Mob, Faux-tism, Compliance Costs II
3rd February 2021
Severian teaches a little history.
A brief summary of our story so far: back at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, the US Surgeon General finally let the cat out of the bag. Turns out that sucking the fumes of burning weeds straight into your lungs isn’t optimal for your pulmonary wellbeing. That being the case, huckster politicians saw a chance to plug a few budget holes by pretending to care about public health. They decided to tax smoking out of existence.
As they should’ve learned from Prohibition, but didn’t, politicians soon discovered that lifestyle crimes are basically unenforceable.* The new taxes created a vast black market economy for smokes. Which had three knock-on effects, in ascending order of importance:
- massive budget shortfalls, as idiot state governments, being governments, had already spent the anticipated tax revenue several years in advance;
- an increased disrespect for the law, as unenforced laws are worse than no laws; and
- turning what was a harmless(-ish) private vice into a public statement of minor rebelliousness — total per capita smoking remained roughly the same from 1960 – 1990, while total cigarette consumption actually went way up (though the ever-increasing importation of Third Worlders, all of whom smoke like chimneys, probably had a lot to do with that).