Silly Little Country

Gangbangers and Public Goods

My own view is that gang on gang killings are a classic public good.
The state is spared wasting the time of police and state attorneys making a case they might have had in other circumstances to make against the deceased, now fortunately deceased, from the point of view of public expense.
So I find myself troubled listening to reports of the high rate of shootings and poor quality ot target selection these days in Toronto (and they are high) - the best of these shootings are simply sparing the public a lot of expense having to figure out what they might have to do with the largely criminal victims. But these guys are not good enough at what they should be doing.
And this is what makes Christie Blatchford's article in today's Globe troubling.
The deep problem is that the gangbangers do not come from the high-IQ section of the population, and, even worse, they come from the low-impulse-control section. As her article points out, these guys just are not too bright.

Given the way so many men dress, the description was apparently sufficiently broad that it captured Mr. Charlton, who was 31 and living at home with his mother when he was killed, and Mr. Bell, who at the time he took nine bullets was a 43-year-old married father and renovation contractor.

Two apparently model citizens taken out by some idiot clowns who cannot even identify their enemies.
I'd be a lot happier thinking we had much smarter gangbangers who would not have to shoot these guys or Jane Creba. Is there anyway we can improve the intellectual and emotional quality of our gangbangers so they kill only one another? Any ideas?

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:10 PM