Steven Levitt: The freakonomics of McDonalds vs. drugs

http://www.ted.com Freakonomics author Steven Levitt presents new data on the finances of drug dealing. Contrary to popular myth, he says, being a street-corner crack dealer isnt lucrative: It pays below minimum wage. And your boss can kill you.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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[iBombAtomicly]

Obviously anyone with large amounts of finances going in and out, is going to need to keep records, regardless of criminal activity or not.

Just because someone is a gang, doesn't mean they are stupid.

If you grow up in a neighbourhood were most people become gang members, and you are very smart, you will probably become a leader, or someone deep in the gangs finances.

Like if you grow up in a rich neighbourhood, you will probably become a big person in a legitimate company .

HUMANS ADAPT.

[Jheanell Barton]

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[ugn669]

Are you seriously saying that you know gangs INTIMATELY from the "other guys"? You're contradicting yourself. These kids are far from stupid or unintelligent. Following your logic making min wage flipping burgers is smart, but making 5 times as much while hanging on the corner is stupid. No, making good money is not stupid, stupid is having the chance to make good money but not taking it. What I said earlier I know, I've seen this firsthand, my info is not coming from the "other guys." Peace.

[justinhove]

Moral and ethical coaching AND LEADING by example are the only proffs that these people DIDNT get that traingin, or they did, and chose to abandon it, either way, unintelligent.

[justinhove]

ALL of these indicate lack of intelligence. Book smart, being able to regurgitate a memorized set of words. Ok. But stupid people are the ones getting weeded out, and the most violent, or most street smart, are the ones who eaither die, or end up running the gang. Either way, an intelligent man/woman/kid that had solid moral upbringing, a CLEAR path of what is right and wrong, WILL NOT be in a gang.

[justinhove]

Where to start. Wrong. and wrong again. i have intimate knowledge of gangs, from the "other guys". TRUST ME when i say the VAST majority of gang members posess a 3rd grade education. And the rest, not all but most, are "street smart" and take ALL of their role models from gang members, from tv, and from music.

[Janusha]

OMG he said nigger !

[ugn669]

And that's the big danger with statistics, anybody can massage them to fit any theory, as has been shown time and time again. Statistics *always* have some percentage error, the uncertainty principle, and that's why any numbers derived from said statistics are often misleading (not always on purpose, a lot of these people have no first hand experience with the topic, so they can't always properly evaluate the results.)

[ugn669]

But I'm not, that's the point. The numbers I gave are factual numbers that are currently in play. I've talked to quite a few people who make a living selling drugs, and also to the people one step above who provide the drugs at 1/2 street value. These are not opinions, or some statistics based on fluff, but real, true, current, facts. As long as this speaker is speaking about today in the US his stats are plain wrong. Granted, it may have been true during the "crack" boom, but not today.

[christinachapman85]

Those of us who don't view such things do not see ads for them, sport. My ads are all for science videos.

[christinachapman85]

I think you are confusing peer pressure with cultural restriction. If everyone you know is doing the same thing, and you are completely unaware that there is anything other way of doing things (because you never see anything else) how can you call it a matter of choice? Are you free to choose that which did not occur to you to choose?

I'll put it another way- imagine an island where everyone speak one language. How can you just CHOOSE to speak another language you've never heard?