Marky thinks back to the good old days, the days of when the mafia was a raging empire, growing constantly. Then he looks as is now, and he stops in his tracks.

"Only four months ago, things were so different. The cities were jam-packed with members. Some cities had five, six, seven crews. The crews were filling, and the population was high. Then, everything changed.

"In the last few months there were four, maybe five wars. The crew leaders were exterminated. The numbers of crews was cut in half.

"How does this happen? How does so much war come out of everything here? Looking at the streets, everyone seems to be lovey-dovey. Then war breaks out, and the whole thing is revised."

Mnirem grabs an orange from a cart and pays the clerk.

"Such a shame..."

War is a shame. However, without war our world could not revolve. I think Jeannette Rankin once said "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."

Some cities had five, six, seven crews. The crews were filling, and the population was high.

I think if you take another look at your history books, you will see that, in fact, most of those crews were empty and our current population is much higher. Power is actually more evenly distributed, too. While there may have been an assload of crews back then, everything was controlled by New York and Detroit. Yes, there is still an obvious dominating force in Cosa Nostra (me), several other cities are rapidly growing in strength..

Anyhow, to answer your question about how it happens. You see, sometimes people forget that power dictates what can and cannot be done, and then they go and do stupid things. As a result, they get killed. And it's not always a shame. Sometimes people being killed is a great thing. It removes poor leadership, breaks up stagnation, and gives someone else an opportunity to show that they can do better.

I would hardly say empty. There were around thirty members per crew, give or take a few.

Only if "a few" is 25 or so. Some had 30 or so (and that is still a pretty small family), but at least half of them had 5 to 15 members.

Regardless of that, your point seemed to be that population was shrinking and that just is not the case. If you look at the total number awake at any given time, the population is higher than it has ever been. There are fewer sleeping bums, though, so that might make it look like we have a lesser population.

Anyhow, it seems to me that this "speech" was nothing more than a pity party for Detroit, and that is something that I just not warranted. People die in this thing of ours, and Detroit brought on their own demise more so than just about any city in history.

Yes, you are quite right. War is a terrible thing, we should all forget this nasty life of crime, all this violence and mistrust.

I was thinking maybe a pottery group? Or perhaps a scout troupe?

"Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya"

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."

Nicely quoted i must say.

Although i do think war is too strong a word to describe our "power struggles".

Granted we do fight, we do die but in most cases we dont choose to fight, we just do. We are part of an organisation that is being threatened and our reaction is to wipe out that threat. The end result is always a shift in power.

Anyway back to the point.

I for one enjoy the differences in our world. One week we are a thriving community of mobsters recruting anything that ships off the boat, the next week these methods of recruitment are shunned and half the mobster's are wiped out for sittinga round doing nothing!

To be able to live through these different era's is a blessing (or luck).

I myself am a fan of the old dangerous / uncertain way we use to live.

A new mobster ships off the boat, he knows nothing about whats ahead of him and has to dodge bullets from all angles, but finds his feet and rises to power.

To dilute this process will make him less of man when it comes to the power struggles we talk about.

My point is that change is necessary and always constant, we can never be too secure in what we have and i for one am happy about that.