Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Gunnar »

I don't think believe anything relating to fentanyl or other drug trafficking has anything to do with the constitutional right of birthright citizenship or that merely getting rid of that right will do anything to mitigate that problem. Nor do I believe that the stupid war on drugs and the punitive prohibition approach to drug addiction is a sane or effective way to mitigate the problem of widespread drug addiction and overdoses. The biggest beneficiaries of that approach are organized crime and drug traffickers, who know that once they once they can get vulnerable people addicted to their wares, their victims are unlikely to seek legal help to kick their addiction, even when they come to realize that they are indeed victims, because current laws make them criminals subject to prosecution and incarceration merely for being addicts.

One has to wonder, though, why fentanyl which is so potentially deadly, and addictive, is used at all in medicine. Are there really any benefits to using fentanyl that cannot be conferred by less dangerous or less addictive means?
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Gunnar »

Physics Guy wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2025 8:23 am
Why does fentanyl have to come to the US from anywhere else at all? Fentanyl doesn't contain any rare elements that have to be sourced somewhere else. It's not a super-complicated molecule as these things go. I am not yet a chemistry guy, and there might be something tricky in synthesising this particular critter, but I can hardly imagine that there is any advanced chemical technique that is beyond American technology and yet is exploited at scale in illegal labs in other countries.

I would expect most fentanyl consumed in the US to have been made in the US. I would be skeptical of any claims otherwise. How the heck would anyone be able to be sure that any large fraction of it came from China? If significant amounts of fentanyl are coming to the US from those countries, as indicated by regularly intercepting and seizing some of it, I suspect this is just because fentanyl is a popular product that anybody who is smuggling anything will try to smuggle.

Foreign producers competing with domestic labs will have higher shipping costs, including the difficulty of getting illegal substances over a border, but as long as their labor costs are lower by enough, they'll be competitive in an unsaturated and inefficient market. I expect the fentanyl industry is like most industries that way.

Cutting down on fentanyl imports by watching more of the border will be much like imposing a tariff on fentanyl. It will cut down somewhat on the supply of fentanyl in the US—initially. Without the additional supply and lower prices from foreign competition, however, the price that domestic fentanyl can command will go up. This will make the market more attractive to American criminals, increasing domestic production. So supply might not go all the way up to where it was when it included imports, but it won't end up falling by as much as the imports were.

It's not as though stopping all fentanyl imports would set any hard ceiling on the amount of fentanyl in the US. The amount of fentanyl in the US is not limited by the American supply of carbon and nitrogen atoms. It's limited by the level of demand from US consumers.

So I'm not sure that raising the price of fentanyl by maybe ten percent or so, by eliminating all fentanyl imports, is going to save many lives. The consumers who weren't deterred by the risk of death will probably find some way to come up with that much extra money.
All good points, especially that last one. An addict will do anything to get his fix and making the drug harder to get and more expensive will only make the addict more likely to commit serious crimes and hurt other people to obtain the means to afford the drug.

ETA: The Trump's obsession about drug trafficking has much more to do with distracting the public's attention away from their corruption and their purely self-serving agenda than any genuine concern about drug trafficking and drug abuse.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Physics Guy »

The simplest picture of how supply and demand determine prices together is that more people will buy something at a lower price, and fewer people will still buy it at a higher price. At 10¢ each your bananas are such a steal that people will buy them even if they're not hungry, but at $2.50 each even most people who are dying for a banana smoothie will go for mango instead.

You can get more sales with less profit each, or fewer sales with more profit each. Your total income is profit-per-sale times number of sales. At each extreme, you get nothing: billions of sales times zero profit is zero, and so is zero sales times a billion dollars per sale. Somewhere in the middle is your peak income, and that price point is where the market should settle, because merchants are pretty sharp about getting the most income they can. If you discover a larger subculture of rich banana snobs than anyone else realized existed, you can become the Starbucks of bananas and sell perfect pre-peeled ones to a small elite market at $20 a pop. Otherwise you'd better settle for less and get reasonable numbers of sales.

