By Adam Ozimek, Contributor Freddie deBoer has a characteristically interesting and provocative post about liberals and radical reforms. In it he discusses an area where we should find ourselves in agreement, the drug war. Unfortunately I think his diagnosis of the problem is clouded by his anti-profit bias. Here is what he says: …it is not an accident that conditions like the Drug War exist. The Drug War is essentially a way to derive profit from racism. The money that flows from anti-drug programs to corporate entities like private prison companies, and to police departments, is staggering. Now I happen to believe that there are reforms that are possible within the system that could help alleviate the effects of this situation, and that the human benefits are substantial. But there’s nothing to stop corporate power from simply finding a new way to immiserate the lower classes in order to find profit… We’re in agreement that the drug war is a problem. And we’re in agreement that interest groups help exacerbate this. In particular Freddie identifies police departments, who benefit from the drug war that gives them more stuff to do. But his desire to see capitalism and profit at the root of everything leads him to refer to police departments as “corporate entities” and identify them with the problem of corporate power. Unless he has a definition of corporate entities that is so broad as to be meaningless this is incorrect. Unfortunately for him, Freddie has selected an example which specifically illustrates that neither corporations nor profit are the source of the problem.
From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/04/14/is-the-drug-war-a-product-of-corporate-power/