Dear Mitch:

I hope and trust you don’t mind that I place us on a first name basis. We’re informal in the Big Easy, are we not? This letter will be highly critical of your efforts to radically reduce the murder rate in The Big Easy, particularly that of young black men (YBM) as victims. So I might as well start off on a positive note. I greatly admire you for, and congratulate you for your courage in these politically correct times, for acknowledging that the main source of this tragic loss of life is not (white) policemen shooting YBMs, but, rather, the fact that they are all too often victimizing each other.

If you seriously want to stop this massive carnage, it behooves you to learn of its true causal antecedents. Only by dealing with them can you stop their results.  So let us dispose of a few supposed root causes that really have little or nothing to do with this dreadfulness.

The horrendous murder of YBMs is not the legacy of slavery. As Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams never tire of telling us, there was far less of this senseless killing in the period between the ending of the war between the The Privatization of R... Walter Block Check Amazon for Pricing. states, and, say, 1950, when we were much closer in time to the dissolution of that despicable institution. If these murders were really a vestige of slavery, their effects would fade, not increase, the more time that has passed since 1865.

Nor are these crimes against YBMs due to prejudice against or hatred of black people in general. Surely, this was far more severe at the beginning and early middle of the 20^th century, before the time of this scourge, than at present and in the recent past. As it happens, Jews and Orientals have also been the targets of racial discrimination, and no such horror has impacted the young men of those communities.

What about gun control? States Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter: “It is really, really hard to shoot people when you don’t have a gun.” But this is magical thinking. Yes, if we could with one fell swoop banish all firearms, no one could put a bullet in the body of anyone else.  But this is not going to happen. The criminals will always have these machines of death, and innocent people will always want them for self-defense. In any case, with no such weapons under present conditions YBMs would do away with each other with knives, chains and baseball bats. This would of course be an improvement since these implements are less efficient, but we can do better than that.

If these, then, are not the real causes of this horrid disarray in the African-American community, what are they? There are several. And, happily, all are far more susceptible to public policy alterations than changing any of the foregoing.

One causal factor in the rampage decimating YBMs is public housing.  These are dens of crime, mainly because their owners, the government, are not subject to the market’s profit and loss test. Were any private landlord managing such real estate, they would soon enough go bankrupt and be replaced by entrepreneurs who could better deal with such challenges; e.g., keeping their customers, the tenants, safe. Private amusement parks, grocery stores, shopping malls, nightclubs, even in poor neighborhoods, are much less violent. For further reasons explaining just why public housing is so dangerous, read Jane Jacobs.

Another explanation for the senseless deaths of so many YBMs is the fact that all too many of them were brought up in fatherless families. The mother is of course important for the socialization of children, but so is the father. All too often, the female parent is powerless to deal the teenage males, particularly when combined with residence in public housing. Why, in turn, are so many black children brought up in the absence of their dads? This too is no “vestige of slavery” nor any inherent tendency of black culture since this phenomenon was virtually absent before 1965. And what occurred then, pray tell? ‘twas Lynden Baines Johnson’s so called “Great Society” which made a pregnant girl a far better financial offer than could the young man who impregnated her. Before that time, the culture regarded such occurrences as disgraceful. But the enhanced welfare system was so heavily financed that the mores changed. Before the onset of this pernicious legislation, the proportion of non-intact families amongst whites and blacks was similar. Afterward, a wide divergence occurred, as the latter were more susceptible to the blandishments of the welfare state: they were poorer. But this problem is by no means confined to any one group. A similar problem arose in relatively wealthy, and white, Sweden. For a further elaboration of this thesis, see Losing Ground by Charles Murray. Losing Ground: America... Murray, Charles Best Price: $4.00 Buy New $12.88 (as of 11:20 UTC - Details)

Yet another cause of this dreadful murder of YBMs is, wait for it, the minimum wage law. This legislation does not provide a floor under wages, raising them as the level stipulated by law increases. If it did, why not raise the level to $1000 per hour, and by the magic of the legislative pen, ban all poverty in one fell swoop. No the minimum wage serves, instead, as a barrier over which would be employees must jump, in order to get a job in the first place. If it is pegged at $10 per hour, then no one thought to have a productivity level below that point will be employable, for any firm doing so will lose money and go bankrupt if it persists in hiring such people. If the law is raised to $15, then an additional number of relatively unskilled workers, those with productivities between these two levels, will lose their jobs.