In a competitive market it isn't that simple, though. The public might still be totally willing to buy all your product at a much higher price, if it had no other way to get your wonderful product, but if the shop down the street is selling the same thing for less, they'll get all the sales and you will get none. So the obviously smart thing to do, if you can, is to have a friendly chat with your neighbouring merchant.
In 1776, in _The Wealth of Nations_, Adam Smith wrote:People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
"Cartel" isn't just the sexy word to use for a criminal gang if it happens to sell drugs. A cartel is a price-fixing conspiracy by producers—of anything. OPEC was an oil cartel, when it controlled enough of world oil production to pull off the price fixing. Cartels are always unstable, because if any one producer lowers prices a bit, they'll make a killing by getting all the sales. It's a Prisoner's Dilemma, in fact. So some kind of ferocious discipline is needed to keep all the producers in line.

Competition still limits the price even with a cartel, because if the price gets too high compared to the discipline then the temptation to defect will be too great for some cartel member, and so the cost of maintaining discipline rises with price. At some point a higher price will raise the cost of maintaining the cartel by more than you gain—and so that's where the price stops. It's still much higher than it would be with no cartel at all.

We keep hearing about foreign cartels controlling the drug trade. The fact that they are cartels is important. It has big implications for how much can be done to limit drug consumption by raising drug prices.

How much can be done? Not a lot. Cartels are big in the illegal drug business, because competition among producers is the dominant factor in the business ... because there is virtually no limit to what consumers are willing to pay if they have no alternative.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Gunnar »

Physics Guy wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2025 9:45 am
The simplest picture of how supply and demand determine prices together is that more people will buy something at a lower price, and fewer people will still buy it at a higher price. At 10¢ each your bananas are such a steal that people will buy them even if they're not hungry, but at $2.50 each even most people who are dying for a banana smoothie will go for mango instead.
This reminds me of a story I read a long time ago. A Seattle Entrepeneur developed a very efficient system for running a fast-food restaurant that lowered his operating costs significantly without sacrificing quality, so he was able to sell good hamburgers for less than his competitors and still make an adequate profit, if only customers would come and try them out. Unfortunately, so few customers came that he was on the verge of going bankrupt. They seemed to think his prices were suspiciously low. Then he had a brainstorm idea. He priced his efficiently made hamburgers at twice the price charged by his competitors and advertised them as "gourmet hamburgers", because they really were quite good. So many customers flocked to his establishment that he was soon able to open up a whole chain of his efficiently managed restaurants in Seattle.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Physics Guy »

There are markets in which demand does actually seem to rise with price, up to a point.

Burger legends also illustrate the importance of stifling competition—like this legend about a burger chain from San Bernardino.
Singing as Ray Kroc, Mark Knopfler wrote: Well, we build it up and I buy 'em out,
But, man, they make me grind it out now.
They open up a new place, flippin' meat.
So I do too, right across the street.

I got the name, but I need the town.
They sell up in the end and it all shuts down.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Gadianton »

CFR on you reliable source, mine is from the The Council of Economic Advisers ( a government agency) had it well over 2 trillion in 2023, the 500 billion numbers I read was in 2015.
LOL. Why don't you just say it Markk, 2.7 Trillion is well over 2 trillion, and just in 2023, conveniently, right at the height of the Biden administration! There's no source except Fox news citing the "CEA" -- and who is that? An internal White House Agency? LOL. A bunch of Trump's recent buddies put into power. Why don't you start citing DOGE as well?
The opioid crisis under the Biden administration cost the U.S. $2.7 trillion in 2023 alone, a new study exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital shows.
The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency within the executive office that advises the president on economic policy, on Friday released a study detailing that the opioid epidemic cost the U.S. $2.7 trillion in 2023
I'm not going to waste my time untangling this because it doesn't really matter, liars (such as the one who recently tried to sneak this number into this thread in a way to avoid suspicion) will just move on to the next thing. The study was "released" yet at the same time was "exclusively obtained by Fox". I'll let the morally broken poster who made the claim untangle this and show us where the numbers come from that add up to 2.7 trillion.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Dwight »

yeah, I'm not conceding the point on opioids, but to get back to the point, the guys who wrote the 14th amendment did intend for it to mean everyone except like the children of diplomats. Directly contrary to what Markk said, we have written historical contemporaneous accounts that while they couldn't foresee planes and such, they did intend for everyone born in the US. If the people/government etc. want to change it they have a process to amend the constitution, and it isn't by executive order.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Markk »

