Appearance and Disappearance
If an economic good is illegal but not seen by many in society as particularly harmful, such as alcohol under prohibition in the United States, the black market prospers. Black marketeers can reinvest profits in diverse legal or illegal activities, well beyond the original source of profit.
Some, for example in the marijuana-trade debate, argue for removing the underground markets by making illegal products legal. This would, in their view:
- decrease the illegal cashflow, thus making the performance of other, potentially more harmful, activities financially harder
- allow quality and safety controls on the traded goods, thus reducing harm to consumers
- let the goods be taxed, providing a source of revenue
- free up court time and prison space and save taxpayer money.
Read more about this topic: Underground Economy
Famous quotes containing the word appearance:
“The aim of science is to apprehend this purely intelligible world as a thing in itself, an object which is what it is independently of all thinking, and thus antithetical to the sensible world.... The world of thought is the universal, the timeless and spaceless, the absolutely necessary, whereas the world of sense is the contingent, the changing and moving appearance which somehow indicates or symbolizes it.”
—R.G. (Robin George)