The middleman need to be doing incredible volume for it to be worth the margin and the risk, and finding and shutting them down is very easy, because:

- They are trivial to find, because they need a large, physical, business presence. This sort of trade doesn't happen under a highway overpass, or in an alley off 3rd.

- There are paper trails that point to them from any legitimate businesses upstream of them.

- Anyone lower in the criminal chain will happily flip on them.

Is argument over this an example of learned helplessness, a desire for society to do nothing and declare failure, or just arguing for the sake of contrarianism?

We have evidence of trying it with catalytic converters, and it worked. Catching every thief is hard. Catching one thief, and having them point to their fence is easy.