I don't understand, are you saying this like black market weed wasn't also capitalism? Like what is the baseline with weed for which it "never... [got] better" from?

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Capitalism is not just commerce. Capitalism is the idea that you can buy control of a market and use the leverage of your investments (capital) to gain outsized profits off the value of the labors of others.

For sure, there are capitalists in the black market drug trade, but there are also socialists (where the laborers have a greater protected share of the value they generate) and fascists, where violent force is the leverage used to gain profits. I'm not suggesting the black market was good, but it did have the side effect that corporations and politicians could not publicly use their positions of power to capture the markets.

Your local weed dealer is probably out of business, or has graduated to other illicit sales. It's the same thing that happened to mom and pop shops in every town when superstores and the internet crowded them out of business.