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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

It surprises me how much Americans don't understand how deeply the cartel is in every transaction. Yes, sending money to Grandma to pay for a car is funding the cartel who probably got paid to make the car available. Grandma may even pay small direct bribes to the cartel just to be able to live her life.

Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution) or we can make Mexico a safe and excellent country again, and that means getting rid of the cartel.

And yes, other countries have their issues too and we should help stabilize those countries as well.

If the Mexican government can fix their cartel issue, we can go back to normal remittances. Until then the US will make policy choices to resolve problems.

As always, the salt of the earth people will pay the cost for politicians being bad at things.

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What you're suggesting is that all Mexicans suffer more because some money may somehow end up in the hands of the cartel. And that, for some reason, the US should help do this. That's absurd.

If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.

>What you're suggesting is that all Mexicans suffer more because some money may somehow end up in the hands of the cartel.

It's not just Mexicans. Cartels don't respect borders.

You give your sister $100. You find out later that she uses $50 of that money to buy heroin and inject it in herself.

Do you keep giving her the $100?

Absolutely not! This isn't even a real question.

If you directly enable a person or group of people or country to harm themselves and others, you have a duty to stop doing it.

If US remittances are directly fueling the cartel which beats, rapes, murders and even engages in torture, then not only may the US cease that but it is plainly ethically bound to do so.

Yes, this will make it hard for Grandma to buy a car.

You can't fund the people who torture and rape random Mexican farmers so Grandma can buy a car.

> If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.

While murdering drug users with their own money may seem like a clever solution, you are in fact still doing murder just in long form.

You pay taxes in the US? You are directly enabling a country to harm others.

You ever buy a phone? You are directly enabling a chain of groups to harm people (in the name of creating that phone).

You ever give a dollar to a homeless man? You might be directly contributing to them harming themselves (or possibly just letting them buy food/drink).

Heck even your example about your sister, I think some people would argue that it's still the moral choice.

Clearly there's a spectrum here. Black and white thinking and statements aren't helping and shouldn't be the basis for policy decisions.

You can and should be making explicit choices in that framework.

You should not buy phones connected to the mistreatment of the Uighur population - and that is doable.

If you think the US is doing more harm than good, you are allowed to move and surrender your citizenship.

And yes, that is literally why I don't support direct cash handouts to the homeless. You can feed them and house them, you can't throw money at them and expect a good outcome.

You should not cast your money as to do harm. If your money is the difference between your sister being homeless or not, then stop giving her money and pay her rent. Buy her grocery cards.

But if you directly contribute to harm, knowably, you are enabling that harm. This is not some weird novel part of ethics. It is in fact black and white.

> If you think the US is doing more harm than good, you are allowed to move and surrender your citizenship.

Actually, I have heard that it’s very hard, if possible at all, to surrender American citizenship. It’s a real problem for some people who had the misfortune of being born on American soil.

Not only is it very doable but the US consulate in your new country will literally help you fill out the paperwork.

1. Move to a new country

2. Present proof you have a new citizenship (you can't generally be "nationless" by international law or you end up remaining a citizen of whatever country you were last a citizen of)

3. Fill out the paperwork and pay $450. The consulate will assist you if you need help.

If you can follow the instructions to bake a cake, you can surrender your US citizenship. It's neither difficult nor expensive.

> If you think the US is doing more harm than good, you are allowed to move and surrender your citizenship.

Well, no, you aren't necessarily without paying a special additional tax to the US government, so it doesn't really solve the problem of believing that paying US taxes is active participation in morally intolerable actions.

The renunciation fee is $450. That is less than a single year of taxes.

> And yes, that is literally why I don't support direct cash handouts to the homeless. You can feed them and house them, you can't throw money at them and expect a good outcome.

You maintain this despite all the research showing that this is the most effective way to help people?

There is no reputable study suggesting direct cash handouts help the longterm persistantly homeless.

> You can't fund the people who torture and rape random Mexican farmers so Grandma can buy a car.

