Cartels as Corporations -- and Governments

As the War on Drugs continues, cartels have grown from street-level gangs to something like corporations, complete with diversified portfolios of criminal activity. In today's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel explore what happens when organized crime functions as a corporate entity -- and what happens when cartels begin to supplant actual governments.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is They called me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Ball,
mission controlled decans. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. We are back, fellow conspiracy realists, well still here,
never left, but we're all at least in the same

(00:48):
city for now. Over the past weeks, folks, your faithful
correspondence have been all over the place. In fact, some
of us are on the road again tomorrow as we record,
and all of us will be traveling together for a
little book tour in October. You can find the link
in our description wherever you find podcasts. Get some tickets.

(01:12):
Let's see where where we had a We're going to
d C, I think Massachusetts right and right here in Atlanta.
We'll give you the dates really quick if you want
to write them down, or you can just go to
the link. Tuesday, October eleven, we will be at Eagle
Eye Books for a special appearance an event with a
book on Thursday October will be at sixth and I

(01:36):
that's s I x T H and the letter I
in Washington, d C. And on Friday, October four we
will be in Plainville, Massachusetts at this awesome place called
an Unlikely Story. I love that name. And also for
everyone who has written to us, uh, like written written
to me personally or written to us as a show

(01:57):
and said, hey, when are you guys going to go
to in search city? Here? Right to our bosses make
a stink. We got your back and let's go. Let's
go further into the rabbit hole. Uh. Today, despite our travel,
we have to admit Matt Noel and I we have
nothing on the movers and shakers of today's episode. Cartels,

(02:20):
specifically drug cartels. Wait, there's more, specifically illegal drug cartels.
Because yes, your local big farm of folks are a cartel. Uh.
Today's question how close are these criminal organizations to becoming
even more powerful, as powerful as say a government or

(02:41):
an international corporation. The answers will surprise you. So here
are the facts. First, what do you guys think? Quick
recap on cartels? What is a cartel in general terms, Well,
the cartel is in general terms, as you said, ben, Uh,
it's a group of different businesses entities really that work

(03:05):
together as one too. This is the main thing, control
prices of whatever the product it is that they are
selling or and or buying, and dictating the supply where
that stuff is available and when it's available. You might
have also heard the term syndicate seems sort of similar
to that. Syndicate and cartels also both seem to have

(03:28):
kind of nefarious, shadowy connotations, right, like a crime syndicate
or a drug cartel. Yep. And it should be noted
that when we're talking about controlling prices that that's really
a lot of different things. It could be controlling the
raw products that go into making the thing, the actual
widgit or whatever it is that they sell, or in

(03:49):
this case cocaine, or just controlling the end price and
then manipulating stuff on the inside in the earlier processes
to create cocaine, play with the variables and uh, and
see if you can get the equation you desire. Look, yeah,
cartels are not always criminal organizations inherently, but when they

(04:14):
get powerful enough, they inevitably take actions that might be
considered crimes unless they control the mechanisms of government, which
is oh, this might be a two parter. All right, Look,
so OPEC, that's a famous cartel. Their thing is in Cocaya,
their thing is oil and petroleum products, and they run
the game. Then there was earlier we talked about this

(04:37):
in episodes on things like planned obs lessons. There was
the Phoebus cartel. Uh, this was a kind of a
I don't know, I get where they were coming from.
I think it was a kind of a weak name.
But they're the reason lightbulbs are crappy right now. They're
the reason they are the reason, they were the reason
they made a lot of money selling you and your

(04:58):
ancestors bad light bulbs. Well that's why filament light bulbs
are bad, Ben. But those new led suckers they're pretty good,
right until an l e ed cartel comes into play.
I mean, look, you know it wasn't too long ago,
guys when we learned that maple Syrup of all things
is controlled by an actual facts cartel. Shout out to

(05:21):
our good friend Lauren Vogel bamb host of brain Stuff,
host of Savor for introducing us to the term actual facts.
UH talked to Lauren earlier. She confirmed it is indeed
all one word. But yeah, maple syrup, there's a cartel
controlled it. That's why it's all. It's all befuddled here.

(05:42):
But if we are being honest, the vast majority of
people in North and South America associate the word cartel
with one thing crime, more specifically illegal drugs, smuggling drugs
and all the related crimes associated did with the acts
of handling and profiting from substances that a giving government

(06:06):
considers illegal. So look, cartels are everywhere. You're listening. In Cambodia,
there's a cartel. You're listening in Singapore. They're very wealthy cartels,
some of those in fact or trading and banking cartels.
You're listening wherever Omahawk, Kansas, plain View, Massachusetts. You are
around and in some ways affected by some sort of cartel.

(06:30):
But today's episode focuses on Mexico. Let's head there, right,
because I think when most of the people in the
US think of cartels, they're thinking of drug cartels, and
they're probably thinking of Mexican drug cartels. Would you guys
agree with that? And you'll you'll you may even know
some of the proper names you may remember like Sinola,

(06:52):
Cartel or Zantas where that was a really big one
in the news for a while and then it kind
of goes way and you forget about them. But there
there are a ton, there are there are a lot
and drugs. You know, there's a reason drugs have been
a part of human history forever. Right since we've been around.
We've been trying substances and what is this gonna do?

(07:14):
Whole buddy, Those mushrooms were different. But the history of
the United States has this really interesting uh relationship with
drugs and alcohol. M Yeah, well back into the eighteen hundreds,
even uh, prior to the formation of the United States

(07:35):
as an entity, there were smugglers. They were not necessarily
breaking laws or committing what you would consider felonies today.
They were just trying to get around paying taxes for stuff.
But still, trafficking is trafficking, and it doesn't matter whether
you're talking about opium or cocaine or cannabis. A variety

(07:57):
of substances have been illegally import it had sold and
distributed throughout U S history, often with devastating consequences. Um
Like think about the turbulent era of opium debts. Okay says,
the US opium surprise might be kind of a problem.
So let's make certain places legal, you know, kind of

(08:21):
the cafe cannabis approach that Amsterdam took in the Netherlands.
This didn't work. People were getting addicted to opium. They
were branching out to other opiates. During the Civil War,
in particular, the widespread use of morphine as an anesthetic

(08:41):
lad to morphine addiction. This happened again in the Vietnam War.
But after the Civil War, government gears started turning and clicking.
That's where we find something a few years later, well
many decades later, uh, because government takes forever the US
about with something they called the Harrison Act of nineteen fourteen.

