Overheard Starbuck

"Has organized crime organized paedophilia?"
---"You mean as a business, as in child prostitution? Or as a means to blackmail or reward paedophiles, politicians, law enforcement officers, corporate executives, and each other?"
"As a business."
---"Wouldn't it have to be a cottage industry? Irrespective of those internet predators making news, there're not that many men who can only pleasure themselves in that way. In the USA the demand for child prostitutes couldn't offset the risks the organization as a whole would incur."
"Most men will screw anything."
---"Exactly and there're plenty of barely-legal teens for the dilettantes. ... Imagine if state legislators in all fifty states decided they wanted their cut of the sports-gambling action, let alone other mob ventures like call girls and auto parts? I'm not suggesting quid pro quo: I'm saying some products are too specialized for mass marketing, not worth the trouble. ... Not so long ago, before the Berlin Wall fell, American mobsters probably controlled the worldwide production and distribution of kiddie porn. While some of today's illegal gambling profits undoubtedly promote child prostitution in those economies with freer markets and fewer money-laundering regulations than the States. And there're probably American travel agents that are happy to direct sex-tourists to those particular hotels.
..."But there are limits to organized crime."
---"For sure."