Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Peter Zeihan || Cartels Part 3: The North American Drug War" video.

  1.  @williewonka6694  “Money is the root of all evil”. I say that not to moralize, but to point out the obvious: we should attack the root of the problem, which is the flow of profits, the laundering and the flow of money. Whether it’s the cash businesses or the illegitimate investing in legitimate businesses, it can be tracked. Even money transfers on the dark web can be tracked. Take away their money and the cartels (or any other corrupt criminal enterprise) have less power. Then interdiction has a better chance of succeeding.
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  2. Follow the money. And then go after the enablers, the stewards and launderers of criminal enterprise money flows. Once you’ve interrupted the money flows, these international criminal enterprises are much weaker. Interdiction and normal law enforcement stands a chance of working.
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  3. I don’t know Pete’s thinking on this, but the first step is to go after the laundering and transfer of money. The agencies most suited to these sorts of investigations are the IRS, the financial crimes section of the FBI, and bank regulators. You don’t have to create a new government agency, you combine what we have into a task force and give them sufficient resources to hire a buttload of auditors and field agents. If you can interrupt the money flows of the cartels and other international criminals, you’ve taken away much of their power to corrupt. And then the traditional interdiction efforts stand a chance of working.
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  4. That is super interesting about laundering money through legal dispensaries. (Sort of reminds me of the car wash in Breaking Bad or the fast food chicken chain.) Pete’s method of fighting the trade is simplistic. “Don’t do cocaine” is certainly an appealing non-solution for the conservative mindset because it hits our personal-responsibility button. Personal responsibility is a core principal of our philosophy*. But it’s not a practical solution for obvious reasons. Pete’s bit about the dispensaries does suggest a practical solution. Go after the cash flow. When the cash flow dries up, the cartels are much less powerful and then perhaps interdiction will have a greater impact. Without massive amounts of cash, the cartels will not be able to operate at such levels of impunity. And how do you go after cash flows? The IRS, bank regulators, FBI & DOJ. You form a task force. You fund these agencies so they have these resources to perform investigations (something the Republicans are loathe to do, unfortunately). You strengthen the penalties for participants at all levels, up to and including the executives and boards of the banks (make them personally responsible for their businesses. Cash businesses can be surveilled and monitored. Transfers, even through the dark web, can be tracked. A side benefit is that we can also stop a lot of other corruption, both domestic and international. But in any case, the first step is FOLLOW THE MONEY. * Real conservatism is a philosophy, a set of principles) not an ideology. If it’s an ideology (such as MAGA or libertarianism, for example) it’s not conservatism. As a philosophy, it shares some principles with liberalism, which itself is more of a philosophy than an ideology. (In fact, that’s how you distinguish liberalism from actual socialist ideologies.)
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