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Sand trafficking in Latin America
- boringg 2y agoIt would be interesting to know percentage of market
- cookie_monsta 2y agoThere's a chart about half way through the article - around 40% in Brazil
- RajT88 2y agoBrazil seems like a wild place. I mean that in several senses of the word.
- cookie_monsta 2y agoIf you are interested in what anarchy would actually look like as a political system, Latin America gives some very good insights
- bboygravity 2y agoAnarchy in a political system. Isn't that a contradiction?
- lazide 2y agoIt’s a sliding scale. On one end you have Germany. On the other you have Somalia/Horn of Africa or the like.
- sali0 2y agoA great book that goes deeper into the sand industry is The Material World by Ed Conway. Highly recommended!
- throwaway519 2y agoAbout $10 per metric ton end customer price (wholesale, CFR), if anyone's interested.
- dkasper 2y agoSand is heavy af. A ton is only like 20 cubic feet. Still… that’s not very much money.
- lostlogin 2y agoMy eye is twitching remembering a fiasco where someone ordered concrete assuming 1 cubic metre required 1 ton of concrete. Ever since that I’ve assumed it’s about 2.5 tons per cubic metre. This works much better.
- blackguardx 2y agoBut concrete is measured by volume at least in the US (cubic yards…sigh). I think this is because different mix designs can change the resulting weight. I’ve even heard of adding air to make for better pumping.
- SECProto 2y agoAir entrainment is critical for freeze-thaw protection, so any exposed concrete in places that have below freezing should have 5-6% air entrained.
- lostlogin 2y agoThe bags of ingredients at the hardware store are usually 20-25kgs here, and labelled that way. It’s a silly way to buy a lot of concrete, but does help someone without a tow bar.
- locusofself 2y agohow can anyone possibly make money off of that with transport costs and labor?
- CapmCrackaWaka 2y agoIs anyone else fascinated more about the stories of the people that get into this kind of stuff? I mean, it seems like you must just be destined to be in this business if you are in it. Nobody goes on the Internet and researches how to get started sand trafficking.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- cookie_monsta 2y agoIt seems to me that business springs up wherever there is arbitrage and this is especially true for "free" natural resources (timber, water, etc). Organised crime can make it profitable because they already have manpower and equipment, but it isn't necessary. The smuggling operations between Guatemala and Mexico go both ways, depending on market prices in both countries for some very unglamorous products like eggs and gasoline.
- CapmCrackaWaka 2y agoMakes sense. Being in organized crime must be fucking fascinating. One day, you’re haggling on the price of black market eggs. Next day, you’re arranging the smuggling of sand from Latin America to Australia.
- lawgimenez 2y agoIt’s not, you fucked up once and you either go to prison or 6 feet under.
- sbassi 2y agoyour answer was like "tell me you don't live in a third-world country without telling me..." I am from Argentina so I know: You go to buy sand and are offered the legit one at a price hard to afford, or the "black" one with some discount. This way you learn there is a black market. Maybe for one bag you will get the same price anyway, but when you need an important amount of it, there will be 2 prices. If you are in a beach town, you hear the rumors about why there is less sand.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dhagberg 2y agoFirst learned about this from a Carl Hiaasen book, Razor Girl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_Girl)
- __mharrison__ 2y agoQueue the next batch of YC sand companies
- malloci 2y agoSandGPT
- avodonosov 2y agoInnovation may be needed for recycling of the old concrete from demolished buildings. Including extraction of sand from it. If anyone invents a cheap process, it may have revolutionary consequences, probably.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI think that's a joke but honestly I think there's a disruption opportunity here. The easy thing about sand is that it takes whatever shape you want it to. The hard thing about sand is that it has to be firm (strong internal chemical bonds) and in small granules (somehow, lots of energy had to go into breaking those bonds, in the beach case this is wave energy). But if you had a large enough library of rocks with known shapes or which will break along predictable lines, and a precise enough idea of the ultimate desired shape for your project, you could skip the energy intensive middle part and just use large rocks that mostly fit instead of tiny rocks in the form of sand-based concrete. Then you'd glue those rocks together with concrete--which would still require sand, but now much less of it. I'm not sure how the monetary economics would shake out, but from an energy budget perspective it seems like a win to not require things to be broken up so tiny just to have them glued back together into something so large. "cheaper" to just mostly solve the puzzle out of already large pieces.
- bboygravity 2y agoIsn't this why often pebbles are simply added to the cement? How do you imagine competing in price with pebbles?
- bubbleRefuge 2y agoI have a gf in Goias brazil . She told me that she was mugged 7 times for her cell phone years ago . Then a new governor came along and began a policy of. allowing police to execute dangerous criminal gang members rather than arrest them. Now the area is considered one of the safest regions. He's rummored to have presidential ambitions. Guess there is a breaking point when crime and corruption gets to a point where people just have had enough and only want results Justice be dammed.
- EMIRELADERO 2y agoAny sources for the shoot-to-kill policies?
- cookie_monsta 2y agoLoads. This wasn't a secret policy: > “The police will do the right thing: Aim at their little heads and fire! So there is no mistake” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/world/americas/brazil-rio-police-kill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/world/americas/brazil-rio...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- caty12 2y agoThis happens in other countries too. I thought this podcast about it was good: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Dya11oWUSsbCkBA9AAzrM?si=EyK5XCA3SKeaktxaGLbHaw https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Dya11oWUSsbCkBA9AAzrM?si=E...
- frellus 2y agoIn the TV show Barry, this is what NoHo Hank was doing. I thought it was sort of a joke, but guess not.
- calme_toi 2y agoReminds the sand trafficing espicode from NPR Planet Money: Peak Sand https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/episode-853-peak-sand https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/epis... >A few years ago, an entire beach in a remote area of Jamaica vanished. Thieves dug up hundreds of tons of sand and hauled it away in dump trucks in the middle of the night. The sand--white, powdery, Caribbean sand--was worth about a million dollars.
- silisili 2y agoThis is happening in SEA, too. The Chinese show up with a giant ship to some rather remote island, offer a few promises or money in exchange to take a little, and completely ravage what beach exists. I've seen it firsthand. To my knowledge, but not necessarily fact, they aren't even working with the country's national government, but small poor regional governments directly.
- SEJeff 2y agoThis reminds me of Singapore, where the national stockpile of sand is a literal state secret: https://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/built-on-sand-singapore-and-the-new-state-of-risk/ https://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/built-on-sand...
- rockyj 2y agoThere is "Sand Mafia" in India also. A lot of people have sadly lost their lives and the corruption / rot runs deep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft