New governments always say “We want to make things better.” What they really want to do is lie to justify destroying their hated neighbors. Those who hate their neighbors quickly find that they can do the most damage to them from safe government jobs.
One prong of their attack is to identify selected occupations as “criminal”. Then, they put those involved in such activities in jail and then take over those same functions. A few decades ago, we were all told that the evil “number runners” were helping the “numbers racket”, which hurt and damaged the weakest people in our society.
The “criminals involved” were hunted down like mad dogs. They were jailed, their property was confiscated, and some are still in prison. As soon as the “numbers racket was cleaned up” (competition was eliminated), government agencies quickly got into the lottery business. “Rackets” became “gaming”, and, as such, was exalted.
When Prohibition was repealed, several states began running their own liquor stores, providing high-paid jobs for well-connected hacks. Now that drugs are illegal, many public agencies provide various drug substitutes for addicts. Soon, drugs will be made obtainable in modern versions of government-run opium dens.
