The Black Markets Fallacy

Charles Fain Lehman · 13 Jul 2026

Read the piece on thecausalfallacy.substack.com ↗

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
That a ban creates a black market is not by itself an argument against the ban.

Their wordsWhat’s fallacious is to argue that this fact necessarily means the prohibition does not “work,” or is not better than legalization.
Our reading
Prohibition reduces how much of a product is consumed rather than merely moving the same consumption underground.

Their wordsQuantity consumed under prohibition is almost always smaller than quantity consumed under legalization.

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