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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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I will limit this to things people do for money and not honor or religion.

  1. Wars of conquest. Like conquistadors in Mexico certainly faced high death rates but also a great chance at being fabulously wealthy with lots of heirs.

  2. Drug dealing. Both the low end dealers seem to take a lot of risks for little gain and the higher ups. Mexican Cartel leaders death rates are definitely far above 10%. S American cartels have gotten safer and less violent but they were very risky for a while. Bootleggers and Italian Mafiosos no doubt faced higher risks.

  3. Donald Trump. Maybe 10% is too high but assasination risks or perhaps for him live in prison risks were quite high.

  4. Long distance trade was quite dangerous for much of history

I think maybe we could exclude the older examples when life was much harsher and not comfortable like today but Colombian drug cartel bosses were often already quite rich. Guys who already had cattle farms and estates. There are a lot of examples of cartel guys who didn’t need to take the risks but just wanted more money and power. It’s obvious a fairly large % of people take the risks.

My gut says it would be smart for me to take a 10% risks of instant death for a 90% chance of $500 million. I might turn it down for religious reasons as suicide is a mortal sin and that kind of feels like sort of suicide.

A shooter repeatedly shot at Trump including grazing Trump's ear. Trump is far past 10%.

American presidents have an 18% fatality rate. So Trump is in good company.