January 8, 2001

1:41 AM

High-tech world mafias breeze past borders.This is a good introduction to a disturbing and daunting problem that touches on many issues: online privacy, bureaucratic inertia, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the future of immigration policy. In the underworld, dealing drugs is day-trading while dealing humans is blue chip investing.
posted by aflakete (5 comments total)

Organised crime is so entrenched in legal business enteprises that they are always going to be around and only get more powerful. That's what happens when you have a world based on monetary value.
posted by Zool at 3:33 PM on January 8, 2001

Correction, that's what happens when you make things illegal. :)
posted by Neb at 9:24 PM on January 8, 2001

What should we base "the world" on instead of value?
posted by aaron at 10:31 PM on January 8, 2001

I think the issue is: As long as any individuals are de-valued, as long as we de-value ourselves and don't make the people who take advantage of that accountable, nothing will change.
posted by aflakete at 11:10 PM on January 8, 2001

What do you mean "widening gap between rich and poor"? that has been dismantled as an urban myth for ages now... wake up!

Check out this report from the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Studies on Foreign Policy Issues, for example. It is available online only in PDF-format, but I'll quote parts of the conclusion for you all anyway:

"The empirical analysis of the report thus indicates that during the last decades of the 20th century international inequality has been reduced, while inequality within countries follows a mixed pattern."

even though you obviously would like to promote your own leftist illusions here, you should check them with reality -- at least once in a while!
posted by dagny at 3:38 AM on January 9, 2001