Politics & Power Quote by Irene Peter

The line lands like a deadpan punch because it flips a civic platitude on its head: governments are supposed to fight crime, not franchise it. Irene Peter’s wit hinges on that inversion. “To make crime unprofitable” borrows the language of policy wonks and law-and-order campaigns, then detonates it with a cynical solution that sounds, uncomfortably, like a budget proposal.

The specific intent is satirical: to mock the way institutions can sanitize predation by wrapping it in legality, paperwork, and “public interest.” If crime is defined less by harm than by who has the authority to do it, then handing it to the government becomes a grotesque form of laundering. The joke is that profitability is treated as the real problem, not wrongdoing. You can hear the implied shrug: if we can’t eliminate exploitation, at least we can regulate the margins.

The subtext is a critique of state power and the revolving door between public office and private gain. It evokes everything from civil asset forfeiture to opaque contracting to “legal” corruption that behaves like organized crime with better branding. The government, in this worldview, doesn’t merely fail to stop crime; it can outcompete criminals through monopoly, legitimacy, and coercive tools.

Contextually, it fits a long tradition of political aphorisms that use cynicism as a diagnostic instrument. The line doesn’t ask you to trust criminals; it asks why you’re so quick to trust systems that can do similar damage while calling it governance.