
Destroying drug cartels, the mathematical way - jaxonrice
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628874.200-destroying-drug-cartels-the-mathematical-way.html
======
dllthomas
To the many talking about legalization in favor of this kind of approach, I
think you're missing the point. I am entirely in favor of legalization, and I
think it is a necessary component of fixing things, but things have gotten
seriously broken. The drug trade has built massive criminal enterprises which
have built themselves infrastructure and organization and connections that can
be used toward ends other than just shipping drugs. It keeps pouring money
into these enterprises, and making things worse, but if we turn off (or down)
that spigot we still have to deal with these organizations. And as someone put
it, they're not in drugs because they have a deep interest in agriculture,
it's just profitable, and their competitive advantage is that they're willing
to do illegal things. Most of them already deal with other things as well, and
I'd expect them to try and ramp up income from those to supplement a loss of
drug related income.

All of this to say, we have a problem we need to deal with. An important part
of that is to stop making the problem worse, but then we still need to fix it
- something like this could be valuable to that end.

~~~
jseliger
>The drug trade has built massive criminal enterprises which have built
themselves infrastructure and organization and connections that can be used
toward ends other than just shipping drugs. It keeps pouring money into these
enterprises, and making things worse, but if we turn off (or down) that spigot
we still have to deal with these organizations.

Actually, after the U.S. ended alcohol prohibition virtually all of the
organizations devoted to booze either went legit or drastically shrank in size
and scope. We would've been better off without alcohol prohibition in the
first place, but ending it was certainly a net win.

If you're interested in the history and parallels of alcohol prohibition to
today's drug prohibition, Daniel Okrent's _Last Call: The Rise and Fall of
Prohibition_ is pretty good: [http://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-
Prohibition/dp/074...](http://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-
Prohibition/dp/074327704X?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)
.

~~~
dllthomas
I wholeheartedly agree that ending prohibition of drugs would be a net win
here, as well. In fact, I said it was probably _necessary_. I just don't think
we should overlook the fact that there's likely to still be issues to deal
with. The history of prohibition, so far as I understand it, doesn't undermine
these points in any significant way. Law enforcement still had to deal with
organized crime, and the size, scope, and influence of the cartels seems
larger than that of bootleggers on the whole (though I would welcome hard
numbers in either direction).

It's not impossible that the problem would just _poof_ go away, but it seems a
poor choice to bet on it. Again, that doesn't mean that legalization isn't the
place to start!

------
carsongross
Destroying drug cartels, the practical way: legalize.

~~~
hooande
I don't understand the economic argument for legalization. It will turn the
price of drugs into price + taxes. The current complex distribution and supply
network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll
continue to charge the current price. The average addict will want drugs as
cheaply as possible and would probably prefer to buy from someone in their
neighborhood as opposed to a pharmacy.

In the case of mexican cartels specifically, I think there is more to it than
just drug sales. They control large areas of mexico, entire towns. They're
providing services of security and dispute resolution that the government
can't or won't because the areas are too poor. Whenever a large portion of a
country is ceded to a criminal group (like sicily used to be) unwinding the
problem is more complicated than deincentivizing drug sales.

~~~
spindritf
> It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes

The price of avoiding authorities, not being able to openly use legitimate
financing, or other facilities (transportation, storage, distribution chains),
and constricted pool of talented employees is very high and currently included
in the price. Also, many potential customers are not being served currently
because they're not willing to engage in highly illegal transactions.

Even with fairly high taxes, regular corporations would easily be able to
deliver product of higher quality and generally better experience not
necessarily more expensively. Just like they do with alcohol, tobacco, or
chocolate.

------
keithpeter
"Vortex uses network-analysis algorithms to construct diagrams for court cases
that show the interactions between cartel members, governors and law
enforcers. These reveal links that are not otherwise visible, what Salcedo-
Albaran calls "betweeners" - people who are not well-connected, but serve as a
bridge linking two groups."

Has anyone done any work on using this kind of network analysis in legal and
productive organisations to see who has the most impact on innovation or
changes in practice?

~~~
1337biz
The problem is that "impact on innovation" starts usually already with a big
discussion on how to measure innovation.

The "easy" way is to take very accessible data points such as the number of
patent applications. But you can imagine just by looking at the patent system
related discussions around here on hn that this is a very "discussable"
subject.

