Rube Goldberg Machine

[Lightning Rod]

Rube Goldberg Machine
for release 11-29-05
Washington D.C.

Governments are in the business of inefficiency. If we want real efficient inefficiency we ask the government to handle it. And any time you hear a president declaring war on something, you can be prepared for a major ramp-up in inefficiency.

Two obvious examples are the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. I liked the War on Poverty but we saw where that went. I can't wait for the War on Hurricanes or the War on Boogie Men.

It's the perfect circular loop. The government creates problems that only the government can solve. It's a practical demonstration of entropy. Rube Goldberg comes to mind.

Take the War on Drugs, for example. Even with the budget of the DEA approaching a billion dollars per year, no appreciable decline in drug use or importation or sale has been detected as a result of these efforts since Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971. In fact drug production and distribution and use have increased.

The Washinton Post reports that drug nazis have destroyed over a million marijuana plants in Northern California. This body count is up from 33,000 plants two years ago. Oh yeah, the war on drugs is really working. After spending billions of dollars and untold human effort on this 'problem', the 'problem' is worse. I call that efficient inefficiency.

According to Wikipedia "a Rube Goldberg machine or device is any exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way." That also sounds like the definition of bureaucracy. If you want to confuse an issue, get a government committee to investigate it.

The War on Drugs is a great example of the Rube Goldberg effect. First you take a harmless plant that will grow almost anywhere and you make it illegal. This has the effect of turning a simple ubiquitous and harmless herb into a high-priced commodity that sells for up to $400 per ounce. If you could get $10,000 for a bushel of wheat, every farmer in America would be growing it. It's no different with marijuana. We're talking about a major cash crop here, and it's all thanks to the drug laws. Governments are famously adept at creating exactly the conditions that they are trying to prevent.

The War on Terror became a license for invading foreign countries. When we went into Iraq there were supposed to be rose petals thrown at our feet and the oil revenues were supposed to pay for the war and the reconstruction. About half a trillion dollars out of America's pockets and thousands of lives later, we see how well that war is working. We have created more terrorism than we have prevented and at a fabulous expense.

The Poet's Eye would rather see a War on Kudzu than a War on sweet, harmless, useful herbs.



"Make the most of the Indian hemp seed. Sow it everywhere."
--George Washington


A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.
--Robert A. Heinlein.

[jimboloco]

the Quakers have committees
i have sat in on the peace & social justice committee
it's cool

i can't make any of my hemp seeds sprout outside.
i have tried using dark earth soil
soaking them in both water and papertowels inside a plastic bag
planted the last few inside a large weed that i'd saved for that opurpose as camophlage
no dice

but my no longer slacking step son has a lot of friends of the younger generation who smoke the weed like giant prarie fires a blowin in th wind!


we've had our techno renaissance yes
but like the high renaissance in art,
there ain't few if none of political policy changes
inside the homeland, but we are secure!

and yet there's this alternate reality
alive and thriving
not without risks
yet a more healthy happy life is lived by many
despite the fact that mj is agin th law

i think that the committee to investigate the new libby
in one such non-functional committee

and the real wars we have to live and die for are the culture wars
civil wars that have been waged all along

so that some committee someday might make some sense\but i'll believe it when i see it

in 1972 a large peace gathering at the NH state capital
we occupied the legislative chamber
voted to end the war and legalize marijuana
power to the people

[Zlatko Waterman]

Though cannabis is not part of my world these days, and hasn't been for about forty years, I've never understood the government's attitude toward it.

In fact, it isn't the government's attitude at all, I'm convinced, but a few anxious pressure groups'.

Reminds me of H.L. Mencken's wonderful definition of Puritanism:

"The lingering fear that somewhere, somehow, someone is enjoying himself . . ."

There seems to be a culture of death, all right.

The business world is interested in making itself fatter; it's already very fat.

The sheer fascination of bloating seems to be the central characteristic. War is the fist of the business thinker.

In the Warren Beatty movie , "Reds" (1981)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082979/

, the John Reed character, played by Beatty stands up in a discussion/lecture group in Portland, Oregon ( he is soon to meet Louise Bryant, then married to a dentist) and comments, after many patriotic shibboleths have been voiced, that the War ( WWI) is about one thing and one thing alone:

"Profits!"

