The deadly genius of drug cartels – TED talk
Fascinating TED Talk by Yale professor Rodrigo Canales who argues that we are complicit in up to 100,000 people dying in drug-related violence in Mexico in last 6 years. The harm goes beyond the countable deaths to incalculable pain and destruction.
The U.N. estimates that there are 55 million users of illegal drugs in the United States. Using very, very conservative assumptions, this yields a yearly drug market on the retail side of anywhere between 30 and 150 billion dollars. If we assume that the narcos only have access to the wholesale part, which we know is false, that still leaves you with yearly revenues of anywhere between 15 billion and 60 billion dollars. To put these numbers in perspective, Microsoft has yearly revenues of 60 billion dollars. And it so happens that this is a product that, because of its nature, a business model to address this market requires you to guarantee to your producers that their product will be reliably placed in the markets where it is consumed. And the only way to do this, because it's illegal, is to have absolute control of the geographic corridors that are used to transport drugs. Hence the violence. If you look at a map of cartel influence and violence, you will see that it almost perfectly aligns with the most efficient routes of transportation from the south to the north. The only thing that the cartels are doing is that they're trying to protect their business.
It's not only a multi-billion dollar market, but it's also a complex one. For example, the coca plant is a fragile plant that can only grow in certain latitudes, and so it means that a business model to address this market requires you to have decentralized, international production, that by the way needs to have good quality control, because people need a good high that is not going to kill them and that is going to be delivered to them when they need it. And so that means they need to secure production and quality control in the south, and you need to ensure that you have efficient and effective distribution channels in the markets where these drugs are consumed. I urge you, but only a little bit, because I don't want to get you in trouble, to just ask around and see how difficult it would be to get whatever drug you want, wherever you want it, whenever you want it, anywhere in the U.S., and some of you may be surprised to know that there are many dealers that offer a service where if you send them a text message, they guarantee delivery of the drug in 30 minutes or less.
Think about this for a second. Think about the complexity of the distribution network that I just described. It's very difficult to reconcile this with the image of faceless, ignorant goons that are just shooting each other, very difficult to reconcile.
