A few thoughts on the FBI's mafia crack-down

Unfortunately, merely decapitating the mob will do nothing. In the event of the death, imprisonment or retirement of a don or two, one or more newbies will just muscle their way over the deceased's turf.

The DEA even tacitly admits this through its policy of measuring its effectiveness in terms of elevations in the cost of illegal drugs, but this crackdown will, if anything, decrease the price of criminal commodities and services through increased competition between organizations for a part of newly cleared territories. Of course the breakdown of these monopolies of crime may leave business owners paying protection to more than one enforcer in the confusion and dispute over territories.

Well, we could take the one step most effective against any economic organization: a boycott, in this case one against vice, drugs and gambling. Almost no economic organization can stand up to pressure like that.

Of course, though, in that case, the challenge is on us.

Just some thoughts....

A few thoughts on Jared Lee Loughner

Some news have suggested that the inflammatory political rhetoric so common today may have fueled Jared Lee Loughner's homicidal rage, and these news-writers and -editors are asking us to sheath such verbal weaponry in order not to arm further such psychos. Unfortunately though, judging any words by the reaction of the people least able to cope with them ignores a simple fact: anyone, like Loughner, unable even to sit in a class or walk a dog is likely to find something to be an idiot about, regardless of the media available to them. Furthermore, even the utter elimination of negative speech in politics will not elevate the rhetoric used; politicians will simply find politer ways to imply the necessity of removing their opponents from the political landscape and will thus simply probably motivate murder by the maladapted in a more gentle way. Dedicated politicians upholding a good cause, however, will lack at least one means to express the emotional force of their cause, and the electorate will still remain unprepared to face such verbal manipulation from their candidates.

How 'bout we just uphold critical thinking? We have to use it in other parts of out live....