Dealing crack on the streets is only more cost effective if you don't consider being shot in the face, arrested, mugged or robbed, etc a problem. If you dont think potential costs factor into cost-effectiveness then go buy yourself some crack, get yourself a gun (probobly much easier if you live in the USA), find yourself a street corner, and then shout at random passerbys that you've got some crack. Good luck with that.
Yeah there are people in Somalia who aren't pirates. But as I understand it most of the pirates come from the fishing villages that have had their entire livelyhood destroyed by western coorperations dumping toxic waste off their coast and before that using fishing trawlers to over-fish the areas. People that live inland probobly aren't affected by this, so you don't have a huge piracy problem away from the coastal areas. That'll be where all your fruit stand operators work.
This is because the government collapsed (I think theres a new government in, but they're busy fighting terrorists and rebels), so mutlinational coorperations though "who's gonna stop us?" and started doing whatever they wanted off the Somali coast. All those people with nice respectable jobs, screwing over village upon village of people because, well, what are they gonna do to us? Their government doesn't protect them, our governments don't care, and our coorperations will do whatever they feel like to increase their profit.
There was an
article on slashdot a few months ago talking about how the pirates have set up a coop profit sharing system for entire villages. They use the ransoms from piracy to build hospitals and schools. Even the people who aren't activly pirates support them by donating weapons and ammo because guess what, fruit stand operator doesn't pay the bills as much as you might think.
It's very easy to dismiss them as horrible people because you've never been in any situation that even remotely compares to theirs. They're just doing what they need to do to survive. I'm much more inclined to demonize the people who worked for the companies that put them in this situation in the first place.