Shades of Ayn Rand: Oil dependence and a failed drug policy

In today's news on Fox.com, there's a story about the presidential election in Bolivia and left-wing candidate Evo Morales who boasts that, if elected, he intends to become "a nightmare" for the United States.

You may wonder - and rightly so - how a little country like Bolivia could even be an annoyance to the United States, much less a "nightmare."

I can answer that question with two words. Oil. Cocaine.

Morales is a Socialist who claims that if he is elected, he intends to nationalize Bolivia's oil and natural gas industries. At this writing, he is the leader by a substantial margin in the presidential election. This is unsurprising, given the number of poor in Bolivia. Socialism is only popular among the ignorant and the arrogant.

Morales also claims that he will legalize the production of coca.

There are two steps that should be taken immediately to defuse Morales' ambitions, and they are both unpopular.

The first obvious problem is that our dependence on foreign sources of oil and natural gas puts us constantly at the mercy of every two-bit tinpot nutcase with a chip on his shoulder and a reservoir of fossil fuels in his backyard.

Lefties claim that the answer is to reduce consumption. Ain't gonna happen. Get over it. We need to tap our own reserves in Alaska. We can do so cleanly and with minimal interference to the wildlife there. Yes, yes, that will be more expensive. But nowhere near as expensive as having to go begging to the Saudis, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales.

Ayn Rand predicted this in Atlas Shrugged years ago. In her novel, Americans were heavily invested in industries in South America that were nationalized (and subsequently destroyed), and that - amongst other things - contributed to the collapse of the American economy.

The second step that should be taken is that the "War on Drugs" should be declared a total failure, and ended. And yes, I am talking about decriminalization, regulation and taxation. The United States has spent billions trying to end coca production in countries all across South America. The end result is that we've created a black market that has crippled entire economies, devastated legal systems (how many Colombian judges have been murdered?), destroyed the livelihood of any number of indigenous peoples, and directly contributed to the rise of murderous drug cartels and bloodthirsty paramilitaries.

And all of this without ending the demand here in this country.

We should simply legalize drugs, regulate and tax it as the industry it is, and subject it to the tort system. Hell, if we can bring "Big Tobacco," the makers of asbestos and silicone breast implants, almost the entire obstetrics practice in the United States, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft to their knees, surely we can handle a few drugmakers.

It's inevitable. We can do it the smart way, or the stupid way. The stupid way is to wait until we simply run out of money.

Why not be proactive about it? Take those billions, and put them into rehabilitation and border security. The money would be much better spent.

Of course, assuming that drug use in the U.S. stays at current levels, that won't solve the problem of Bolivia's delusions of grandeur; it would just change the commodity we're dependent on.

On second thought, maybe that is the solution to the drug problem. A Socialist president a la Morales would likely respond by nationalizing the coca industry. And nothing would destroy it faster.