The novel Gray Gold is set in WWII America, but it could be fit to any time. Anywhere and every time there are rule makers, cronies set up to profit from those rules, and people willing to work around the edges of the system to make their own way. A new article at Reason.com touches on just one golden opportunity set up by modern governments.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, my great-grandfather, Giuseppe Marano, thought his money-making glory days were over. Having made a good living selling alcoholic beverages to willing buyers at a time when that business was illegal across the country, he and his cohorts certainly viewed the passage of the 21st Amendment as the end of a very profitable era. Except that it really wasn’t. Politicians may have formally dumped the national ban on booze, but in many places they’ve imposed enough foolish restrictions to keep bootlegging a going concern.
If you can pick up a hot 1939 Lincoln like Nick Guyon’s, skip the extra fuel tanks and set it up to run whisky.