(09:03):
The Harrison Act is important for this story because it
outlaws for the first time opium and cocaine cocaine UH
for non medical purposes. So at this point in nineteen
in the United States, you're a note from a doctor
away from getting all the nose candy, all the all

(09:25):
the green dragon you want. But this, this move towards
um somewhat regulating these substances. It doesn't do anything illicit
drugs continue to circulate, and criminal organizations realize this can
be a revenue stream. Why would you Why would you

(09:46):
bother really with illegal gambling at the dog track or whatever,
when you know you have a guaranteed crazy profit margin
on things the government doesn't want you to buy. Well, yeah,
you got a diverse a fire right. You gotta get
a little human trafficking in there too. I mean, you
you gotta make sure you're diversified when you're a cartel. Uh.

(10:07):
But yeah, it's interesting when you hear a lot of
the political posturing about the border, right when when anybody's
talking about the border, we gotta secure the borders and everything,
and you think about how poorous they really always have been,
about how much contraband flows across both ways, from the
United States to Mexico and the Mexico into the US. Uh,

(10:29):
it's weird to think about. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm
old school with some of this geopolitical stuff. The only
real borders that stand the test of time are geographic
borders mountains, rivers, oceans, in hospitable lands, stuff like that.
Everything else is just a conversation that a civilization has

(10:50):
with itself. So it should be no surprise that those
are not as effective as the real borders of the world.
Cartels today, it turns out they do a lot of homework.
They're not good people, but they are not unintelligent people.
And cartels today, oh a lot of thanks to things

(11:13):
like the mafia. Things you know, like the Italian like
in Deragata all that, the the Italian mafioso who they
they paved the way for organized criminal activity in the
United States on the part of cartel's contraband has been
going across this Uh you you've nailed it, Matt. They've

(11:34):
been going across this poorous border from Mexico in the
US since forever, and that border has changed over time. Right,
it's gone multiple ways. Not for nothing. Is there a
stay called New Mexico. Think about it anyway. So the
so the the cartels or something like the cartels really

(11:58):
comes into being dairy. Uh, the great swinging a miss
of American policy prohibition. So yeah, alcohol is illegal as
long as the politicians can stumble to the booth and
vote for it. And these folks in a different country
across the border, criminal elements say hey, we can make alcohol.

(12:20):
We could just move it around and then they also
branch out, as he said, they diversify and they start
moving cannabis later and then they get into cocaine and
that's where the glory days of Narco traficonde begin. So
let's start with the Gulf Cartel, not the Golf Cartel.
That's that's different, but that that is a thing that's live.

(12:44):
Saudi Arabia just started it. Yeah. The Gulf Cartel is
a drug cartel. It's based in Matamorros, uh Tamua, Lipas, Mexico,
and it was founded in the nineteen thirties by Juan
Nepomucino Guerra UM. Originally known as the Matamorros Cartel or

(13:04):
Cartel de mantamoros Um. The Gulf Cartel initially started smuggling alcohol,
um and other illegal goods into the US. UM as
a result of prohibition, it opened up this black market,
as we know, like you know, far and wide domestically
and abroad. And because of those poorous borders you were
talking about, Matt, I mean, this was just a perfect opportunity,

(13:25):
uh to get in on the action here. Um. So
once prohibition ended, they needed something else to you know,
what their beaks with um. So this organization started to
dabble in controlling gambling operations, sex worker rings, UM, a

(13:46):
network of thieves that were like out stealing cars. I mean,
this really is kind of you know, low level mafios
type activity in terms of the what's the word diversification
of crime that they are working with UM and other
you know, other smuggling operations. Did you guys see in
the news? Is slightly off topic, everyone, I apologize, but

(14:08):
we're going over here. Recently in the news, two of
the major uh like mafia groups got busted recently in
New York for for doing the kind of front company
thing that we discussed in the past, where there's like
it looks like a nice little I think a soccer
club or a cafe, but in the back there's like
a serious gambling operation and they're they're funneling tons of

(14:32):
illegal money through their laundry. Wash your money, just just
wash your money. You know, I can't tell you, I
probably legally can't on air how many times I've just
happened by a little corner shop in some out of
the way neighborhood in your favorite cities, by the ways,
your realist just to like buy a coffee and they're surprised,

(14:56):
and I'm surprised to him, like I thought this was
a coffee shop and they're like, oh, yeah, no, we
got the coffee, and yeah right, and like no card payments,
only cash, and you don't have change. You want to
change for a twenty, that's fine, I got a ten.
You have to change for a ten. I'm starting to
think something's up, you know what I mean. Anyway, it

(15:19):
was good coffee. I'll just take the coffee. Just take
a free coffee. That's such a that's such a petty,
like Larry David's style hack, go into a place that's
obviously a drug front and just pretend that you don't
have exact change. They'll give you the coffee because they
don't want you hanging around. So anyway, your mileage me

(15:40):
very don't get shot. The birth of Mexico's major cartel,
like the major cartel period, you can trace it back
to the nineteen eighties. A guy named Miguel on Hell
Felix Guyardo who he was in Um he's sometimes called
like his street name, was the Godfather. He was the

(16:02):
countries like the Mexican connect. He was the plug with
the infamous Pablo Escobar, who came very close to assuming
political power in Colombia. Uh. You know, Pablo esk Bar,
the Medaine Cartel, all the hits, all the good ones. Uh.
This guy, Guyardo, goes underground when his partner in crime,

(16:27):
his writer die, a guy named Raphael Cato Kintaro, gets
arrested for the murder of a d A agent in
that's the Drug Enforcement Administration here in the States. And
so later this guy, after he's gone underground, he's inspired
to do something revolutionary. This is like the difference between

(16:50):
the Old and the New Testament. He goes to all
the narcos and he says, I extend to you an invitation.
You see the Godfather thing. He says, let's get together
and let's imagine them at a big like Vladimir Putin
esque style cartoonist table, Like it's a very long, big

(17:11):
table because there are a lot of dangerous people there.
And he says, okay, okay, guys, here's our deal. We're
going to divide up this country between us. We're going
to divide up the entirety of Mexico into different regions,
different areas. We'll call them plazas. And everybody gets to

(17:32):
say in what their territory is. So if you are
cartel A, you control this part of the country, this state,
or this region. Uh. This is a huge move and
it's one that all of the various players who are
not friends, by the way, recognize as an enormous opportunity.

(17:53):
And as history will later prove, a lot of them
just agreed because they were abiding their time to take
out the other gangs. But still this this solidified the
canonical players. This made the pantheon of cartels. This is
where we get stuff like the Sonola Federation or the

(18:13):
Ariano Felix Brothers on Tiajuana. It was gonna like make
a joke and I think, I don't think it would land,
But it feels like this guillard Do guy is the
Fred Hampton of the cartels. Like not in a bad
because it's not. It's a bad comparison, right, because that
would make you think that I imagine the Black Panther
Party for Self Defense and other groups like that as criminals.

