Name: 【TED】Steven Levitt: The freakonomics of McDonalds vs. drugs
Uploaded: 2016-06-08T06:09:06.000Z
Duration: 22 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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You'll be happy to know that I'll be talking not about my own tragedy,

It's a lot easier to be lighthearted about other people's tragedy

and I want to keep it in the spirit of the conference.

being a drug dealer in the height of the crack cocaine epidemic

was a very glamorous life, in the words of Virginia Postrel.

There was money, there was drugs, guns, women,

you know, you name it -- jewelry, bling-bling -- it had it all.

What I'm going to tell you today is that, in fact, based on 10 years of research,

a unique opportunity to go inside a gang --

to see the actual books, the financial records of the gang --

that being in the gang was a glamorous life.

But I think, more realistically, that being in a gang --

selling drugs for a gang -- is perhaps the worst job in all of America.

And that's what I'd like to convince you of today.

First, I want to explain how and why crack cocaine

had such a profound influence on inner-city gangs.

how somebody like me came to be able to see

the inner workings of a gang -- an interesting story, I think.

And then third, I want to tell you, in a very superficial way,

when we actually got to look at the financial records,

which is that this presentation has been rated 'R'

by the Motion Picture Association of America.

It contains adult themes, adult language.

Given who is up on the stage, you'll be delighted to know

So let me start by talking about crack cocaine,

To do that, you have to actually go back to a time before crack cocaine,

in the early '80s, and look at it from the perspective of a gang leader.

Being a gang leader in the inner city wasn't such a bad deal in the mid-'80s --

Now, you had a lot of power, and you got to beat people up --

you got a lot of prestige, a lot of respect.

But the thing is, there was no money in it.

You couldn't charge dues to the people in the gang,

because the people in the gang didn't have any money.

You couldn't really make any money selling marijuana --

cocaine's a great product -- powdered cocaine --

but you've got to know rich white people.

And most of the inner-city gang members didn't know any rich white people,

You couldn't really do petty crime, either.

Turns out, petty crime's a terrible way to make a living.

As a result, as a gang leader, you had, you know, power --

it's a pretty good life -- but the thing was, in the end,

you were living at home with your mother.

There were limits to how powerful and important you could be

if you had to live at home with your mother.

crack cocaine was the extra-chunky version of tomato sauce

Because crack cocaine was an unbelievable innovation.

I don't have time to talk about it today, but if you think about it,

of every invention or innovation that's occurred in this country,

on the well-being of people who live in the inner city,

And for the worse -- not for the better, but for the worse.

It was a brilliant way of getting the brain high.

Because you could smoke crack cocaine -- you can't smoke powdered cocaine --

and smoking is a much more efficient mechanism of delivering a high

And it turned out there was this audience that didn't know it wanted crack cocaine,

you could buy the cocaine that went into it for a dollar,

Highly addictive -- the high was very short.

So for fifteen minutes, you get this great high,

And for the people who were there running the gang,

it was a great way, seemingly, to make a lot of money.

Not really me -- I'm really a bit player in all this.

My co-author, Sudhir Venkatesh, is the main character.

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【TED】Steven Levitt: The freakonomics of McDonalds vs. drugs

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