Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island • Hacker News Board

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#51

Post by chewz » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:30 AM UTC

Joakal wrote: post #15

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the ocean. Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big balls or small brains? I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the huge d…

High risk, high reward. Drug lords offer wealth, rich, or just a job, etc. Look at people doing lottery, etc. Poor uneducated people tend to do it. If people are more educated, they will tend to avoid unnecessary risks (in part because stable jobs = eventual goal achievement).

> If people are more educated, they will tend to avoid unnecessary risks

I can assure you that education has nothing to do with it. Educated / better off people will take similiar risk/reward decisions just at different point of utility function.

What is different is that having a little more money gives you some breathing space and allows you to optimize risk/reward over longer term which usually is leading to smarter decisons.

https://brilliant.org/wiki/utility-functions/

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#52

Post by interactivecode » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:55 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #49

rajacombinator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too much difference from tech entrepreneurs or “hackers” (in the HN sense) tbqh. Actually a lot of hackers do much crazier stuff than sell drugs, which is a pretty well established business. Selling boxes of cereal for $40 a pop is a lot more bizarre idea, for instance. Or look at any number of activities in the crypto world, which look like pure lunacy to outsiders, but have made a lot of money. The thing is, yo…

Selling boxes of cereal for $40 a pop might be a more bizarre idea, but the downside risk is that people ask you about that failed business venture for the rest of your life, not the death penalty. Think the number of people willing to risk their lives helping some foreign smuggling contact they've just met for a couple of weeks' minimum wage income back at home (it's a lot easier to understand the incentive structur…

major debt can chase you for a long long time

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#53

Post by paganel » Sun, May 12, 2019, 11:59 AM UTC

cosmodisk wrote: post #41

trwy678yay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to deal small amounts of MJ in college, it was a great way to have a side income and honestly was pretty low-risk. When I graduated and was getting ready to move to CA, I had mentioned to my dealer that I was moving and was obviously pretty broke as I had not started working yet. He told me he could hook me up with a one time job to drive an escalade towing a boat filled with MJ from CA to the midwest and I wo…

I was told this about 10 years ago. People used to transport cocaine from Spain to Northern countries in Europe.They'd send 2 cars: empty,large SUV,with as many bells and whistles as possible. And a few miles behind a little Smart car with all the drugs. They always stopped the SUV but the little one was stopped not even once...

Noticed a similar thing earlier this year, while I was crossing the border from a non-Schengen area country into the Schengen territory. The owner of a new Audi Q5 or Q7 just in front of me received all sorts of questions from the customs guards, while me and my gf passed the border in a breeze. We were driving our 12-year old small 1.4 liter hatchback, which has scratches on all its four corners, I said to myself that were we to transport anything illegal nobody would have suspected us.

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#54

Post by jacquesm » Sun, May 12, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the ocean. Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big balls or small brains? I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the huge d…

I'm not a smuggler, but I know one. Let's call him George. He's not currently available to tell his story so let me give you the abridged version.

George ran a (very) successful business here in NL and in Belgium, made a lot of money and was doing just fine. Then in a short period of time his wife died and his business took a hit both from competition, regulation and because he wasn't paying as much attention to it as he did in the past.

One thing leading to another the business failed. George panicked a bit being left behind with a child to take care of and a huge drop in income so he figured what's the harm in taking a boat filled with pills into Australia. That didn't work out too well and George is now on an extended visit to Australia, I don't think we'll meet again in this lifetime, that's how long his sentence was.

Now, before you judge: George was in every sense of the word a start-up type, serial entrepreneur with a lot of hustle and in general doing just fine. All it took was a couple of cards dealt from the bottom of the pack to turn him into a criminal.

So no big balls, no small brains, just plain old desperation and momentary lapse of judgement. If not for that you'd all be proud to swap places with him. The really sad person in that story is the kid, first to lose mom and then dad effectively too.

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#55

Post by JoeSmithson » Sun, May 12, 2019, 12:55 PM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #11

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the ocean. Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big balls or small brains? I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the huge d…

Watching to many movies. The point they catch you in the supply chain is not the ocean part, it's what you do with it when you arrive or intel from picking it up. > huge downside risk of being caught People climb cliffs all the time and handle the risk of the rope breaking and dying. What if you have a fit in a car and crash (Or someone coming the other way does), is that hard to handle? Death is way worse than being…

People are caught in the ocean all the time - https://maoc.eu/news-maoc

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#56

Post by canuckintime » Sun, May 12, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

yowlingcat wrote: post #36

bartimus wrote: post #35

Nice article. But the title is a bit misleading since it's hardly mentioned how life in the island got transformed.

