'How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang'

[Popular Front of Judea]

Being a downwardly mobile member of the American working class I have to cop to experiencing a certain amount of schadenfreude when I read articles like this:



In 2000, economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics about the internal wage structure of a Chicago drug gang. This piece would later serve as a basis for a chapter in Levitt’s (and Dubner’s) best seller Freakonomics. The title of the chapter, “Why drug dealers still live with their moms”, was based on the finding that the income distribution within gangs was extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, while the rank-and-file street sellers earned even less than employees in legitimate low-skilled activities, let’s say at McDonald’s. They calculated 3.30 dollars as the hourly rate, that is, well below a living wage (that’s why they still live with their moms).

If you take into account the risk of being shot by rival gangs, ending up in jail or being beaten up by your own hierarchy, you might wonder why anybody would work for such a low wage and at such dreadful working conditions instead of seeking employment at Mc Donalds. Yet, gangs have no real difficulty in recruiting new members. The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth. Rank-and file members are ready to face this risk to try to make it to the top, where life is good and money is flowing. It is very unlikely that they will make it (their mortality rate is insanely high, by the way) but they’re ready to “get rich or die trying”.

With a constant supply of new low-level drug sellers entering the market and ready to be exploited, drug lords can become increasingly rich without needing to distribute their wealth towards the bottom. You have an expanding mass of rank-and-file “outsiders” ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of “insiders” securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass. We can call it a winner-take-all market.

The academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders. Even if the probability that you might get shot in academia is relatively small (unless you mark student papers very harshly), one can observe similar dynamics. Academia is only a somewhat extreme example of this trend, but it affects labour markets virtually everywhere. One of the hot topics in labour market research at the moment is what we call “dualisation”. Dualisation is the strengthening of this divide between insiders in secure, stable employment and outsiders in fixed-term, precarious employment. Academic systems more or less everywhere rely at least to some extent on the existence of a supply of “outsiders” ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of uncertain security, prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail.How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang |Alexandre Afonso (http://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Saw this, interesting article. Not sure that the headline is that accurate, even if it is eye-catching. Rather, it just seems a depressing expose of the difficulties inherent in gaining education for education's sake.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Interesting.

you might wonder why anybody would work for such a low wage and at such dreadful working conditions instead of seeking employment at Mc Donalds. Yet, gangs have no real difficulty in recruiting new members. The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth.

About this though, I don't know if a lot of people have real illusions in this when they sell drugs though - at least not for very long. People want money and want the respect and sense of worth that comes with it, but people also just blow through the money to buy some cool shit. Well the money and the hope of beating the odds and gaming the game are definitely draws, I just don't think it's the only thing... otherwise drug-dealing and gang tales really like wouldn't be so full of warnings and moralistic stuff. I think the link between these (black market entrepreneurship and academic) ... and the link between workers who save (or just dream) of being an artist, artisan, or owning a shop based around their interests is the wish for an unalienated life where you can do what you want to do. Even though most low-level drug dealers have someone over them, it's more like they are a franchise owner, rather than a wage slave... they get their supply and then it's up to them to sell it so they can get more drugs and sell that and so on.

As for the arguments about academia in general - I think the phenomena of such a stark divide between low-level people and the ones who've got some security is more part of a general phenomena of all professions in neoliberalism... why have more doctors you have to pay a lot when most of the work can be done by medics and nurses and so on? Why deal with a teacher's union when you can create teaching programs that ship college students into those spots? Why have a bunch of academics doing their own work while also being fine educators of students when you can just have a handful of high academics who have publish all the time and bring in grant money and prestige (attracting tuition and so on) while TAs teach the classes of 300 students for barely any money?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Interesting.

you might wonder why anybody would work for such a low wage and at such dreadful working conditions instead of seeking employment at Mc Donalds. Yet, gangs have no real difficulty in recruiting new members. The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth.

About this though, I don't know if a lot of people have real illusions in this when they sell drugs though - at least not for very long. People want money and want the respect and sense of worth that comes with it, but people also just blow through the money to buy some cool shit. Well the money and the hope of beating the odds and gaming the game are definitely draws, I just don't think it's the only thing... otherwise drug-dealing and gang tales really like wouldn't be so full of warnings and moralistic stuff. I think the link between these (black market entrepreneurship and academic) ... and the link between workers who save (or just dream) of being an artist, artisan, or owning a shop based around their interests is the wish for an unalienated life where you can do what you want to do. Even though most low-level drug dealers have someone over them, it's more like they are a franchise owner, rather than a wage slave... they get their supply and then it's up to them to sell it so they can get more drugs and sell that and so on.

As for the arguments about academia in general - I think the phenomena of such a stark divide between low-level people and the ones who've got some security is more part of a general phenomena of all professions in neoliberalism... why have more doctors you have to pay a lot when most of the work can be done by medics and nurses and so on? Why deal with a teacher's union when you can create teaching programs that ship college students into those spots? Why have a bunch of academics doing their own work while also being fine educators of students when you can just have a handful of high academics who have publish all the time and bring in grant money and prestige (attracting tuition and so on) while TAs teach the classes of 300 students for barely any money?

[blake 3:17]

About this though, I don't know if a lot of people have real illusions in this when they sell drugs though - at least not for very long. People want money and want the respect and sense of worth that comes with it, but people also just blow through the money to buy some cool shit.

There are billionaires from it.

[cyu]

The best corruption, is legalized corruption.

http://www.tobacco-news.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Tobacco-giant-R.J.-Reynolds.jpg
http://matboule.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Ritalin1.jpg

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

There are billionaires from it.

Exactly. These are rare and actually "climbing up the ladder," is a matter of how much work you're willing to put in, who puts you on, who you know and your networking skills and how dirty you plan on getting your hands (among a variety of other issues). It all seems so easy. Needless to say, I can think of scores of people off the top of my head who use to or still do hold on to illusions that they can make it to a Pablo or Ross level. I also know scores of people who still live with their family and peddle.

It's like that golden carrot being held over your head; "I got this, Ill flip that, then give these hitters some beat, get my weight up, this, that and the third, blah blah," it's very easy imho to get caught up in the idea that it's easier and more profitable to get the fast pennies even if your surroundings are screaming to you, just fucking give up and do something better, lol, most especially if you've actually seen some legitimate cash from it and by that, I mean stacks, who've been through shit, whom are involved in shit; it's real fucking hard, because then it's like, you know the moneys there, you know how to do it, it's really fucking easy (hypothetically) so then you begin to rationalize it's a matter of Will, time, endurance, luck, etc.

Which becomes very frustrating if you're the persons on the outside of the hustle because I, for example, had to counsel one of my friends a couple months ago, cause her husband went up state and she was real upset and it was so sad because he's way smart, he could probably do anything he really wanted, but a record, and former fast cash keep him at it, when they both were overcome by stress and strife and it was just all bad. Do I think he had/has illusions of grandeur? Absolutely. That's another thing though, given the nature of the vocation, if you stick with it, you will get a record, you will get charges, thus making it harder and harder to even get a job at say, a McDonalds. Which in turn then ups the anty and adds to the pressure of getting your shit handled and getting more money (at least enough to "survive").

Not to mention, I can very easily see how people ('someone I know' included) get into this mindset of, "why the fuck would I work my ass off, at McDonalds, to earn shit pay and watch other, lazier people either get the same amount or make more than me? Why would I even want an hourly wage? I can serve this dude a bunnie, boom, I just made 120 in 5 minutes, no mops needed." See what I mean? Levels to this shit! :lol:

This article is way interesting, thanks for posting.