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Before that it was the military, hunting mamoths and other ventures. Not all young men are going to be pacified. Some are going to get organized and start an adventure. It may be selling drugs, it may be joining a radical political movement or some other high risk high reward strategy. Crime is often portrayed as being caused by poverty when in reality a lot of crime isn't commited in order to pay for food and rent, it is committed for status. There is no dignity or way to meet attractive women for a loser guy. Join a gang and there is a risk of death and prison but also a chance of meeting hot women.
You can meet hot women by getting a decent job and going to bars. The allure of gangs is a brotherhood, fighting alongside men who will die to protect you, and vice versa. Even if the gangster life is often brutal, it's a far more real type of connection and community than the mainstream modern world offers.
I think what you’re forgetting is that gang recruits are teenaged boys who see an immediate route to status, money, and success with the opposite sex. This isn’t the fifties- no teenaged girls are dreaming about marrying engineers(and the sorts of boys who are recruited into gangs are not going to become engineers anyways). Gangbanging successfully is high status among these lads peers, including their opposite sex peers, and that’s what’s important for the discussion.
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I don't think this is a refutation. The existence of a more optimal approach to an end doesn't rule out the possibility that other more risky approaches are motivated by the same end.
Sure you can get a good job to get women instead of risking prison, but you might not have thought it through!
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