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Cocaine is consumed in every country on earth, but virtually every speck of it starts its life in one of three countries in South America: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.
In other words, the gang faces what economists call a collective-action problem. Everyone stands to gain if all members can agree not to exploit each other, but the individual incentives for exploiting are so strong that it is unlikely that everyone will stick to the agreement.
probably won’t kill you. But it may very well kill someone else.
In 2000–2003, foreign companies built 60,000 factories in China alone.
no country in the world smokes more marijuana per person than New Zealand,
they were perfectly legal—in the sense they had not yet been banned—and
Heroin has a frightening reputation, and rightly so: the margin between an effective dose and an overdose is narrower than that of any other mainstream narcotic.
Users’ ethnic background has changed, too. In 1970, fewer than half of heroin users were white. Now, 90 percent are.
Put together, sex and drugs are worth more to Britain than agriculture.
Demand for some goods is “elastic,” meaning that it drops dramatically following even a small increase in price. Demand for other products is “inelastic,” meaning that consumers will keep buying more or less the same amount as before, even in the face of big price rises.
when it comes to fighting crime, money is no object—as long as it is spent on enforcement, rather than prevention.
