Legalize freedom

Nick Gillespie pens a fine op-ed in the NYT on the theme that the government should legalize and tax drugs, gambling and prostitution. Well, yeah.

The commenters at the reason blog are all in a tizzy about Nick saying something nice about FDR and talking positively about tax revenues and such but in my view Nick is right on target. He is doing the amazing trick (for a libertarian) of actually trying to change the minds of people who do not already agree with him, specifically NYT readers most of whom will hold the commonplace views that FDR was a great president and that more tax revenues are a good thing.

I am, though, professionally obliged to point out that while the drug, gambling and prostitution prohibitions surely generate large deadweight losses, transfers to cops are not among them, not because such transfers do not occur, they surely do. Rather, transfers are just that, transfers, and not deadweight losses.