~~~
keithpeter
I wasn't communicating well, what I'm on about is that knowledge flow in large
organisations is not always (or even often) through 'official' channels. I'm
thinking of Etienne Wenger's work on situated learning, especially the
insurance office example in Lave and Wenger's book.

It struck me that datasets from email, and from sharepoint like systems might
help people identify the 'betweeners' in their organisation.

~~~
kvnn
Yes, people do this - it is called Social Network Analysis and has been around
a few decades. It is well introduced in
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1449306462> . There is actually a thorough
example of analyzing an organization's "social leaders" and arranging
departments to take advantage of them.

------
pstuart
Or maybe they could just, you know, legalize and regulate it?

~~~
siscia
Idk, we can definitely talk about marijuana but cocaine and eroine are very
different... Legalize them would be at least very risky. Anyhow we need to
move in a different direction than kill/arrest everybody, it simply not gonna
work.

~~~
grannyg00se
How do you justify your bias toward specific drugs? Why should alcohol and
oxycontin be legal and cocaine illegal?

What gives society the right to choose for me what I may consume for myself?

~~~
siscia
I used to live in the US, now I live in Europe and I can see what you mean.

However I can argue that we should think twice before to make legal something
that get you addicted with the first dose and mess up with your brain in a so
heavy way.

(Yes I do know about alcohol but it is a cultural and, by the way, different
issue)

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah, alcohol is a different issue. In that trying to quit alcohol can
actually _kill you_. Trying to quit cold turkey can _put you in a hospital_
where they will start administering alcohol through an IV _to save your life_.

Comparing alcohol and cocaine is absurd, alcohol by any reasonable measure is
just about one of the hardest drugs there is, and causes _massively_ more
societal harm than cocaine.

But we are supposed to make it a special exception because it's old? All that
really amounts to is _"Lets ban this because people who seem alien to me use
it, but lets keep this other thing legal because 'normal' people use it."_ It
is a xenophobic argument.

------
siscia
In my opinion the only way to win this war is to start from the bottom.

There are tons of farmer in Colombia who can only survive by growing those
drugs, but they would like, in most of the case, to be able to grow crop or
bananas or whatever is legal.

However they can't because a mere economic reason, they won't get enough money
to survive from traditional culture.

If we invested the money we are actually using to violently fight against the
cartel to develop the infrastructure and the education in those country we all
be better off; we would have way less drugs in our world and we would have
launch a new economy (more market for American brands like apple, google, IBM)

~~~
mtgx
I don't think I remember the book where I read this, but it was something
about a former chief of police of New York, I believe in the 90's, when
criminality was very high, and instead of focusing on the "big crimes", he
focused on the small ones, like stopping graffiti on the walls, people jumping
the gate at the subway, and other small crimes like that.

The point was to dramatically reduce this "ecosystem" of criminality. I
believe it's kind of like when people see garbage on the ground, it's much
easier for them to throw their garbage on the ground, too, because "others are
doing it". The same thing must be with small crimes and with the people
joining the drug cartels.

I believe The District was inspired from this guy's work:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_District>

~~~
iamben
Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point?

~~~
protomyth
The Freakonomics book has a counter argument to Gladwell's conclusions. They
point out that crime went down nationwide and in cities at the same rate as
NYC without the NYPD policies. They also point out a connection to the
legalization of abortion.

// I am reporting on a book not expressing my own opinion

------
dreamdu5t
Drug prohibition is immoral and violates the political and ethical sovereignty
of the individual. I own my body and I despise anyone who seeks to enslave it.

Of course, America's "liberty" is really just a facade for their nationalism.