(18:36):
But it's not. I just meant like this this concept
of this lightbelt, oh, this Phoebus cartel lightbulb that goes
off and you go, what if we all worked together
kind of thing. Um, yeah, that's perfect and and yes,
and you did clarify quite well. But you're right. There's
powering collectivism. Honestly, that's what they're realizing. And since that point,

(18:59):
drug words in Mexico and abroad, as you point out,
they have come and gone, and new groups have risen
to power as ephemeral loyalties fade and shift, as political
protection and patrons change. Killings and arrests, you know, they
leave vacuums in leadership and crime, just like nature a

(19:20):
boors a vacuum. In this quick and dirty history, already
we see a clear pattern. The criminals, like mafia and
bootleggers before them, found success by applying corporate tactics to crime,
by organizing their efforts, collectivizing, by demarcating their territory. They

(19:42):
sought consistency in their product. And most importantly, this is
a crazy thing. They realized two things. They said, Look,
we don't need to fight the law if we can
buy the law. You know, it's like a Sith version
of lobbying, which you know, lobbying is a Sith version
of lobbying. But and you point this out as well
a little earlier, you gotta diversify, diversify your funds. Right today,

(20:06):
cartels don't just run drugs. They pedal political influence. They've
got their hands or tentacles or or their firearms in
numerous front companies. They dabble in non drugs stuff. Avocados,
we talked about that, smuggling limes, also lines. Don't forget
the lines. They smuggle guns, they smuggle human beings. Uh hey,

(20:32):
the cartels seemed to say, get it straight, We're not
just about cocaine these days. And at some point we
have to ask our cartels now functionally corporations. More disturbingly,
could they one day use their power, brutality and influence
to not infiltrate, but to replace governments? Will pause for

(20:55):
a word from our sponsor cheers where it gets crazy? Um, yes, uh,
well what's the question again, Ben, could uh could cartels
replace a government? And are they functionally corporations? Okay, yeah,

(21:20):
you're right, correct, that's our show. Thanks everybody, Good game,
good game. I mean you're right, it's it's fascinating and
it's terrifying in equal parts. Yes, cartels, the ones that
are around now, the ones that have survived the eternal,

(21:40):
ongoing Game of Thrones and uh, what's that show succession?
They kind of do a succession thing. All of those
who have survived have survived because they behave increasingly like
legitimate corporations. And yes, folks, this is not a theory.
They could potentially replace elected governments, either in part it's

(22:06):
already happening or entirely. And this is where we want
to introduce one of the stars of our show today,
a journalist named Tom Wayne Wright. I love this guy.
I love his work, and uh, you don't have to
love it, but you should know about it. You should
know about it, especially if you feel like my day

(22:28):
is going too well. I'm having too much of a
good time. I need to pump the brakes on my happiness.
While Tom Wayne Wright is your dude. He pulls right
up to the curbains. Let me handle this, Tommy Wayne right, Yes,
that's me. This new is awesome. There's there's a great

(22:51):
interview you can find with him. Oh well, I know
it was MPR, but I can't remember Terry fresh Air
it was it was Fresh Air. Um, it's really really interview.
Should check out. He wrote an amazing book from his
his reporting that he was doing for the Economist for
a long time. Yeah, back in or Pal, Tom gets

(23:13):
a job with the Economists. It's prestigious. It's a prestigious magazine,
and it is a periodical that's entirely focused on macro
and micro economics, right, which inevitably touches politics. So Tom
is the Mexico correspondent, and he knows his remit as

(23:34):
he's going in. His job in Mexico is to cover
the biggest businesses in that country. So this is stuff
like the oil industry, which is big there. This is
stuff like maybe water banking, uh, mobile communications, tequila which
is still it's huge. Uh. And surprise, surprise, Tom, you

(23:58):
also have to cover another big business, the drug trade,
especially the illegal ones. Yeah. Right, Like this is the
point where we have to take a little bit of
a sidebar and ask how much money these cartels make. Now,
you know, we're not above calling out calling out things

(24:19):
that need to be called out, So we have to
give a stuff they don't want you to know. Whompwamp
to Senator David Purdue from Georgia in Uh, let's just
do his quote. So Purdue told the Senate International Narcotics
Control Caucus, Uh, these operations were bigger than most people

(24:44):
could possibly imagine, and he stated the following at half
a trillion dollars five hundred billion, That makes the cartel
business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone, coming
across the United States bigger than Walmarts. To put it
in perspective, So this is larger than our largest companies,

(25:08):
half a trillion dollars. Just think about all the yachts, guys,
copious yachts, so many yachts. Yeah, yachts are the pringles
of being a billionaire. You can never stop with one.
You just can't. There it is, I mean, it's a

(25:29):
it's a crazy quote, right most most people and I
say this not as a ding, this is just not observation.
Most people will have a very difficult time grasping just
how much one billion dollars is, let alone five billion,
let alone a trillion dollars. US politicians, in case you're

(25:53):
listening you're not in the US, you should know our
folks are famous for convenient hyperble So we gotta unpack
this a little bit. The actual estimates about how much
money drug the drug trade makes, they're all over the place.
If you look at Mexico. You have to kind of

(26:14):
make an imaginary pie and then sort of eyeball what
you think Mexico's Cartel's slice of that pie is. So
it's really tricky. All the estimates are reverse engineered, and
they're they're kind of a they're kind of a cosmic combo.
If you will of will all right, you're on record,

(26:37):
he has Uh. They take they take different statistics that
can help them triangulate the whole picture. So you take
stuff like the street value of um how how is
cocaine most often sold? Is it sold by like Graham
metric systems? I think that would be like the the

(26:58):
base level on the univer You can get much less
than a Graham. I've always heard this, like, you get
a hundred dollars of cocaine, no matter what, no matter
what it is, no matter what, Yeah, no matter where cocaine,
you'll love it. Well, let's let's that's very good. Is
that your your your cocaine barker voice? We got yeah,
we got piles of it. But it's mommy's little help us,

(27:21):
come and get yourself. Uh No, you have to also
remember that, like the idea of weights, you know that
only applies to distributors and people that are really doing
the business, Like if you're buying street drugs, you're not
likely going to get you know, verification of the weight
or purity or even the guarantee that it won't just

(27:42):
kill you out right because it's got rat poise and
are fenel in it. Yeah, yeah, not for nothing do
people talk about stepping on the cane. So yeah, the
the estimates are coming instead from tangentially related things like
the street value of a given amount of given substance
or drug consumption rates, which are already really tricky because

(28:05):
when something's illegal, not a lot of people are going
to tell you they're doing it unless they, you know,
they have to um or they look at stuff that
might seem not as related, like the amount of US
dollars that are repatriated from Mexico to the United States. Anyway,
with all this, with this weird uh, this weird big stape,

(28:28):
the salad, this ghoulash of related statistics, what you find
is that since about two thousand and six, estimates have
varied widely. Experts will tell you that there is anything
from six billion to twenty nine billion US dollars worth
of value going through these Mexican cartels. Now, that might

(28:51):
not be a half a trillion dollars, but let's be honest,
there's a lot. The u N for a wider scope here,
the UN estimated back in two thousand eleven, they said
worldwide proceeds from drug trafficking and what they called transnational
organized crime were the equivalent of one point five of

(29:16):
the entire economic product of the human planet, one five
of everything. Yeah, and that number, by the way, is
eight hundred and seventy billion dollars at least in two
two thousand nine dollars. Right, But that's not Mexico, that's everyone.

