Freakonomics

[Fe 26]

I've got a reserve on it at the library. Took a peek at Borders and thought the chapter about drug dealers living at home was interesting. It's somewhat shocking, but not surprising to find a College grad was in charge of a drug ring. One of my next door neighbors in college was a huge raver and graduated with a double major in chemistry and business.

that doesn't suprise me at all. My next door neigbor got busted two weeks before school got out for dealing. Everyone knew about it, but the only way he got found out was becuase one of his "friends" ratted him out when they got pulled over and they found drugs on him.

But yeah, the kid had been going to college for 4 years for fucking auto mechanics and had been dealing the entire time. Better yet, you all paid for him to go to school.

[Burky]

That happened here to a guy I knew too, but on a bigger scale. He was dealing quite a lot of weed, and got caught, and interrogated, and he told the police who his supplier was, who was importing I think.
The guy got beaten half to death by some gang soon after.

[Fe 26]

Sucks that he got beat down, but you know, when you play those games and you rat...

[Burky]

Well yeh. I guess most people getting mixed up in that stuff have it coming sooner or later.

In the Freakonomics, the stats about crack-gangs were really interesting. This was in the 1990s, so it won't apply for today.
As a foot-soldier (street dealers), you had I think a 1/4 chance of being killed each year, and they only got paid $3.30 an hour, compared to the $8 minimum wage (roughly). It then went into why would anyone do such a dangerous job. The given answer was it was like Football, journalism or any other field where you have to work right from the bottom, with virtually no pay, and then if you're the best out there, you get to the top and make megabucks. These foot-soldiers could become promoted, and go higher up in the gang, and the leader of an 18 block area in the given case took in $18k per month, with a $10k profit. If you go higher than that, then you could make millions a year. So these kids who are pedalling risk their lives for this kind of a chance for that kind of money.

However, it doesn't apply now, as the price of crack dropped dramatically, which meant that profits went way down, making the whole thing not such a great job to go for. This also explained partly why murder rates dropped in the US, as if the profits were down, then it wasn't worth fighting turf wars anymore, and so deaths within the gangs also fell.