Gadianton wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2025 1:57 pm
CFR on you reliable source, mine is from the The Council of Economic Advisers ( a government agency) had it well over 2 trillion in 2023, the 500 billion numbers I read was in 2015.
LOL. Why don't you just say it Markk, 2.7 Trillion is well over 2 trillion, and just in 2023, conveniently, right at the height of the Biden administration! There's no source except Fox news citing the "CEA" -- and who is that? An internal White House Agency? LOL. A bunch of Trump's recent buddies put into power. Why don't you start citing DOGE as well?
The opioid crisis under the Biden administration cost the U.S. $2.7 trillion in 2023 alone, a new study exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital shows.
The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency within the executive office that advises the president on economic policy, on Friday released a study detailing that the opioid epidemic cost the U.S. $2.7 trillion in 2023
I'm not going to waste my time untangling this because it doesn't really matter, liars (such as the one who recently tried to sneak this number into this thread in a way to avoid suspicion) will just move on to the next thing. The study was "released" yet at the same time was "exclusively obtained by Fox". I'll let the morally broken poster who made the claim untangle this and show us where the numbers come from that add up to 2.7 trillion.

It was in 2017 just over 1 trillion, in 2020 1.5, and now a 2.7 number.....I believe that is very consistent and compliments the overdose death rate rise, not to mention inflation. If you believe that the deaths, costs, and burdens associated with them are some how shrinking overall, fine, but all you have is identity bias and discrimination, and seem to be incapable of seeing what is going on in our country beyond what your tribe tells you, based mostly on their hate for anyone that disagrees with them, as you clearly demonstrate. It's sad Gad. You had four years to address this mess, and it has gotten worse. It is time to give someone else a chance to at least aggressively try to mitigate this mess we have gotten ourselves into. No one is without blame.

I'll go back to a Vietnam analogy. Currently, the deaths each year are approaching twice the amount of deaths of Americans in the Vietnam war, over the years we were involved, again, each year. It is the leading cause of death for two generations of American men each year. What is really crazy is that some cites almost welcome this, an certainly enable it, with staggering results.

On January 30, 2024, Mayor Wheeler, Governor Tina Kotek, and Chair Jessica Vega Pederson each declared a State of Emergency to address the fentanyl crisis. Each declared a 90-day state of emergency to address the public health and public safety crisis driven by fentanyl in Portland's Central City. ( City of Portland .gov)

"Overdose death counts continue to rise at a startling rate in Washington state. Between September 2022 and September 2023, Washington reported a 41% rise in drug overdose fatalities — the highest increase in the United States. As the most populous county within the state, King County saw the highest number of overdose deaths, a majority of them concentrated in Seattle and downtown, in particular. In 2023, overdose deaths downtown represented more than 11% of overdose deaths within King County." (Downtown Seattle Association)


"At least 1,089 people died from fentanyl poisoning last year, up 18.4% from 920 the year before, according to preliminary data released by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment." (Colorado Sun)

"San Diego County has experienced a 700% increase in fentanyl overdose deaths since 2016 (2024), linked to fentanyl — counterfeit pills and powder — being smuggled from Mexico into the United States."
(DHS)

There are dips and rises in these cities but overall it is a growing mess, a huge mess. I have a hard time understanding why "we" don't get behind what ever administration is in charge. That sad part about this if the Democrat's had won, and Harris was doing what Trump is doing to combat this epidemic, you would support it, I am sure of that.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Markk »

Physics Guy wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2025 8:23 am
Why does fentanyl have to come to the US from anywhere else at all? Fentanyl doesn't contain any rare elements that have to be sourced somewhere else. It's not a super-complicated molecule as these things go. I am not yet a chemistry guy, and there might be something tricky in synthesising this particular critter, but I can hardly imagine that there is any advanced chemical technique that is beyond American technology and yet is exploited at scale in illegal labs in other countries.

