Best post in this thread, Dom. These guys are sitting in Brooklyn without two nickels to rub together, washed up and broke at fifty, and completely unemployable. And to a street guy, that's a fate worse than getting popped.
I've said this before, and I'm not repeating it to be mean spirited because there are guys on this board who are much more "book smart" than myself. But you can NOT understand the street from a strictly intellectual point of view.
I don't care how many of the books you've read, how many comparisons you've made to the Roman Empire, or how many times you've read "The Prince." If you haven't been exposed to it, even peripherally, you'll never completely understand the way these guys think, or what their motives were for turning to crime. Period.
Since there aren't really books about this point of view and it's the one I'm specifically interested in about the mob, you should sometimes make a post about. What exactly is that makes these guys do it, even if it feels like an over simplified answer. I think it would be very interesting.
