virus: Earn Big Money Selling Drugs

Gifford, Nate F (giffon@SDCPOS3B.DAYTONOH.ncr.com)
Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:37:10 -0500

I am currently reading a book called "The Corner" about the people who buy
and sell drugs on a corner in Baltimore Maryland, USA. I was late to work
today because I got caught up in a description of how Cocaine changed the
dynamics of drug dealing on the corner. The basis for this change was
Cocaine's potential for essentially unlimited demand. The book says that
$20 to $30 will satisfy the habit of the most hard core Heroin user. This
allowed the development of a "user/dealer" community and dealers had the
opportunity to develop an ethos that included the principles:
1) Don't do business with children.
2) Don't shoot anyone who doesn't need to be shot.
3) Never sell to anyone who's not already using <this is my favorite:
from a dealer's p.o.v. this keeps the cops out of your business, in addition
it leaves a little room at the bottom for junkies to make money by
recruiting new junkies ... sort of like Amway.>
4) Don't touch what you sell.

Cocaine changed the rules because the limiting factor on demand was the
amount of money the user had. This combined with the war on drugs to create
many small sources of product .... meaning there was more room on the corner
for dealers. A dealer has two risks: Obtaining product, and selling
product. The balance of these two risks means that in order to remain on
the corner you could never buy enough product to attract the DEA on the one
hand and that in six hours you could sell enough product to keep you
"styling" for a couple of weeks.

>From a game theoretic standpoint this led to a sort of single iteration
prisoner's dilemma kind of game. That is since every transaction was pretty
much autonomous it was in the best interest of all parties involved to cheat
the other parties given the slightest opportunity. This led to an
exponential amount of violence in the trade, and to the inclusion of
children into the trade since they are easier to control.

I found this exposition interesting from a memetic point of view for several
reasons:

1) The drug trade exists in a competitive and repressive environment so
that the selection of memes is as aggressive as you will find in our
democracy.
2) The war on drugs seemed to be reinforcing the drug dealing meme ...
the book keeps talking about the variety of white people who end up on the
corner to cop ...

Any comments or opinions on the drug use/ drug selling memes?