h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,947880,00.html

This is an interesting article on the prohibition and subsequent underground incomes in two main areas. Cash crops in the midwest & California are particuarly prevalent and the pornography industry. According to this article they make up 10% of the US economy.

Wow, Abbi, that's an amazing article. Had no idea the black markets thrived at such levels.

Excellent article. I'd read another article by the author of 'Reefer Madness' in 'The Herald' about a month ago which was also very good.
I can't say I'm surprised to be honest - the drugs and hard-core porn markets do have the US federal agencies helping them stay in business, after all.
People are tired of scratching together a living, seeing wealth everywhere in the media, and are willing to take more risks to 'get their piece'. Of course this is because the media is also telling us that greed is okay.

I was surprised that the midwest was so active in the crop. There has been talk of pot being grown on the west coast legally I believe at one time. Not sure. I guess the tobacco and other farmers are hurting in the farm belt. It is amazing that it is 10% and that it was a UK article. Is the Guardian considered reputable?

I was not clear about the porn. Do they mean all porn, illegal porn, or untaxed porn how about the larger sex industry? I saw a show the other day where a therapists was talking with parents that allowed (encouraged) their teenage girls to have a web site with daily pics & email in order to make money and or get a modeling career started. They took no responsibilty for who may be looking. It did not concern them because they felt safe and normal. yuk!

I have always thought prostitution should be legal and taxed. I think it has worked out in Vegas, why not (most) everywhere in the US ?

They have so called *sin taxes*,luxary taxes,entertainment, why not this service?

Hemp grows wild in on the Great Plains. Why wouldn't it be an important crop if they could get away with it? Apparently you can hide it in a cornfield if the helicopters aren't patrolling.

Regarding the sex industry, people have problems with sex and nudity. It's not only that it's forbidden. It's also fantasy. So why is the real thing so uninspiring? Maybe if you don't put anything in, you don't get much out?

My cousin was very much into the adult industry in Las Vegas and elsewhere. She made a lot of money too but she ended up paying a lot of that for protection, from cops and pimps.

In some areas of the world, it's about the only occupation a poor girl can engage in that will give her enough for a dowery and hence a chance at an honorable marriage. If the United States, that's probably not an issue. Still it probably beats waiting tables or sewing shirts together.

The associations can get vicious. It's often argued that prostitution breeds other crime, but it's probably a consequence of crime breeding by definition. Who is the hooker going to call if she's assaulted or whatever? The cops?

Making prostitution illegal breeds the crime in other words. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. The same probably applies to drugs.

If pharmiceutical corporations didn't want to corner the markets, you'd probably see a totally difficult official attitude towards recreational drugs or the like. You see, the medical business is into drug pushing and doesn't want to tolerate competition, especially from the grassroots.

Likewise, a woman being able to charge for access to her body empowers her. No freebees on account of marriage or whatever. Everything is strictly accounted for.

Guys don't like that. They don't like to have to pay to play. They talk of romantic love when it suits their purposes, but in most cases it's just talk. They want something and they don't want to have to trade anything for it. They talk about how it's demeaning to charge.

Demeaning for who?

Once again, the boys make it demeaning themselves. That's how they can control the girls. Use them, abuse them, then demean them for submitting.

It's really quite political. Control your women and you can control the world. Because women are the world and the gateways to it.

I am in agreement on your take of the sex industry.

With all the tree people wanting to save trees it would make sense to have hemp as an alternative. It seems to grow wild easily.
I agree the pharmacuetical companies and the *alcohol industry will block anything they cannot find a way to have control of. They both have huge and a powerful lobbys. They should their own branch of the government at this rate they are so connected.

Billions could be saved between the tax money collected, the safety issues watched ,and the lack of people in jails and all that goes with that. Violent criminals need to be locked up they should be the priority and are not.

The hidden incomes are not taxed have to be huge. Surely costing far more than 10% of any local government to lock them up for these behaviors. They are spending a lot of tax money to do this!

About 30% of people change lifestyles or ways that attempt to. People change addictions at the same rate no matter what the process or consequences. I think we can count on these behaviors and small business persons surviving, they have a long track record. It's amazing a lucrative tax base has gone untaxed this long!

First, I don't agree that government needs to tax people to do what comes naturally. If government wants to license people, that's one thing and if the people see a reason why licensing might be a good thing, well maybe, but taxing their income is total baloney. Since when?

