<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>philipkglass</author><text>Mechanically crushed rock can be used in concrete in place of river sand. There&amp;#x27;s no danger of stripping the rivers bare of sand (or running out of materials to make concrete) in places that have a modicum of environmental laws and law enforcement. Sand theft operations plague places with weak rule of law, where there&amp;#x27;s free money to be made by stealing from the commons even when responsible ways to make concrete are only modestly more expensive.</text><parent_chain><item><author>temp0826</author><text>I wonder if there is any r&amp;amp;d around using cheaper&amp;#x2F;abundant (finer desert sand) for construction. Or if the sand racket is preventing that (feels ridiculous to write that but all this about black market sand is new to me). Way outta my wheelhouse so I&amp;#x27;m not even sure why it would be bad for construction in the first place.</text></item><item><author>ikesau</author><text>&amp;gt; Luis Fernando Ramadon, a federal police specialist in Brazil who studies extractive industries, estimates that the global illegal sand trade ranges from $200 billion to $350 billion a year—more than illegal logging, gold mining and fishing combined. Buyers rarely check the provenance of sand; legal and black market sand look identical. Illegal mining rarely draws heat from law enforcement because it looks like legitimate mining—trucks, backhoes and shovels—there&amp;#x27;s no property owner lodging complaints, and officials may be profiting. For crime syndicates, it&amp;#x27;s easy money.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The environmental impacts are substantial. Dredging rivers destroys estuaries and habitats and exacerbates flooding. Scraping coastal ecosystems churns up vegetation, soil and seabeds and disrupts marine life. In some countries, illegal mining makes up a large portion of the total activity, and its environmental impacts are often worse than those of legitimate operators, Beiser says, all to build cities on the cheap.&lt;p&gt;this sounds like a really hard problem to fix. i see there are researchers trying to estimate mining levels by counting ships[1], but even if we&amp;#x27;re able to get a heatmap of the problem, there&amp;#x27;d need to be an enormous amount of cooperation between nations to certify sand provenance. damn.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;satellites-spy-on-sand-mining-in-the-mekong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;satellites-spy-on-sand-mining-in-th...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Crime rings trafficking sand</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sand-mafias-are-plundering-the-earth/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>eszed</author><text>My understanding is that desert sand gets blown around by the wind, which (heh) sands it smooth. Smooth sand doesn&amp;#x27;t grip the concrete (I think), so it&amp;#x27;s not amenable for building.&lt;p&gt;When I first read that my question was whether a different concrete formula or amalgam could work with smooth(er) sand, or if that&amp;#x27;s a hard limit that cannot be overcome. Does anyone know?</text><parent_chain><item><author>temp0826</author><text>I wonder if there is any r&amp;amp;d around using cheaper&amp;#x2F;abundant (finer desert sand) for construction. Or if the sand racket is preventing that (feels ridiculous to write that but all this about black market sand is new to me). Way outta my wheelhouse so I&amp;#x27;m not even sure why it would be bad for construction in the first place.</text></item><item><author>ikesau</author><text>&amp;gt; Luis Fernando Ramadon, a federal police specialist in Brazil who studies extractive industries, estimates that the global illegal sand trade ranges from $200 billion to $350 billion a year—more than illegal logging, gold mining and fishing combined. Buyers rarely check the provenance of sand; legal and black market sand look identical. Illegal mining rarely draws heat from law enforcement because it looks like legitimate mining—trucks, backhoes and shovels—there&amp;#x27;s no property owner lodging complaints, and officials may be profiting. For crime syndicates, it&amp;#x27;s easy money.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The environmental impacts are substantial. Dredging rivers destroys estuaries and habitats and exacerbates flooding. Scraping coastal ecosystems churns up vegetation, soil and seabeds and disrupts marine life. In some countries, illegal mining makes up a large portion of the total activity, and its environmental impacts are often worse than those of legitimate operators, Beiser says, all to build cities on the cheap.&lt;p&gt;this sounds like a really hard problem to fix. i see there are researchers trying to estimate mining levels by counting ships[1], but even if we&amp;#x27;re able to get a heatmap of the problem, there&amp;#x27;d need to be an enormous amount of cooperation between nations to certify sand provenance. damn.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;satellites-spy-on-sand-mining-in-the-mekong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;satellites-spy-on-sand-mining-in-th...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Crime rings trafficking sand</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sand-mafias-are-plundering-the-earth/</url></story>