5 Things You Won't Believe Spawned Black Markets
For as long as there have been laws, there have been black markets to sell whatever those laws prohibit -- drugs, guns, whatever Han Solo was shipping on behalf of Jabba during his smuggler days. But not every law is as clear-cut as "machine guns and heroin are bad," and not every black market item is as menacing as those. In fact, you'd be utterly baffled to see what's getting traded in the shadows these days, considering it includes things like ...
#5. Flight Attendant Uniforms (Yes, for Fetishists)
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With the economy in the crapper, Japanese airlines struggled with bankruptcy, trying to rebuild their image and their finances. This of course led to some job cuts to crews and flight attendants. Unfortunately for the airlines, the female staff they had previously let go had neglected to return the uniforms, presumably adding them to their cosplay wardrobes (because we understand that's what all Japanese women do, without exception).
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If the vows aren't spoken in front of a giant underage love pillow, then the marriage is null and void.
Freshly laid off and presumably bitter, the ex-employees turned to selling their possessions to make rent, and they were pleasantly surprised to discover that there is totally a market for stewardess uniforms in Japan. And we're talking to the point that a single uniform is worth thousands of dollars.
Officially, the airlines had prohibited the sale of their uniforms for fear that someone would be able to purchase one and use it to sneak their way past security and into restricted areas, which is a completely legitimate concern. However, as the pink-slipped stewardesses were to find out, it seems like that's not really what the people buying the uniforms have in mind.
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"Now come back in an hour with half a flat Diet Coke and tell me my bag isn't tucked under the seat enough."
In a revelation that is equal parts disturbing and reassuring, it appears that most buyers are not budding terrorist cells looking to infiltrate airport security, but simply uniform fetishists looking to infiltrate women dressed as airline employees.
And these people are devoted to their role-playing fantasies -- just the jacket sells for hundreds of dollars, while the full New Japan Airline flight attendant uniform sells for the equivalent of more than $3,000. The uniform from a rival airline is priced at nearly twice that.
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The three evolutions of stewardess -- Uniform, Uniforce, Unimaster.
Moreover, uniforms that have been worn are considered more valuable than new outfits and garner a higher price, which should come as no surprise in a nation that sold used panties in vending machines.
Meredith P.
Self-loathing is only a twist away.
#4. Mega-Flushing Toilets
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The staggering majority of Western households have at least one toilet, so it may seem strange that there could be a black market for them. But imagine this: You've just given your shiny new eco-friendly low-flow toilet its inaugural poo-slam. You stand proudly and push down on the lever, only to be filled with panic as the commode gives a halfhearted gurgle and spits all your waste back into the bowl, spilling out over the lip and forcing you to take immediate action: shout upstairs to your mom that burglars broke in and shit on the floor.
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"And you don't want to know what they did to my bed sheets."
Ever since 1992, American toilets by law could use only 1.6 gallons per flush. Being used to flushing power in the range of 3.5 to 5 gallons, Americans with brand-spanking-new toilets suddenly found themselves with toilets that couldn't handle their dookies.
People found themselves having to flush several times just to hide the shame of persistent floaters and eventually got fed up with it, deciding to smuggle in high-flow toilets from Canada at the risk of hefty fines or even imprisonment, because yes, installing high-flow toilets is against the law. Plumbers found themselves braving $2,500 fines to secretly install the less eco-friendly toilets. Some homeowners would install the toilets themselves, and others modified low-flow toilets to make them more powerful.
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For an in-depth look at the lives of hotshot toilet modders, try "Fast and Furiously Allergic to Corn."
Some desperate bear-shitters would even pull off a sly deception, displaying a law-abiding toilet conforming to the 1.6-gallon flush regulation for inspectors before switching it for an illegally competent model once the inspectors left, which is surprising on two fronts: one, for the ingenuity of people wanting to flush their dinosauric poo submarines with dignity, and two, for the realization that "toilet inspection" is a real, actual thing.
This isn't even addressing the sort of "fact finding" mission one has to go through in order to actually get a high-flow toilet across the border. You have to live close enough to the Canadian border to drive over and get one, or know somebody who does who would be willing to run porcelain for you. Or you could call around to commercial fixture warehouses and see if they have any old high-flow units lying around. It's quite a trail of breadcrumbs, and in each conversation you have along the way, you are implicitly telling everyone that you shit like a demon.
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"Yes, hello? Do you have high-flow toilets? Perfect. Because I fire out logs the size of Howie Mandel."
#3. Breast Milk and Sperm
If you had a list of "things not to purchase from shady sources," you would think that "bodily fluids" would be right up there alongside "health insurance" and "children." But you would be wrong. Dead wrong.
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Filthily, stickily wrong.
We've written before about the difficult yet lucrative market for human sperm -- some of the males reading this paid their rent that way. But in some countries, selling your sperm means risking jail.