(29:38):
So that's GDP global domestic product. Yeah. So back to
this caucus you mentioned the Senator Diane Feinstein, just to
put this in like um and across the board perspective
for US political wonks. She is hanging at that caucus
June eleven, the same year, and she says, quote, the

(30:00):
illicit drug trade is a business valued at anywhere between
four hundred and twenty six and six hundred fifty two billion.
Its reaches global, its distribution is growing, Its leadership is criminal.
So these politicians are kind of throwing out guesses. But
they're all big numbers. There's no one who's coming along

(30:21):
and saying, you know, playing prices right. No one is saying,
I think it's four hundred six billion and one dollar
he's gonna say, Or just shoot for one dollar with
those giant figures, you probably win. Well, then I want
to go back to all Tommy Wayne Right. Uh. Tom
Wayne Right, the awesome person who was interviewed on NPR

(30:44):
that we've been discussing because he did write a book
about his travels and his reporting with the the Economist
down there, and man, he lays it out so plainly
and clearly. I think we've got a quote from him, right,
we do, we do? Indeed, matt uh he says, he says, uh,

(31:05):
so he's talking about how weird his job became right
when he because he's thinking, I'm in a report on
mobile phones and maybe tequila, and he says instead quote,
I found that one week I'd be writing about the
car business, the next week I'd be writing about the
drugs business. I gradually came to see that the two
actually were perhaps more similar than people normally recognized. Now,

(31:29):
Tom hasn't you know, a sponsored the show or anything.
We're just a fan of good sources and primary sources.
So he wrote a book called Narcoonomics Clever Portmanteau Tomu
Narconomics How to Run a Drug Cartel. Uh and it
very much is like a textbook. So we're gonna dive
into some of this stuff. What does he find? This

(31:52):
is so amazing to me. Oh my god, what does
he find? Well, we'll tell you what he found. Uh.
He found that these companies we're using business models, they
were very very similar to the types of strategies um
and or you know, organizational kind of arrangements that big
box stores um or even fast food franchises used. And

(32:15):
you'll remember back to that quote we we we referenced
about you know, Walmart in terms of like the amount
of capital they're generating. So then being one of the
biggest US chains Walmart in certain industries are effectively the
only buyer for certain products um and. This is the
same deal with cartels. And that becomes the idea of

(32:38):
being an exclusive buyer, you know, the the that that
is part of you know, the cartel model. And we
were talking a little bit off air about how I
thought I just mentioned, um, you know the character of
Gus spring on breaking bad and how he, you know,
in his straight kind of cover life, owns and operates
and runs day to day this like fast food franchise,

(33:01):
the Lapoyos Harmonos, And he does that with the same
like fastidiousness and attention to detail and in some cases
ruthlessness as he runs his illegal drug operation. Um and
and you know, and it's it's the revenue stream in
and of itself, but it feels like they kind of
are like existing in these like very interesting parallel paths.
I didn't know if you guys that occurred to either

(33:22):
of you in looking into this stuff. Well, yeah, if
you think about that example, and you imagine the price
of the raw chicken that Gus Fring buys in order
to cook and then sell in his you know stores, right,
you can think about it the same way as the
cocoa leaf for the coca plants then are grown very
specific part of South America over there, like only a

(33:45):
couple of places in then Andy's Mountains. Um. So, like
if the price of that chicken in Gus Fring's case changes,
Gus has to make a decision who am I going
to raise my prices or am I going to make
other operating cost changes in order to make up, you know,
for how much I'm gonna make, how much how much
income I'm gonna have, how much profit I'm gonna make.

(34:05):
It's the same thing with the drug cartels. So they
start they manipulate variables. As we said, Ben, Yeah, yeah,
just so, And we're gonna get into this. This is
crazy foreshadowing. We're actually going to have some math that
is not boring in a second or later this week.
We still don't know if there's a two parter. So okay,

(34:25):
let's think of Let's think of Tom's example here. Let's
think of big box stores in the United States and
in North America in general. Walmart is one of the
biggest chains. Uh. It's so big that the children born
to the founder were automatically billionaires, if not multi multimillionaires. UH.

(34:51):
In certain industries right now, Walmart is effectively the only
buyer of a good, so they all the shots to
the suppliers. This means that if there's a quoting Tom here,
if there is a disruption to some sort of supply
and Walmart runs that supply chain, uh. Tom uses the

(35:14):
example of like a bad harvest year for apples, apple growers.
In that case, they can't increase their prices because Walmart
is the only buyer. Therefore, Walmart dictates the price. So
Walmart can say, uh, dang, we already made the price,
and if you don't sell it to us, I guess

(35:38):
just put them somewhere because they're not going anywhere else.
And that that makes way more sense when you're talking
about a drug cartel and somebody, let's say, growing coca
plants and coca leaves, because it's you have one person
that you can sell it to, and if you don't
sell it to that person, your life could be in danger.
Right if it just goes somewhere else and you try

(36:00):
and offload it somewhere else, you could be in trouble
with the person that would have usually purchased it, even
if they're not going to buy it at their going price,
right right. This is what economists call a monopsony, not
monopoly monopsony. This means that a given buyer has control
over purchasing a product in a given area. So if

(36:22):
you are growing coca, you have an agreement to only
sell to your Walmart a specific cartel, Unlike dealing with
the Walmarts of the world. Violating this agreement doesn't get
you in court, it gets you killed, often in horrific ways.
Because you are then most useful as an example to

(36:43):
other people who might try to get a little out
of pocket. And honestly, just like in the world of corporations,
this approach works. Uh. Tom Wainwright points out how there
was this this weird thing that happens in Bolivia. Okay,
so the government with some funding from the US. The US,

(37:04):
by the way, every time we talk about drugs, the
US is very much like, oh, the left hand doesn't
know what the right hand is doing because you know,
black bag budgets. Leave it there. Another episode, So Waynewright
points out how there were millions of dollars pumped into
this idea of flying helicopters and crop dusters basically over

