Friday, October 21, 2011

You know you're an economist when ...

... you find yourself needing to cite “Buchanan 1973″ when claiming that gangs want to do “too many” drive-by shootings.

In addition, the Mexican Mafia regulates drive-by shootings…because any particular street gang only suffers a portion of the increased attention of law enforcement from drive-by shootings, each street gang has an incentive to do too-many (Buchanan 1973).

1 comment:

Tel said...

This is not humour, this is the foundations of a nation state. The average Mexican should be paying tax to the police to protect them from the gangs, and paying tax to the gangs to protect them from the police. Violence is a commodity, no different to gold or oil. It's tradable too.

Come to think of it, the Mexican gangs might consider starting the printing of their own fiat currency, and then insist that all protection money be paid in that currency. Could be interesting.