If you have paid taxes, or participated in the United States of Americas economy, you have directly funded the rape of indigenous Americans, the bombing of Venezuelan fisherman and Iranian schoolgirls.

How do you think the rest of the world should react to this? Total economic embargo towards the US? Leveling the continent? How should Americans who oppose rape and murder of children (like you seem to be) react to the fact that they fund rapes and murders?

Positive effects aside, legalizing recreational drugs will not eliminate the cartels, but instead will reroute the distribution of their product through "legal" channels. The cartels have sufficient power that the only move left is their integration with established markets. They aren't just going to lie flat while "legitimate" corporations take their spot.

Legalizing has other benefits though, like increasing scrutiny into human- and arms-trafficking, a legitimized drug business will need to shed that part somehow and hide it.

Plus we have seen from italian-american gangs and certain casinos that if you force them to legitimate businesses, they eventually become legal organizations. Why continue with illegal and volatile illegal business when you have a profitable legal one?

And that’s not good?

> If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.

Insufficient. Avocados are already legal in the US and yet the cartels have moved into that business. Cartels follow money. They are not going to just roll over when drug money dries up.

See the documentary series Rotten on Netflix or see https://www.npr.org/2022/02/19/1081948884/mexican-drug-carte...

A safe and prosperous Mexico would be a huge advantage to America. We should be investing a lot more into this.

The US has been investing heavily in Mexico. They are our top trading partner.

Something I found interesting was that China and Mexico have a similar Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) per capita income (~$26000).

> that means getting rid of the cartel.

Stop Americans buying drugs from them. Even invading Mexico won't get rid of the cartels.

I think it's possible, but pretty difficult. There's just too much money to be made selling drugs to the US.

I am against marijuana but I think it's clear legalizing it successfully starves the cartel of a lot of drug financing (and therefore we should both legalize it and have public campaigns against using it, ala alcohol).

Even the weird state based legalization has caused the cartels to pivot into things like avocado farming and mining.

Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. Probably shifting them towards lower risk choices (pot, ketamine) and aggressively crack down on dealers is a winning combo.

(A lot of low level dealers are just graduated drug users but the line between buying and selling is a large one and dealers do immense harm while also shielding more dangerous criminals. Incentives against dealing incl aggressive enforcement are powerful at dissuading low level dealers, which in turn starves the criminal organizations.)

> Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use.

What? In the case of opiates (which is the most significant drug problem we have at the moment), users are often physically addicted to a specific substance and that addiction was often initiated by legitimate medical usage of that substance. They'll certainly care if you say "hey, you can't use heroin any more, have some weed instead".

The medical pipeline for opiate addiction has been gone for several years now.

Most users were exposed to fentanyl unknowingly through buying other tainted drugs, often expecting percocet or even ecstasy.

Some of these users do require methodone treatment, but you can't give drug users unregulated access to opiates. That is just not gonna work out. Either they are going to self taper ("stretching" their tail of their stash) or they are going to end up in a hospital and get tapered by a professional.

>Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution)

Indeed, it is not.

But not for lack of trying. The biggest migration in history is the 10% of Mexico that has moved to the US since 1970. <https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1trqnn8/he...>

As of 2024, 11 million Mexican-born people live in the US. <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...>

Where do you get the line about the biggest migration in history from? Your link seems to just be to a one sentence Reddit comment from someone with the same username as you, and no source.

Feel free to come up with another country that has sent 10% of its population over 50 years to one other country, and is large enough that that means an eight-figure population transfer.

Fron what I can tell, immigration levels right now are about the same as they were in the late 19th century, when a lot of our great grandparents first came to the US.

At that time, the scare was about the Chinese, as opposed to brown people from South of the border.

> Fron what I can tell, immigration levels right now are about the same as they were in the late 19th century, when a lot of our great grandparents first came to the US.

... and which, in turn, led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which gave the US 40 years of relief from the influx to integrate the existing population. We need another such.

What should cartel members do to successfuly integrate in the US? Buy more guns?

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