(37:26):
the Andies Mountains, which is prime growing area for coca,
and they were dumping wheat killer, they were dumping herbicides
over there, and they destroyed thousands and thousands of hectakers
of coca. But oddly enough, if you were like a
nine eighties movie producer in Los Angeles, the price of

(37:50):
cocaine from your guy doesn't change, it's the same because
these cartels have learned lessons from corporations, just like Walmart.
They have a grip on the entirety of their supply
chain such that they can move the variables and they
can make that thing that street price on the other

(38:13):
side of the equal sign, they can make it stay
the same. It just takes some bookkeeping exactly well. And
the prices that Tom Wainwright describes, I think this is
this the math you're talking about, Ben or Okay, the
way he describes the difference in how much a cartel

(38:34):
pays for the raw product, the coca plants, like depending
on how well the harvest was that year. The difference
between a regular year and a oh man, this coca
plant is twice as expensive as it normally is is
astoundingly not even a thing for the cartel, Like there's
no effect there. And here's why. So this is what

(38:58):
Tom says within that MPR interview. To make for instance,
a kilo of cocaine, you need about a ton of
coca leaf, and that ton, once it's all dried out
in a country like Columbia, will fetch perhaps four hundred dollars.
Now that's not much money. If you know anything, if
you've watched any movies that deal with kilos of cocaine,

(39:20):
four hundred dollars doesn't seem like much. That's me talking
back to the quote. Now, the kilo in the United
States will fetch about a hundred thousand dollars. So let's
say you're incredibly successful in managing to raise the price
of coca leaf and you manage to double it to
eight hundred dollars. If you then manage to transfer all
of that extra cost onto the consumer, make somebody pay

(39:42):
a little more for the you know, user side of
the cocaine, that final kilo of cocaine is only going
to cost now one hundred thousand and four hundred dollars.
In other words, you can double the price of coca
leaf and you increase the price of the final product
cocaine by us than one percent. That's insane, yea all

(40:03):
thanks to monopsony. Yeah, okay, okay, So this is this
is a phenomenon. This doesn't like, This isn't how economics works,
except if you're in this situation with this like super
shady supply chain. It's how you can make economics work
for you, and it doesn't just apply to illicit drug cartels.
If you control supply and demand, if you can artificially

(40:27):
influence those things, then you decide you can reverse engineer
the equation. You can decide what the end point prices,
and you can just make things work in that regard.
Our work toward that aim. This is Uh, it's brilliant.
I'm having a hard time with this because you guys know,
I like the closest thing I have to a spiritual

(40:50):
belief is is respective intelligence. And this is very intelligent.
It's very evil. We're gonna pause for a word from
our sponsors, and then we're going to take aque to
the next exciting part of cartels as corporations. Franchising. Baby,

(41:14):
we've returned. What's better than starting to McDonald's, starting a
system where other people pay you to start their own McDonald's.
This is franchising, and cartels are hip to this. Again,
very intelligent, very not good people. Uh. Tom has our
back on this, Tom Wayne right. Uh. He goes into

(41:36):
details specifically about the Zetas cartel. It turns out that
these dudes owe a lot of their success not just
to the drug trade, but to franchising, Like a lot
of cartels before them. They expanded through violence, but also
through a business innovation that might surprise some of you,
especially if you like own a Chick fil a. Yeah,

(41:57):
it's true. Um. So when the Zetas uh set out
to incorporate into a new area, to spread their business
into a new area, um, they send out scouts um
to find uh, let's just say, underground entrepreneurs already plying
their trade in the marketplace. They essentially make them an

(42:20):
offer that's very attractive that they come with the to
them with a um, presumably a better product, uh, the
Zetas brand, you know, um, and that's going to there
they essentially, Um, you're right, then franchising is the way
to go, Like you can't really like, Okay, you could
have your little mom and pop diner, but what if

(42:41):
instead you had a McDonald's. We will know what a
McDonald's is. You know, there's consistency. You're part of a family. Now. Also,
if you join us, we're less likely to just like
snuff you out, you know, because yeah, always that's the
inherent that that's the inherent kind of uh you know,

(43:02):
subtext of the whole thing. Right. Yeah, And and it's
so weird. Yeah, it's so it's so strange because it's
not just the the concept of a franchise, like selling
a brand, going yeah, you should join the Zetas. The
Zetas are we're a good we're a good group of
you know, cartel members, and we really have each other's backs.

(43:23):
And join us. You'll like it. It's not that you know,
there's like at least corneon Wayne, right, there's like merch
in reactual branding, y'all. Where can we get our hands
on some of these embroidered baseball caps and T shirts? No, no,
don't do it. I don't think you want them to

(43:45):
have your address. Honestly, it's a self preservation thing. Surely
you'll think they're available on the on the on the
black market or in collectors circles. Just seems like something
that somebody would be, you know, morbidly, you know, fascinating
enough to have some sort of like glass case at
this point in Yeah, it's kind of like serial killer merchandise.

(44:05):
You know, would you would you want to be someone
who looks like you're down with that even ironically? I
mean it's a question. But the link of the Zaida's
thing is the Zaida's thing is real. In terms of branding,
they're going they're being very corporate about it. They're saying, look, hey,
look we see you, young man. You're out on this corner.

(44:26):
You're running the block. You're doing your crime. We like that,
and you know what we like growth. We believe a
rising tide carries all crimes. So join up with us.
Do some crimes for us. Call yourself the Zaida's just
like us. We will take over your territory the way
roam of old conquered nations. Don't change your original practices.

(44:50):
Just use our money, wave our flags, and give us
a certain percentage the flags. In this case, as you
guys mentioned, it's branding, it's swag. They will give you
ba small caps was Zeta's logos, T shirts with the logo.
They might give you some small arms firearms training in return.
The Zetas like the federal government level. There'll be funny later,

(45:13):
we're terrifying the federal government level. Zetas get a share
a percentage of all the money from those local criminals.
It is exactly one to one. The kind of franchising
model that you see in fast food. Just so strange
to me that it actually functions that way and and
Waynwright isn't making that up. He been. He talked two

(45:38):
people to at least one person in prison that was
running one of these franchise like, uh, franchise like Zeta's
or is that not Zata's. It's darkly hilarious. It's a yeah,
it's a kingpin from L Salvador uh so. So like
any other franchise arrangement at their pros and cons pro

(46:00):
this allows ze us to grow much more quickly than
they're less illuminated competitors. Con they have the same problem
that all franchise operations have. The more franchise e s
you have, right, the more local outfits you have, the
better it is from the big company because you get

