I'd say everyone you mentioned should get a UBI except for you.

No moralistic puritanical assholes on UBI. Everyone else is just fine.

Well exactly, why assume that addicts are irrational, rather than assuming they are utility maximising economic agents like everyone else and are acting like they are doing whatever maximises their own subjective value.

No one pays $100 for something that's not worth $100 to them, why would we assume addicts are any different?

Every choice has costs and benefits... the idea they are doing something harmful is simply recognising there are costs...

The very concept (outside of very narrow application) seems wildly unscientific and paternalistic to me.

I can relatively easily define an addictive commodity as one whose consumption increases future utility... but this does not warrant any corrective measure for such commodities... as long as people are aware, they can make their own decisions.

Why not sell them in chemists like vitamin supplements... beats giving the market to organised crime in nearly all measures... unless you believe the myth everyone will want to become a drug addict if it was legal.

But who considers it harmful...

If I think using insulin to stop diabetes is harmful, and she should suffer according to god's plan, then she is a drug addict.

On the other hands, addicts, of their own free will spend their own hard earned money on drugs, clearly they think the benefits outweigh the costs (from revealed preferences) and so are not addicted.

Remove the subjective evaluation of other people's habits from your definition because otherwise we are back where we started that addiction is just other people's opinion you shouldn't be doing stuff.

Anything that stops pain is going to be addictive... no one will want to stop if it means being in pain... and other than that, how does one define addictive?

Addiction is simply something someone else refuses to stop doing... so this will be addictive regardless of what they think any specific mechanism is that causes addiction.

During alcohol prohibition, alcohol wasn't illegal to consume, posses or buy, it was only illegal to manufacture, transport and supply. In other words, alcohol prohibition was more like decriminalisation.

So decriminalisation was never really the solution because it leaves the supply in the hands of criminals and all the problems that creates.

What needs to happen is actual legalisation.

CO2 taxes would make the nuclear proposition must better from an economics point of view.

If you're worried about the greenhouse effects of crypto mining, tax carbon.

Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with ideology.

This isn't libertarian ideology, it's economics, the study of human choices. There's a mathematical explanation of how it works, not some stupid fuck you I got mine ideology, but rigorous scientific study.

Maybe you should do a course in economics on coursera or something so you don't come across so ignorant?

Cognitive dissonance (hard to understand other opposing view points) affects you as much as anyone.

Just to prove that this isn't a supply issue... If china imported human waste, would you eat it?

No... demand demands supply... not the other way around.

People use fentanyl because you outlawed opium.

No, it's not libertarian ideology, it is economics, which is the study of human choices. Libertarians generally don't recognise the existence of externalities.

The point is that if fentanyl was free for everybody, almost no one would use it. Even most drug users don't use it deliberatly... and if given the choice between other safer opiates and fentanyl most would choose the safer opiates.

Therefore, fentanyl is the result of prohibition. If you keep going you will end up with carfentanyl instead.

Drug use isn't driven by supply, it is driven by demand. You cannot change the preferences of humanity through ideology like prohibition. This will get worse not better because of prohbition.

The Iron Law of Prohibition says that fentanyl is entirely the result of prohibition. Prohibition caused this crisis, it cannot be the solution to it.

Try reading it again, it's not a libertarian philosophy but a deep economic analysis of the incentives behind the epidemic you are advocating for.

The first hit on google for "Iron Law of Prohibition" is the wikipedia page on it.

Learn 2 read.

Yes, the first time... after that preferences are given... they just are.

If you prohibit water, people will kill for it, and cartels will have the monopoly on it, and everyone would submit to the cartels...

Drugs are like water to an addict... if it's cheap and easily obtainable, addiction would no longer be the great problem you make it out to be.

You clearly didn't read the Iron Law of Prohibition.

You didn't put in any effort, so I'm not going to read your comment.

If there was a mile high pile of fentanyl for free for everybody, no one would use it if they could get their hands on opium. The only reason it is used is because of prohibition, and often unkowingly.

So prohibition is the cause of the fentanyl crisis.

Read some economics.

Why dissuade people beyond providing them decent enough information on the subject so that they can make up their own mind?

Clearly they are demanded, and in a free market we should supply that demand at the lowest possible cost.

If American doesn't want to lose itself to the cartels it should end prohibition.

You need to read up on the Iron Law of Prohibition to understand that, without prohibition, China would have no chance in hell of getting people addicted to fentanyl.

Prohibition is a self goal that lost China two Opium wars, lost Mexico to the cartels and has almost lost the US to the Mafia.