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Your tax dollars at work . . .

Your tax dollars at work . . .

https://nypost.com/2022/12/09/new-york-gets-ready-for-home-delivery-of-marijuana-and-edibles/

“Hey . . . Jose . . . bring me a lid of Colombian Red to 724 evergreen terrace”

Wait . . . is this actually legal? Apparently yes. And New York is ramping up an entire “regulatory body” to monitor door-dash style home delivery of marijuana. See link above. It's really, really true.

NYC of course, is the place with a $3 Billion budget deficit this year. But thank God they found enough money to launch and administer pot deliveries, eh?

NYC also has a homeless population of +/- 100,000. How do they even count this? And can you get uber-pot if you sleep in the subways? Just asking.

Okay – homelessness doesn't do it for you? How about NYC's murder rate – it hit a 20 year high this year. A bunch of those were in subways. Wait – sorry – I agreed to drop that topic. So, so sorry.

Well, NYC is also the place with an “official” high school graduation rate of 75%, but only a 7% dropout rate. Where are the rest of the public-school students? Missing and presumed dead? Lost in the subway system? Okay . .. okay . . I'm done with the murders on the subways. It's over.

Back to the pot deliverers. If you had told me that the city was setting up a bureaucracy to administer liquor deliveries, I'd still be outraged, but at least able to process this. There are a bunch of rappers, Hedge fund operators, and politicians who might need extra bottles of Cristal for a "Succession" style gathering but find it inconvenient to send Greg from their party out to fetch it. Deplorable, but understandable. But you can zip right around this inconvenient speed bump in your quest for living large, and get pot delivered straight to your penthouse. Or your rent controlled, slumlord-owned walkup.

My take? This is possibly the unfortunate end result of people who refuse to come back to the office and work. You can't spark up in your cubicle, for sure.

How does the NYC government even find itself in the middle of this crap? Not by accident, I guess. There probably were “smoke filled room” meetings between pot dispensary moguls and politicians where “something” was offered up as an inducement to legalizing same day home delivery of Aurora Cannabis Inc (listed on the NY Stock Exchange - ticker symbol "ACB"). If only we knew what that was, and who paid it, eh?

Hmmm . . I guess some things are just unknowable. Like the cosmic nature of dark matter, and dark energy. Now . . . dark pot delivery deals.

Maybe the weed delivery persons could be tasked at keeping an eye out for murders in progress, or those tens of thousands of missing public-school students? So the tax dollars spent "regulating" this farce won't be totally wasted (pun alert), eh?
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Where do the tax dollars come into play? Just the regulatory body? The permits to become a delivery driver and set up a warehouse are unlikely to be free and can probably cover the costs of the oversight and more.
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@NerdyPotato wait - your theory is that "municipal permits in NYC" are FREE? this is the most ridiculous assumption in this thread. Nothing in NYC is free. And with permits comes the opportunity - obligation - to bribe government functionaries to obtain permission to operate.

Ask any restaurant operator who has bought his way out of a failed health inspection. Ask the slumlords operating thousands of buildings which couldn't pass an occupancy inspection on their best day if the inspector was blind.
@SusanInFlorida no, my point is they aren't and the system pays for itself and probably more. This is not where your tax dollars go to, it's one place they come from.
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@NerdyPotato "the system" has NEVER paid for itself. Government on all levels is huge ponzi scheme in reverse, where the money distributed by "the system" is MUCH higher than what's collected in taxes. the difference is made up by borrowing, which drives inflation, and enriches (favored) lenders/creditors.

Ask yourself this: in 1960 the average new car was $2,500. Today it's over $25,000. How do you think this relentless inflation, compounding year over year, takes place? It's built into the assumptions of "the system".

The average senator or house member earns $180,000 annually. Base salary. Before "speaking fees", "book sales"; "shrewd real estate investments"; free jet trips to whatever, free hotel stays and meals ...

Ask yourself why "the system" doesn't treat you this nicely, as well.
@SusanInFlorida very simple: capitalism. And you're right, that doesn't treat most people nicely. It only works because it's good for the top 1% that makes the rules.
SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F
@NerdyPotato okay - free markets are the cause of government corruption? how do you explain places like russia, china, cuba, north korea, etc.

Let's just agree that governments want to hold onto power by any means necessary. Allowing people to work and earn a profit isn't inherently corrupting.
@SusanInFlorida corruption doesn't come free markets, but capitalism does indeed encourage bribes, yes. And I don't need to explain anything about dictatorships because those have nothing to do with weed, market dynamics or anything relating to this post. Let's stick to the topic.

Sure, I agree governments not only would, but actually go over dead bodies to keep the systems that benefit politicians in place. There is nothing wrong with working or earning a profit, but capitalism pushes this to the extreme where workers have to harm their health to barely survive in order for CEOs to earn more than they could ever spend. If you see no problem in that, we just live in different worlds and I have nothing left to say about yours.