That's fair. It's unfortunate that The Guardian's editorial has been slipping. The TLDR is that half a ton of cocaine is 453 kilos, which at a conservative estimate of 20k/kilo is (according to Quora wholesale values so take w a grain of salt) $11M street value of product if not more. So you take that and put it side by side by the economic day to day flow of the Azores. What do you get? For a 20k gdp/capita across a…

but the effect wasn't primarily economical! After reading the headline I also assumed that the story would be about the economic changes resulting from the infusion of such a 'valuable' resource i.e. I assumed the islanders would become smugglers/distributors themselves with the accompanying violence and risk such an occupation usually carries. The police quickly found and isolated the gang that lost the cocaine so there wasn't the usual violence from the owners coming to reclaim their product. Also the article says the islanders sold the found cocaine locally AND the street value plummeted:

> Before Quinci’s cocaine had washed up on shore... the flow of drugs was usually small and predictable. Often when the police made a seizure, they would make such a dent in the drug supply that local prices would skyrocket. But now police faced an unprecedented situation. As well as the 500kg of cocaine they had seized in the previous two weeks, Lopes thought that at least another 200kg were still unaccounted for... that summer, [the village] became a hub for the sale of the missing cocaine. “People from all over the island came here to buy drugs,”... A product so valuable in the rest of the world was rendered almost worthless through abundance. “They had gold, but they didn’t know how to work with it,”... Other Azoreans “were selling beer glasses full of pure cocaine”... Each one of these “copos”, which were about a third of a pint, contained about 150g and cost €20 (£17) – many hundreds of times cheaper than what it would cost in London today... [a] man had apparently paid a friend 300g of cocaine just to charge his phone...

The effects were mostly cultural and affected mostly public health. There were some economic capital accumulated (used to "build coffee shops") but I thought the article did a good job with the subverted expectations and providing an overview of some long term effects

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#57

Post by bredren » Sun, May 12, 2019, 1:04 PM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #17

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the ocean. Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big balls or small brains? I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the huge d…

I’ve known people who did small time smuggling... nothing approaching millions of dollars. The decision is usually economically rational, i.e. they need money for something and the risk of getting caught is low enough that it’s worthwhile. Of course I imagine people who are knowingly moving millions of dollars either are reckless risk takers or think they can outsmart the weather, law enforcement, mechanics and whate…

They are also probably not awkward moving this stuff in a vacuum of support. If there are millions at stake some people are getting paid to look the other way.

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#58

Post by orthoxerox » Sun, May 12, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #54

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the ocean. Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big balls or small brains? I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the huge d…

I'm not a smuggler, but I know one. Let's call him George. He's not currently available to tell his story so let me give you the abridged version. George ran a (very) successful business here in NL and in Belgium, made a lot of money and was doing just fine. Then in a short period of time his wife died and his business took a hit both from competition, regulation and because he wasn't paying as much attention to it a…

Who's the kid with now? Does Australia let them live with their parent in prison?

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#59

Post by cosmodisk » Sun, May 12, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #53

cosmodisk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told this about 10 years ago. People used to transport cocaine from Spain to Northern countries in Europe.They'd send 2 cars: empty,large SUV,with as many bells and whistles as possible. And a few miles behind a little Smart car with all the drugs. They always stopped the SUV but the little one was stopped not even once...

Noticed a similar thing earlier this year, while I was crossing the border from a non-Schengen area country into the Schengen territory. The owner of a new Audi Q5 or Q7 just in front of me received all sorts of questions from the customs guards, while me and my gf passed the border in a breeze. We were driving our 12-year old small 1.4 liter hatchback, which has scratches on all its four corners, I said to myself th…

Registration plates matter a lot too. If you are from certain countries, you'd be checked much more often.

Re: Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

#60

Post by ajcodez » Sun, May 12, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the ocean. Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big balls or small brains? I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the huge d…

I had a friend from university who tried to smuggle cocaine from Las Vegas to Australia. He was coerced by a guy working at Vice and was introduced to the opportunity through a drug dealer / nightlife mutual connection. I remember he bet me $20 he could beat me at 1v1 basketball. He would participate in pyramid schemes and was a club promoter too. I heard he came from a wealthy or at least upper middle class family in the Middle East.

Initially he was supposed to escort someone else doing the smuggling and get paid, but then the job changed. He said no, so they threatened his safety and his younger sisters safety who was also studying in Canada. He got caught and sentenced to years in jail in Australia.