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> If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs This is a naïve "Bernie bro"-style take. What do you with cartel turf wars? Le

by dvt 5y ago

> If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs This is a naïve "Bernie bro"-style take. What do you with cartel turf wars? Legalize murder? The problem is not only complex on a local scale (city or country), but there are geopolitical pressures at play as well. Cartels tend to be very populist, often funneling money back in their communities making them (paradoxically) better. On the other hand, you've also got offshore banks that protect cartels, laundering their money, just as they protect the likes of large tech companies stash their money in tax-free havens. If you want to change that whole machinery, be prepared to take on the world's billionaires.

alex_sf 5y ago
The reason cartels need to murder people at all is because the business is illegal and there is no justice system to mediate disputes. F500 CEOs aren't doing drive-bys on each other over patent infringements because they can just sue.
- kiba 5y ago
  Why would the cartels want to legalize drugs?
  - alex_sf 5y ago
    They don't. It would mean no more risk premium and the involvement of people that could do a better job than them, but don't get involved in the trade for obvious reasons.
- esyir 5y ago
  The big mistake you're making is that legalising it also magically brings all the infrastructure to neuter the cartels.
  - alex_sf 5y ago
    Of course it doesn't, they just transfer to other illegal activities, see: bootlegging by organized crime during prohibition. The problem the cartels will face is that there is no other business that makes as much money, and it would require a retool of the entire organization (or scale up, at a minimum) to get back to even a fraction of their power. Cartels are not some unstoppable juggernaut: they run on capital, same as every other business. No money for bribes & no money for foot soldiers == no more cartel at a recognizable scale.
    - barbacoa 5y ago
      Kidnapping and extortion of wealthy avocado growers is already a lucrative business many cartels have been branching out to.
      - blablablerg 5y ago
        And Kidnapping of avocado growers is a billion dollar industry? How many are there to kidnap? That doesn't compare to the income generated by cocaine traffic.
    - mulander 5y ago
      > The problem the cartels will face is that there is no other business that makes as much money This is not true. See this article[1] and HN thread[2]: > “It’s good business,” El Polkas says with a shrug. “It makes a lot of money.” When I ask how gasoline compares to narcotics, in terms of overall revenue to Los Zetas, he rubs his index fingers together. “Fifty-fifty,” he says. “It’s approximately as profitable as drugs.” [1] - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-war-mexico-gas-oil-cartel-717563/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-w... [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101141
      - 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
        One anecdote and a thread about semi-fictional action movies about Brazilian Special Police Operators? Not exactly the strongest rebuttal. And a quick search reveals: >he Mexican government said fuel theft — huachicol as it is known in Spanish — decreased from about 60,000 barrels per day in 2018 to about 11,000 a day in 2019, with estimated savings of $6 billion. > According to Pemex, fuel theft averaged about 4,440 barrels per day in 2020. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/despite-some-successes-mexico-still-struggles-with-fuel-theft https://www.freightwaves.com/news/despite-some-successes-mex... I have no idea how good the source is, but there's just absolutely no way black market fuel sales could ever generate the same amount of revenue. > On 2 July state-owned oil firm Pemex reported a 114 per cent year-on-year increase in illegal tapping during the first four months of 2020, during which authorities recovered 9,291,986 litres of stolen fuel with a commercial value of MXN157m (around US$7m). 10,000,000 only has a commercial value of $7m. Imagine the logistics of scaling that kind of operation.
- philwelch 5y ago
  That might have helped if they did it decades ago. At this point, there are plenty of other victimful crimes—human trafficking, protection rackets—to keep the cartels in business.
walrus01 5y ago
Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Same reason alcohol smuggling gangsters existed during the US prohibition era.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Cartels would continue to exist though. Because there are always other illegal services that need to be provided. Prostitution, gambling, murder-for-hire, mercenaries, unlicensed surgeons, as well as a still-extant illegal drugs market because they are merely cheaper, or sold to those who cannot buy the otherwise state-approved drugs(underage, banned for some reason).
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    None of that provides 1% of the income that illegal drugs does.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Wait, what? You are saying there are no cartels in enterprises where the underlying good is legal? For example, oil cartels don't exist? The cartel will exist if the existance of the cartel causes it to make more money than would otherwise be the case. You should read about all the knee cappings and dirty dealings standard oil did in the U.S. When the US had mob problems, yes the mob was involved in prostitution and gambling but it was also involved in port unloading, ice delivery, meat packing, unions, and plenty of other legal goods/activities. Many of the organized crime issues the US struggled with were related to fixing elections and paying off city workers, particularly in big east coast cities like NY, Boston, and Chicago, where loyalty to the machine meant city contracts, city jobs, etc. There was fixing of construction contracts, service contracts, garbage delivery, etc. All of these goods/services were legal. Cartels are just organized crime, and what causes an end to cartels is rule of law. As long as there is no rule of law, it will always be more profitable for someone to break into a store and take something than to obtain it legally, and it will always be more profitable to burn down a rival company's factory than to outsell the factory by lowering your price, and it will always be more profitable to seize market share with a gun than with a better product and to extract payments by offering protection to small businesses who can't rely on the police to protect them because there is no rule of law. The idea that a country without proper rule of law can get rid of organized crime by legalizing everything they do seems pretty far fetched. The Sicilian mafia existed because of a lack of rule of law, not because of drugs. It took up drugs, it took up other activities when the opportunity arose, but it far predated them. Mexico has a rule of law problem and a corruption problem, and really a weak central government problem. Fix that, and cartels can be brought under control.
darkhorse22 5y ago
What does "Bernie bro" add to this?
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Perhaps a better term would be populist-tier.
  - darkhorse22 5y ago
    Leave Obama out of this.
boterock 5y ago
These turf wars exist because these people have a lot of power from trafficking drugs over a very widespread area. In the moment that every person can have a coca plant in their house, the trafficker loses this power.
zionic 5y ago
These cartel bosses have fancy cars and luxurious homes. We could drone them all day every day if we wanted, but we don’t because they are employees of our intelligence services. They pay their tribute and they get to be rich, while “our” side gets a fat black budget not accountable to congress. The banks who launder the money only get fees and no jail time because they are working under the table for the same agencies.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  This is a serious accusation you have no proof of, it doesn’t belong here.
  - brodo 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_co...
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      The Iran-Contra affair is irrelevant to the topic at hand
  - riekus 5y ago
    There is plenty of proof that the CIA facilitated cocaine transports to get their weapons in Nicaragua?
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      We are talking about current cartels in Mexico, not Iran-Contra
strken 5y ago
It's making a gamble that legitimate drug companies operating with their own security forces and the support of the government could out-compete cartels in both security and economics. I think it would work absent external pressures. A drug company that can openly operate on the highways and ports, pay for its own helicopters and operate its own militia for security, and call in the police and army at need, has a significant edge over a cartel operating covertly. Unfortunately, a legitimate company would at the very least not have access to the North American market, which would stop it competing with the cartels.
ALittleLight 5y ago
I don't think it is naive at all. Drug decriminalization programs have success in the Netherlands and Portugal. Prohibition on drugs is similar to prohibition on alcohol in the US in that it is a source of funding for organized crime. The source of the violence in Mexico is drug cartels. Drug cartels take profit from the illegal drug trade. Eliminate the illegal drug trade and you will greatly reduce the funding for organized crime. Attacking their funding is the solution. Cartels would not be popular if they did not have money. If they cannot smuggle illegal drugs they will have lots less money.

