Re:Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
by CryptoPunk on Monday January 14, 2019 @01:19PM
(#18905038)
If gangs are claiming turf and excluding other dealers, then those aren't dead drops, which by definition are undetected drops by anonymous parties. It's an open question whether effective dead drops are even possible, but if they are, and come to be widely adopted for trade in contraband, then a significant portion of the source of territorial conflicts between criminal organizations vanishes.
I think it's very unlikely a drug business can get to scale without reusing drops; the cost of scouting a good drop is significant, and the number is finite. Regardless, the value of a drop declines the farther it is from customers and from the dealers who supply the drop. So in practice, gangs will still have an incentive to claim turf and to harm other dealers using drops on their turf.
Even if that somehow doesn't happen, they'll still have the same strong competitive incentives. So they'll be very much inclined, as now, to discover rivals and take over their business through violence.