TED: Steven Levitt, crack and McDonalds

Part 1 of a series of blogs I intend to do on various TED talks.

Being the nerd that I am, I recently downloaded the TED Talk app to my phone and then downloaded a whole bunch of talks on a variety of subjects. My first video was of Steven Levitt (the author of Freakonomics) talking about the economics of a crack-cocaine selling gang. While these gangs tend to have a portrayal in media of being glamorous, with women, money and bling (see the Grand Theft Auto series), Levitt demonstrates that an entry-level job (i.e., the kind of job that comprises the vast majority of the gang) in a gang is much more like working at a McDonalds. Mr. Levitt, I found, is a pretty good speaker. While his delivery perhaps could have used some work (he paced throughout the whole video), his appeals were very solid and he was ultimately very convincing. The crux of his argument, where his ethos stems from, is that he was receiving data from inside a gang. He was in contact with Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, a sociologist who had the good luck of being trusted by a gang through rather odd circumstances. While in the trusted circle of this gang, he was able to get his hands on their financial books, the contents of which he sent to Mr. Levitt. With humor, wit and intelligent insight, Mr. Levitt works this data into an analysis of the gang life that paints a very different picture than most people have. Rather than this idea of a glamorous life, he shows a life of danger, he tells the story of a very dangerous life with minimum payment. While he does a good job of banishing misconceptions, I felt that he could have done more analysis into why the foot soldiers stay on board with the gang when it is obviously such a terrible occupation.