This pernicious legislation negatively impacts YBMs for three reasons. One, they are young, two they are black and three they are male. The youthful are more severely rendered unemployable than the middle aged by this law because the former have lower productivity due to less experience. They are thus less able to “jump over” the unemployment hurdle constituted by minimum wages and into a job.  A similar situation influences the experience of blacks vis a vis that of whites. And why is this? It is due to poorer schools, a greater degree of fatherless families, disproportionate residence in public housing, and other phenomena now politically incorrect to even mention. And third, males in this cohort are more violent than females, less willing to take orders typically given to the unskilled, more likely to provoke customers, bosses, fellow employees. It is no accident that for these reasons the unemployment rate of YBMs is typically quadruple that of middle-aged whites. It was not much different from that of any other group before the advent of the minimum wage.

What does unemployment have to do with the murder of YBMs by each other? It is simple. If you are unemployed, you are far more likely to be bored than otherwise. If you are bored, the probability rises you will be resentful and get into trouble. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Thus, you are more likely to shoot someone for an insult or a slight or for no reason at all that any rational person can discern.

A huge part of getting into trouble involves the market for illegal substances. This leads to yet a further cause of the problem: drug prohibition.  If these products, all of them, not just marijuana, were legalized, the drug gangs would be largely neutralized. When alcohol was illegal during Prohibition, young Italian men were killing each other over turf with great enthusiasm.  Under our present laws concerning drugs, it would appear it is now the turn to do so of other equally young people, but with a different skin color and ethnicity. Italian-American parents can now thank their lucky stars that the prohibition of beer, wine and booze has ended. President Reagan said to the Soviets: “Tear down this wall.” I say to you, Mitch, rip up this policy, at least in New Orleans, where you have some control. Create a Free Enterprise Zone where there is no welfare, no public housing, no minimum wages, and all drugs may be legally bought and sold.

Defending the Undefend... Walter Block Best Price: $1.99 Buy New $10.80 (as of 07:55 UTC - Details) Will ridding our fair city of any one of these causal elements entirely end the senseless killings of YBMs? No, of course not. Will eliminating all of them together do so? Not likely. But, in the latter case, such an initiative will radically reduce this horrific slaughter. The perfect is the enemy of the good. These free enterprise remedies will not entirely solve the problem. It is too deeply embedded for that. But all these lives are precious, and if we can save even some of them, we will be doing the Lord’s work. Is an intact family an absolute guarantee that there will be no murders? That is silly. There are killers from two parent-headed families and most children of female-headed households do not engage in any crime whatsoever.  Will the eradication of public housing constitute a complete solution? Again, no. Most inhabitants of this type of real estate are not criminals and there are plenty of miscreants who live in private homes. Will radically reducing the unemployment rate of YBMs end all of these shootings? Unfortunately not. The overwhelming majority of killers have been employed and most of the unemployed are law abiding. But will each of these changes help a bit, and will all of them together substantially turn things around? Yes. The same cannot be said for drug legalization. That in and of itself and alone will punch a really big hole in the murder statistics of YBMs.

Mitch, I know you’re a pinko liberal leftie progressive, but, I think you are also an honest man with a burning desire to radically reduce this carnage amongst YBMs. I full well realize that drug prohibition, public housing, welfare, minimum wages are all shibboleths of your end of the political spectrum. I appreciate it will be difficult for you to renounce these long-standing positions of yours and your fellow travelers. But if you are really serious about saving the lives of YBMs, and I think you are, you will eschew these stances and embrace the laissez faire capitalist system, the last best hope for these downtrodden young people

And, also, there will be side benefits of freeing up the economy in these ways. YBMs who are criminals by no means confine themselves to preying on each other. They also commit aggression against the rest of us. If they can become more civilized enough so as to stop shooting one another, all of us, young, old, black, white, whatever, will also be safer.

Yours truly,

Walter E. Block, Ph.D.

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