Friday, September 7, 2012

A Report from Rahmaland on the Neil Barofsky Interview

An EPJ reader emails:
I just finished listening to your interview with Neil Barofsky. It's quite interesting as to what happens when you press these guys on the soundness of their belief in government / government programs (i.e. TARP, the War on Drugs, etc).

I also thought your observation about power centers was spot on. I'm from Chicago (the South Side) and have seen these power centers at work on a street level. In the late 60's and early 70's, when I was younger, the gangs in existence in Chicago were primarily concerned about their turf. Sure, they were into criminal activity (petty theft, grand theft auto, etc), but nothing along today's scale. Now these guys control territory (power centers) to control the drug trade making millions of dollars in the process with a lot of violence to boot. If you take the "king pin" out on Friday evening another one will be there Saturday morning to take his place. And the beat rolls on. If you remove that which creates the power center in the first place - the illegal status of the drug(s), which causes the price to skyrocket providing massive profits to drug dealers - you largely eliminate the problem associated with the power center in the first place. Barofsky, and guys like him, either don't know this because they're either blind to the truth or they never had to deal with the effects of the drug trade growing up like I did.

Great interview. And keep up the outstanding work.
You can listen to the Barofsky interview here.

1 comment:

  1. Not only "if you take the "king pin" out on Friday evening another one will be there Saturday morning to take his place," but other "king pins" will charge more and more for whatever is illegal with lesser costs for protection. Thus increasing their profits, thus increasing the violence, thus increasing the bribery, thus increasing what the authorities want done away with.

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