~~~
paulhauggis
I feel the same way about taxes, but we can't always have what we want..now
can we?

~~~
itistoday2
Taxes and drug prohibition are two very different things, with completely
different reasoning behind them. Equating the two is like saying, "Cars should
have seat belts, and white people should own black people as slaves." One idea
has practical, well thought out reasons behind it that help improve people's
lives, the other doesn't.

Drug prohibition causes far more damage to society than a society where all
drugs are legalized. It's also an affront to what seems like a basic human
right: choosing what you put in your body. The concept of prohibition
certainly doesn't have a single well thought out reason to support it. Every
single argument in favor of it has been shown to be either false, or the worse
of two evils, and finally, drug prohibition has been a total failure, a
conclusion that's agreed to even by those who support it. It hasn't achieved
any of its goals and will not achieve them. I can sense that you probably want
specifics, so I'll list just a few, and if you want more... JFGI.

\- AP: failure to meet any goals [http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-
impact-years-tril...](http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-
trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/) \- History of marijuana laws and
reasons that were given for them:
<http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm> \- Portugal's
success with total decriminalization of all drugs (not as good as
legalization, but it's a step forward):
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-d...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-
drug-decriminalization) [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-
years-af...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-
decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/) \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_and_against_drug...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_and_against_drug_prohibition)
\- Simple observations of hypocrisy (just one example: Marijuana does not fit
the definition of a Schedule I substance yet is classified as such, while
cigarettes do fit the definition and are legal).

The concept of "taxes", or collecting a pool of resources to be used for
society at large, does have some well reasoned arguments to support it. It is
an idea that does actually help society. Certainly there is a lot of debate
about how those funds should be used, and whether they are used
inappropriately, but the basic idea of pooling the collective resources of a
society for the common good at least has a leg to stand on.

~~~
mindslight
Heh, both of your juxtapositions are a lot closer than you seem to think.

Drug prohibition is actually based on tax laws. The bulk of federal drug
deillegalization will not even take an act of congress - they'll just start
issuing tax stamps.

Seat belt laws are based on the idea that government/society has a financial
interest in the productivity of your well functioning body. This analysis
essentially treats us all as mild slaves. The conditions are certainly better
than the racial slavery of yesteryear (although I'm just repeating the
groupthinkline here; I don't have a time machine), but the ideology is not.

Pooling money for common purposes and avoiding free riders has a moral leg to
stand on. However, the current system has massively outgrown this
philosophical justification, using the sheer majority of revenue collected for
maladaptive antifeatures.

~~~
IgorPartola
I have no problem with you driving without a seatbelt on, so long as you sign
a waiver that says that if you do not have enough money in the bank and your
insurances will not cover you, theother emergencny room staff must turn you
down before providing you treatment at my expense. So long as I am effectively
buying you implicit insurance I sure as hell want you to be careful. Feel free
to buy your way out of that.

That is a strawman for decriminalizing drugs. When you don't wear a seatbelt,
you risk others' financial harm. We deal with that largely without loss of
other people's lives. When you mug people for cash at knife point to buy
heroin, peole get physically hurt. You cannot possibly sign a waiver saying
that you will not mug, steal, break-in, etc. if you decide to try heroin.

Mind you I am not arguing against decriminalization or legalization of drugs.
Just saying that your argument is bogus.

~~~
mindslight
Eh? First, I made no argument connecting seat belts and drugs. Perhaps you're
just skipping around my comment, reassembling sentence fragments in an
arbitrary order?

Second, given that most people have insurance, and that the ones who don't are
free riding on emergency care for _any_ injury, but yet you're saying that you
would support deillegalization of non-seatbelt wearing if one were to sign a
_specific_ waiver (which the cartel of insurance companies would then prohibit
you from signing anyway, no doubt), I don't believe your argument to be
sincere. I can only infer that your real viewpoint is that universal mandatory
seatbelt usage is a good thing, and you're just making yet another specious
justification for dictating individuals' behavior.

