> their activity is bad for the state, illicit trade is lost revenue
I wonder. With a sufficiently sociopathic point of view, every high end car theft almost certainly represents a subsequent insurance claim and new car purchase. And every insurance claim results in upward pressure on insurance prices. If you just look at car theft and export through a "economic impact to the state" lens, there are without doubt a lot of industry and political people who see it as being new revenue and _good_ for the state.
If you really think it in non-standard ways. It does contribute to GDP. New cars sold, insurance claims. And I suppose on average the criminals are more likely to spend their gains in economy in general.
It contributes to GDP in the same way that someone fucking a whore instead of their wife does. Yeah there's a transaction there, but should there be? And at what cost? Ditto for the divorce.
This kind of stuff is textbook broken windows fallacy.
Your logic reminds me of when we see people on HN saying that it's "good" when old cars get totaled out over petty BS or have their operating costs artificially raised by the state because they statistically get replaced with safer, cleaner cars but at the end of the day the population has to bear those costs at some point. At the end of the day people are basically forced to surplus in a particular way. Viewed through a state lens of course the state wants this invested in highly regulated, fairly complex and integrated areas of the economy.
You don't even need to be a sociopath. You just need to be a single minded idiot who's rounding every hard to measure harm to zero in dishonest pursuit of your goal.
You see these thought patterns and flimsy justifications on all sorts of issues once you start looking.
I wonder. With a sufficiently sociopathic point of view, every high end car theft almost certainly represents a subsequent insurance claim and new car purchase. And every insurance claim results in upward pressure on insurance prices. If you just look at car theft and export through a "economic impact to the state" lens, there are without doubt a lot of industry and political people who see it as being new revenue and _good_ for the state.