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<title><![CDATA[Comments for entry "When I'm President" at Dilbert.com Blog]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/801]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Regular thoughts and updates from Dilbert.com]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from KristinKailey]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1739326]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Your hypothesis about drugs is incorrect.  People will always find a way.  What I think they would do is bill out under a nice harmless name, kind of like the !$%* sites do so that when it shows up on your bill it doesn't appear to be anything illegal.  With attachments for the I-Phone now that act as a credit card reader, its more feasible than ever for the drug dealer on the corner to swipe your Visa for that pack of crack or coke or whatever and have it bill out as Funky Fred's Candy Store.    Sure, the funds can be tracked which would make investigations easier in theory, but the criminals will always find a way around it (just as terrorists will always find a way around whatever reactive &quot;security&quot; we put in place).   

As a matter of fact, this move would likely consolidate illegal drug trafficking in the US because all the unsophisticated dummies would get caught, while the smart ones would be thinking 5 moves ahead and would have the resources to set things up.    

You have some good ideas Scott...but sometimes you have pretty crappy ones too...just like the rest of us.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from STONEGUARDIAN]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737341]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[As far as the plan on the whole, I think your underestimating the barter system. If prostitutes can give sexual favors for drugs, then the black market will revert to a sex and drug based economy.

Unfortunately, it's gonna be really difficult to convert the value of a !$%*!$% to grams of cannabis, to grams of cocaine, to grams of heroin, to grams of meth. And the manufacturer of each particular drug is going to affect the value exchange a little.

And in all this confusion, someone will eventually get screwed (or think they got screwed). This will lead to an argument, and possibly to drug/pimp wars. So eliminating physical money would actually increase gang casualty.

Even if this plan works (by making the black market too dangerous/easy to track), the drug problem won't go out with a wimper, but with a bang. And do you really trust the American public to see beyond the short term damage?]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[SatAMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from STONEGUARDIAN]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737340]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[As far as the plan on the whole, I think your underestimating the barter system. If prostitutes can give sexual favors for drugs, then the black market will revert to a sex and drug based economy.

Unfortunately, it's gonna be really difficult to convert the value of a !$%*!$% to grams of cannabis, to grams of cocaine, to grams of heroin, to grams of meth. And the manufacturer of each particular drug is going to affect the value exchange a little.

And in all this confusion, someone will eventually get screwed (or think they got screwed). This will lead to an argument, and possibly to drug/pimp wars. So eliminating physical money would actually increase gang casualty.

Even if this plan works (by making the black market too dangerous/easy to track), the drug problem won't go out with a wimper, but with a bang. And do you really trust the American public to see beyond the short term damage?]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[SatAMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from STONEGUARDIAN]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737300]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[&gt;I can't tell you how many times I've bought gas or brought food to my dealer.

Your absolutely certain your friends are getting high off of unadulterated home grown product? Because this contradicts what my college Wellness class instructor told the class.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from tkwelge]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737099]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I can't tell you how many times I've bought gas or brought food to my dealer.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[ThuPMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from tkwelge]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737098]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[&gt;[Good luck trading sex and favors for heroin. At some point your dealer needs actual money. 

--scott

WOw scott, this is some world class cognitive dissonance.  You can't think of anything that a user could trade to a dealer that they could trade for cash?  Seriously?  Come on, man...

Also, everyone needs sex at some point too, and it can be quite expensive.  Free sex can count as a cash exchange in the long run.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from tkwelge]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737097]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[&gt;I'm pretty sure the actual cannabis in a street joint isn't what gets you high. Drug peddlers soak their product in brown-acid and other chemicals before selling it. 

As somebody who smokes weed every day, this is pure nonsense.  Seriously, you should never contribute to any conversation ever again.

Also, even if you eliminate physical currency, the drug trade will not stop.  I'll barter for my ganja if I have to.  Or I'll become a grower and trade to my friends in return for favors.  

This is probably the dumbest post and thread I've ever read on this blog.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from STONEGUARDIAN]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737094]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Sorry, shouldn't have posted.
Anyway, pot contains 4 times the amount of tar as cigarettes, but most drug users only smoke about 2 joints a day, as opposed to the 20 cigarettes the average smoker consumes. The math is pretty simple from there.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from STONEGUARDIAN]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1737093]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I'm pretty sure the actual cannabis in a street joint isn't what gets you high. Drug peddlers soak their product in brown-acid and other chemicals before selling it.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Tigerh8r]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736712]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I see only two problems with your plan.  The Constitution and Reality.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from meblackstone]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736524]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Wow....log off for a few days....

