A comprehensive go through the world of illicit trade

Though mankind has traded tangible goods for millennia, latest technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in both reputable and unlawful economies. Before three decades, the innovative forms of illicit trade have damaged with all historical precedents and, as Dark Business shows, today operate as if on steroids, tied to computers and social networking. In this new world of illicit business, which benefits state governments and diverse participants, about Dark Business: What sort of New Illicit Economy Is Threatening Our Future trade is certainly impersonal and anonymized, and huge profits are made in short periods with limited accountability to sellers, intermediaries, and purchasers.

Louise Shelley examines how new technology, communications, and globalization gasoline the exponential growth of dangerous forms of illegal trade-the markets for narcotics and kid pornography online, the escalation of sex trafficking through web advertisements, and the sale of endangered types for which profits total in the vast sums of dollars. The illicit overall economy exacerbates many of the world’s destabilizing phenomena: the perpetuation of issues, the proliferation of arms and weapons of mass devastation, and environmental degradation and extinction. Shelley explores illicit trade in tangible goods-drugs, humans, arms, wildlife and timber, seafood, antiquities, and ubiquitous counterfeits-and contrasts this with the damaging trade on the net, where intangible goods cost consumers and agencies billions because they drop identities, loan company accounts, access to computer data, and intellectual home.

Demonstrating that illicit trade is certainly a business the global community cannot afford to ignore and must interact to handle, Dark Commerce considers diverse ways of responding to this increasing task.