Narconomics – Tom Wainwright

One of the best books on economic and social topics I've managed to read. Tom Wainwright presents really interesting issues related to how drug cartels operate and how all sorts of anti-drug agencies operate wrongly. The stories told in it are incredibly gripping, logical and present a chain of cause and effect.

Buy me and read me

For most of the book, Wainwright focuses on descriptions of the operations of drug gangs. You can get the impression that it's a good piece of #knowhow on running a drug business. The successive chapters offer us a recipe for the operations described earlier.

A similar problem was tackled by the creators of the channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell.

About the book

What did the bosses of drug gangs learn from observing the world of big business?

How on earth can a fledgling drug-cartel boss succeed in an illegal industry worth 300 billion dollars a year? By learning from the best. From building brand value to personalised customer service — the people creating criminal organisations diligently studied the strategies and tactics of corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's and Coca-Cola. And what do those in power have to do to be able to fight this plague? Stop spending 100 billion dollars a year on ineffective actions and understand that drug cartels operate like brilliantly organised corporations.

Tom Wainwright, an editor at The Economist, uncovers the secrets of the most mysterious and brutal of activities — the production of and trade in drugs. The road leads from the coca fields in the Andes, through American prisons and marijuana shops in Colorado, all the way to drug dens in the darkest corners of the internet. The author of Narconomics provides a fresh and innovative look at the question of the drug trade and its 250 million consumers. He talks to a Bolivian cocaine-market magnate, a gang leader from El Salvador, a pill maker from New Zealand and a charming Mexican granny who, while frying pancakes, hatches murder plans. He interviews presidents, police officers and teenage killers in order to understand how drug gangs function, why they cooperate with one another and what corporate social responsibility has to do with all this.