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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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Asklemmy
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Drug cartels aren't really corporations. There's no formal structure, shares or board meetings, and sometimes they do just descend into civil war (like in Mexico right now). They're businesses, but in some ways Rome was as well. The thing that makes them a funny historical edge case is that their primary business is transport rather than theft, and that's down to the massive US/Canadian demand, the wealth behind it, and the inability of any recognised state to join the drug trade in their place and get away with it.
This is an arbitrary list of things and I don't agree that all corporations have all of these, but I guarantee most cartels have a formal structure, a clear description of ownership, and what qualifies as board of leaders. Most wouldn't be able to function without it.
They compete with rival cartels in all the same ways corporations would if they could (or already do when they can get away with it).
I'm curious why you're willing to call them businesses but not corporations.
It's definitional, a corporation is a specific legal structure. A single trader is not a corporation, but is a business. Ditto for Rome, which I've never heard called a corporation even though it was all about money.
Civil war. In case you aren't following the relevant news, the Sinaloa cartel is fighting with itself. A corporation can never do that - government laws set out very clearly who controls what.
And, that makes a huge impact on what kind of people run a corporation, and how they go about managing their business. Managing the loyalty of underlings is of little concern, while it's about the only concern for a warlord. If a VP tried to run their own business with company assets, they'd just be jailed for breach of trust.
I admit I am misusing the term "cartel" here, given that it refers to a group of independent interests acting cooperatively, not a single entity. And legally recognized corporations already attempt to form cartels whenever possible, which is the entire purpose of anti-trust law.
And I agree that govt legislations each have their own definitions for what constitutes a "corporation", but it's the same for "marriage". Yet we wouldn't say marriage only exists if you have a govt.
I don't think it's useful or interesting to end the discussion at "a govt defines a corporation, therefore a corporation doesn't exist without a govt". Because I maintain that if the US govt disappeared, all the entities you currently consider "US-based corporations" would not disappear. Similarly, corporations currently operate internationally in many different countries with many different legislative requirements and many different definitions of "corporation". Yet we don't think of them as existing exclusively in the context of any one of those countries.
Corporations do have infighting, and Hostile Takeovers do happen, and we are in agreement that ONLY reason they're not bloodier is because of governments enforcing their laws. But also, I shouldn't have made "cartel" analagous to "corporation", since the analogy for a cartel civil war would be multiple businesses or corporations having a falling out.
But we also already have a sordid history of US "corporations" operating outside the laws of other countries, oftentimes with the help of the US military. So how do we square that circle?
Publicly traded corporations wouldn't really make sense or exist anymore, but certain private ones in the right industries might manage to go oligarch, and become/set up a new government. Most would be hopelessly unprepared and would be overrun, though. In my own answer there's an anecdote about this.
People know what the Sinaloa cartel is, and might not know about the nuances of corporate structures, or even what a share is, but do have a vague idea corporations are complicated, and very dependent on law enforcement and litigation to function. I won't argue semantics.