Prince Quotes

Prohibition begets proliferation

In the domain of cops and robbers, an interdiction serves to structure a black market and a shadow economy.

When Prohibition was first enacted in 1920, most people stockpiled alcohol, thinking they'd have enough to last them for years. By 1923, that was starting to run out, so your average person started to rely more and more on criminals.

Bootleggers quake in fear of me ringing them on a Sunday afternoon. I call after dinner, usually.

Black markets exist any time there is a profit to be made.

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.

When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.

The country is being flooded with illegal liquor and that either Congress will need to modify the law or spend incalculable sums to enforce it [Prohibition].

Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a business man. When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive [in Chicago] it's hospitality.

Illegal stills had always been plentiful in the South, so Prohibition there did not have the bite that it had in the North.

I believe I've always been so successful on the black market for a lot of different reasons.

What Brighton's got is a major sea port on either side, good for importing drugs, great for exporting cash, stolen cars, stolen antiques. It's got the largest number of antique shops in the UK, so it's a great place to fence stolen goods. It's got tremendous communication: you've got the sea ports, you've got the channel tunnel, you've got Gatwick Airport 25 minutes away, and London's 50 minutes away by train. So all these escape routes... Which is what villains like.

Every general prohibition creates its bootleggers.

It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse. It's the politics of contraband, it's the smuggler's blues.

For every prohibition you create, you also create an underground.

Doo never actually made moonshine, but he hauled about an ocean of it.

I don't know whether crime is dictating business or business is dictating crime.

Prohibition created more drunks than anything else.

This is a business that works outside the law.

Black market sounds negative, but, in fact, everybody loved the black markets during the communist era. It was the only place that officials and others could get shoes and consumer products. There were shortages everywhere. The black market during the Soviet era was essentially the only capitalism there was.

People have to cooperate. Many people and traders here try to evade tax. They don’t want to pay tax so they smuggle goods and services into this country to make more money—as much as possible. The also manipulate the foreign currency market.

The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price.

The can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money.

When you criminalize something, only criminals can deal with it. When criminals deal with it, there's no recourse to law, so there's only recourse to violence.