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In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

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Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#131

Post by vmception »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #108
vmception wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experience? Infrastructure? Level of development? You can act afraid of Mexico or just go there and have a good time and notice the difference. The only bad parts of Mexico is where the recognized government and the local cartel haven't ceded power and are in conflict. They both like a booming economy and market confidence, just a different strongman to pay from a user experience perspective.

Supposing my pocket is picked in a cartel-governed part of Mexico, what remedies are available?

Exit the market

Negotiations can break down very quickly

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#132

Post by boterock »

edgyquant wrote: post #64
boterock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.

It’s definitely not like that in the US (at least on a large scale) and we regularly have large busts and individual cities taking down large operations. Even large scale gangs don’t tend to last long as a centralized bloc because then the fed launches an operation and seizes bank accounts/arrests all the guys at the top. The problem is that people want to do cocaine, they just do. I’ve been to plenty of parties full…

The skeptical part of me makes me think that it is just smoke... the police takes down large gangs as it draws too much attention, so they gotta do their job. But really big fishes never get caught, and everyone gets good scores in their reports. Down here it is known that some cops are in the trafficking network, and micro traffic is the norm.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#133

Post by ok_ok »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

I'm reminded of this recent viral Youtube which depicts what is apparently a routine occurrence in South Africa: A professional gang, armed with heavy caliber weapons, executes a sophisticated highway ambush in an attempt to capture a vehicle loaded with cell phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc I watched an interview with Leo Prinsloo, the star of the video. He mentioned that although this incident we…

God you're fucking stupid. I can always count on HN for the dumbest takes.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#134

Post by juskrey »

Guthur wrote: post #109
papito wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISIS did actually govern. They had their own DMV.

Which was always the reason I thought there was more to ISIS than the western portrait of a group of extremist ideologues. State construction and maintenance is not a trivial thing and their are not the sort of skills you stumble upon within a group of "madmen". The groups spontaneous arrival and near immediate success in this regard was a little remarkable imo, and raises interesting questions on support and backing…

More thoughtful commenters (e.g. Taleb) actually noticed early that ISIS and wahhabism in general is a deeply rooted and quite old political movement, not all-of-a-sudden religious cult and madness.

Partly because of this conflation the whole narrative (heavily sponsored by oil money of course) have kept blind Western elites for very long time, especially in Europe, where they only start to understand that worship places with heavy foreign aid inflow are not necessarily harmless community centers, and "religious liberties" must have strict bounds to be classified as so.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#135

Post by ok_ok »

totalZero wrote: post #72
boterock wrote: post #11

About that last sentence: "former U.S. Ambassador [...] said in April that López Obrador views the fight against drug cartels as a distraction ... So he has basically adopted an agenda of a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards them, which is pretty troubling to our government, obviously.” Not from Mexico, but from Colombia, where we also have a very hard time with drugs. The real problem with drugs has never been he…

Exploitation in the drug market happens in the reverse of what you think. The target market is the first world, because the product has maximal value there. The positive externalities are all gained by the producer countries. Traffickers and coca producers have even risen to become major politicians in places like Venezuela and Bolivia. Meanwhile, negative externalities -- crime, addiction, and so forth -- get distri…

God damn, you're dumb!

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#136

Post by bagacrap »

boterock wrote: post #11

About that last sentence: "former U.S. Ambassador [...] said in April that López Obrador views the fight against drug cartels as a distraction ... So he has basically adopted an agenda of a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards them, which is pretty troubling to our government, obviously.” Not from Mexico, but from Colombia, where we also have a very hard time with drugs. The real problem with drugs has never been he…

well according to the Netflix "Rotten" episode about avocados, violent criminals will kidnap and murder for anything of value in Mexico. Therefore I'm not so sure the legality/regulation of the market has anything to do with it. If anything, the issue is the proximity of a poor country to a rich country.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#137

Post by heavyset_go »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

I'm reminded of this recent viral Youtube which depicts what is apparently a routine occurrence in South Africa: A professional gang, armed with heavy caliber weapons, executes a sophisticated highway ambush in an attempt to capture a vehicle loaded with cell phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc I watched an interview with Leo Prinsloo, the star of the video. He mentioned that although this incident we…

> But observing countries like Mexico and South Africa, where gangs and police forces have started to merge, has helped me realize that there are important nonlinear effects.

This happens in the US[1][2], as well.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-fbi-investigating-...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-13/villanue...

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#139

Post by soldehierro »

totalZero wrote: post #95

What are the arguments against two years of compulsory police (or naval) service for men at age 18 in Mexico? It would certainly alter the political dynamics of the war on drug cartels if moms nationwide were to send their sons to fight trafficking, and scooping young men out of their communities might prevent them from getting involved in criminal enterprises.

Sexism, for one.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#140

Post by boterock »

midev wrote: post #62
boterock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.

> In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians This is not true in the US. We have no politicians that are suspected of being involved with cartels. While our policies might not help the situation, no politician is actually working with traffickers.

Yes you’re right, I can’t say from that side.

What I can say is it has happened here for a long time, and no one questioned as they were also in control of the media. Just until recently it became widely known the 20+ years of smoke of “fight against drugs”. Maybe over there is different, or maybe is not a big of a deal, as, even if there is a lot of money in drugs, there is orders of magnitude more money in big tech, and also from a cleaner origin, so who knows.

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