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Comment by threwawasy1228 | Hacker News Reader

This is an incredibly naive thing to say. I was on a beach resort area controlled by the Zetas a year or so back on a vacation. It was incredibly dirt cheap and everything seemed really nice and peaceful, the town was under control of only one group afterall. Then all of a sudden one evening there was a screaming man pulled out of a building into a street and brutally beaten in front of everyone that was out there. After this ended he was dragged off and everything went back to normal. It was an extremely shocking flash of violence.

Just because it isn't a 'war' so much anymore doesn't mean that the violence that comes with areas being under control of gangs magically goes away.

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So the difference is that they weren't wearing government uniforms? That "flash of violence" doesn't sound out of line for any moderately authoritarian state.

They really should invest in uniforms.

It sounds like you're saying extreme violence from the local anarcho-capitalist-libertarian business/corporation/cartel is excused and normal because... there are no checks and balances in nation states.. so oh well!

The original point was that the American drug policy causes a lot of violence. This public beating was used as an example. Would he have been beaten by a cartel if drugs had been legal(ish) in America? It is reasonable to say: no.

Authoritarian states beating their subjects has nothing to do with him being beaten in the streets that night.

> Would he have been beaten by a cartel if drugs had been legal(ish) in America? It is reasonable to say: no.

While I'm against the drug war, I wonder what career drug dealers (and everyone who's part of their economy) would do if drugs were legalized and commoditized.

Would it not lead to an increase of "worse" crimes with "real" victims like kidnapping, human trafficking, robbery, etc. as criminals try to replace their income and sustain their lifestyles?

Could be.. and I wonder further.. if the non-violent state was able to increase it's funding for security while the violent dealers had their monthly profits reduced.. over time 'the people' would have the increased funding and the violent ones would have less money for guns, hired killers, and such..

A huge chunk of low-level drug dealers are just struggling college students. I imagine if drugs were legal and taxed, they could be helped by some of that tax money going towards funding education.

Also, a lot of people go into illegal drug dealing because it is a high risk/high reward avenue, compared to many traditional prospects, where you can make a lot of money with comparatively little time investment. If I remember correctly, that was one of the stated reasons for why Notorious B.I.G. went into drug-dealing, despite being a good student and initially considering going to college for a more traditional high-education career.

They were the uniform of the streets. You can easily distinguish who is blessed by a drug lord and who is not just by the way they walk or the shoes.

Zetas basically are the government in the Yucatan and some gulf states.

Better off just acknowledging them as an authoritative single party regime, and staying as far away from drug possession as possible, lets you get confused as a competitor.

It's not entirely clear to me why this is any different from many other sovereign justice systems. I think the point stands that people who obey the 'laws' of their 'government' aren't subjected to random acts of violence by non-government entities the way they would be under a two-cartel system. And overall, it's much more peaceful that way.

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