I would expect most fentanyl consumed in the US to have been made in the US. I would be skeptical of any claims otherwise. How the heck would anyone be able to be sure that any large fraction of it came from China? If significant amounts of fentanyl are coming to the US from those countries, as indicated by regularly intercepting and seizing some of it, I suspect this is just because fentanyl is a popular product that anybody who is smuggling anything will try to smuggle.

Foreign producers competing with domestic labs will have higher shipping costs, including the difficulty of getting illegal substances over a border, but as long as their labor costs are lower by enough, they'll be competitive in an unsaturated and inefficient market. I expect the fentanyl industry is like most industries that way.

Cutting down on fentanyl imports by watching more of the border will be much like imposing a tariff on fentanyl. It will cut down somewhat on the supply of fentanyl in the US—initially. Without the additional supply and lower prices from foreign competition, however, the price that domestic fentanyl can command will go up. This will make the market more attractive to American criminals, increasing domestic production. So supply might not go all the way up to where it was when it included imports, but it won't end up falling by as much as the imports were.

It's not as though stopping all fentanyl imports would set any hard ceiling on the amount of fentanyl in the US. The amount of fentanyl in the US is not limited by the American supply of carbon and nitrogen atoms. It's limited by the level of demand from US consumers.

So I'm not sure that raising the price of fentanyl by maybe ten percent or so, by eliminating all fentanyl imports, is going to save many lives. The consumers who weren't deterred by the risk of death will probably find some way to come up with that much extra money.
You pose a interesting question. I had never though much about US fentanyl labs. I highly doubt that most fentanyl comes from "home grown labs"(HGL's). I did search for it and there is not much about it. I found one site where it read the feds found three locations were the chemicals, but they weren't sure if it was a lab or dump site, but either way shows that there are HGL's of some sort. But again, I have a hard time believing that "most" of the fentanyl consumed here is locally produced. But I open and interested in any information you can find on it.
How the heck would anyone be able to be sure that any large fraction of it came from China?
Because of the staggering amounts that are seized. Whether directly from China, or indirectly from China via Mexico. I doubt that HGL's send the product to Mexico, and China, so they can smuggle it back in.

Also, I don't see how any HGL could possibly compete with the current market, the risk reward just is not there in my opinion, but again I am interested in this, and if it true, we need to stop it for sure.

And, you made a good point in what Chemicals are required, and where would they legally get them here? I have no idea.
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Re: Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

Post by Doctor Steuss »

Physics Guy wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2025 8:23 am
Why does fentanyl have to come to the US from anywhere else at all? Fentanyl doesn't contain any rare elements that have to be sourced somewhere else. It's not a super-complicated molecule as these things go. I am not yet a chemistry guy, and there might be something tricky in synthesising this particular critter, but I can hardly imagine that there is any advanced chemical technique that is beyond American technology and yet is exploited at scale in illegal labs in other countries.
[...]
Often, the difficulty isn't in synthesizing, but in isolating it from all of the byproducts of the synthesis without further tainting or degrading. That said, there looks to be at least 15-or-so various synthesis methods published at NIH. All of them look to yield about 70-90% purity, so you're then still left with steps to remove that 10-30% of waste compounds without causing additional reactions to the thing you just made. All-in-all, I imagine anyone with a basic lab and know-how could probably make it happen (Patrick Arnold was synthesizing abandoned steroids in his little BALCO joint with seeming ease).

My guess is it's somewhat the same reason weed was largely smuggled rather than grown here. The risk associated with "manufacturing" verses possession/distribution are significantly different, and it can be much harder to keep a manufacturing operation under the radar, than distribution.

Unless you're a business or university, ordering large quantities of given precursors can potentially land you fairly quickly on someone's watch list. While a given compound might be readily available for purchase, its legitimate uses can be pretty narrow in scope, causing suspicions when anyone new or unknown orders quantity.

Ultimately, if we stopped 100% from coming into the US illegally, it would likely have little to no impact on drug use overall. As you pointed out, it's feasible to manufacture here, and stopping it all from coming in does nothing to address the root causes of the problem.
Last edited by Doctor Steuss on Wed Feb 12, 2025 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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