marijuana farming: it's not just for hippies anymore.

[No Elephants]

We should have seen it coming.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/1/humboldt-s-hippieslamentenvironmentaldamagebypotminers.html

If they can't kill us with liquor, cigarettes, carcinogenic preservatives in our food, or good ole fashioned poverty, they'll get us with marijuana farms.

[Enthusiast]

1. That was interesting.

Who would have guessed that marijuana would become an environmental problem.

These growers better be careful what they wish for. Part of the value of marijuana comes from its relative scarcity due to its legal status. If it was legal it would proliferate to the point where profits would be a fraction of what they are now. Seriously. Funny how capitalism works that way.

[No Elephants]

2. True. Supply and demand.

Just ask anyone in any US oil company why oil prices go up and they will answer "supply and demand."

Of course, they artificially depress supply, as Pat Robertson found out when he wanted in on the US oil refinery business. (Couldn't have happened to a creepier guy, but still....) But, it's supply and demand.

Government complicity with big business isn't supposed to be part of a free market society. So, we don't have capitalism so much as we have government legislated corporate welfare. I think I'd be okay with free markets or with communism. It's government legislated corporate welfare that bothers me more than either extreme. Of course, that would make me an extremist.

Extremism was very in when Christianity was being spread. Also in 1776. Today, though, extremism is deemed toxic by No Labels. Me, I deem a one party system masquerading as a two party system toxic, especially when that one party enables and cares about only 1% of the population.