Not disagreeing with your larger point, but the fact of the matter is that it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot.
If coca cola were made illegal, something that is bad for you by many metrics but hardly life destroying, people are not going to switch to hard liquor in the same way.
Kidnapping, hard drugs, smuggling, all of these are sources of income, but they're dwarfed by pot sales. The hope is that the cartels can only maintain the empires they have with a huge money maker like marijuana, and without it, they may get more desperate and expand the worst of their operations, but they will still shrink in their influence, power, geography and labor force.
I agree with what you're saying here, with the current conditions they will take a hit. Conditions can change, however, so we can't count them as neutered yet simply because legal pot undermines a part of their portfolio.
Only the first time. Then the opposite is true.
Afaik many people use meth for performance enhancement and as a cheaper alternative to coke, heroin mostly comes in with people who've built up an opiate addiction through prescription opiates and a cheap escapist solution.
Add in a generally very crappy living situation, where these substances are used as means of escapism from reality, and most of the habit boils down to all kinds of circumstances, but very rarely to this urban myth of "it's just so addictive that you can't stop after the first time", as most of it has to do with building habits on top of an already destructive lifestyle.
Case in point: I've done meth and coke more than once, and never did I feel the need to "keep on doing it due to withdrawal". If anything, the side-effects of something like meth make it very unpleasant to regularly use due to being physically and mentally very taxing.
That's why I don't think there's some kind of "large untapped market" for substances like these. Most people are still rational actors and if otherwise content and happy with their life won't start with destructive behavior on the sole basis of a substance being "super addictive".
That's whats being thought on elementary school traditionally, haha.
You don't have to look far though. Look at the usage of Khat by Somalians and Kratom by Thai. If its easily available and socially accepted, its gonna fly and will be very difficult to get rid of.
I can't wrap my head around using meth. Speed alone makes my head swirl and everything go fast. Exactly which performance would be enhanced by an even stronger upper? Or is it people with undiagnosed ADHD who resort to meth?
In Europe though, I know drugs like these are used in clubs, but so is XTC (MDMA & relatives) and GHB. XTC seems to be more rare in Eastern Europe where speed is more rampant. Whereas heroin usage is on an all time low. But theres people who go to clubs Thu/Fri/Sat (yeah, it starts on Thu for some reason). And if they use multiple times a week, yep then it goes quickly downhill.
> That's why I don't think there's some kind of "large untapped market" for substances like these. Most people are still rational actors and if otherwise content and happy with their life won't start with destructive behavior on the sole basis of a substance being "super addictive".
Oh, I do! All these young goths who automutilate themselves (though a niche subculture, I admit), teenagers in general cause of being unsure as well as having to perform (study). If its more widely and easier available, its also cheaper, and more accepted.
To be fair, I've also seen people addicted to booze, weed, and cigarettes. Its just that these drugs are more socially accepted.
I've seen it very popular with people working in shifts doing physically very taxing work, like warehouse workers in logistics, often combined with alcohol as a downer.
I have atypical ADHS and a small line will keep me up (and mentally super focused) for 3 days straight. But the crash that follows is really nasty and can last for up to 2 days. Not something I'd want to go through regularly, I can count on one hand how often I do that in a year.
That's snorting tho, I've heard and read that smoking it is way different and more comparable to a heroin high (short, very intense, mostly fading away). Nothing I would want to do if I want a downer I'm happy enough with some Indica cannabis.
> teenagers in general cause of being unsure as well as having to perform (study). If its more widely and easier available, its also cheaper, and more accepted.
Imho this whole phenomenon of "experimenting teenagers overdoing it" is the direct result of decades-long prohibition and stigmatization politics. Educators and adults keep telling young people "Using this will make you instantly go crazy and addicted, all your teeth will fall out!". But when they try it they notice how it's not that bad, so they underestimate the actual long-term effects and consider them as "just more fear-mongering", which then leads to irresponsible long-term abuse.
The other side of that is the abuse of legal drugs, where people often overdo them as they consider them "safer" due to being legal. For whatever reason way too many people think this whole legal/illegal distinction is made on a scientific basis of the substances actual effects when it really isn't.
