Joe Rogan Experience #2395 - Mariana van Zeller

Economists estimate that about 35% of the global economy is ‘hidden’—15–20% black market (illegal goods and services) and the rest gray market (untaxed or unregulated work). This isn’t just drugs and guns; it includes street vendors and off-the-books labor that also affects tax bases, public services, and inequality.

Van Zeller repeatedly finds that smugglers, couriers, counterfeiters, and even some cartel workers are motivated by survival and blocked opportunities—a teenage cocaine carrier who wants to be a dentist, or villagers with no other viable work. Thinking in terms of ‘could this have been me in different circumstances?’ changes how we design policy.

The U.S. is the world’s largest drug consumer market, spending roughly $150 billion a year on drugs, which sustains cartels and violence across the border. At home, fentanyl mixed with xylazine (‘tranq dope’) is causing gangrenous wounds, amputations, and mass addiction, while many rehab centers are fraudulent, treating patients as billable assets rather than people in crisis.

Beyond classic Nigerian-email stereotypes, van Zeller documents ‘scam factories’ in places like Cambodia and Myanmar where trafficked workers are tortured and forced to run crypto ‘pig-butchering’ scams. Victims range from lonely individuals in online romance scams to a small-town U.S. bank manager who lost tens of millions of client funds chasing fake crypto returns.

They highlight cases like a Guatemalan mother and daughter legally seeking asylum, only to have the mother deported, deprived of medicine, and die, and an American-raised young man deported to Mexico where he doesn’t even speak Spanish. Rogan and van Zeller argue that once non-criminal immigrants are deeply integrated, mass raids and deportations are cruel, waste talent, and alienate communities that could be allies.