(46:20):
you know, you get to wet your beak, as you said, Noll,
with every single transaction. But if you are the local outfit,
if you're the local franchise, then that means the more
spots there are close to you, the more competitors you have.
There are more people trying to eat your lunch or

(46:41):
sniff your blow or whatever. We want to go with this, Paul,
I trust you on the edit. This makes things tougher
for the local franchises. Every McDonald's, think about it, Every
McDonald's ever in a given area makes money for the
big clown, but they have to compete against the other McDonald's.
The same thing is true in the drug trade. In

(47:02):
legal franchises, franchise ease can go to court, they can sue.
It's called encroachment. They feel like their federal government, they're
big company, their Graham Puba has done them dirty by
having too many you know, McDonald's or Burger Kings or Rby's, Subways, Nando's.
It doesn't matter. It's the same thing. And the problem

(47:26):
is we we're talking about illegal drug trafficking or you know,
just organized crime franchising. There's not really a court of law.
There's someone who decides to kill you, and you don't
really have appeals. This is so weird to me to
think about two groups of Zeta's that converge on the
same corner and then there's a conversation, well, no, there's

(47:47):
our corner. It's like the Spider Man means corner. No, no,
but we're the Zetas. But yeah, but but we're the Zetas.
That's interesting that it was like, it's like a West
Side story like rumble kind of situation. But you know, yeah,
you're right, it's like the Spider Man, mean, where they're
pointing at each other. But you know, you could also
argue that, I mean, the obvious argument is that prohibition
of drugs in general is what creates the the the

(48:10):
vacuum that these folks operator, um, and that's there's no
question about that. But you could also argue that without
a larger scale cartel situation, there would be much more
chaos and in fighting between you know, much much larger
number of competing entities, don't you think. I mean, obviously

(48:32):
the cartels, I'm not I'm not being a cartel apologist here.
I'm saying they do serve some function, uh in in
you know, in this world. Objectively, that's not a bad point,
because the alternative would be, uh, a more micro economic
king of the hill, block by block, city by city fight.

(48:55):
But we're again, we're not being apologist here. What we're
seeing is a natural evolution. As disturbing as it may seem,
it doesn't in these sorts of systems. It doesn't really
matter what you're selling. It matters how you sell it
and how you control uh, competition. Right now, you control

(49:16):
access to resources. We just got a bunch of game
theory listeners. Ears perked up. Well, we talked about that
kind of command and control and management stuff. So shout
out to uh, settlers of Katon, Shout out to a
couple of MTG decks. Uh, look, this is the thing.
Uh Waynewright knows this, as you are alluding to earlier.

(49:38):
Matt Waynewright knows this because he sits down with a
drug kingpin who is in jail in El Salvador and
talks with the guy. Uh and Tom notices. Tom is like, look,
this guy is in jail physically, but he's still clearly
running his business, right, he just has He just couldn't

(49:58):
choose the address of his apartment, basically, but his life continues.
And this guy's gripes are one for one, all the
stuff you would expect to hear from like a very
stressed out mid level manager like um, steph needs to
be better. These people are like doing the wrong thing

(50:19):
on this block and where do they have these deals? Man?
That kind of stuff, and it's interesting. But as a
lot of people, a lot of our fellow listeners today
will point out all businesses legal or illegal. You know,
if if we become agnostic about what they are attempting

(50:41):
to sell and we study instead the structural process of
selling it, we see that businesses passed a certain threshold
typically evolved to practice the same strategies. That is largely
writ that is just capitalism with the capital c But
the big question, the dangerous part, and this is what
we'll end on here, what happens when a cartel replaces

(51:04):
a government a non capitalistic in theory entity, an entity
that is meant to serve and protect the people who
live within its borders. This has almost happened way more
often than people like to think. I mean like Pablo Escobar,
who is in my mind, most famous for introducing the
hippopotamus UH to South America, but is also known for

(51:30):
dabbling in drugs and ultimately he got very very close
to making a run as a legit politician. It's a
scary story, it's worth looking into. But we want you
to know that these brushes with replacing democratically elected governments,
they occur more often than you think, and it works

(51:50):
very It's actually a simple system. You start, you buy
the low level folks, just like banks buy neighborhoods. Right,
You don't start in the is posh Beverly Hills area.
You find the desperate people. You find the people who
need help or the people who desire more power. You
get the low level folks and you support their careers.

(52:14):
You exert your influence to advance your chosen moles right
to ever hire positions of power. You don't start by
buying a president. You start by growing someone into a president.
That's the way you buy an attorney General Clinton, who
then becomes Governor Clinton, who becomes President Clinton. We just

(52:36):
learned about that, by the way, we didn't even did
we even talk about Mina, Arkansas, and like everything that
went down in Mina while he was like cocaine was
coming in on airplanes and the c i A wasn't
fin Hey, but he plays saxophone. Hey man, it might

(52:57):
have just been his own personal to get highway. That's
what you think jazz plays itself? Do you think jazz
plays itself? No, sir, shout out By the way to Connor,
I always love that Sam Jackson line from Jackie Brown,
where like Jackie Brown gets caught with cocaine, He's like

(53:18):
he just explains away, like that man. Maybe she wasn't smoking,
It might have just been her own personally, the guy
with right right, remarkable, Who are we to judge? So
the cartels think they are the ones to judge, to
be honest with you, speaking of segways, since about the
ninety nineties, they understood largely these various different organizations. They

(53:41):
understood their success was contingent on being a power behind
the throne for the breaking bad example, Gus Free never
wants to be police chief. That's too obvious. He wants
to be the biggest donor to the policeman's ball. Right.
That's how you get folks, You start, you start small.
Koch brothers taught us that many years ago, and they

(54:05):
did it. Uh, they are doing it with great success.
Or they were. But the idea was, if they can
co opt government authorities, all they have to do is
give those folks a percentage, a really small percentage. What's
big for an individual is small for a corporation. And
again these are corporations at this point. So they said,

(54:27):
everybody wins, you know what I mean, except for the civilians.
But those aren't really people. They're either customers or their
revenue sources or their victims. Uh So, the alternative they
had was open confrontation, was war hot war writ large,
and this would have been bad for business. They didn't

(54:47):
have a bunch of like, um, go get her guys
like slapping themselves on the face and saying tonight we
dined on blood. They were They were like, what are
our Q for profits gonna look like if we if
we can't make something work here? And this was sort
of the lay of the land until about two thousand

(55:08):
and seven. Two thousand and seven, the boffins at the
cartels changed their calculation and thus they changed their m
O and they begin to attack local elected officials and
political candidates. Why did they do this They did it
exactly in reaction to a two thousand seven statement from

(55:29):
the Mexican federal government that declared open war on cartels.
Just for comparison, keep spinning these business analogies. Imagine if
one day, um, the President of the United States, as
we record this, Joe Biden came up out of press
ofference and he was like, oh gosh, I guess I
need sunglasses and we're doing Uncle Joe one second. This

(55:51):
prop comedy will be worth it for Matt and no folks,
I don't know if it'll be done with it. Okay,
So he goes on and it is unexpected. H wow,
it looks like I'm on coke now, all right? He
goes on and he uh, he has do unexpected press
conference and he goes um, Philly Americans, the time has come.