When you're 15, you don't care how your life will look like when you are 30. It feels like talking about retirement.
God I am glad this period is long over, life can be so good now (and apart from alcohol, a bit of weed and few spectacular mushroom trips I didn't do any other substance).
This comports with what I've seen. Most people who've wrecked their lives with substance abuse had some underlying problem that they were trying to medicate/escape from. Depression, low self-esteem, abuse, etc.
Other drugs you end up tapping into a deep network filled with really shady people. High chance of being ratted on, robbed, etc. Even for those dealers multiple drugs, generally multiple supply networks. Which is worse.
although yes, i did deal with my growers directly.
I think most drugs have a wide range of users. Some have more or less problem users of various kinds, notably addicts. But all also have large numbers or normative users, even heroin.
In the 80s, the most noticeable gays were transexuals, eccentrics, prostitutes or people busted in embarrassing situations. People who couldn't/wouldn't be low key. This led to the impression that gays are mostly fringey people. Same for prostitution. No one knows about the individuals with a phone number and a regular life. Same for all vice. Normative people manage to keep it under the radar. You see street users, not the 32 year old coffee machine shop owner.
I don't think there's any drug that will addict many users after one or two times. Obviously, many do lead to addiction in large numbers, so are still risky.
Funny drug dealer quotes "I don't sell drugs, drug's sell themselves"
In all reality though Pot is by far harder to conceal in small/large quantities so per pound profitability on Pot has to be lower than other drugs like Meth / Cocaine / Heroin. Especially with the rise in Opioid addiction here in the US it seems folks with a poor moral compass (drug cartels) are naturally going to flock to something like Fentanyl production to increase the potency of their heroin or opioid sales.
Kudos to the legal marijuana industry, but it does shift the "war on drugs" to areas far more dangerous, and in my opinion worth focusing on.
I think the OP got it right -- even if there was no heroin crisis in the US, the cartels would turn to some other money-making proposition.
The only way to quash them is to strengthen the Mexican state, whether it be this one or a new structure.
I also read the farmers get nearly nothing for their crop, and obviously the high end cartels take all the profits anyways.
How would the US possibly strengthen the Mexican Government though, barring massive investment?
Not creating uncertainty by constantly threatening to pull out of NAFTA would be a good start. Helping to strengthen Mexico's economy was once a mainstream republican position seen to mutually benefit both countries. [1]
[1] Excerpt on illegal immigrants from Regan/Bush 1980 primary debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok
Not that I think such an action would be a good idea, or that threatening it is either, but what about the previous 20 years of NAFTA make you believe that it’s strengthening the Mexican state?
I was more focusing on the uncertainty created by the unclear messages from Washington, which does materially delay investment and confidence within Mexico, and makes it harder for the state to focus on defeating the cartels. Though I do believe that trade generally has a positive impact on economies as a whole.
Imagine if Mexico had the manufacturing capability of China, plus a growing middle class, fueled by no-education-necessary manufacturing jobs.
As a business, you don't have to deal with BS joint ventures, no time zone delay, no 3mo ship journeys, etc. The US is more than capable of boosting Mexico to this state.
More excessive pollution? We don't need another China.
This would also be a boon to agricultural nation's in Africa.
Here is the thesis:
----
Ongoing food and clothing donations to countries in need cause more harm than good.
While short term donations are able to help bridge emergency situations, such as after a natural disaster, ongoing donations lead to dependence.
Local producers of food and clothes are unable to compete with free, donated goods, and so switch their production to other goods or stop producing altogether.
If and when the supply of donated goods runs out, the country has already lost their ability to provide for themselves.
Thus, when supplying aid to countries in need, it is essential to promote local independence in addition to filling their immediate need, taking care to avoid the creation of a dependency.
In kind food aid is essentially unintentional predatory pricing.
I think the big difference is that people, intending wholeheartedly to do good and help these countries, instead cause significant damage.
