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Comment by blawson | Hacker News Reader

Another huge challenge about dealing with the drug trade - people with guns and power probably aren't just going to go away because you've changed the dynamics of their most profitable market: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-20/mexico...

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They aren't funding armies and bribing governments by skimming off the avocado market. If you take away 90% of their revenue, the cartels' power will shrink quickly.

All crime is not fungible.

Check the revenue breakdown of the cartels. It’s far beyond drugs.

Could you supply a link? Would love to know the revenue breakdown.

Not the OP, am on mobile and too lazy to search for links and it’s also about Italy and not Mexico, but there were some studies made a few years ago that showed that the Calabrian organization ‘Ndrangheta was worth about 50-60 billion euros at the time. They had started getting big in the late ‘80s by smuggling Columbian cocaine into Europe but nowadays I think that the drug trade represents a very small percentage of their revenues. For example I live in a reasonably big Eastern-European capital and I’m pretty sure that the biggest waste disposal thing in our city is controlled by ‘Ndrangheta.

Presumably a similar transformation will be carried out by many Mexican cartels when and if the drug trade will dry off.

The difference is that these crimes (extortion, contract abuse, gasoline theft) are actually stoppable. They have real victims who can complain; they have physical pipelines that can be protected. Drugs generally involve a happy buyer and happy seller transacting in private.

Organized crime doesn't go away overnight. It's not like all the gangs immediately disappeared after the end of Prohibition in the US. You just have to keep taking away their revenue sources, eventually they're too poor to fight back.

Not OP but here is one also from HN[1][2] on Mexico. Selected quote from the article:

> “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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101141

[2] - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-w...

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