FWIW, I've held up starting to drive for people who weren't putting a seat
belt on, and I think it's pretty ridiculous to not wear one. I just don't
think the government has any business mandating such behavior.

~~~
IgorPartola
Correct, my viewpoint is that seatbelt laws are a good thing. Your insurance
company will make you pay more for not wearing seatbelts. The math dictates
it. I have no way to make you pay more (other than raising your taxes which
you may or may not pay depending on your income). Thus my only recourse is to
make you wear a seatbelt via a law that my representatives in the government
impose and enforce. Do I have any business making you pay for not wearing a
seatbelt (via fines or higher premiums)? Yes, so long as I am on the hook for
your medical bills. The waiver I mention is fictional not only because we
could never enforce it, but also because the medical staff admitting you takes
an oath to treat you. However, my argument is that the waiver is the minimum
requirement for the financial math to work out. Therefore seatbelt laws are in
place for a reason, do more good than harm, and are absolutely in my right to
demand of my government. In that sense my argument is absolutely sincere.

On top of the above, I spent many years in a country with a poor healthcare
system and lax seatbelt laws. The results were not pretty.

Lastly, in your original post you seem to suggest a possibility that the
government telling you to put on a seatbelt is somehow comparable to being a
slave in the early days of this country. If that really was your suggestion, I
am not sure how to respond to such misrepresentation of reality.

------
BenderRodriguez
The infamous group Anonymous pledged war against The Zeta cartel in 2011 with
announcements that they had names, and even personal information about the
cartel members. Unfortunately, anonymous decided to back down due to threats
of aggravation. Though, in the end the hostage was released the cartel has
killed numerous internet bloggers/reporters, and has kidnapped hackers to
perform black-hat cyber attacks against targets...

It all seems to come down to the amount of resources one has to invest in such
an effort. The various law enforcement communities are fighting with the
"latest" technology but, the cartels are right there with them if not below or
above them...

In the United States, the latest defense may be the use of various autonomous
robots such as, submarines, boats & drones.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexico-confirms-
seeking-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexico-confirms-seeking-us-
drone-help-in-drug-war/2011/03/16/ABbSEZg_story.html)

Unfortunately, similar techniques are being applied by the cartels to thwart
the deterrents. It seems only obvious because, its less weight, and less
people = cheap.

Like Autonomous ultralight UAV. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508>

Autonomous ROV/USV Submarines without life support systems must be cheaper.

Just mischievous robots in general,
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.unh.edu%2F~it666%2Freading_list%2FPhysical%2Ffinal_ieee_robot_crime_august_2010.pdf&ei=p6aWULf1DO3liwKwmoHwCQ&usg=AFQjCNFNAlhEKuVRCyDEZ-
ywqg54NJpl-Q)

Think on it.

------
davyjones
Please be advised that there is a grisly image in the link.

~~~
keithpeter
UK resident personal view: we have this Imperialist thing going where it is ok
to show dead foreigners from hot countries but not ok to show dead people in
UK. It is a known issue, one commented on a lot in relation to tabloids. I'm
surprised to see New Scientist going in for this.

------
siscia
Sorry guys, I am seeing so many "legalize" that I really need to say that we
cannot really legalized everything.

If we legalized so powerful/bad drugs like heroin or cocaine we build a
business, if we legalize those drugs then we need to legalized newer drugs, if
we let corporation to make money out of drugs, well the first scenario that I
can think about is a big pharmaceutical corp. who is investing in order to
build super addicted drugs, super cheap drugs (free for the new-consumers ???)
and commercial like "Try fancy-cool-drug-name you will get smarter, more
beautiful and every woman will want you" (and at the very end a little voice
will said very very fast "It __can __give you dependency")

I mean, I already hate the commercial of antidepressant (that are about the
same stuff) and I am sure you do the same, legalize everything will be too
much.

There is only one single scenario where it would be possible, when we will
Educate (note the capital E) every single person, then no one will use such
powerful drugs (heroin, cocaine and acid, i don't know anymore).

~~~
slowpoke
Education shouldn't be about not doing drugs, but about not getting addicted
to them. It's perfectly fine to occasionally take drugs (you know, like
CH₃CH₂OH or C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, the former of which is a lot worse than a good number
of illegal and "dangerous" drugs like THC), it's not fine to be constantly
stoned/high/drunk/intoxicated. I don't want even more "drugs are bad, mkay
kids" in schools. Drugs are perfectly fine and have been part of human
civilization for thousands of years now. It's only been very recently that
people got the idiotic idea to crack down on them.

------
marshallp
Legalization is the best way to end it. The network analysis needs to occur
about politicians in the rich countries, how to manipulate them into
legalizing drugs. It's a lot easier to collect data on them and it's the
actual root cause.

~~~
stephengillie
Legalization would stop the flow of money and jobs away from this country and
would also remove the main reason these cartels exist.

Legalization of marijuana will allow buyers and growers to come together in
their communities. It allows buyers to choose local farmers instead of those
in foreign countries. Legalization would remove the cash source that causes
people to want be part of these cartels.

------
Daniel_Newby
Evolution will defeat this strategy in short order. Some organizations
practice better communications security and will thrive in the vacuum created
by the loss of their competitors.