by dvt 5y ago

alex_sf 5y ago

The reason cartels need to murder people at all is because the business is illegal and there is no justice system to mediate disputes. F500 CEOs aren't doing drive-bys on each other over patent infringements because they can just sue.

kiba 5y ago
Why would the cartels want to legalize drugs?
- alex_sf 5y ago
  They don't. It would mean no more risk premium and the involvement of people that could do a better job than them, but don't get involved in the trade for obvious reasons.
esyir 5y ago
The big mistake you're making is that legalising it also magically brings all the infrastructure to neuter the cartels.
- alex_sf 5y ago
  Of course it doesn't, they just transfer to other illegal activities, see: bootlegging by organized crime during prohibition. The problem the cartels will face is that there is no other business that makes as much money, and it would require a retool of the entire organization (or scale up, at a minimum) to get back to even a fraction of their power. Cartels are not some unstoppable juggernaut: they run on capital, same as every other business. No money for bribes & no money for foot soldiers == no more cartel at a recognizable scale.
  - barbacoa 5y ago
    Kidnapping and extortion of wealthy avocado growers is already a lucrative business many cartels have been branching out to.
    - blablablerg 5y ago
      And Kidnapping of avocado growers is a billion dollar industry? How many are there to kidnap? That doesn't compare to the income generated by cocaine traffic.
  - mulander 5y ago
    > The problem the cartels will face is that there is no other business that makes as much money This is not true. See this article[1] and HN thread[2]: > “It’s good business,” El Polkas says with a shrug. “It makes a lot of money.” When I ask how gasoline compares to narcotics, in terms of overall revenue to Los Zetas, he rubs his index fingers together. “Fifty-fifty,” he says. “It’s approximately as profitable as drugs.” [1] - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-war-mexico-gas-oil-cartel-717563/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-w... [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101141
    - 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
      One anecdote and a thread about semi-fictional action movies about Brazilian Special Police Operators? Not exactly the strongest rebuttal. And a quick search reveals: >he Mexican government said fuel theft — huachicol as it is known in Spanish — decreased from about 60,000 barrels per day in 2018 to about 11,000 a day in 2019, with estimated savings of $6 billion. > According to Pemex, fuel theft averaged about 4,440 barrels per day in 2020. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/despite-some-successes-mexico-still-struggles-with-fuel-theft https://www.freightwaves.com/news/despite-some-successes-mex... I have no idea how good the source is, but there's just absolutely no way black market fuel sales could ever generate the same amount of revenue. > On 2 July state-owned oil firm Pemex reported a 114 per cent year-on-year increase in illegal tapping during the first four months of 2020, during which authorities recovered 9,291,986 litres of stolen fuel with a commercial value of MXN157m (around US$7m). 10,000,000 only has a commercial value of $7m. Imagine the logistics of scaling that kind of operation.
philwelch 5y ago
That might have helped if they did it decades ago. At this point, there are plenty of other victimful crimes—human trafficking, protection rackets—to keep the cartels in business.

