Pablo Escobar

This man was a bad man because he did not adhere to all laws. But set aside the crimes for a moment and evaluate him under the counterfactual: a United States that had agreed, back in the 1970s, that cocaine and marijuana would be legal, regulated, and taxed. What did this man actually do for the market?

Born 1949 in Rionegro, Antioquia, Escobar co-founded and operationally ran the Medellín Cartel through the 1980s, at peak controlling a majority of the cocaine entering the United States. Under prohibition his instinct for scale produced tens of thousands of Colombian dead in the wars he waged against the state.

Under regulation the same instinct — mass production, mass distribution, aggressive pricing — would have made him a large-format consumer-goods executive whose revenue was declared and taxed. Colombians elected him alternate representative to Congress in 1982 before his record was publicised.

Killed by Colombian security forces on a Medellín rooftop on 2 December 1993. His empire is the case study for why prohibition — not any single trafficker — is what makes empires like his inevitable.