Bay Area drug kingpins lured low-level dealers, promising cheap rent (2020)
eastbaytimes.com
eastbaytimes.com
On a side note, those dealers had pretty long hours, they’d be there from before 7am some times (and people buying too). It was also sad to see that most of their customers seemed to be residents of the nearby affordable housing buildings.
The experience certainly inspired me further on the path of entrepreneurship.
Gang tattoos to limit the mobility of their labor, duopolies to minimize conflict but maintain most of the benefits of a monopoly, squeezing upstream suppliers by playing them off each other, geographically-differentiated pricing and much more.
The violence is obviously the biggest difference, but even the rest serves as a warning not to drop regulation entirely.
You don’t need a government necessarily to enforce those rights, but free exchange of goods and labor cannot exist if violence is possible to coerce those exchanges.
Enforcing legally binding contracts, for example.
In doing so, you no longer need to keep business within a tightly controlled group (family?) or enforce it with chainsaws.
Neither apply to selling heroin on the street.
It's illegal, so it's hardly a free market.
I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems that the way we manage affordable housing in the US contributes to the problem. Vienna and Singapore can teach us a lot about how to do this better: https://www.shareable.net/public-housing-works-lessons-from-...
There's no arrangement needed, the entire state of CA has effectively decriminalized drug possession. Getting busted for dealing with just a small stash sufficient to support a few hours of selling amounts to a slap on the wrist.
So unless the dealer is A Problem, there's not really any interest in wasting time on it. You're not putting them behind bars by catching them, you're just generating busy work for yourself as a cop, and wasting resources in general.
The same scene can be observed in any CA urban center. There is still some enforcement in the lesser populated/rural parts where police are bored and looking for reasons to mess with the lives of poor addicts though.
With legalization, you get rid of black markets and dealers, taxes flow and product quality rises.
Decriminalization just means that addicts and dealers don't get fucked as hard when caught.
At that time at least, SFPD targeted dealers.
The sad thing is, I think it’s good that SF is trying to treat addicts differently. However, I don't know if they’re attracting more addicts because they are lax or maybe you just see more because they aren’t thrown in jail? I’m not from Cali so I don’t know the situation too well. Sadly, it just seems like it’s spiraled out of control whatever they’re doing.
Rent control is literally about politicians absolving themselves of accountability. They "make" housing "cheap" again without direct consequences to the budget. The angry mob is gone, the money problem is gone and the social problems are now allowed to pile up over time until you have a dysfunctional community. It's like sticking your head into the sand.
Oh and please don't comment on how you can stick your head into the sand while simultaneously solving the actual problem as if sticking your head into the sand is a valid strategy.
Once you can put together at least a few thousand for a re-up you will make more than minimum wage, and you can double your money in a week or two with cocaine and harder drugs. It's easy to make 2k a week selling just eight balls and grams of cocaine if you know the right people on both ends of the equation.
But of course it's only easy until you get raided or someone else decides to test you! The cops will rob you too in the US. One friend lost two lbs of weed and another got jacked a few times for larger amounts of coke by the police. It's a real calamity and drug legalization is the only solution.
Whatever you are doing, make sure that you can do the time you might get and don't panic when you get raided.