Crack cocaine and economy
Posted by Lake Gensui Uchino , Tuesday, April 27, 2010 6:42 PM
I found a video of Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, talking about crack economics.
According to Levitt, the way gangs are organized is very similar to the way McDonald's is organized.
There are the "Board of Directors" at the top, and below that, are the regional directors, and below that are the local "franchisees" of the crack business in the gang. However, the interesting part of this organization would be the "foot soldiers." Foot soldiers would be the equivalent of part-time workers at McDonalds.. only they earned much less. They earn about half of the minimum wage in the U.S. and the death rate of their jobs is 14 times the death rate of a soldier in Iraq.
So the interesting question was, why do these teenage kids, or these "foot soldiers" put their life on the line for such small money?
Check out the video below. It's actually really interesting.
Some of the students might know that I also teach Pubic Speaking at this university. It is from that perspective that I was most impressed with the introduction of Dr. Levitt's TED talk. In addition to grabbing the audience's attention with a bold claim and some humor, he clearly stated the purpose of his talk and previewed the three main points he would be presenting. This is exactly how I ask my students to give their speeches. I will recommend this video to my ENG115 classes in the future.
Beyond the organization and presentation techniques used by Dr. Levitt, there is also an intriguing sort of analysis used to tell his story.
Before this course, I'd never heard of Freakenomics. In this past week, I've seen two student blog posts on the topic and am now curious to investigate further. Thanks to you and Sonia for introducing me to this topic.
One suggestion on your blog post: I would have embedded the video directly in to the page instead of providing a URL to the TED video. Also, I'd have posted a link to Dr. Levitt's current website (if he has one).