Using pre-covid stats, a new J. Law & Econ paper tries to account for all U.S. crime costs, i.e., costs due to not everyone fully obeying all laws. These costs include prevention efforts, opportunity costs, and risks to life and health. The annual social loss is estimated at $2.9T, comparable to the $2.7T we spend on food and shelter, the $3.8T on medicine, and a significant fraction of our $21T GDP. One of the biggest contributions is $1.1T from 104K lives lost in 2018 at $10.6M each, including $0.7T from 67K drug overdoses deaths.
First time commenting here. A very interesting idea but the dynamics of competition between multiple such organizations would very likely lead to a race to the bottom. There may be ways to avoid this but I don’t see how,
The main problem is the drug companies. Once you have widespread opiate addiction, overdose deaths are inevitable. "An estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid." - ref: https://www.hhs.gov/opioids...
What do you think is wrong with the conventional (and politcally unacceptable) solution, legalization and regulation of drug potency?
My understanding is that most overdose deaths result from unexpectedly potent black market drugs. Somehow that doesn't seem to happen much with OTC drugs bought at CVS or Walgreens.
The problem is much the same as with the obesity epidemic. Big phood makes people fat and big pharma makes people drug addicts. A large organization acting on behalf of the people would probably help them to defend themselves. Robin's solution seems as though it should work. However, the more conventional approach is government. Government works in Japan, I think. Probably, the problem with government defending its citizens elsewhere is lobbying and corruption.
The late Mark Kleiman used to complain that schools were not held accountable for crimes committed by their students, so they chose school hours convenient for the commutes of the faculty even though that resulted in lots of crime committed before most adults got back home.
First time commenting here. A very interesting idea but the dynamics of competition between multiple such organizations would very likely lead to a race to the bottom. There may be ways to avoid this but I don’t see how,
The main problem is the drug companies. Once you have widespread opiate addiction, overdose deaths are inevitable. "An estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid." - ref: https://www.hhs.gov/opioids...
What do you think is wrong with the conventional (and politcally unacceptable) solution, legalization and regulation of drug potency?
My understanding is that most overdose deaths result from unexpectedly potent black market drugs. Somehow that doesn't seem to happen much with OTC drugs bought at CVS or Walgreens.
The problem is much the same as with the obesity epidemic. Big phood makes people fat and big pharma makes people drug addicts. A large organization acting on behalf of the people would probably help them to defend themselves. Robin's solution seems as though it should work. However, the more conventional approach is government. Government works in Japan, I think. Probably, the problem with government defending its citizens elsewhere is lobbying and corruption.
The late Mark Kleiman used to complain that schools were not held accountable for crimes committed by their students, so they chose school hours convenient for the commutes of the faculty even though that resulted in lots of crime committed before most adults got back home.