Dealing with the Cause of the Problem, Not the Effects

Friday afternoon I attended the holiday luncheon of the Maverick Angels, an investor club local to me here in Southern California.  I really like these people; they’re sharp, articulate, and they move swiftly when they like what they see.

In addition to their for-profit activities, in which they’ve enjoyed fantastic success, they generously support certain charities.  I heard a brief presentation from an older fellow with a kindly smile, a PhD in electronic engineering, long since retired.  He now serves as a consultant to non-profit organizations, including this one that deserves your attention: El Nido — a group that does one heck of a good job at keeping high-risk kids out of trouble.

Btw, what would you guess to be the average cost to society, over his lifetime, of the typical gang member, including hospitalizations (his own and his victims’), criminal justice / imprisonment, car wrecks, thefts, vandalism, etc?

It’s approximately $2 million.  Apiece.  Multiply that times the large and growing population of gang members, and you have quite a number.

This got me thinking about our civilization’s wrongheadedness in the way it addresses gang membership, as one of dozens of social woes I could have chosen.  We moan about paying the costs of dealing with the effects, but we’re unwilling to pay even a small price to deal with the cause; El Nido’s funding comes largely from private donors, as budgets from state and local government have been cut to the bone.

I bring this up because of the analogy to our tragic lack of a progressive energy policy.  The long-term costs of generating electricity from coal are extremely well documented.  No one, even the industry itself, argues against the fact that coal-fired power plants are escalating healthcare costs and driving up the human misery associated with lung disease. Coal is also acidifying our oceans, and warming our climate.  Yet we seem perfectly happy to live with these consequences as long as we can enjoy cheap electricity.  It’s hard to understand.