In parts of the United States, raw milk trades on the black market
Black markets are not only about drugs and smuggled weapons. Several US states require milk to be pasteurised, and the ban has spawned underground trade in raw milk and young raw-milk cheese, legal in some EU countries but outlawed in America if aged less than 60 days.
A black market is any trade that breaks the law, or some institutional rule, somewhere. People use it to deal in contraband, dodge taxes and regulations, or get around rationing and price controls, and they usually pay in cash because it is hard to trace. The grey market sits in between: legal goods sold through channels the maker never authorised. The white market is ordinary legal commerce. Profits from illicit deals on which no tax was paid are called black money, often laundered to hide their source.
Economists split the hidden economy into layers according to which rules are broken. The illegal economy deals in banned goods and services. The unreported economy evades the tax code; in the United States unreported income is estimated at 2 trillion dollars, leaving a tax gap of 450 to 600 billion. The unrecorded economy escapes government statisticians, a particular headache in countries that switched from socialist to UN-standard accounts. The informal economy operates outside licensing, labour contracts, credit and social security, untaxed and uncounted in national output. Its true size is unknowable, and one writer argues no government or company could replace the 1.8 billion jobs it provides.
Prices can go either way. Goods that are scarce, dangerous, rationed or banned tend to cost more, since the prohibition itself pushes prices up. Yet even when the underground is cheaper, many buyers stick to legal sellers, who are regulated and accountable. In some places knowingly buying on the black market is itself a crime, and in England and Wales stolen goods can be confiscated from innocent buyers with little hope of a refund. Sometimes the illegal option simply wins on service: many Baltimore residents prefer unlicensed taxis as more available and fairly priced.
Scale varies enormously. The United Nations puts the retail value of illegal drugs at 530 billion dollars, and campaigners for legalisation compare the trade to Prohibition-era alcohol in the 1920s. Interpol reports that illegal logging rivals drug production in value in some countries.
Source: Black market
