Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to the Toronto Star

The legalization of cannabis was greeted with great euphoria and celebration – a victory for the common person. It only that were true. It is important to understand what is in the belly of the latest capitalist Trojan Horse. The liberalization of pot laws follows alcohol and tobacco that have a proven track record huge of destructive healthcare, social and legal costs to name only a few, that the industry does not fund through taxes. They simply make billions in profits for the private sector and the government is left with token tax revenues to pay for all the fallout. Cannabis, alcohol and tobacco are the three horsemen of the apocalypse with prostitution being the fourth. Their impact goes far beyond and much deeper than the legal right of simple possession and consumption. The frequently overlooked problem is profit, taxation and social control.

Recreational substances that have been available for centuries are all a convenient palliative permitted and tolerated by governments throughout history to allow the common person to fend off the corrupt and dysfunctional capitalist world – if only for a few short hours. All are made legal by governments and an economic system whose only goal is not moral, caring or excessively democratic but control-oriented and profit related.  Money trumps morality every time. Social vices are a well-worn national method of anaesthetizing the population and ensuring that they do not get too troublesome.

The taxes that the private sector pays on pot, alcohol, tobacco and everything else have been shrinking for the past fifty years from their average of 80% to less that 20% currently.  In this race to the bottom, it doesn’t take an economics major to understand that the major impact on society is the massive drop in revenue to governments all over the world – all while corporations are banking more money than ever. Even with taxes shrinking precipitously governments are addicted to the heroin of free enterprise. There is a negative symbiotic relationship between the two. Free market capitalism is an amoral economic juggernaut that takes no prisoners. We live in a private sector capitalist democracy that is served by capitalist governments. They are not intended to serve the public in any way, shape or form thus businesses’ loathing for social programs that divert money away from their pockets.

Over the past fifty years the increasingly aggressive privatization and marketization of our society has expanded significantly with the introduction of the tech revolution, casino gambling, off-track betting, the explosion of lotteries and the similar expansion of charitable begging which has become big business. All these forms of free enterprise are legal but corrupt paying out only a tiny portion of their proceeds. More and more our society is becoming inundated by these kind of negative euphoria businesses in the midst of increasing misery. The taxes taken in from all these venues are a small fraction of the social costs associated with them and dwarf the taxes paid by the industry. This is only the tip of the iceberg. In all these cases the private sector would also say they are paying all the taxes leally owed and that is the problem.

We have entered a competitive race to the bottom around the world where the private sector pays the smallest taxes possible while personal tax rates are egregious. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that taxes were the price we pay for a civilized society.  The loser in all of this money laundering (legal and illegal) is the unfortunate and often innocent individual consumer and local governments. In a time of cries by every political puppet for keeping taxes low on business and growing the economy, the exact opposite is needed. We need to begin raising private sector taxes dramatically to rebalance the treasury and reinfuse our communities with cash. If the G8 banded together and raised taxes together corporations would have no where to hide. The private sector must stop being a parallel society and begin to pay a much larger share of their substantial profits to governments and local communities that created their businesses, not to anonymous shareholders. We need transparency in profits not privacy. We also need governments to separate themselves and stand up to the private sector on behalf of the public. They need to make decisions that are best for the people of this country at large not a few fat cats. When 0.1% of the world’s population owns approximately 45% of the world’s wealth and the top 10% owns fully 88% something is seriously wrong and must change, particularly when you note that the top 10% includes people earning $100,000 or more. The bottom 50% of people in the world own virtually nothing. It is time for the tail to stop wagging the dog. The free market system does not work. We have two hundred years of data to prove it. It has not solved the problems of the world, it has made them worse. It’s time to stop pampering the private sector and start demanding that they perform like they should – as responsible citizens.

Our civilization depends on it.