Twenty-First Century Black Market and Underground

by Jamiroquai

I've always been fascinated with the Black Market as well as the Underground, both at the National and International level. Observing it much like, say, a Sociology Professor would. Now before I go any further, I should state that most of my personal experiences in black markets is via drugs (weed-speed), so I'm not going to go into great detail about assault weapons, explosives, chop shops, computer software obtained via piracy, etc., simply because I don't know anything about those factions of the Black Market.

What I do know, and I know it well, is the illicit drug trade. The first thing that comes to mind is outright paranoia. Whether it is for their friends (possible snitches/thieves), the cops/Federal Agents, or life as they know it. They are ones who are looking over their shoulders in their sleep, because for the most part the majority of activities involved are felonies, which means PRISON. The customer base that demands its supply of one of many illicit drugs is doing so with cold, hard cash.

And 98% of all Cannabis out there right now is someone?s personal stash of it. The remaining 2% is on standby to supply the demand. In other words, there are a handful of people out there with 100+ pounds and up, and they broker it to retailers, but with a cost that's right in between wholesale and retail. 100 pounds is enough to give 6,400 people a quarter-ounce of cannabis, or 1,600 people an ounce. Now figure in a metropolitan area the size of one million people, and theorize that only 5% regularly purchase Cannabis, that's a customer base of 50,000 people. That figure is probably being too conservative, but let?s postulate that this is the status quo. You will need an astonishing 3125 pounds to supply an ounce to every single person of that 50,000! Let?s say an ounce is a month?s supply, you'd need 37,500 pounds to supply that demand for a year! Wholesale price being, let?s say $500 per pound, adds up to $18,750,000! So if 10% of 100,000 people make demands upon the supply then it doubles to $37,500,000!! The supply always meets the demand; it is this fact that fascinates me.

We all know the law doesn't even put a dent into the supply pipelines, and I'm talking about pipelines that supply entire cities, which for the most part is run by just a handful of people. Some of these people have been doing this for decades and that takes some impressive ingenuity. Because these people have weathered the law, snitches, and bitches, and they have pocketed countless millions at the expense of damn-near everybody but themselves. They don't "mule" in the Cannabis. They don't grow it. They don't distribute it either to the masses. So what do they do? What they do is make sure this week the weekly/monthly shipment gets to the border and then across it, reaching its destination, wherever that may be. Only then can they collect their commission for managing the supply. In a sense they are like district managers, maybe even regional managers.

The fact that they have figured out the way to pipeline the stuff in means that they know something that the Department of Justice doesn?t, because approximately 90% of all Cannabis in the United States is of foreign origin. For the most part it's fresh and available year round because it comes from the tropical region of Central and South America where sections (one square mile=section) of it are grown. Families who?ve been doing it for two to three generations now grow the cannabis. One square mile of Cannabis grown in the tropics would produce a yield measured in tonnage. Take 160 acres or one-quarter of a section/square mile and plant your seeds three months between each 1/4 plot and you'd be harvesting four times a year. These families get paid in American currency, and no matter where you are south of our border, you've got massive buying power.

To summarize: The money, sophistication and sheer volume of supply dictates that if you've got the money, you'll get your honey. Johnny Law just can't seem to figure out that money talks and bullshit walks, whether it's 2001 or 2051.