On the cost of health care...

I would actually agree the overall cost is an issue, but not because of the costs of treatment. Scott's right. Reliability and testing, as well as maintenance is expensive. And on drugs it works out to a very small window when the inventing company can recoup costs before generics are available.

But, while younger individuals are occasionally outliers, something like 50% of health care costs are in end of life scenarios. We pump alot of money into trying to prolong life when it's impractical. It's the human thing to do. I'm not knocking it. But we need to either rationally accept the cost, or create impartial metrics where the pressure of making the hard decisions isn't dumped on family or doctors.

And to jump way back up to earlier,

There already is a market for purchase information. It's an ongoing battle. One of the big sources of data collection is rewards cards (supposedly identifying information is removed when it's sold). 

In some other areas I've been more up close and personal with the level of monitoring that goes on than I like, so I will admit to a bias. In college, I majored in Chemical Engineering, and as part of an honors contract in humanities was assigned to teach for a week shortly after the OK City bombing on how Hitler used art as propaganda. This resulted in buying and checking out from the library...lets call it original source material. Anyway, a couple weeks later I got a call doing a &quot;survey&quot; with questions like none I'd ever heard before.

What do you think of state militia groups? (I don't know any)
What kind of precautions do you take for disasters (not much beyond storing water and making sure my filter works)
What is the biggest danger to your freedom? (being a broke student)

I was later able to confirm through my companies DHS rep that that was a standard screening call and I had a file showing me as no threat. (Which is accurate).

But it did leave me with a heightened sensitivity to leaving a trail, so I'm not exactly unbiased (but that also doesn't mean I'm wrong).]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Drowlord]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736522]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[@Scott,

Interesting theory, except that our companies sell the same stuff in other countries for pennies on the dollar.  Medical companies in other countries don't seem to have the same burden.  And ultimately, we pay a vast fortune for things (like purified oxygen, a bed, and a pulseox) that are decades-old technology.  In fact, i can buy an oxygen concentrator for $250 new, and a pulseox for $50.  Even a really decent set will cost ~$1000.  To buy, brand new, not &quot;to rent&quot; for 4 days.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from conorst]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736521]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Have you been aware of the problems in Ireland due to the fault in the IT systems in one of the main banks. This has caused massive disruption to people with salaries not being paid and standing orders not being processed. It is a major reason why so many people like and want !$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%*!$%]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Drowlord]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736520]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Insurance is NOT THE PROBLEM with healthcare in this country.  People seem to obsess over the insurance issue, but &quot;how do we pay for it&quot; is just a smokescreen for the &quot;why is it so expensive&quot; question.

My daughter got Pneumonia this spring and we took her in when her breathing seemed difficult.  Four days under supervision in a hospital with oxygen (no surgery, a few minutes of &quot;real doctor&quot; time, and in a ward with shared nurses), and it cost $37,000.  A year ago, my older daughter got a bamboo splinter lodged in her throat (from a bamboo skewer holding fruit at a school party).  It cost over $1700 to sit in an emergency room for an hour waiting for someone to look in on us, while the splinter dislodged itself.  I won't go into &quot;the real&quot; medical services that friends, coworkers, and family have had recently, but surgery of any sort costs at least $100,000, and serious treatments quickly top $1,000,000.

[When a hospital buys a medical device that costs only $10 to manufacturer, they also have to help cover the tens of millions of dollars it cost the manufacturer to test it, and the millions it cost them to test other ideas that didn't work. So the $100 device is marked up to $2,000. In other words, you pay a premium for being extra sure your medical treatments aren't going to kill you. Drugs, same thing. -- Scott]]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from rbgos]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736514]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[You missed the part where you explain how &quot;tens of millions of people suddenly become new consumers of healthcare and wellness products.&quot;

I have no doubt that you have a brilliant explanation for how you'll get this to happen, you just accidentally forgot to include the explanation in your master plan...

[I think you might be the person who missed that part. Try reading it again. -- Scott]]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from roccoernest]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736506]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[[Good luck trading sex and favors for heroin. At some point your dealer needs actual money. And I don't know how your dealer trades bitcoins for cash either. By your argument, we should make alcohol and cigarettes legal for kids because they will get them anyway. Do you see no benefit in making it harder? -- Scott 

I don't know how either, but Silk Road already does it (here's another website you didn't know about) and I know a few people who use bitcoin that way. And even if current dealers don't use it now, when the hammer comes down, they'll need something and they'll make something - they won't just go away. Do you seriously think they will?