(56:12):
We can no longer tolerate the activities of Walmart the
good of the American people. This is war. No more
tune amounts like that's kind of what they did, but
with drugs and a lot more guns. I don't think
Subway has an army. Well yeah, I mean if you
just imagine, if you imagine how much of a betrayal

(56:33):
that probably seemed like. Because again, these a lot of
these local and larger politicians and even government like military
officials were receiving a lot of money personally from organized crime.
There are folks like Ernesto Trucci, writing for the Chicago
Policy Review, who pointed us to a fantastic study by

(56:57):
Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley which explains what is happening.
They call it the criminal governance hypothesis, and they say,
the reason that these cartels actively were, you know, an
open war against these governments is that they wanted to
establish criminal governance regimes at the sub national level by

(57:21):
subduing those local municipalities, the folks who need help the most.
Just like corporations before them, they figured out that controlling
the machinery of law gives you direct control over not
just your product, but over what is defined as prosecutable crime.
And it also helps you, you know, sell lives and avocados.

(57:43):
Let's not forget about that, Zack de le Rocca. It
turns out was correct. Again the g ride you want,
the machines that are making them, and the leaders of
these cartels are many, many things. But again, like restaurateurs,
they are not stupid. They could not survive this long
in their environment to otherwise. Maybe we maybe we end

(58:03):
on this like a little thought experiment, Matt. Nope, no, Matt.
Let's say you are a cartel and you want to
replace a government. What's the name of the cartel? What's
the what's the Frederics, the Sinnabon Cartel. Oh, that's really good.

(58:23):
All right, I was going to be the Marcus meth Emporium.
But that's fine, Okay, different names, different places, you know
what I mean? It's Okay, we're at well, you're at
the you're at the Luxottica stage right with sunglasses. Now
you're selling things under different names. So we got this cartel.
Our guys need to expand and they need what all

(58:44):
governments and businesses wants. They want predictable results year over year,
minimal expenses, maximum profit. Those big expenses for your cartel,
they come in the form of criminal penalties. So, being rational,
very intelligent act ters, you take a page from those
Koke brothers out in the US. You start acting local.

(59:05):
You don't buy presidents yet unless that president is cartoonishly incompetent. Yes,
that is a statement that should be taken the way
you thought. I meant it. You start small Zeta style.
You look for vulnerable municipalities, like think about think about
this all right, wherever you live, wherever you live, think

(59:26):
about your world, your region. You know that there are
areas where people are worse off than they are in
other parts of town. That is where you go. You
want to find the places where the rule of law
and the governmental mechanisms meant to enforce that law seem
most strapped for cash. Nolan Matt look at each other

(59:50):
as kingpins of a drug cartel, and they say, boom,
that's where we go. In Mexico, there's a cheek. Sorry, Texas,
just the whole thing, just the whole thing, one of
the biggest states. We'll just do that and then what
do we doing Thursday. But but there's a cheat code,
and we don't we don't really have time to get

(01:00:11):
in the weeds with it now. But in Mexico, it
turns out there's a cheat code. You as drug cartel leaders,
you find an area where the elected officials belong to
a party that is not the political party of the
current Mexican president, because that party, the ruling party typically

(01:00:33):
historically in Mexico, is going to give less federal support
against drug trafficking because oppositional politicians run that town. And
that means that the federal government is already poisoning the
pill against these very innocent people. Now, if you're the president,

(01:00:55):
you can point to those places with the opposing political
party and you can say, hey, look how terrible they are.
Look at all the violence in your city in your
state because you supported this political party. If you support
me and my crew, my gang, maybe this can you know,
get a little better. It's gross it's true. It's how

(01:01:18):
the system works. If you don't fall in line with
that current dominant party, you have a target on your back.
And this I wish this wasn't true, but it very
much is. And then if you come back into the fold,
you come in from the cold, violence starts to go away. Wow,
just like that. Trejo and lay Back this up. In
their research. They show that Cartel's not only exploit political rivalries,

(01:01:42):
but they also show this blew my mind. They show
that Cartel's time attacks too electoral cycles, which is nuts.
Imagine if an election was coming up in your city
and you knew that drug violence was on the rise
for some reason, and you might not know why, but
you know what's coming. It wasn't a particularly great show,

(01:02:05):
but um, that show Weeds, as it kind of like
moved into later seasons, did sort of show that process
that you're talking about. I think at the end of
the day, the president of Mexico was like deeply embedded
within the cartel. I can't remember exactly because it was,
like I said, not particularly great, but um, you know what,

(01:02:26):
it is a thing for sure, especially in countries where
that line between you know, politician and criminal is ever
thinner how to say that it's not a thing here?
We know, damn well it is, but maybe not to
the same degree of like you know, um, I don't know.
Maybe maybe that's maybe that's a pipe dream. Maybe it's

(01:02:47):
just as bad. Money is a drug too, man, Money
is a drug in the first ones, and people get hooked. Look,
what we're saying here is not that cartels have replaced
the entire or Mexican government. Yet we're not saying that
at all. Well, we're telling you is something that's in
its own way more disturbing. Cartels knowingly have their finger

(01:03:11):
on the vote. They don't want individual neighborhoods, they want
the offices of power. And what does that mean for
the future. Honestly means things are dire. Opposing the narcos,
as anyone can tell you, is a quick ticket to
an early death. There are many, many, many heroic individuals
who are fighting against this incipiate takeover. But there's a

(01:03:34):
reason people talk about you know what they call it,
uh what you're alluding to knowl In Mexico, it's sometimes
referred to Latin America, sometimes referred to as plato plomo,
which means silver or lead, which means if you can't
be bought by silver, you will be bought by lead. Guys,

(01:03:56):
forgive me, I think I think these symbolism here is
being lost on me. Had alluding to bullets, Yes, let see, Okay, okay,
cool silver bullets. If you wanted to go where wolves? Yeah,
huge problem that our next episode where wolds. But also

(01:04:16):
we have to admit oh wait, wait, have you guys
seen that new vampire movie on Netflix with Jamie far Shift.
Oh my gosh, I liked it. I really enjoyed, had
a great time with it. Jamie fox Snoop Doggs there.
Uh yeah, yeah, I like it. I'm a sucker for
any supernatural comedy horror honestly kind of has like tails

