Conventional Wisdom of The Economist John Kenneth

In this chapter of Freakonomics, the question of the chapter is “why do drug dealers still live with their moms?” Economist John Kenneth Galbraith dives into a term called conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is known mostly as being true, but this is not always the case. Galbraith thinks that this type of wisdom is “convenient, comfortable, and comforting.” (citation) As the first couple of paragraphs continue on Levitt says that conventional wisdom is not always true, but it is hard to argue that is is never true.

One thing to compare conventional wisdom to is the dealing of crack cocaine.In 1996 the police force in Atlanta decided to underreport crime in the area.

The reason they decided to do this was because the city wanted the Olympics to come to Atlanta, and the only way for them to consider is if the crime rate decreased. Even though they got rid of reports every year there were still 22,000 police reports alone in 2002.

In the 1990s crack appeared out of nowhere. It had the police force in a frenzy, the dealers showed that they had the upper hand. The dealers had an unlimited amount of cash and access to any type of weapon. But when you really looked deep into the projects that the drug dealers were living in, you would notice that most drug dealers lived with their moms.A graduate from the University of California Sudhir Venkatesh received a degree in mathematics. Venkatesh next went to the University of Chicago and received a PhD in sociology.

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On one of his last projects in receiving his PhD was going into one of the poorest black neighborhoods in Chicago and ask 70 questions. As Venkatesh was trying to find someone to take the survey he ran into a group of teenagers that ran the building he was in, they were the gang of junior-level dealers, and they were not very excited to see him in their building. Eventually a crowd surrounded the boys and Venkatesh, one boy was waving a gun around saying let me have him. An older member of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation took Venkatesh clipboard and realized he could not read. When Venkatesh verbally asked the questions most responses were either gasps or f*** yous. Venkatesh was held in the projects but was eventually let go, after getting home he realized that he wanted to know more about what he Black Disciples did.

Venkatesh went back to the projects and found J.T., Venkatesh asked if he could be let into the gang. After some major convincing J.T. agreed and said that Venkatesh would be under the protection of him and that Venkatesh would not have to worry. Venkatesh witnessed some terrifying things, including shootings and stabbings. One time a guy named Booty gave Venkatesh some notebooks before he was killed, inside the notebooks were all of the gangs financial records over the past four years. After all of this investigating, Venkatesh was awarded a 3 year stay at Harvard’s Society of Fellows. Cocaine was the rich person’s drug, that is why people in the ghetto did not buy it. When crack was invented it was the hot stuff in the ghetto, it required such a low dosage of cocaine that one hit of it was only a few dollars.

Before the invention of crack it was difficult to come close to earning a living on the streets, when it came time for a man to start supporting his family he would have to quit, you would never hear of a 30+ year old gangster. If you did, he was “working a legitimate job, dead, or in prison” (citation). Instead of leaving the business and letting the youth thugs take over the business the veterans stayed because with crack they could make real money. Negatives arose with the invention of crack cocaine. The infant mortality soared in the 1980’s in black children and the rate of low-birth weight babies, and parent abandonment (citation). Many other tragedies struck the blacks all because of the addiction of crack cocaine. Overall crack cocaine hit the black community harder than the white, but the crime rate began to fall eventually.