Actually, I think the discussion was the consequences of enacting laws intended to drive people away. But if you really want to discuss the consequences of enforcing existing laws in Main Street America, okay, I can roll with that.
Legalizing illegal drugs would be a help. I'm not sure all those empty stores would be snatched up by drug dealers in the fashion you seem to be thinking they will. But it might help government revenue if taxed. That said, if we're going to talk about the economic impact on smaller towns, I think immigration is the more important issue. Running customers and workers out of town is going to be bad for business whether there are folks selling narcotics legally or not.
Believe it or not, my major focus in these issues is not the government or the law. My focus is the people. I criticize the law when I think the law is bad for the people. If the law is bad, discussing how to enforce it better is then not solving the problem. Making more laws like it is then not the solution. The solution is to change or, if necessary, eliminate the law. But here, in the article from which I took excerpts, we have the story of a town that enacted a law that drove customers and employees out of town. And there are people saying this is a good thing. I'm watching the public debate on immigration be about whether we should have a wall or a fence, and how many armed guards do we need patrolling the border. If anyone suggests we don't need any of that, someone with your general response about rewarding lawbreakers chimes in, or worse, someone decides to talk about how the immigrants are going to ruin America.
Of course, open trade would help a great deal to elevate the economic fortunes of other countries and thus lessen the massive flow of immigrants to the U.S. to make a living. But of course, we can't do that either, because everyone thinks we're in some sort of competition with other countries and that if they rise then we fall, that we'll some how loose points in the great trade game. This is not true of course, but it is the conventional wisdom. So we seek our protectionist policies and any suggestion of opening up trade is met with complaints about protecting American jobs and loss of national sovereignty and all that jazz. The thing is, this doesn't just hurt the people in other countries, this also hurts Small Town/Main Street America. Hurt is relative, because we're generally pretty well off here in America, but we could be doing better, if we'd just let ourselves.
But we don't. We'd rather just make more laws to interfere with trade and immigration in name of protecting American values. I'm not sure why sugar subsidies and strict control of immigration are American values, but they must be. And meanwhile, folks in Riverside, New Jersey, get to see their businesses suffer and see some of their neighbors happy about it. And I'm left wondering why I really have to defend the idea that maybe we ought to consider getting rid of the laws that are doing us more harm than good.
So anyway, I'm still not entirely clear why you're trying to bring drug dealers into this. It seems like an odd tangent. Yes, I know, legalizing illegal activity and all, but how does this address the immigration problem? Or is your goal in this discussion something else?
