They said it was for the children. For the families. For the soul of America.
But Prohibition wasn’t a war on alcohol—it was a war on the people.
It wasn’t about virtue. It wasn’t about safety.
It was never about saving anyone.
It was about power. About profit. And about punishing the very people it claimed to protect.
Just released my first Special Edition eBook:
Prohibition and the Profit Motive – How the U.S. Sold Control as Virtue
This $5 eBook version helps me keep going.
It funds the next piece.
It keeps the lights on—literally.
Can’t swing $5?
Even a $1 tip makes a bigger difference than you think.
Can’t support at all? Please share this with someone who needs to know.
Thank you for being here.
Every view, every read, every repost—
you’re helping me fight back with facts.
This is a radical 9-page microhistory that exposes:
- How Prohibition was used to criminalize poverty, independence, and rebellion
- How women’s pain was exploited to justify surveillance
- How the government knowingly poisoned its own people—and got away with it
- And how all of it echoes in today’s drug war, overdose crisis, and profiteering off pain
Included in the Special Edition:
- Letter from the Author
- Full design and printable formatting
- A haunting “Then vs Now” historical photo spread
- Extended commentary not included in the free version
Free version here (education should be accessible): Prohibition and the Profit Motive: How the US Sold Control as Virtue Standard PDF
Special Edition ($5+, supports the work): Prohibition and the Profit Motive – eBook Special Edition
This was written, researched, designed, and formatted by one person—no team, no budget, just rage, tabs, and truth. If you believe in history that hits back, this is for you.
—The Mad Philosopher
_Subject Index:
Origins of the Temperance Movement, Feminist advocacy and state betrayal, Racialized and class-based enforcement of Prohibition, Government-sanctioned poisoning, Surveillance and control policies, Economic exploitation of addiction, The War on Drugs as a legacy system, Pharmaceutical profiteering and opioid crisis, The commodification of pain, Resistance, rebellion, and reclaiming history_
Private property.
This whole subthread is gold. Honestly, I’m just here nodding along. Housing, land, even access to basic space—so much of what we call “freedom” is just choosing between systems of control. The bigger question is: what would it take to decommodify survival itself? That’s where my brain’s been lately.
How in your view would housing work in lieu of private property? Not trying to troll, genuinely curious on this viewpoint.
Housing is state-owned and operates at cost as a public utility. Homes and apartments are built, maintained, and allocated based on need.
So basically I don't get to choose my home, a bureaucrat chooses it for me?
Bureaucrats already decide where you can and can't live under capitalism. They're called credit agencies, landlords, and banks. The difference is that under communism you're guaranteed a home and 30% of your income doesn't go into the bank account of a useless finance parasite.
Fair enough. Under such a system, would I be allowed to build my own home? Or in a state-issued home, would I be allowed to modify the home to suit my tastes? I ask because I've been in construction most of my life as an electrician, and my dream is to define a custom space that I'm not about to be yoinked out of on a whim, as i have with homes I've rented. I enjoy my rural lifestyle, and all I want is an acre to do whatever I want on, raise some livestock, and to be left alone.
This is pretty much everything I've been putting my effort towards in the last 15 years. I'm tired of dealing with what's available and just want to build. Nothing gaudy or ostentatious, mind you, but a simple and comfortable house for my family. I can do damn near all the work myself, but the costs just keep jumping ahead of what I can presently afford at every step.
In the USSR, for example, people were given plots of land in addition to their homes. Pretty sure that you could opt to build housing there the way you would want. Even if I am incorrect on that last part, a relevant system seems perfectly workable.
You would choose your home from those available to you. What is available to you would be decided by a system attempting to balance the diverse range of requirements and preferences of the society that you are in.
You may notice that this generic answer describes both a hypothetical state-owned housing system and the private housing market that you are probably all ready in. The only difference is how and for whom that system works. In the hypothetical socialist society the allocation might be decided by a bureaucrat or it might be voted on or maybe some other way, who can say it is a hypothetical society after all.
The home you are in now though you chose based on your preferences but also what you could afford. Who decided what housing to build and how it should be priced? Who decided how much you should be paid? Who and importantly for whom decided what the laws regarding housing would be? You chose your home but you did not choose the conditions in which you chose it. These are the means by which a capitalist chose your home for you.
That's better than what we have right now where you don't get to choose your home because you can't even own a home period. At best, you can pick which shitty landlord you can tolerate.
You're probably thinking of personal property. Private property is things you own for other people to use.
A house is private property if a landlord is renting it to you, and personal property if you live in it.
Abolishing private ownership of housing would mean you still own your house, but mortgages and landlordship are illegal, so the demand crashes and they're cheap. Cheap enough? Probably not on its own (not that housing is cheap enough for everyone to get one in our current system); there'd need to be subsidies for construction, and real estate companies would have to adapt to be cheaper as well, and heavily regulated so they don't come up with schemes that are basically just rent and mortgages again.
That might sound like a lot of fresh new government bureaucracy, but you have to contrast it with the giant chunks of the legal system needed to enforce debt collection, rent, and evictions.