That's because in Canada, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act was passed in 2004, prohibiting monetary reward for sperm and egg donors, which led to marked shortages in sperm banks. The reason for that was simple: If you don't pay people for doing something, chances are people aren't going to want to do it. Even if that thing is masturbating.
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"If you aren't going to pay me, I might as well go back to doing it in my neighbor's mailbox."
However, the demand for donor sperm did not decrease, which lead to under-the-table chili peeling. In Canada today, more than 90 percent of the semen used for artificial insemination is from back alley sperm deals (which is illegal) or from profit-based sperm banks in the United States (which is also illegal). Anyone caught seed smuggling in Canada is facing up to 10 years in jail and a $500,000 fine.
Not that the ladies are left out of the bodily fluid black market. They can always sell their breast milk.
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Is it too much to hope that they sell it specifically to babies?
Many women, after giving birth, produce much more milk than their new baby will realistically need. So what does a responsible adult do with the extra milk? She pumps it out and sells it online, earning as much as $20,000 in a single year. In one lady's case, she made enough money off of her surplus breast milk in just three months to afford a new laptop and a wedding dress.
While it's technically legal (as in there are no laws against it as of now), the FDA is very concerned about the handling of the milk. Milk can go bad in a lot of ways, and this is a completely unregulated market conducted over the Internet. So it's unlikely that the donor was adequately screened for diseases, and the milk probably wasn't handled in a way that would make it safe for a baby's consumption. And when you can make that much money off of something the female body regularly produces without any kind of regulation, you're going to attract some disreputable people, including some women who turned up positive for child-friendly illnesses like HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B and C.
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The vanilla, chocolate and banana flavors of the breast milk world.
Even if the mother is clean, the categories of breast milk are puzzling, to say the least. A browse of online milk sellers boasts milk from mothers of "fat babies," milk from moms who are willing to give free samples to prove "quality and safety" (the process used to determine these attributes is not adequately explained) and even milk from women who are willing to sell their breast milk to men, because let's be honest, they have more money than babies.
And as if the horror wasn't complete, some customers have relayed stories of having paid a truckload of money for "clean" breast milk, only to receive a nonrefrigerated bag of curdled milk in the mail.
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"... so you're saying a trampoline won't make it frothier?"
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Replythe sperm thing...what the f**k man why did no one tell me about this -.-. next time i jack off im asking for 150$
Reply#4- I'm not a plumber, nor do I claim to know much about the subject,but don't you think the 'old' style toilets would have been tested all those years ago. If you remember, way back in the day, from about the early 1960's, or so, and back American appliances were actually built in America, by Americans and they lasted FOREVER. It's because they were built well(like tanks!) and American consumers wouldn't put up with spending their money on a piece of junk that blew up in two months. Back in those days and before, way back when indoor toilets were becoming the norm, don't you think the designers and manufacturers tested them to see how much water was needed to send a good sized brown trout out to sea? They weren't just going to install them in homes and have them not work, like the new Al Gore friendly models, heck no! For every family out their that doesn't have a dad or large teen dropping more than his share, there is always that husky uncle who eats a third plate of stuffing and potatoes on every holiday. And American plumbers and appliance designers knew this and built them their product to handle it. Sure the new 'low flows' would probably be great in some left-wing hippy-sissy world were everyone ate nothing but lentil soup and tofu, but this is America dammit! John Wayne died with 14(!) freaking lbs. of undigested beef in his colon, imagine what THAT would have done to a 'low flow'. U!S!A!
Reply... American engineering isn't that great. For reference, I point to any bridge built after the early 1900s.
I hope that guy at #3 knows whether he's drinking milk or not.
ReplyYeah, imagine dealing in both and getting the labels mixed up!
I'm a woman and that breast milk thing is disgusting. I would never buy random breast milk from some random person. I'd rather my kid go on powdered or something rather than other breast milk (which probably doesn't give the right nutrients to the child if it's not their mother, though I'm no expert).
ReplyI am thinking, once again, Japan is somehow involved and its not for babies.
As a pregnant woman, I'm not so much disgusted as thinking 'cha ching'. Don't know if I'd buy it if I had the money (I'm not a very trusting person); know I'd sell it. Also, most of the market is for couples who are, essentially, looking for a mail-order wet-nurse in the form of regularly delivered frozen milk cubes. I just checked. Wet-nurses (non-mother milk providers) are still better than formula, FYI, which provides only basic nutrition, no immune defense or most of the more advanced stuff. So actually, a healthy woman's milk would be better. If I had a nursing sister, who I actually could trust, I'd rather use her milk than formula in this hypothetical universe. Given my actual sister, this won't be happening (she's neither nursing nor trustworthy). But, hypothetically, it's medically sound as long as screening for illnesses is thorough. Milk banks for donated and screened milk are very common, and many hospitals will sell donated milk to struggling mothers (particularly premature babies benefit from this).
