Black Market

This Article serves mainly to provide a moderately in-depth and easy-to-understand guide to what the black-market actually is, for quick reference in relation to role-playing, setting-building and more.

Description
The "Black Market" is old slang that has, interestingly, been admitting into the English Language on a permanent and valid basis, but as a noun - suggesting that there is, in fact, a literal "black market". Despite this, the black market refers to illegal sale, trade and purchase of any items, intellectual property or even information.

The act of interacting with the black market is illegal, naturally, and as such, anyone who interacts with it are criminals. Often romanticized as an actual illegal bazaar somewhere, that only the chosen few have access to. Calling it a "black" market, is merely a play on words in regards to underhandedness and "shady" activity.

The metaphorical term likely comes into action, because Criminals often have vast spanning networks and connections. Criminal activity might cover anything from merely crossing the road when the light is red, or failing to pay a fine, but professional criminals are motivated by the same factors that motivate ordinary law-abiding citizens to work, namely to earn a living and accrue wealth.

The Criminal Underworld is a similar term, which refers to the localized relationship between Professional-, and lifestyle criminals of a specific geographical region (though the internet is slowly erasing the borders), and it is connections that form between Professional Criminals that brings into existence the Black Market.

Supply and Demand
The Criminal Underworld is notorious for creating its own demand forcibly, often by sabotaging production, monopoly under threat, theft of product etc., or by influencing politicians to make something illegal or at the very least, extremely restricted, driving prices up - or perhaps merely by influencing those who otherwise control the given product.

This is illegal in most countries, and in many countries, it has become a downward spiral that has created hidden civil-wars between self-appointed subcultures - also typically known as Street Gangs.

The Criminal Underworld also frequently creates a demand by pushing drugs or other addictive, but highly illegal substances unto the population. The trade of illegal narcotics creates business groups that are in strict competition with each other, often forming larger interconnecting organizations to create alliances (often based on ethnicity, religious belief, culture or similar ties) and essentially going to war with other parties that attempt to bud into the trade, protecting their illegal businesses.

This creates a market for illegal weapons and illegal cars (to be used as getaway vehicles), and because the money made from illegal business cannot typically be reported to the tax authorities, and as such, typically cannot be banked, it creates a need for a supply of items that can be purchased for cash - all creating further need for the black market.

However, these examples of supply and demand are rather complicated, and one could argue that they are only illegal because of the responses of society, incidentally making the acquisitions of drugs and weapons illegal or restricted, but a simpler example is that of theft, which is easier to work with; A thief steals something, which he then sells to someone else - depending on the rarity of the item, either above or below standing market value. The example is simplified, because in almost all such cases, the items are sold to a "fence" (someone who doesn't steal or otherwise illegally obtain items themselves, but are connected to many people who have access to customers - and through this elaborate number of middle-men, it becomes very difficult to trace the stolen items).

Exclusive Inventory
Exclusive Inventory is typically consisting of items that are either: Items like these are normally sold at much higher than "market value" (which may incidentally be 0, if the item is totally prohibited, in which case, comparison to production value is a better estimate). It isn't uncommon for the "street value" (meaning the value at which the item can be locally obtained, through local the "local black market", meaning local professional criminals with connections to the broader network) to be over 800% higher than normal value, which is usually the case with illegal drugs for instance (and that number wouldn't even begin to cut it for some drugs).
 * Extremely rare and difficult to obtain through legal means
 * Items that are heavily restricted or illegal to possess
 * Items that are legal to possess, but are associated with ones identity, and as such cannot safely be used for criminal activity, without obtaining them illegally and circumventing normal registration processes.

Non-Exclusive Inventory
Non-Exclusive-, or regular inventory refers to items which are commonly available to the average consumer, but perhaps either expensive or for some other reason not desirable to purchase through common means.

Such items are traditionally sold remarkably cheaper on the black market, but there is always a chance that the items are counterfeit, which is somewhat ironic (to find crime within a community of criminals). Frequently, knock-off items are sold even cheaper on the black market, or even openly in some countries, and are sometimes excellently made and at other times, barely resemble the original product in neither appearance, value or function.

In most countries, privately selling a fake item, if not marketed as a genuine product, is fully legal - but producing the item may be highly illegal. As such, this is a typical and relatively.

In certain environments of Western Society, a lot of status and social acceptance comes from material possessions, and especially in these circles, one finds a tendency to purchase stolen goods at considerably lower prices than market value.

It used to be the case that it was unaffordable or at least very difficult to afford certain expensive luxury items (fashion, smartphones, accessories) for people of the middle-class (here strictly referring to economical classes, not classes of society), with these items often being marketed specifically towards the upper-class, with there being more appropriately priced variants available to the middle-class and lower-class, but this has gradually started changing because of the simple observation that a lot of money can be made from making items that seem exclusive, available to the middle-class, who will gladly in-debt themselves to obtain these subjectively better items, but this doesn't necessarily create an opening for the lower-class, which in modern society is composed of those who only work part-time, those who earn very little and those who are unemployed entirely - and it is typically towards both the middle-class but especially the lower class that stolen non-exclusive inventory is marketed, as the prospect of saving lots of money greatly appeals to many of the middle-class, and the prospect of having something that clearly marks them as being much wealthier than they are, is an important symbol for many of the lower-class.

Non-Exclusive Inventory Black Market deals often are somewhat more overt than Exclusive Inventory Black Market Deals, and are often difficult to police, because it can be very difficult to prove that something is stolen if it is a mundane item. As a result, such items can often be sold through main-stream outlets, claimed to be "errant purchases" or 2nd hand (which they sometimes are, as they were stolen after being taken in use).

It isn't just mainstream items that sell well through such medias, any item which is a common purchase can fairly safely be sold through such a media, if moved outside of the "hot zone" (an item being described as "hot" in the criminal sense, means that the item is suspect because authorities will likely look for it, and the "hot zone" is in this case the area in which the item is likely to be recognized). In theory, anything that isn't easily traced can be sold in this manner.

Daily, items such as copper wiring, bricks, shop-lifted clothes, non-traceable electronics and many other items are openly sold and many in such a way that the buyer could legitimately not be aware that the item(s) is(/are) stolen.