The economic argument seems wrong in the “Burning coca leaves won’t win the war” section.
The total amount of a good that consumers buy must be less than or equal to the amount that is produced (and not destroyed). So if enough of the crop gets destroyed, then less of it will get consumed. And that’ll happen regardless of whether the suppliers are in a competitive market or monopsony or threaten people with guns.
I framed this in terms of quantities rather than prices because the argument seems more straightforward this way. Also, it seems like reducing the quantity sold is more directly related to what anti-drug folks care about than raising the price. Also, the street price for US consumers would presumably go up if the availability went down, since the people who sell drugs to consumers would be able to make more profit by raising their prices.
If there are problems with the economic argument in the post, that doesn’t necessarily mean the conclusion is wrong. “Burning lots of coca crops will have little to no effect on the price or quantity of cocaine in the US” does seem plausible, mainly because producers can just grow a lot more coca leaves than they need. Producers can predict in advance that lots of their crop might get destroyed (or their product lost in transit or similar), and growing coca leaves is not that expensive relative to their operation, so they can add a lot of slack by growing more than they need. (This doesn’t depend on monopsony or violence.)
Related to the quantity argument, the book talks about how there was a green revolution of sorts in the cocaine business. Between 2005 and 2011, the amount of cocaine that could be extracted from coca plants increased by 60-100%. In that time period, the quantity of coca plants decreased without the quantity of cocaine decreasing.
The economic argument seems wrong in the “Burning coca leaves won’t win the war” section.
The total amount of a good that consumers buy must be less than or equal to the amount that is produced (and not destroyed). So if enough of the crop gets destroyed, then less of it will get consumed. And that’ll happen regardless of whether the suppliers are in a competitive market or monopsony or threaten people with guns.
I framed this in terms of quantities rather than prices because the argument seems more straightforward this way. Also, it seems like reducing the quantity sold is more directly related to what anti-drug folks care about than raising the price. Also, the street price for US consumers would presumably go up if the availability went down, since the people who sell drugs to consumers would be able to make more profit by raising their prices.
If there are problems with the economic argument in the post, that doesn’t necessarily mean the conclusion is wrong. “Burning lots of coca crops will have little to no effect on the price or quantity of cocaine in the US” does seem plausible, mainly because producers can just grow a lot more coca leaves than they need. Producers can predict in advance that lots of their crop might get destroyed (or their product lost in transit or similar), and growing coca leaves is not that expensive relative to their operation, so they can add a lot of slack by growing more than they need. (This doesn’t depend on monopsony or violence.)
Related to the quantity argument, the book talks about how there was a green revolution of sorts in the cocaine business. Between 2005 and 2011, the amount of cocaine that could be extracted from coca plants increased by 60-100%. In that time period, the quantity of coca plants decreased without the quantity of cocaine decreasing.