Demaestro - 10:08 pm on Nov 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

I can think of a major difference: New York City does not charge service fees for facilitating those street-corner transactions.

Kind of, New York does collect license fees from legal vendors some of which I am sure are selling illegal wares.... and the ones without licenses are fined for not having a license.

So they do profit, just not in the form of service fees, but in licensing and fines.