Things like this are one of the reasons I find the Gates Foundation's way of working so interesting. They spend a lot of time and effort, supported by a lot of money, to help entire societies to improve. Things like enabling women to take control of their own reproduction, which has a huge stabilising effect on an economy. Moving the needle on that issue takes a significant amount of work, and is much harder than simply sending aid.
The problem with this is of course, that it is expensive and takes time.
Often countries really do need aid, and fast. If people remain willing to send aid, it's a hard sell to say "actually, we don't want that free food, thanks", not least of all because they might need more aid in the future!
The economically honest change would be to cut the subsidy, give out a welfare payment of a similar amount, and then let the market sort itself out. Nobody is a net loser, but the economy can reallocate resources out of farming if it wants. In this case, presumably foreigners would pick up food production and the Americans would go build infrastructure or something instead of farm.
I dunno how feasible the politics is, but that is the basic "everyone wins" case. Arguably the farmers might be worse off because they have to find something else to do.
Additionally the original argument was that cartels will seek out whatever means they can to make money.
It'll just shift their efforts towards other money making schemes, ie human trafficking or kidnapping and ransom.
Lets look at a historical example, after prohibition did human trafficking and kidnapping jump up enormously because the gangs were going to make money somehow?
Or did the number of violent crimes and influence of gangs drop off because there wasn't a huge river of cash flowing into their pockets afterwards?
Sure we have an issue with legitimate drugs. Decriminalizing will not stop our drug problem, but it will reduce our, and especially mexico's crime problem. And I, and I bet all of north mexico would rather have a drug problem than a crime problem. (For one drug's only directly affect the user, but crime affects everyone)
The only way to quash the cartels is lowering demand. But yeah that's too hard.
As I jokingly stated though, drugs sell themselves.
Education doesn't work either - look at the D.A.R.E. program.
I doubt selling pot is more profitable than the rest of their activities combined. Take The Knights Templar as an example, they operated within a single state and made around a Billion USD in 2013 from Iron ore alone.
https://nypost.com/2014/03/17/mexican-drug-cartel-moves-from...
Further, a lot of the other crime by cartels is funded by their marijuana business. It has been a cornerstone of their overall businesses the last 40 years.
That example of you gave, is fringe. The Knights Templar are not doing $25+ billion in annual revenue, which is what the implied extrapolation would be. The total annual 'revenue' for all Mexican cartels, is likely to be closer to $10 billion than not (RAND corporation estimated $6.6 billion for their drug trade, which is the majority of what they do).
There's a critical distinction between traditional corruption and illegal activities by gangs and similar, which is plentiful in 100+ of 195 nations, and the specific effects of the war on drugs. The war on drugs aspect of it, can be relatively easily neutered.
This is a well studied topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-dru...
no. the cartels are what you get when you actively block organizations that are serving huge needs (recreational drugs), from access to peaceful means of conflict resolution and contract enforcement.
(and worse, you've got governments regularly going in and attempting to destabilize the cartels with force, so that even if they wanted to build up more peaceful resolution mechanisms, they'd be punished for doing so.)
That’s how cartels get power in the first place, but once they’re there, they’re in the business of preserving revenue streams and territory and thus power.
Once they’re large enough, their raison d’être is no longer simply fulfilling a market need but maintaining and expanding revenue and power, creating market need as required to keep the machine running (e.g. protection rackets)
[1] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/03/mexican-cartels-exto...
[2] http://www.newsweek.com/cartels-kidnap-avocado-farmers-69630...
[3] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/12/1546610/-Avocados...
An anarchocapitalist would note that this is straight out of the statist playbook. What distinguishes cartels from roving bandits that pivot to stationary? It's hard to lay the blame for this on capitalism per se.
You're asking the wrong question, I think. The 64 trillion dollar question, IMO: "what allows market incumbents to remain stationary"
The 'blame', as ever, lies in human frailty. Avarice and greed. Alternatively, you could look at avarice and greed as malformed extensions of self-preservation instinct.
Bad actors are omnipresent and relying on market forces to expel them from markets is like trying to pray cancer away.
You only say that because you don't like the answer, as it demonstrates that statist barriers on the market are the true causes of this problem, and a free market economy would render this issue entirely moot.
