I would definitely prefer the marijuana
In the early yuppie era, I remember reading in National Geographic that the deluxe chocolate business was the beneficiary of some counter-intuitive marketing. The more expensive the chocolatiers made their products, the more loud rich young idiots bought them.
I don’t think the gold-plated-truffle industry ever quite recovered from the Crash of ‘87, but marketing marcheth ever onward. Today, there are more outrageously expensive chocolates on the market than were ever available to the junk bond whizkids with Motorolas even bigger than their Rolexes.
This exposé of the makers - in a manner of speaking - of some really thrillingly expensive choccies, therefore, tickled my funny bone.
(Via.)
Fascinating. This reminds me that I haven’t been to Jacque Torres recently. Time for a chocolate run…
Comment by RichVR — December 22, 2006 @ 5:50 am
I’m somewhat skeptical of the $350 USD per pound price they quote for Marijuana in El Paso. I suspect the author meant to quote that price per ounce. Maybe the poorest quality Mexican “brickweed” might go for $350 a pound if you buy it from a major distributor before they even try to get it across the border, but I can’t see anything selling for that price in the US.
Comment by Alereon — December 22, 2006 @ 7:17 am
Heh - I missed that :-).
Yes, $US350/lb grass seems rather cheap. The stuff’d have a hard time becoming the USA’s top cash crop if it were that cheap.
(Which is not to say that I actually believe the recent story saying that it is the USA’s top cash crop. It may be so, but it’s from an activist group, and you can’t trust activists further than you can throw them. This could be one of those rare cases where the grass enthusiasts and the drug warriors agree, though; government drug seizure press releases usually hilariously overestimate the value of the drugs seized, too.)
Comment by Daniel Rutter — December 22, 2006 @ 7:57 am
Sounds like you found a good example of a Veblen good.
Comment by mph — December 23, 2006 @ 1:01 am
Even here in Australia it’s unlikely that the reported amount of marijuana is equal to the amount actually seized.
In Queensland, it’s sometimes less.
Comment by phrantic — December 23, 2006 @ 1:12 pm