regulation consist of weed and the need to regulate dispensaries - his other positive examples are all individual criminalization (if lighter than the mass incarceration regime) but that's okay because they also added more money for rehab. And he's explicitly critical of regulated, legal supply.

One of his statements on that - "But the problem with that reasoning is we did flood communities with legally made, consistent quality, clearly labeled opioids for years. And the net effect was millions of people getting addicted and hundreds of thousands of people dying." - ignores that overdose rates increased when that legally made, consistent supply was withdrawn. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/09/12/us-overdose-deaths-opioid-crisis/) Never mind that actively pushing opioid use (via pill mills) (differs greatly from the existence of regulated supply.)

Matty had the wrong continuation, so I fixed it.

US bombing of Vietnam was destructive and morally wrong. But... it killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, continuing decades after the US lost the war, through unexploded bombs and mines peppered across all three of those nations, with many of them killing children, all of... which had a smaller economic impact than you might think.

xp which is simply to note that when you say that if one just had an open mind toward the Ezraverse one might actually have a lot in common with the former Obama staff wonk of the week, I’m not sure that’s true.

(And that’s ignoring the dumb throwaway line about destroying capitalism.)

Ezraverse

you lost me

Center-Man: Across the Ezraverse

i listened a bit to klein’s piece with “GROWTH AT ANY COST” pethakoukis which presented an infuriating and astonishingly dishonest mischaracterization of the past 50 years of usa economy. i was like out of my body angry at klein’s refusal/inability to address the many primary factors of the fundamentals of changes in it, which results in a slowing of economic growth vs the 50s and 60s. Very accepting of “yeah it’s just suffocating effects of regulatory government” by my quick listen. shit work. he’s writing a book about it now, wtf it better point at waaaay more than that.

Really? I actually got the sense that Klein was disagreeing with him and asking him questions he couldn’t answer that gave the lie to his thesis.

Our goal should be to get to 1b loyal, dynamic Americans this century. https://t.co/dzildfstLM

— @jason (@Jason) May 28, 2024

We should test them, vet them and embrace them deeply.

Help us, neoliberalism, you’re our only hope

I don’t think Biden should shift his rhetoric to start talking down the economy or whatever it is people are now advising — he should issue regulatory waivers and re-write rules in ways that promote lower costs and higher productivity and stop inflationary debt cancellations.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 29, 2024

When Obama was president, liberal pundits loved to quote Keynes “the boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.”

This is the boom he was talking about! https://t.co/V5x4LwqDxN

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 29, 2024