As the U.S. government built its latest stretch of border wall, Mexico made a statement of its own by laying remains of the Berlin Wall a few steps away.

The 3-ton pockmarked, gray concrete slab sits between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which extends into the Pacific Ocean.

May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges,” reads the inscription below the towering Cold War relic, attributed to Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero and titled, “A World Without Walls.”

  • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If legal alternatives undercut their main income stream, yes, they’ll disappear. Or rather, they’ll fall apart as their resources become scarce and the ‘middle managers’ being cut out of the remaining money start fighting the higher ups and each other.

    Ending alcohol prohibition didn’t strengthen the bootleggers. It put them out of business as Budweiser ate their lunch.

      • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They’ll almost certainly try to (and some people who are currently involved may see some success). But they won’t have their de facto monopoly anymore. And these organizations are rife with internal corruption (shocking, I know); they aren’t being run efficiently.

        Without their monopoly profits, they aren’t going to be able to afford the hit squads, the bribed law enforcement, or the silence of the people who know where the bodies are buried (often literally).

        Crime won’t magically fall to zero overnight, but these organizations will not be having a good time.

        • diprount_tomato@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But you’re still giving them concessions while the population pays it just because you haven’t been able to deal with them properly

          • DistractedDev@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            You never will. People want drugs. Someone will always provide them. Might as well have some regulations.

          • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ending the black market the cartel thrives in is the proper way to deal with them. Waging an endless ‘war’ on a vague concept that makes the most vicious cartel leaders fabulously wealthy is clearly not.

            Now is there a particular reason that you’re playing devil’s strawman all over this thread?

      • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        The fact that they (mostly) aren’t doing it with the drugs that are legal, should tell you why. And you already have precedent to know what happens when drugs get legalized - the Mafia is not selling bootlegged alcohol anymore.