the.com/bootlegger
An entrepreneur who solved prohibition the way the market intended: illegally.
means A person who makes, smuggles, or sells goods — classically liquor — in defiance of the law banning them.
from From the literal practice of hiding a flask in the leg of a tall boot. Smugglers and small-time hooch dealers in 1800s America would tuck a bottle down there, out of sight of lawmen, and the slang 'bootleg' for illicit liquor caught on well before Prohibition. When the 18th Amendment turned the whole country dry in 1920, the word was already waiting, and 'bootlegger' graduated from boot-stashers to the organized rum-runners and speakeasy suppliers of the era.
- name origin
- smugglers hid flasks inside their actual boots
- NASCAR link
- stock car racing evolved from moonshine-running getaway drivers
- economics lesson
- banning a product just hands the profit margin to criminals