https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...

Keep in mind that it came into being right as the Nixon years used anti-drug legislation to effectively take down blacks and hippies.

On top of that you have nations that wanted to hedge around their big and growing pharma industries, and others that was negative to all drugs (except their local cultural ones) for religious and cultural reasons.

In effect religion and economics trumped medical science, and the world has been dealing with the blowback ever since.

Companies make a 2x, 3x, 10x, 100x premium off of labor. The only way they can do that is with a perceived shortage of "work". The way they do that is to make enough political instability that a strong single digit percentage of people are visibly falling through the cracks of solvency. Drugs help.

Many business owners are aware on some level that they could double salaries and stay solvent, but they don't think about it, they think in terms of "market rates" for labor, and they want rates to be as low as possible, so they subconsciously collude in cultural movements which make work seem scarce, and life scary and chaotic.

Their brains don't drift to the "what if we all just work hard and get paid a fair share? what if every employee was on a partner track?" scenario because they would lose money. And they're the ones deciding what the partner agreement says so it doesn't change.

There's no technical reason in 2017 for there to be any unemployment, for anyone to be hungry or need health care, lack access to the internet, or anyone to work more than 20 hours a week.

The problem is if that happens, the working class will rest up, get educated, and demand fair compensation for their wages, and the capital class will be stuck with a piddling 20% of the global economy instead of the 80% they currently get.

So they fight tooth and nail to keep a certain level of instability, in the workforce, and in far away places.

I think you have a conspiracy narrative, and you are trying to fit evidence to support it.

One (but certainly not the only) missing factor here is a discussion of skilled vs. unskilled labor. The market for skilled labor is relatively small compared to unskilled labor, but even in that market companies struggle sometimes to fill positions, that's one of the claims companies backing H1B programs make (even if it is a bit dubious). On the other hand, there's an almost unlimited supply of unskilled labor available, and that's growing all the time. Further complicating things is the fact that the demand for unskilled labor is directly driven by the size of the market, and they tend to scale together.

People desperate for any work to offset their costs of living are more willing at accept lower pay if it means getting a job and that's exactly the situation we see evolving now. All of this so far has been predicated on the supply side of things being the driver, but there's also the question of demand. If people had options they could fall back on then the unskilled labor market would demand higher wages and refuse to work under the poverty line forcing employers to increase wages. The problem is of course that people are so desperate for anything at all that they're willing to work in jobs that can't keep them financially viable because it at least slows the collapse. Eventually they'll either move into a skilled position that gives them a better chance, get sick, die, or turn to crime or drugs to try to cope. Long term this is of course economically disastrous, the middle class has all but ceased to exist, and the economy is slowly grinding to a halt as more and more of the population finds themselves unable to take part meaningfully in it. However in the short term it means record breaking profits for corporations. It's pretty obvious to anyone who's watched the policies that corporations have pushed for the last 40 years exactly what choice they're going to make.

Far from reducing labor, you just turn it into largely unpaid, forced labor. AKA "The way it's always been".

If you suddenly have a lower cost of living you have increased your negotiating leverage. This often leads to higher wages.

Similarly, increasing people's desperation commensurately decreases their wages.

Penal labor is, incidentally, big business:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

Regarding conspiracies.... There's no conspiracy. Like I said, I think most business owners realize they are making money off their employees. They just don't benefit from paying people a fair wage because they don't have the infrastructure to capture the additional value created by a growing human being.

It makes sense when you think about it: The reason they are a capitalist and not labor is that they don't want to have to do repetitive work, or sometimes don't want to work at all. As your employees develop new skills and abilities, it takes work to restructure the business around them. It's repetitive. "Oh, another one of my tech support people wants to train to do product design. Great." Most capitalists find it easier to just structure the company to support one kind of labor and then try to prevent employees from growing out of it.

Due to information technology, we're getting close to being able to scalably restructure organizations around a group of people with continuously progressing skills, but it's a hard problem. Only a handful of companies (with great management) are able to do it by hand today.

So for now, labor is stuck in a low energy state, even though there is a stronger equilibrium at a higher, "fair" pay. Individual companies don't benefit from going against the norm, so there's a chicken and egg situation, which creates an opening for the afformebtioned disruptive technology.

> so they subconsciously collude in cultural movements which make work seem scarce, and life scary and chaotic.

I agree that business owners will offer someone lower wages, because the job they're providing is very stable. (i.e. my friend had a choice between being an assistant manager at a chain sandwich shop, or being a manager of a new restaurant in a different city. He's taken the low-risk option.)

I also agree that there are structures that exist that encourage the drug war to go on. The iron triangle between: Politicians passing drug laws and other harsh criminal laws, DAs who want perfect records, police & prison guards who want more overtime and toys, and the unions that represent police and prison guards and lobby for more laws.

It's the business owner -> drug war link that I find tenuous. I know several business owners, of multi-million dollar companies. They aren't consciously thinking like you say they are, they are simply thinking "who do I need to hire to get this job done".

Admittedly, maybe I need to be talking to the CEO of a company that primarily employs retail or blue-collar workers.

You also make the claim that it's subconscious, so I don't even know how to collect evidence in regards to that...

I don't think your theory is falsifiable. Because you're making conjecture about someone's subconscious, and about a small group, it's nearly impossible to prove or disprove.

What kind of evidence would you need to change your mind?

//edit and I have to give credit to the other replies--- the prison workforce is a great counter-example to why the drug war would be useful from an evil capitalist perspective. I feel embarrassed that I missed that :/

Would you mind describing the reasoning behind this part?

Say no to drugs but the governments' kept it Running through our community, killing the unity The war on drugs is a war on you and me And yet, they say this is the Home of The Free But if you ask me, it's all about hypocrisy...

I mean... people liked Tupac for a reason, flaws and all.

See also: the opium wars.

It was a national security concern, insofar as smugglers bringing cocaine, heroin, and marijuana into the US via Mexico are a matter of national security for the US.

It's circular to bring up the US War on Drugs to support the argument that the opium wars were about national security, in response to a comment challenging whether the opium wars support the argument that the US War on Drugs is about national security. My whole point is that I'm skeptical of the case that either is about national security.