As the history of all communist states demonstrate, state-impose barriers to market creates all sortes of economical,social and criminal problems. Drug trafficking is one of them.
How does his answer demonstrate that?
If their markets were eliminated through legalization they might turn to violence for a little while, but eventually the organizations would starve. You can't run a 8.6 billion dollar kidnapping business.
how would you defend the historical abuses of power and nasty behavior by government? there's a lot more democide to answer for than there are murders by malign corporations.
Their behavior, from undermining the local government to monopolizing trade to death squads is all activity consistent with what the cartels have done. Cartels have better margins, but bananas were pretty deadly.
The point is in reference to your extremist position that if only drugs were not contraband and subject to the rule of law, you wouldn’t have the cartels. That position Has been demonstrated many times to be incorrect. Using the Central American model, you can also contrast with Costa Rica, where there is a stable government and the rule of law is more mature.
The problem is you're contrasting an extremely isolated example versus the millions of corporations that have existed, with many thousands of those corporations having had immense scale, against centuries of vast war, slaughter, repression and genocide by governments resulting in the direct murder of over a hundred million people. That's the parent's very clear point.
If a commodity can no longer be (near) monopolized into their share of the market, then demand does not magically grow for other commodities. Sure, they can pivot strategies (which costs significant amounts of money) and adapt new commodities and services to match market demands, but this does not mean that they have the same profits.
If they truly are already profit maximizing (to the best of their abilities), then they are already are servicing the markets with the highest demands. Which then if you remove their ability to service their market with the highest demand, you also remove the profit of that market. To generate their current revenue (with loss of the pot market) they would need to generate more demand in their other markets (advertising), find a new market with large enough demand (innovation), or service a lot of niche markets.
tldr:
- Demand exists for commodities.
- Different commodities have different demands.
- Shifting suppliers of a market does not generate new demand in different markets for the original supplier.
Of course not. What we face is an organized, unregulated, lawless group of dangerous criminals who find one of their primary income sources dwindling. I did not intend for my original point to debate foundations of economic theory, only to point out that they are likely to continue diversifying their product -- apparently they are switching to avocados and old-fashioned mob shakedowns, as per another comment on this thread.
Taking violence out of transactions by simultaneously making the consequences of violence very expensive and the alternatives to violent dispute resolution relatively inexpensive is what makes non-violent markets work.
But I agree: a market in violence rather than a People controlled, pre-agreed upon rules-based government monopoly on violence would lead to and an explosion of cartel-like violence in many more arenas. I just think it is because we make it relatively cheap in that scenario rather than any kind of moral coupling.
As things evolve, they may naturally enter other industries. Heck, even become legitimate.
EDIT: Fixed second paragraph.
If you're interested in reading more into how cartels operate, I'd highly recommend the book Narconomics by Tom Wainwright - https://www.amazon.com/Narconomics-How-Run-Drug-Cartel-ebook...
Editing in an excerpt from Chapter 9: Diversifying into New Markets: “The basic option is to sneak over the frontier with a guide on foot, hoping to avoid the US Border Patrol’s sentries. For those with deeper pockets, or without the stamina to wade through rivers or cross deserts and mountains, there is a luxury option: crossing “in the line,” meaning walking up to the immigration desk with fake documents. Coyotes buy a secondhand visa, and make the client up to look like the person in the photo. A guide surreptitiously directs the migrant to whichever line is moving fastest—a sign that the person on duty is giving the documents only a cursory check. No detail is overlooked: the coyotes even put souvenirs in their clients’ bags to make them look like day-trippers.”
Excerpt From: Tom Wainwright. “Narconomics.” iBooks.
Edit: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41635008
Damn.
http://www.extracrispy.com/culture/4302/avocado-cartel-shake...
"Of course this is not a failure of Capitalism. No True Capitalists would do such a thing. What you need is more Capitalism to solve this problem."
I'm suggesting that a corrupt state, which cannot prevent the rise of a counter-state power like the cartels, and the evolution of anarcho-capitalism are similar.
