Drugs and Anarchy, why the market will protect society.

The store and the pharmaceuticals both want to sell drugs for profit; how would the free market enforce societal norms against this?

Since many recreational drugs raise the risk of violence or injury, protection agencies would charge higher rates for the protection of drug users. Some, at first, would say that this gives the protection agency a higher incentive to sell hard drugs in order to receive higher premiums. This however is not how insurance works. Insurers' best interests lie with the customers. This is because the customer is insuring against some misfortune, if this misfortune occurs they must pay to indemnify him. The payment is always much higher than the premiums.

For example if someone is paying $100 a month for car insurance, and this person is faulted for an accident which will cost the insurance company $10,000 in repair and medical bills. It would take 100 premiums to cover the cost of the bills alone, or 8 years and 4 months worth of payments. If the customer's rates were doubled as a result it would not be another 4 years until the insurers regained their losses from the accident, and this is only if you refrain from having another accident within that time.

The insurer's best interest lies in keeping their customers away from misfortune. With physical protection insurers best interests lie in keeping their clients from being attacked by an antisocial aggressor. If it were believed that a drug induced antisocial or aggressive behavior, that would give the insurer incentive to dissuade society at large from from imbibing the drug to lower the number of antisocial aggressors on the streets who can potentially attack their clients.

Aggressive behavior leads often to retaliation, as such it would be very costly to insure for protection an aggressive man. Since the drug induces aggressiveness and promotes involvement with others that have a higher chance of aggression an insurer would not want to insure a drug addict as readily. Violent behavior is uninsurable so at worst drug addiction could cost an insurance company a steep payout, they would lose a paying customer with, and there would be another violent thug on the streets an insurance company would need to protect against.

If young kids on drugs cause more damage in violence and vandalism than the profits pharmaceuticals and drug stores make off of their addiction, the protection agency would be rational in compensating the drug stores and pharmaceuticals for lost profits in exchange for placing age restrictions on sales. Even more, all corporations too would subscribe to various insurers and protection agencies just as individuals. Just as someone who promotes aggressive behavior is less insurable than one who is cooperative, if selling hard drugs were considered to promote aggressive behaviors pharmaceuticals and drug stores selling hard drugs would become less insurable to those who did not sell hard drugs. This would force drug dealers to either go unprotected or be forced to pay very high premiums.

Those who would continue to sell unsociable drugs would lack the sort of legal protection which socially legitimate businesses are given, and there would be little difference in public perception of a drug dealer now and one in an anarchic society.