The point is that you *aren't* going to have a cashless economy: You are going to have a &quot;digital cash&quot; economy. And that's fundamentally no different - just better - than every time a government tried to change the currency in order to control the economy. Many governments already issued a currency change historically so that banks would force people to exchange bills to track money. Sure, at first, it'll be difficult to use e-cash to pay for drugs, but someone will find a way. Either with trading items of equivalent value, or using an underground alternate cash (bitcoin or others or gold or barter). People *will* find a way. 

My argument never said you should make drugs easy to get, so don't attribute that to me. I said that you can't *stop* people from getting it. You couldn't stop people from getting alcohol, so you legalize it and regulate it, which is what we've done. We can do the same thing for drugs - make it legal, regulate it, take the criminal element out. How exactly is what happened to alcohol different than what's happening to drugs? Other than the fact the alcohol is so much worse for you.

Anyway, my main point was: if you make a traceable economy, and their exists things that are illegal, people are going to set up an alternate system. It's inevitable. Now if the things you need to pay for with the black market are very rare - say taking out a hit on someone, or crazy hard core drugs nobody uses, or illegal bomb parts - then the underground economy will be small enough to probably not matter. But regular light drugs, prostitution, and things like old fashioned light bulbs are so prevalent that a major economy will spring into place to support them. It's happened every time some government tried to implement something similar. Why would this be different?

[Prohibition didn't work because cash existed. There are no analogies from the past to inform us what would happen without cash in a digital world.  -- Scott]]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from dilbertolie]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736483]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Can we assume that you're not trying to outlaw garage sales and the like, so there will always be person-to-person trades.  Obviously, I'm not going to log my transaction as &quot;for illegal substances&quot; (the way I do in the memo field of my checks...  ;) but I might end up doing a lot of &quot;fancy mountain bike repairs&quot; out of my garage.

Likewise, if we assume that folks will always enjoy the luster of gold and/or gems, and you're not going to outlaw me buying jewelry, I might do that, then trade it for my illicit substances, etc.

Then there's always bitcoin.  (Bitcoin.com -- some people like it better-enough than banks to carry $2-3MM as a balance!  The whole point of bitcoin is that I don't like the &quot;revenuers&quot; tracking my purchases.)  You gonna outlaw them?

=TANGENT=
So, what /would/ have to happen to push The People over the brink and cause an all-out revolution? Lately, The Administration(s) have been tromping all over our constitution and The People mostly just !$%*! about it without taking any actual action.  What would it take for us to get off our keisters &amp;  push The Feds back?

In previous posts, you had run on a largely libertarian platform.  Not so much as a Libertarian party member, I mean with ideas with strong Liberty Appeal.  This whole idea of throwing taxes &amp; tax-breaks around to do social engineering is going to grate heavily against those who feel that they're perfectly happy running their own lives &amp; businesses without so much government intervention &quot;, thank you very much!&quot;  (Even hard-core libertarians recognize the need for government to stop (or finish) the initiation of force, and that includes business coercion, employee endangerment, etc.)

Lastly, you underestimate the world's ability to generate problems.  You may well be The Greatest President That Was Never Elected, but &quot;[b]y my sixth month in office, I would run out of problems to solve&quot; is a bit of a stretch, even in the forgiving realm of campaign promises!  :)]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from treekiller]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736481]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Just go ahead and endorse Romney like we have all been expecting.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Kingdinosaur]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736480]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Scott: here is a huffington post link

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/05/millions-risk-smoking-cannabis-cancer_n_1570281.html

They site the british lung association

[The study discussed in that link involves the levels of tar exposure, etc.. They make an assumption that higher levels of exposure must cause more cancer. But studies of lung cancer rates for marijuana users don't show the predicted result. If I'm wrong, please provide a link. -- Scott]

[P.S. Much of what you read in the Huffington Post is out of context. That's how they manufacture news from thin air. It's a proven business model.  -- Scott]
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from gmtx14]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736429]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Scott, I think you're really onto something great here. Keep in mind that while the current cash denominations are $1 through $100, there used to be five larger bills of $500, $1000, $5000, $10,000, and $100,000; all of which except for the $100,000 bill were circulated in the general public starting in the 1920's. The government started phasing them out in 1969 due to concerns about drug trafficking and counterfeiting. In 1969, electronic payments were not nearly as common as today so perhaps it's time to revisit, as an interim step, getting rid of the $100 and $50 bills. Most merchants have signs stating they won't take them anyway. This would not only crimp the drug trade, but also help close (but certainly not eliminate) the tax gap between actual and collected income without an increase in tax rates. For anyone who complies with the law, this should be a non-issue.]]></description>
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