(quotes from the film-- the Gene O'Neill character has all the best lines . . .):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082979/quotes

Beatty himself in an interview referred to that film as a "romance", and it certainly is.

Casting Jack Nicholson as the deranged genius alcoholic Eugene O'Neill was a little work of genius in itself.

The depictions of the "wild art set" in that film are the best I've even seen: the teens and twenties have never looked so good for art, in spite of wars and revolutions.

In the teens and twenties artists were seeking ecstasy, because they knew it led to truth.

But not the Rumsfeld-Cheney truth. And not the truth of Ronald Reagan's contras and Oliver North operators in the basement.

They want to feel the ecstasy that Bill Bennett ( arch Republican moralist) feels when he watches that little ball dance over the roulette wheel; or the ecstasy Rush Limbaugh feels when Rush finally gets "the rush" and feels the Percodan circulate throughout the ganglia in his spine and the rest of his rotund body . . .

Or as Cindy Lauper put it about her own sex:

"Girls just wanna have FUN!"

A very fine column, LR.


--Z

[mtmynd]

Good one, L'Rod! Given the facts on the War on Drugs, it should rightly be called the War for Drugs.

I find it sadly amusing that the majority that support this 'War' in all likelihood have their own medicine cabinets bulging with pharmaceutical mixtures to alter their own minds, solely because the pharmaceutical lobbyists have made their own elixirs 'legal' in the eyes of America.

[Michael]

LR, great piece.

Um, I forget, what was it about?

Just kidding - - - I think.

First you take a harmless plant that will grow almost anywhere and you make it illegal. This has the effect of turning a simple ubiquitous and harmless herb into a high-priced commodity that sells for up to $400 per ounce. If you could get $10,000 for a bushel of wheat, every farmer in America would be growing it.

LR, I’ve heard, and used most of the arguments that you present except for the above. I don’t know why I haven’t heard or used it. It makes perfect sense.

Not to worry though. The Regime, as you know, is a big believer in “small” government. They just think that it’s incumbent upon the government to control what people do with their bodies – who they love, whether they should give birth, whether a person should be able to end the suffering of a loved one, whether reality or fantasy should be taught under the guise of “science”, etc.

So, like with almost everything else, they’re bound to eventually contract the war on drugs out to the “private sector”, which will hire “warriors” at $6.95/hour. These warriors, however, will use their “well paid” positions to score what they, up until that time, had to spend a months salary on – drugs.

Oh, that’s right, they would have to take a drug test before they were hired.

At any rate, the CEO would bilk the taxpayers out of the billions of dollars about which you write via the contract his Drug Warriors, LLC, a subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc., will have with the government.

It won’t be any more efficient in “solving the drug problem”, but, at least it will be in the spirit of capitalism and “free trade” and some one (or two) will realize great wealth from the deal (are we allowed to use the word “deal” in this case?).

To friendship,
Michael

“Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.” – Ronald Reagan

The Mind Of Michael
Speak Your Mind And Read Mine

[tinkerjack]

Remember what a hot button issue states rights were when Nixon delveloped his "southern strategy" and played to the racists.
So now the federal government trumps state medical boards about medicanal pot.
I might be wrong but I thought the head of the police chiefs assocciation was for decriminalization. Bush needs issues, social security did not work, now it is immigration, tomorrow drugs again. Well actualy he never says much about drugs does he? You think he might be powdering his nose again?


Good piece LR. Arkansas polio weed is pretty good I hear. I never had any problem with booze but some people are maroholics. Jitterbug and his mate can make a quater ounce last a month, I could smoke that much weed in a week. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a real job, but I am self employed. Hard to get down to work when I am stoned. All I want to do is type. I used to say as long as there is one thing I want to do more than smoke dope I am ok. Trucking was like that for me, I was high on the real thing, a clean windshield, a shoe sign and powerful gasoline (Firesign)

One thing I enjoy about going without smoking weed is my dreams. For some reason I don't remember them very well when I go to sleep stoned. I like the feeling after a couple of days of sobriety when my dreams return. Man I tell it would have no love life at all if not for my dreams.

I been thinking that we are back to the days of the Robber Barons, Upton Sinclair could be writting The Jungle about the drug companies today. 38% of their budgets for marketing, 18% for research.

More people die from legal Rx drugs every year than illicit drugs.