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Comment by sigstoat | Hacker News Reader

> This is what unfettered capitalism (anarcho-capitalism) looks like. I like capitalism, generally, but divorcing morality (or, alternatively, failing to separate socially-contracted power to coerce action) from economic gain results in the violence and brutality.

no. the cartels are what you get when you actively block organizations that are serving huge needs (recreational drugs), from access to peaceful means of conflict resolution and contract enforcement.

(and worse, you've got governments regularly going in and attempting to destabilize the cartels with force, so that even if they wanted to build up more peaceful resolution mechanisms, they'd be punished for doing so.)

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> no. the cartels are what you get when you actively block organizations that are serving huge needs (recreational drugs), from access to peaceful means of conflict resolution and contract enforcement.

That’s how cartels get power in the first place, but once they’re there, they’re in the business of preserving revenue streams and territory and thus power.

Once they’re large enough, their raison d’être is no longer simply fulfilling a market need but maintaining and expanding revenue and power, creating market need as required to keep the machine running (e.g. protection rackets)

Here is an example of that with avocados:

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/03/mexican-cartels-exto...

[2] http://www.newsweek.com/cartels-kidnap-avocado-farmers-69630...

[3] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/12/1546610/-Avocados...

> That’s how cartels get power in the first place, but once they’re there, they’re in the business of preserving revenue streams and territory and thus power.

An anarchocapitalist would note that this is straight out of the statist playbook. What distinguishes cartels from roving bandits that pivot to stationary? It's hard to lay the blame for this on capitalism per se.

>What distinguishes cartels from roving bandits that pivot to stationary?

You're asking the wrong question, I think. The 64 trillion dollar question, IMO: "what allows market incumbents to remain stationary"

The 'blame', as ever, lies in human frailty. Avarice and greed. Alternatively, you could look at avarice and greed as malformed extensions of self-preservation instinct.

Bad actors are omnipresent and relying on market forces to expel them from markets is like trying to pray cancer away.

> You're asking the wrong question,

You only say that because you don't like the answer, as it demonstrates that statist barriers on the market are the true causes of this problem, and a free market economy would render this issue entirely moot.

As the history of all communist states demonstrate, state-impose barriers to market creates all sortes of economical,social and criminal problems. Drug trafficking is one of them.

His answer demonstrates that statist barriers on the market are the true causes of the problem?

How does his answer demonstrate that?

Because the person you are replying to is projecting. The gp never mentioned communism or really any of the things accused of them in the reply. I suspect when you have a system with little government oversight and people unafraid to use violence you naturally end up with something akin to what's going on with the Mexican cartels.

Yeah, but one of the reasons they are so hard to eliminate is they have enormous bank rolls for guns and money.

If their markets were eliminated through legalization they might turn to violence for a little while, but eventually the organizations would starve. You can't run a 8.6 billion dollar kidnapping business.

How do you explain the historical abuses of power and nasty behavior of the companies that produce things like bananas and pineapples?

"abuses of power and nasty behavior" ... "produce things like"... how is this "question" supposed to be addressable?

how would you defend the historical abuses of power and nasty behavior by government? there's a lot more democide to answer for than there are murders by malign corporations.

I’d suggest that you spend 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with what companies like Standard Fruit Company and United Fruit did in Central America.

Their behavior, from undermining the local government to monopolizing trade to death squads is all activity consistent with what the cartels have done. Cartels have better margins, but bananas were pretty deadly.

The point is in reference to your extremist position that if only drugs were not contraband and subject to the rule of law, you wouldn’t have the cartels. That position Has been demonstrated many times to be incorrect. Using the Central American model, you can also contrast with Costa Rica, where there is a stable government and the rule of law is more mature.

> I’d suggest that you spend 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with what companies like Standard Fruit Company and United Fruit did in Central America.

The problem is you're contrasting an extremely isolated example versus the millions of corporations that have existed, with many thousands of those corporations having had immense scale, against centuries of vast war, slaughter, repression and genocide by governments resulting in the direct murder of over a hundred million people. That's the parent's very clear point.

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