walrus01 5y ago

Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Same reason alcohol smuggling gangsters existed during the US prohibition era.

oh_sigh 5y ago
Cartels would continue to exist though. Because there are always other illegal services that need to be provided. Prostitution, gambling, murder-for-hire, mercenaries, unlicensed surgeons, as well as a still-extant illegal drugs market because they are merely cheaper, or sold to those who cannot buy the otherwise state-approved drugs(underage, banned for some reason).
- stickfigure 5y ago
  None of that provides 1% of the income that illegal drugs does.
rsj_hn 5y ago
> Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Wait, what? You are saying there are no cartels in enterprises where the underlying good is legal? For example, oil cartels don't exist? The cartel will exist if the existance of the cartel causes it to make more money than would otherwise be the case. You should read about all the knee cappings and dirty dealings standard oil did in the U.S. When the US had mob problems, yes the mob was involved in prostitution and gambling but it was also involved in port unloading, ice delivery, meat packing, unions, and plenty of other legal goods/activities. Many of the organized crime issues the US struggled with were related to fixing elections and paying off city workers, particularly in big east coast cities like NY, Boston, and Chicago, where loyalty to the machine meant city contracts, city jobs, etc. There was fixing of construction contracts, service contracts, garbage delivery, etc. All of these goods/services were legal. Cartels are just organized crime, and what causes an end to cartels is rule of law. As long as there is no rule of law, it will always be more profitable for someone to break into a store and take something than to obtain it legally, and it will always be more profitable to burn down a rival company's factory than to outsell the factory by lowering your price, and it will always be more profitable to seize market share with a gun than with a better product and to extract payments by offering protection to small businesses who can't rely on the police to protect them because there is no rule of law. The idea that a country without proper rule of law can get rid of organized crime by legalizing everything they do seems pretty far fetched. The Sicilian mafia existed because of a lack of rule of law, not because of drugs. It took up drugs, it took up other activities when the opportunity arose, but it far predated them. Mexico has a rule of law problem and a corruption problem, and really a weak central government problem. Fix that, and cartels can be brought under control.

darkhorse22 5y ago

What does "Bernie bro" add to this?

edgyquant 5y ago
Perhaps a better term would be populist-tier.
- darkhorse22 5y ago
  Leave Obama out of this.

boterock 5y ago

These turf wars exist because these people have a lot of power from trafficking drugs over a very widespread area. In the moment that every person can have a coca plant in their house, the trafficker loses this power.

zionic 5y ago

These cartel bosses have fancy cars and luxurious homes. We could drone them all day every day if we wanted, but we don’t because they are employees of our intelligence services. They pay their tribute and they get to be rich, while “our” side gets a fat black budget not accountable to congress. The banks who launder the money only get fees and no jail time because they are working under the table for the same agencies.

edgyquant 5y ago
This is a serious accusation you have no proof of, it doesn’t belong here.
- brodo 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_co...
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    The Iran-Contra affair is irrelevant to the topic at hand
- riekus 5y ago
  There is plenty of proof that the CIA facilitated cocaine transports to get their weapons in Nicaragua?
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    We are talking about current cartels in Mexico, not Iran-Contra

strken 5y ago

It's making a gamble that legitimate drug companies operating with their own security forces and the support of the government could out-compete cartels in both security and economics. I think it would work absent external pressures. A drug company that can openly operate on the highways and ports, pay for its own helicopters and operate its own militia for security, and call in the police and army at need, has a significant edge over a cartel operating covertly. Unfortunately, a legitimate company would at the very least not have access to the North American market, which would stop it competing with the cartels.

ALittleLight 5y ago

I don't think it is naive at all. Drug decriminalization programs have success in the Netherlands and Portugal. Prohibition on drugs is similar to prohibition on alcohol in the US in that it is a source of funding for organized crime. The source of the violence in Mexico is drug cartels. Drug cartels take profit from the illegal drug trade. Eliminate the illegal drug trade and you will greatly reduce the funding for organized crime. Attacking their funding is the solution. Cartels would not be popular if they did not have money. If they cannot smuggle illegal drugs they will have lots less money.