Wages of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance and the Underworld Economy

“ Never in history has there been a black market tamed from the supply side. From Prohibition to prostitution, from gambling to recreational drugs, the story is the same. Supply-side controls act to encourage production and increase profits. At best a few intermediaries get knocked out of business. But as long as demand persists, the market is served more or less as before. In the meantime, failure to ‘win the war’ (against crime) becomes a pretext for increasing police budgets, expanding law enforcement powers, and pouring more money into the voracious maw of the prison-industrial complex.”