Is anyone else fascinated more about the stories of the people that get into this kind of stuff? I mean, it seems like you must just be destined to be in this business if you are in it. Nobody goes on the Internet and researches how to get started sand trafficking.
I personally think getting into organised crime kind of mirrors the process where corps pick up fresh grads. Someone who fits the profile of being suitable for organised crime is someone without legal opportunities due to a lack of education, illegal immigration status, prior convictions, etc. In similar ways they are "headhunted" in a process that is more about convenience than key skills in a resume. If you're one of these people you'll end up floating around spaces where the "headhunting" happens.
I remember when I was young and unemployed being plucked from the street when I was looking at job cards in the window of a job centre by members of an MLM. They tried to rope me into their ugly embrace selling door to door on commission only deals that were dubious in nature.
What's kind of spooky to me is how thin those lines can be, it only takes one mistake, lapse in judgement in youth or rolling your birth into an unstable family to end up on the wrong side of that line. This is why I personally find it quite distasteful when people who travelled the happy path turn up their nose at people who fell off onto the darker one. In some cases some kids excel in their black market roles and would have applied the same gusto to a white market profession if they'd had that opportunity.
Once you’re in, it also gets progressively easier to get in deeper, and harder to get ‘out’.
All your contacts are ‘in’, you have a reputation and people trust you to do what they expect, etc. etc. If you get arrested, even more so, as now people ‘outside’ have a clear signal which side of the line you’re in.
People looking down on you is as much a defense mechanism for them as anything else too, of course, as it provides not only a us vs them mechanism, but also makes it easier to segregate themselves and avoid crossing the line.
The documentary the Act of Killing [1] follows a man who was a regime-sanctioned killer of "communists" in Indonesia. Watching interviews with the director, he talks about how after someone's killed a couple of people, refusing to do more means admitting that the previous kills he's done are something wrong/terrible.
The director helps reveal what's inside the killer's mind by suggesting to him to make a movie of his experiences. In one scene [2], we're at a lush waterfall, we see angels dancing and the victims of the killers thank him for freeing them from communistic godlessness and sending them to heaven, with the song "Born Free" playing in the background...
Having been close friends to some killers (legally sanctioned by the gov’t at the time), the other issue is killing is, frankly, really easy. Way easier than anyone in polite society is going to be comfortable with really knowing, frankly.
Emotional and social consequences from killing are not so easy though, usually, but the actual act itself is pretty straightforward, especially with a little training and some forethought/prep.
It tends to change one’s view of society and other people quite a bit. Which makes re-integrating with society and/or integrating childhood conditioning hard. Hence the flight to delusions or drugs for many.
But often the hardest part for many people to understand is how easy it can be for many to just shrug their shoulders and go ‘ok’ and continue on with their lives with not only no guilt, but feeling good about it. Because sometimes people needed killin’.
Aren’t soldiers just that? Governments sanctioned killers? The only “guideline” is that the victim must be the “enemy”. Just that the definition of “enemy” is vague and arbitrary, enough that it can mean anything needed at any time.
Being government sanctioned it makes sense that it would attract people who find it easier (even enjoyable for some) to kill and live with it afterwards, or at least it makes it easy by providing the moral cover that it was necessary and moral. They were enemies after all.
These people are far more likely to continue to find killing easy during and after the fact as ling as they’re given even the vaguest sense of moral cover.
If you believe [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-ratio-of-combat-soldiers-t...], it varies from 7% to 14% of active military personnel that would be in ‘combat arms’, with everyone else being behind the lines in support roles. At least in the US. That lines up with my understanding anyway.
It’s actually a much lower percentage though. As most combat arms folks will be stuck guarding something and never see action, be in an indirect fire type role (artillery, sitting in a bomber or in a connex piloting a surveillance drone), or even if actually infantry have a super boring tour patrolling some pointless BS in the middle of nowwhere.
It also depends on where you draw the line at ‘killing’ of course. Does being a loader in an artillery battery count? A forward observer? A pilot who fires a cruise missle? A dude pushing the button to fire a cruise missle on a ship? An officer ordering an air strike?
About the only folks who are ‘killers’ in the way most folks would recognize the term though are infantry (of various forms, including mech. inf.), and perhaps some pilots if they have really good optics.
Soldiers follow orders. If they’re good ones anyway. Most have been trained to be able to be killers, and are often armed as such, just in case some folks need killing (per the chain of command and appropriate ROE).
But it rarely comes up, and anyone going into most MOS’s in the military hoping to do that is likely to be sorely disappointed.
It seems to me that business springs up wherever there is arbitrage and this is especially true for "free" natural resources (timber, water, etc).
Organised crime can make it profitable because they already have manpower and equipment, but it isn't necessary.
The smuggling operations between Guatemala and Mexico go both ways, depending on market prices in both countries for some very unglamorous products like eggs and gasoline.
Makes sense. Being in organized crime must be fucking fascinating. One day, you’re haggling on the price of black market eggs. Next day, you’re arranging the smuggling of sand from Latin America to Australia.
I lost a best friend that few years prior to his jail conviction got his phd in economics. I always knew about his business and he told me many stories about why he was doing it. I even advised him. But I always stayed out of it. One thing got clear to me. The people in that world are similar to our 'normal' world. You have the same hierarchy as in normal society with smart and dumb, nice and not so nice people. His story took place in Europe. He started after meeting some people in his fighting gym. Got a first assignment and things rolled fasr from there. High reward and thrill was an important motivation for him. He occasionally had hundreds of thousands of euros in cash. which we mainly spend on parties, escorts and drugs. Sometimes huge chunks of the money got lost because a person in the chain got caught or stole the money. But on avarage he was making like 200k a month.
He got caught on the highway few years ago with several kilos of heroine and cocaine and has to sit for 22 years.
This is the way it is with everyone. Rarely does someone choose their industry and job. I was into computers as a child because I had access to them through my grandparents' bookeeping business and being taught by my grandfather.
I really wanted to build houses but could never find a confluence of opportunity. I was sucked in by the available opportunities. My family were all artists and skilled industrial laborers. A lot of whom picked up their trade in the military. My opportunity was tech and I consider myself very lucky.
My father was a failed artist turned retailer bootstrapped by his father's GE stock he was granted as a precision welder, and I worked as a retail clerk and manager in the retail business for a time when I wasn't working in tech.
Farmers kid becomes a farmer. Maybe another opportunity comes up and they take it.
I'm never impressed by anyone's professional title until I hear their story. 99% of the time it's a result of the circumstances they were born into. Usually the only people with an interesting story were born into very modest or limited opportunity and had to grind it out until a better opportunity presented itself.
Sand trafficking is a perfect example. It is the best opportunity they have.
your answer was like "tell me you don't live in a third-world country without telling me..."
I am from Argentina so I know: You go to buy sand and are offered the legit one at a price hard to afford, or the "black" one with some discount. This way you learn there is a black market. Maybe for one bag you will get the same price anyway, but when you need an important amount of it, there will be 2 prices.
If you are in a beach town, you hear the rumors about why there is less sand.
I've forgotten the name, but I once watched a documentary on illegal gold mining in Brazil. One of the most successful of them was a German (illegal immigrant?
not enforced in brazil anyway) , who was attracted by the wild west aspect.
There definitely does seem to be a breed of people like this, and Latin America or Africa can present some interesting opportunities (see alo cowboy capitalists by vice).