The flaw I see with AC is that once the private police force and the private court system in an anarcho-capitalist state combine, there is nothing to prevent them from coercing the organization's will on all around. This is a de facto state. Given that this state may not have primacy, other groups may oppose -- civil war in a supposedly stateless society.
My thought here is that the cartel is the counter-state to Mexico, a state-in-waiting/hierarchical body capable of providing similar "services" that the state typically provides -- defense, mission-definition, communication access, as so on. Whether or not the people under their thumb agreed to this transfer of power is not really necessary to consider, as it is the circumstances at play.
Anyhow, my two cents.
2. (uncountable) Anarchism; the political theory that a community is best organized by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, rather than by a government, which is regarded as being coercive by nature.
3. (countable) A chaotic and confusing absence of any form of political authority or government.
4. Confusion in general; disorder.
Their unregulated businesses use capital to aggressively expand into other markets, destroy competition, and oppose democratic regulations - behaving similarly to legal capitalist corporations. Though, granted, they conquer with guns and gangsters instead of legal loopholes and lawyers.
A lot of people here are so steadfast to the bigger state idea that they see it everywhere as a solution even when it's the cause.
While cartels do lots of horrible things, if you had to operate with the constant threat of having all your assets seized and receiving a life in prison, would you operate as peacefully as possible or would you act to instill fear in those that wronged you and/or threaten your way of life.
If the products that the cartels distribute were legal, most cartels likely would either be those western corporate entities or wouldn't exist.
I've been thinking about this for a day, and it's bugging me. I think the problem here is that this a true statement, yet it is also an incomplete statement. The ways that it is incomplete are important.
This is like saying that startups exist solely to make their founders into successful businesspeople. Well, yes, but there are a ton of folks who want to be successful that don't end up that way.
So sure, if you ask the top guys at the cartel why they're in it -- they're in it for power. But there's a huge sorting and filtering function the market does that's not included in this observation. Routes and methods that work great for cocaine don't work so well for people. Government officials that might be bought off with money siphoned off from huge flows can't be paid off if the flows aren't that great. In short, it makes it appear as if cartels only exist based on the will of the cartel leader. That's whack.
I don't have any other comments about your analysis, but that was bugging me. I wish things were simple enough that it was just a matter of focusing on a few powerful men with large egos. It is not.
The legality, politics, and forcefulness of this aren't binary objects. The War on Drugs more or less enables the cartels.
The War on Drugs resulting in an avenue for the founding and persistence of the cartels does not absolve the cartels of their brutality, however. That was my initial point, so apologies if it didn't communicate well.
Anarcho capitalism would look more like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/07/world/americas/mexico-sta...
The population organized an armed militia and kicked the cartels and government out. They are funded by local orchard owners. Who now have the most power and keep things in order. So it's not really libertarian, but it sure is a lot more stable than what was before.
There's other examples in Mexico. Mormons that have established colonies there. And sneak in weapons to defend themselves and successfully fended off the cartels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIyaIHsJbc
If these marijuana results show that reducing prohibition removes a revenue stream from the crime lords, then we can expect ending prohibition will hit them even harder. Perhaps enough to relly reduce lawlessness in Mexico as well as the US.
It's tautologically true that organised criminals will always do criminal work is profitable; but they gangs can be small or large, powerful or weak. It seems they are powerful in Mexico because prohibition cedes most of the US drug market to them.
Reminds me and makes me think, the human smuggling business must be taking big hit since illegal immigration is way down since 2007. Course maybe people fleeing central/South America makes up for some of that.
If they lose half their income they lose more than half their power. I have no doubt that economics is the fastest way to reduce drug trafficking.
In reality, of course, no such super-organizations exist. If and when the industry they have a comparative advantage in disappear, so will the organizations.
You're out of your fucking mind. And if you can't tell how out you are from the first line, you can tell when you assign a moral aspect to the things you don't like.
Jesus, you're a piece of work.
I'm going to put this down as an isolated lapse, but please take the spirit of this site to heart and don't do this again.
This is what unfettered capitalism (anarcho-capitalism) looks like. I like capitalism, generally, but divorcing morality (or, alternatively, failing to separate socially-contracted power to coerce action) from economic gain results in the violence and brutality.