(01:04:37):
from the hood vibes from the from the promos that
I've been looking at. Yeah, I'd be interested to see
what you think. Like, you know, I think the three
of us are Actually we have a We have a
pretty good finger on the pulse of each other's taste. Like,
I don't think we've ever given each other a bad
recommendation on things. Unfortunately, not on the vote. We have

(01:04:57):
very little control over that. Yeah. Yeah, well, podcast cartels
aren't quite a thing. Yet drug cartels very much are
and oh I see your face, mat and uh well, well, uh.
One difference between a hypothetical podcast cartel and a drug cartel,

(01:05:20):
especially in Mexico, is that, you know, the definition of
the state really is if you get past all the
niceties and diplomatic window dressing and all the you know,
pretends about cultural traditions or whatever, which really find is
the definition of a state. The only one that matters

(01:05:41):
is the entity that has a monopoly on violence, on
the legal application of violence. That is the only definition
of a state that really matters in human history, and
cartels are getting close to that. Cartels now have gangs
and regularly did groups of armed forces that have in

(01:06:04):
some cases got training from places like the School of
the America's look it Up, have fun uh and this
means that. And they've got branded hats, they got the swag.
You know, they're driven. But the thing you need to
realize is Mexico specifically is arguably home to more armies

(01:06:24):
than the state itself controls. And that should scare you. Uh.
And the big question, of course, if we want some
light at the end of the tunnel, will legalizing these substances.
Will it curtail the expansion of these brutal regimes? I
mean I had to say, I hate to be this person, guys,
But years ago, yes that might have worked, But today

(01:06:46):
that window of opportunity may have passed people by. Cartel's
went from gigs to mobs, to businesses to international corporations.
And if you were listening now, in make no mistake,
the next step is governed. I mean, what does their
I R s look like? Well, that's exactly right then,
And and to your point I think you made very
early in the episode. Uh, we were talking about prohibition,

(01:07:09):
you know, once prohibition and did they found somewhere else
to to to go in terms of like you know,
illegal underground enterprises. Uh, if if all of a sudden
tomorrow drugs were legalized, yeah, it would be a blow.
But does it maybe mean they would get into even
more diabolical and nefarious trades like human trafficking. They'd up

(01:07:30):
their division, right, That's what I'm saying. Like, I just
don't think I think it's an illusion or a little
bit um naive in the very least to say that,
if you know, I mean the point earlier about prohibition
being a big case cause of this. But you're right,
you can't put that back in the bottle tomorrow just
by okay, sorry, we take it back. All drugs are
legal now, that's not gonna end to the cartel's iron grip.

(01:07:54):
Switzerland did fix, at least to some extent there um
heroin all by by legalizing and making it a something
you could get from your doctor through a prescription, which curtailed,
you know, a lot of the black market heroin sales,
But that didn't remove the organizations that we're selling the heroin.

(01:08:17):
So I'm interested to know, I haven't seen a deep
enough dive and like what actually happened to the organization
selling the heroine that is now legal. They opened to McDonald's. Yeah,
it's not like the biggest market in the universe, you know,
just just it's a very wealthy market. Um, that's true.
But but this is this is where we leave it.

(01:08:37):
And you know, folks, we have a lot of a
lot of our fellow listeners today have spent time in Mexico.
Are Mexican nationals may have tragically had encounters with cartel
associated crime. One thing that happens very often in the
US is that a country, millions of people gets vilified

(01:08:59):
or treated as the is monolithic. Make no mistake, Just
so we can be very clear, US drug policies are
a huge part of the rise to power of cartel's Uh.
And there is a very compelling argument to be made
that making these things no longer, making these substances no

(01:09:20):
longer a source of illicit income will slice the Achilles
heel of some of these cartels. But the again, the
question is, you know, what if, like here, here's the thing,
what if potatoes became illegal. As we're recording this, we
get out of the booth, we find the potatoes are

(01:09:41):
now illegal. They're on the level of heroin everywhere but Switzerland.
McDonald's would not fail because McDonald's makes a ton of
money as a real estate company. Now they don't need
the fries. Yes, but they could also just work with
the government and have a few select McDonald's for potato

(01:10:04):
growers where it's specifically sanctioned potatoes for their products, in
the same way that drug companies you know, still by
heroin essentially to turn into legal prescription drugs. Uh. That
that still happens. Remember that I'm gonna turn into a
potato horder. I can't live without them. I'm addicted. I

(01:10:27):
need the carbs, you know. But we also need to
thank you folks. So we went a little long on
this one, but we we feel like the conspiracies are real, uh,
and they need to be examined in more depth. So
thanks to Tom Wainwright. Thanks to everybody for tuning in.
The most important part of this show is you. We

(01:10:49):
want to hear from you, and we try to be
easy to find online, correct de mundo. You can find
us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, and
you can find us on YouTube at they handle conspiracy
stuff on Instagram. We exist as conspiracy Stuff show. And hey,
while you're on the internet, go go preorder that book.
Preord to the book stuff. They don't want you to

(01:11:10):
know the book. Ben Bolan in the Big Text for
damn good reason, with with with Matt, with Matt Frederick
and Noel Brown. We did our best. Uh. It is
so good, it really is. And the reviews are coming
in and they're really positive, and it really I'm just
so proud of you, Ben, proud of all of us,
but really just not that other park. The illustrations are cool,

(01:11:31):
it'll be a cool addition to any conspiracy, really exactly,
Admiral Turbot, Nick Benson, fabulous friend of ours mural artist
Shordinaire did these beautiful, uh comic book style illustrations. Get
ye to an Amazon or whatever Barnes and Noble page
and preorder that business. It's gonna be a really nice
looking and most importantly reading book. And thanks to everybody

(01:11:54):
who already did pre order and uh sent sent a
note to me. Just got back in the States for
a second, I've got I've got some personal thank you
on the way. It might be filmed in a weird place,
but but yes, we we are grateful. You will also
not to be too orphan any Christmas story about it.

(01:12:16):
You also get access to a secret episode when you
pre ordered the book. We're not even going to tell
you what it is. Nope. Hey. In the weirdest turn
of events ever, our podcast got turned into research that
got turned into a book. Then that book got turned
into an audio book. So our podcast like went around

(01:12:39):
this weird, weird way to turn into a really cool
prose audio book. It's awesome, It's really really good and
I can't wait for you all to hear it. So
check that out and if you if you, if you
don't like it, then buy it for your enemies. That'll
show him. Yeah, but if that'll show But if you uh,

(01:13:00):
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(01:13:23):
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