Even if they do, the cartels already own huge man & firepower. They will just move on to the next thing, maybe coffee, avocados, oil whatever.
When you have accumulated so much power you can demand cash from the world around you.
When you have accumulated so much power you can demand cash from the world around you.
There's no substitute for the margins you can get in the illegal drug trade. Take away the primary source of funding and you make it much easier to break the gangs. We've already gone through this. Just legalize it already.
I would agree that letting black market bs continue will eventually lead to groups that could threaten global control on random other commodities but that's no reason kick the can further down this road.
Finance wars. Like with the "Ten Cents War": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific
No they couldn't. That'd just mint another cartel run black market that they don't control and that cartel would tax the black market coffee at substantially less.
You can kind of think of the current drugs situation as a "so big the number doesn't matter, it's a non stater" percent tax.
Illegal goods have better margins but extortions provide a platform for power and money with less effort.
- Problem? What Problem? I don't see no stinkin' Problem!
I think controlling municipalities like they are is working fine for them. No need to mass produce weapons when you can just buy them.
And now you got an entire online community dedicated to 3d printing firearms and sharing models and designs, and it is REALLY easy to go from 3d printer design into sintered or casted metal parts that require little to no actual machining to operate.
In my opinion, 99% of the barrier to obtaining firearms in this era is purely a lack of desire and them already being so cheap to get. It doesn't require a craftsman of 20 years to produce working fierarms nor even specialized or unusual equipment or materials. But even if someone did order more specialized machinery from China to produce say cold hammered barrels at a factory scale, a chinese tool making company isn't going to think twice about shipping it and taking the money, and if the producers can run it for just a few months it would have paid for itself.