On Becoming a Criminal
Being a
bachelor for a week while my kids and wife were away at camp was a good opportunity to watch a couple of movies
my wife would not be interested in and that were not appropriate for the
kids. I watched two cocaine smuggling movies I loaned from my oldest
son Forrest (wonder if he's trying to tell me something!) - "Blow" and
"American Gangster". The lessons are relatively straightforward:
1) The problem with being a criminal is that you have to trust criminals - sometimes with your life.
2) Apparently, when you become a criminal you forget how to say "when".
3) If you can't sever your ties to your family and friends (especially flawed ones), you shouldn't be a criminal.
4) If being a criminal sounds like "easy money", you are too stupid to be a successful criminal.
I
used to teach my senior physics students how to become a serial
killer. The idea being that physics is supposed to teach you how to
think, how to do anything you want. Of course, it's part of a liberal
education in which you should learn why it is inappropriate to become a
serial killer. Nevertheless, a physicist shouldn't be a serial killer
because they can't learn how, they should choose not to be a serial killers for
ethical/moral/social reasons. The third problem listed above is highly relevant to
being a serial killer, i.e. being a serial killer is like being a priest, to do it successfully you must give up all worldly attachments.
The penalties for not doing this are more severe for the serial
killer. So, if you're interested in being a serial killer, you should
probably just become a priest instead :)
A Kentucky Memory
In
1995, I received my Ph.D. and got a job teaching in Murray, Kentucky. I was there for 3 years. My son Dale was born there.
The first thing I really noticed when I moved there was all of the contradictions that are
inherent in the Kentucky culture. It's Bible Belt country and one
friend called it "The Buckle." So, everyone (90+%) goes to church and
everyone uses good manners. You would expect that in such a place the
people would be more virtuous and have less vices - certainly a lot less
criminal activity. After all, right and wrong are pretty important to
these people. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was just
as much crime there as anywhere else. Some people will openly lie to
your face. It's the land of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, not to
mention a haven for Riverboat Gambling. Some people are rightfully uneasy about
these things, but the truth is that they provide much needed money and jobs which is doubly important in a generally low income area. So, there is some
complacency about many of these things, but there is some strong
contention about Tobacco growing. Some of the older folks, including
some whom I greatly admired, would not hear anything bad about Tobacco -
they'd get visibly upset if you were anti-tobacco. Part of the manners
culture included Respecting Your Elders, so people (me included)
wouldn't raise the issue in their presence. Being a somewhat liberal,
self-righteous, anti-tobacco proponent I did have plenty of conversations
and feelings of superiority. There was no doubt in my mind that I was a
better human than a Tobacco Farmer. Then, I read a
pair of newspaper articles.
The first was about a tobacco farmer that
was uncomfortable growing tobacco, so he tried to grow fruits and
vegetables. ( FYI, all tobacco farmer grow grains and other stuff - it
is not prudent as a farmer to "put all of your eggs in one basket", so
there is an important sense of crop diversity - but their cash cow is
tobacco}. After 3 years, the farmer still kept his other crops, but got
rid of the fruits and veggies and went back to tobacco. Simply put, he could not make a living
without growing tobacco. I was demonizing the farmers, and feeling good
about myself. The problem was not with the farmers, it is with a
society that does not allow farmers to make an honest living without
tobacco. Our society sucks, but it's harder to point your finger at an
amorphous blob than it is at a group. It's not easy telling you that I
was self-righteous, but that article made me reexamine myself a bit. By
the way, all 4 of my wife's grandparents were Kansas farmers and of her
24 aunts and uncles on her side of the family, very few have continued
into farming. It's very hard work and it's very high risk/reward. I
now have a lot of sympathy for farmers - even tobacco farmers.
[I
don't want to be too political here, but I think the problem is plain -
we don't pay the correct amount for things, too much for some things, not enough for others - we subsidize other people's
lifestyle. For example, it doesn't cost much to grow corn and turn it
into high fructose corn syrup, and the government subsidizes the corn
making it super-ultra cheap. However, as a practical matter the real
cost of high fructose corn syrup comes in health care. Instead of subsidizing the corn
(making it nearly unprofitable to grow anything else), we should be
taxing the bejesus out of high fructose corn syrup - ditto with anything
obviously horrible for you. After all, we have appropriately excessive
"sin" taxes on tobacco and alcohol, time for high fructose corn syrup
and transfat to be recognized as "sins." (Oh yeah, those extra taxes should go directly to health care, not some politicians pet project). Similarly, there should be
more user fees. You get taxes on the life you lead, less so for the
life of others, especially rich people. If we do these things, we can
lower income taxes and eliminate the EVIL that is property taxes. OK, I
guess I have gotten too political here, time to move on].
More Tobacco and Back to Criminal Behavior
While
that first article was enlightening, a second article was heart
breaking. Trafficing in tobacco is not illegal activity, but it is
clearly bad - there is a taint to it and some of the 4 problems listed
above apply in some way to the tobacco industry. To intelligently
traffic in cocaine or tobacco, you really need to start with this most
fundamental rule:
Do not use the product
The
consequences of doing so are numerous and dire. So one farmer was
resolute - he would never use tobacco of any sort, and he never did. He
was a very prosperous farmer acquiring much wealth including vast
tracts of land. So, what could possibly go wrong? Where's the
downside? The government was never going to "bust him" - indeed he
received substantial subsidies from the government. He would go on to
lead a long life. But, he lived long enough to see each of his children
die of lung cancer. Seriously, it makes me want to cry just thinking
about it. I let you process that however you may.
Back to Kentucky Life
You
may not have gotten this from my writing, so let me be plain. I
enjoyed living in rural Kentucky a lot, and I have fond memories and
good friends there. Despite the obvious
contradictions in the culture, the people were almost universally
pleasant, sincere, and kind. It is a very good place to raise
children.
After living there for about a year and contemplating the above
contradictions, something kind of amazing happened - I was able to see
that there were many similar contradictions in my liberal, hippyesque
life in Oregon. These things were difficult for me to see living inside
that culture, but when I got away from it for a while I could see them
much more
clearly. I won't go on about it, but let's just say that drinking
coffee and eating pastries/other crap from Starbucks every day will
probably end
your life and make it as uncomfortable as quickly as a pack of
cigarettes a day. The point is that I think there is value in moving
around a bit, whether by job relocations, extended vacations, or
however.
Getting out of the country for a while is also a good thing, and in
addition
to doing it ourselves, my wife and I have given our children
opportunities to do that as well.