Well, since the Civil War apparently and then later since 1916 so government can afford to go to war. I don't think we need that sort of government service do you?

They have gone to war, formally or informally, at least a half dozen times in the last century. How much has that cost? More than you could possibly pay in taxes I bet.

No, let government get by on what it's got already. It doesn't need to get meaner. It needs to get leaner.

Government shouldn't even be taxing bootleggers. They're just making a oligopolistic market for a few high rollers. The small business person needs a break, not to be broken at first opportunity.

Corporations need to be dissolved. They masquerade as persons under the law complete with 14th Amendment rights which means they can sue your ass for attorney's fees believe or not. Since when does General Motors need help paying for lawyers?

This legal fiction has caused more legal problems than it'll ever be worth.

Some corporations make more money than some nations. For all practical purposes they are nations except they tax everybody indirectly, under the counter, by the influence they have on public policy. Get rid of them and everything else will pretty much fall into place where it belongs.

Don't forget, it was corporations that created the 13 Colonies, chartered by the Crown. They were a bad idea back then and they're still a bad idea.

Without the subsidies they get, we probably could get by with a good deal less taxation across the board.

Yes, they provide jobs, but why do we need jobs? Because they stole the land that's why!! Buh!!! Can the jobs replace the land? Are the jobs there come rain or shine? Sure they are, job security, remember? NOT!!!

Very interesting take on the tax issue.

Corporations started the 13 colonies?
That is a new one to me, how so?
The crown payed for them by business ventures?

I doubt corporations will ever be dissolved, the monopolies disturb me. The definitions must have changed. The off shore situations being tax sheltered is real BS.

There were two types of colonies, those managed by trading companies chartered by the Crown and those managed by the Crown directly. Most of the 13 were chartered. I think New York might be an exception, as it name implies, it was considered a holding of the Duke of York, a member of the Royal Family.

The Crown paid by supplying soldiers to fight us, meaning injuns, and the French mostly. So then the Crown would tax the people to pay for this stuff, which is one of the reasons the American colonists revolted.

Now this corporation business was created so Europeans could climb out of the pit of feudalism. As long as they were loyal to the king they could organize settlements, like towns, that weren't subject to the nobles and the serfs could be relatively free in such places.

Cortez and company formed just such a corporation when they founded Veracruz, so it was a widely recognized thing among the people of Europe, who had few tribal connections and would otherwise be at the mercy of noblemen and their thugs.

So, it's probably fair to say that indian people paid dearly so that Europeans could shed their feudalistic shackles and gain title to lands they didn't in fact own anymore than they owned the estates they worked as serfs, but in the case of the corporate colonies, they could pretend ownership and make it work because they had the coercive power of the king and later the government behind them.

The thirst for land began among the landless of Europe. There was plenty of land, especially after the ravages of the Black Death, but the nobles owned most of it, so the people they deprived were encouraged to emigrate to the Americas and elsewhere to gain their own estates.

This was especially true after the realm of France was closed to English routers after the English were finally expelled at the end of the Hundred Years War. Likewise, the Reconquista in Spain left many hidalgos landless and unemployed. Guess where they decided to seek their fortunes? Knight errants looking to cash in.

Now, maybe you can see why I'm not especially finding European culture as admirable as many people do?

While I'm still thinking about it, I ought to mention that my studies of the Hundred Years War and subsequent events has really opened my eyes to the reasons why Europeans felt compelled to conquer the world. I would, therefore, highly recommend such a study or course to anybody who wants to know how this mess got to be how it is. That in turn might suggest ways of getting out of it with minimal damages to all concerned, but I suspect that'll require some sort of paradigm shift as it's called usually. And that won't be easy to conceive or accomplish.

Thank you Analiese. Some bits I was familiar with from your writings. They are so full of info I should read them again at this point. Some facts would fit together better now for me!

Sounds like a great suggestion for study. Do you feel there are *solutions* to all of this, within it?

Interesting article and conversation, I have his other book about fast food, havn't read it yet though. I wish authorities would wise up about hemp, its a great product and revitilizes depleted fields without use of chemicals. I certainly love my hemp hand cream, do you have hemp products in the US?

I know there's quite a few small shops in Arcata, California that sell hemp products...