#4 Reminds me of a King of the Hell episodes.
ReplyThat and Seinfeld with the black market shower heads.
I haven't heard or seen the word dookie in years. Awesome article!
ReplyHaha my dad bought cow shares so he could legally get raw milk, that shit's delicious. No parasites here!
ReplyIf the government was actually concerned about people's health they would start making things like cigarettes illegal
For added humor, replace the meth in "Breaking Bad" with any of these black market items.
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ReplyMichael Schmidt lives in Ontario, Canada. Why should he have to move to a different country to consume what he wants??! It's his body, I really don't think the government should be involved in what people choose to eat or drink.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesOutlawing raw milk saves human lives because raw milk is not safe. If it were perfectly legal, far more people would assume that it's safe or that it even has health benefits over THE MAN'S pasteurized milk, as stupid people are prone to do, and we would have more deaths by contaminated dairy products.
Brucellosis, dear. Look it up, and though it doesn't kill you, it sure isn't pleasant. Also, parasites.
Raw milk is safe. It leaves the cow sterile. What makes it unsafe is human handling. Pasturization makes it cheaper and easier to handle milk in an industry. When it comes to smaller, local systems, raw milk is fine.
Yea... you're still missing the point if any ofyou think that because something is potentially hazardous no-one should be able to buy it. If someone wants to eat or drink a naturally occurring, non-narcotic substance, that's their business. Require it to be labeled unsafe; ban it from supermarkets... whatever.but banning it outright? That's just nannying. Also, it's not that unsafe given the right handling and cleaning of the teats before milking.
Fast and Furiously allergic to corn...I laughed at this for a good 10 minutes.
ReplyGreat article
The problem with milk wasn't that milk raw from the beast is e-coli-riffic. The problem was that it was barely milk.
ReplyIn the bad old days before refrigeration, unscrupulous types were taking milk from disease-ridden half-dead cows fed on distillery waste (hence the name 'swill milk'), and watering it down to stretch it for resale, inadvertently making an already iffy product a better breeding ground for bacteria. They'd thicken it up to hide the trick with flour and eggs (another health hazard), and whiten it up with chalk and plaster.
Scores of kids died, but not because it was raw.
You realize we are talking about raw milk today, in the 21st century, not back in the 1800's when they just didnt know any better and there was no alternative. And yes, raw milk is riddled with E.Coli, why do you think we have pasteurization?
In reply to toasty; raw milk is not riddled with E. Coli more than any other product that goes through your house. It leaves the cow sterile.
We have pasteurization because 1. pasteurized milk came about when refrigeration wasn't as advanced as it is now and 2. we developed an dairy industry and when things are that large scale, pasteurization is necessary (but small farmers can safely produce raw milk).
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Dear Ms Ng
ReplyI followed your tip and attempted to make a purchase dropping tips such as "special" and "French styled", and now there is a naked mime milking himself on my chesterfield. What the hell?
He smuggled it in through his mammary glands. It's a very risky medical procedure, but it keeps the milk fresh and warm. The French use mimes for this purpose because you want the milk disturbed as little as possible, and their being a mime puts less strain on their lungs.
You should be grateful, cardboard. You're getting the good stuff.
Farm bees are not that dangerous, dude. They rarely sting as long as you're gentle.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesEver tried to go near a box with thousands of them inside it, and their queen and babies, too?
Ahhhh yes, because I'm sure the bees know that they are on a farm and therefore have no need to be aggressive....
I have and it's scary, but they are generally not aggressive. Though I'm not sure that'll hold when you start moving their hive.
I have. We had a hive. So long as you have a decent breed that's not prone to aggression (Like Italian or Russian) and have a smoker and suit with you it shouldn't be too hard.
True, my neighbor had a few hives. He'd let the kids in the neighborhood come watch as he opened the hives and added or removed frames. He didn't even wear gloves when working with the bees. He said he had a really sweet tempered species though, so I don't know if that's normal for farm bees.
If you hold the handle down the entire time the toilet is flushing until the gurgle that tells you the deed is done, you can flush almost any gargantuan turd. Almost. Without holding that handle down? Can't flush a fart.
ReplyHow DOES one flush a fart?
^Very carefully
"Make anything illegal and it becomes ugly, dirty, and dangerous. Outlaw fly-fishing, and your father-in-law buys his flies from the mob." - Penn Jillette
ReplyOf course some things are illegal because they are ugly, dirty, and dangerous.
"They don't let you have bees."
ReplyI'm pretty sure I remember an episode of Married with Children that had Al becoming involved in a high-flow toilet smuggling ring. I always thought that was a hilarious episode, but never thought much of it as a reality. Good article
ReplyLOL saw that one, as well as the lo-flows on King of the Hill