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The fact that they want votes at all is a sign of how much more you have to be courted under a democratic government. You may shrug and say that this influence is very small, but you don't make any exemption for population in your post. That is, you appear indifferent as to whether that government rules over you and 9 others or you and 99999 others.
Moreover, consider the fact that there is no recourse at all under the cartel's governance. If they have a shootout and you happen to be affected, who are you going to complain to? Or if they decide they want to use your property a certain way, what are you going to do? Which system would you prefer to be ruled by?
Because they can ruin lives, and their nature means people cannot think rationally when partaking of them. A substance that people cannot be expected to use rationally seems like something meaningfully different than most goods.
How is that working out for Mexico? War and 100k+ missing people a year is preferable to legalizing drugs?
South America is uniquely violent compared to old world countries with similar markers for instability. Almost all of it boils down to the manufacturing and selling of drugs.
I think you are strawmanning my argument.
Which was that a sufficiently potent band of criminals and a government is indistinguishable because the cartels in Mexico display the ability to govern and in some cases the consent of the governed, I would go as far to posit that if a cartel becomes sufficiently powerful and entrenched within an economy, they would very much allow people to vote.
If you legalize it, how much is that going to cut down on the violence? Moreover, it's not as if they're only supplying domestically. I doubt the US is going to let Mexico wash its hands of efforts to prevent the export of those drugs, and this is one of those things the gangs and government fight over.
I'm not straw-manning the argument, I understand that your point is about perceptions of sovereignty. My point is that we should not forget that a system in which a person's vote does nothing is not the ideal for a democratic government, whereas there is no reason to think the cartels give a damn in the first place. We see real-life dictatorships which control more than the cartels do of their own countries and they don't give people real voting power either.
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I had no practical recourse when the United States government decided that my family's rental properties could be indefinitely occupied by squatters because (apparently) that prevents Covid or something. There are also more than a few examples of individuals being disciplined by their governments for defending their own property - sometimes it's worse to have a government than not.
I agree with your broader point, but the level of practical recourse available can feel just as hopeless under a government as a gang. Ain't no drug dealer ever tried to tell me whether gardening supplies are "essential".
Having recourse isn't the same as getting what you want. You could have challenged the matter in the courts. You could have voted for and campaigned for politicians who were opposed to the policy. You could have petitioned the existing government to reconsider the policy. Even though there was an eviction moratorium, it wasn't the same as the government saying you had to allow squatters—the tenants still owed whatever you were charging on the current lease, and you can still go after them for it once they are finally evicted. And if they don't pay there are mechanisms by which you can enforce the judgment. And if you engage in any of these activities, the risk to your personal safety or livelihood is low enough that it isn't an issue. Contrast this with a drug lord deciding to appropriate your apartment for one of his friends. Who are you even going to complain to? What could potentially happen if you do complain? Yeah, it sucks when you lose money because of a government policy you disagree with, but it's a much better situation than when you lose money because of a criminal you disagree with.
I don't think this is a very strong argument. Trivially, a portion of covered tenants are effectively unservable, a larger portion of covered tenants are going to be judgement proof, most state eviction systems got absolutely wrecked by the moratorium in ways that prevent a lot of newly-started evictions from actually going through in anything close to a reasonable time frame and further delay them, and being incredibly charitable and assuming that the same people who told SCOTUS about behavior "absent an
unexpected change" weren't planning around these things, they still are separately impacting those systems by other bad policies.As far as I can tell, there have been no successful cases attempting to bring damages against the government -- indeed, the unlawfulness of the moratorium was used to dismiss a suit about the damages for a taking.
And that's for a court case that ultimately decided on statutory interpretation grounds, not takings clause or due process ones. Eg, a case where the courts would have been A-OK if Congress wrote a law.
This isn't quite parallel with the mafia don that theoretically will accept appeals from those under his 'protection', but gives his made men's decisions incredible latitude even in the face of repeated bad acts, and only occasionally has them injure the representatives of even victorious appellants. But it rhymes a lot more than you'd hope.
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I agree that a government that tries to engage with its people beyond simply keeping the peace is going to fuck up and impose unbearable burdens on some people. But I'd gladly take a democratic government over a literal cartel, and I suspect most people would as well.
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