You'll be happy to know that I'll be talking not about my own tragedy, but other people's tragedy. It's a lot easier to be lighthearted about other people's tragedy than your own, and I want to keep it in the spirit of the conference.
Biće vam drago da čujete da neću pričati o svojoj, već o tuđoj nesreći. Mnogo je lakše biti nonšalantan kada je tuđa nesreća u pitanju, a ja želim da govorim u duhu ove konferencije. Dakle, ako verujete medijima,
So, if you believe the media accounts, 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.
život dilera droge u slavnim danima kada je vladala epidemija krek kokaina, bio je glamurozan, po rečima Virdžinije Postrel. Tu je bilo novca, droge, oružja, žena, šta god vam padne na pamet – nakit, kajle - svega je bilo.
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 the answer turns out not to be 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.
Danas ću vam ispričati kako zapravo, na osnovu deset godina istraživanja, i jedinstvene prilike da uđemo u bandu - da vidimo poslovne knjige, podatke o finansijama bande - nismo dobili potvrdan odgovor da biti u bandi omogućuje glamurozan život. Zapravo, realno je reći da biti u bandi - prodavati drogu za bandu - jeste možda i najgori posao u Americi. U to bih danas želeo i vas da ubedim.
So there are three things I want to do. First, I want to explain how and why crack cocaine had such a profound influence on inner-city gangs. Secondly, I want to tell you 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, about some of the things we found when we actually got to look at the financial records, the books, of the gang.
Zapravo želim da postignem tri stvari. Najpre želim da objasnim kako je i zašto krek kokain tako značajno uticao na ulične bande. Zatim želim da vam objasnim kako je neko poput mene stekao uvid u funkcionisanje bande. Mislim da je to zanimljiva priča. I na trećem mestu, želim površno da vam ispričam o nekim stvarima koje smo otkrili kada smo stekli uvid u finansijske podatke - poslovne knjige bande.
So before I do that, just one warning, 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 that, in fact, there'll be no nudity --
Pre toga, jedno upozorenje, ova prezentacija je dobila R rejting od Američke filmske asocijacije. Sadrži teme za odrasle i nepristojne izraze. Znajući ko je na pozornici, biće vam drago da čujete da neće biti golotinje,
(Laughter)
mada -
Unexpected wardrobe malfunctions aside.
(Smeh) - neočekivani problemi sa odećom nisu nemogući .
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So let me start by talking about crack cocaine, and how it transformed the gang. 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 -- the early '80s, let me say.
Za početak, pričaću o krek kokainu i kako je preobrazio bande. Da bi to shvatili moramo da se vratimo u vreme pre krek kokaina, u rane osamdesete, i da stvari posmatramo iz perspektive vođe bande. Biti vođa bande u getu i nije bilo tako loše sredinom osamdesetih. Neki bi rekli početkom osamdesetih.
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. The gang had no way to make money. 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 -- marijuana's too cheap, it turns out. You can't get rich selling marijuana. You couldn't sell cocaine; 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, so couldn't sell to that market. You couldn't really do petty crime, either. Turns out, petty crime's a terrible way to make a living.
Jer onda imaš znatnu moć, možeš da prebijaš ljude - imaš mnogo prestiža i poštovanja. Ali u tome nije bilo novca, razumete? Banda nije nikako mogla da zaradi novac. I nije mogla da naplaćuje članstvo ljudima u bandi, jer ti ljudi nisu imali novac. Nije se mogao zaraditi ozbiljan novac prodajom marihuane. Marihuana je previše jeftina, kako se ispostavilo. Ne možeš se obogatiti prodajući marihuanu. Kokain nisi mogao da prodaješ. Kapirate, kokain je super proizvod - kokain u prahu - ali morate da poznajete bogate belce. A većina članova gradskih bandi nije znala bogate belce - nisu mogli da prodaju na tom tržištu. Nisi mogao da se baviš ni sitnim kriminalom. Ispostavlja se da je sitan kriminal užasan način da se zaradi za život.
Tako da, kad se sve sabere,
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. And so it wasn't really a career. There were limits to how powerful and important you could be if you had to live at home with your mother.
kao vođa bande, imao si, znaš kao, moć. To je dosta dobar život. Al’ radi se o tome da na kraju, ipak živiš kući kod mame. Tako da to nije prava karijera. To je više kao -- jednostavno postoji granica koliko moćan i važan možeš da budeš ako moraš da živiš sa mamom.
Then along comes crack cocaine. And in the words of Malcolm Gladwell, crack cocaine was the extra-chunky version of tomato sauce for the inner city.
A onda se pojavio krek kokain. Prema rečima Malkoma Gledvela, krek kokain je bio varijanta paradajz sosa sa krupno seckanim paradajzom, za geto. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
Because crack cocaine was an unbelievable innovation. I don't have time to talk about it today, but if you think about it, I would say that in the last 25 years, of every invention or innovation that's occurred in this country, the biggest one in terms of impact on the well-being of people who live in the inner city, was crack cocaine. And for the worse -- not for the better, but for the worse. It had a huge impact on life.
Jer krek kokain je bio neverovatna novina. Danas nemam vremena da pričam o tome. Ali ako razmislite, moglo bi se reći da u poslednjih dvadeset pet godina, od svih izuma i inovacija koje su se desile u zemlji, najveći, po uticaju koji je imao na dobrobit ljudi koji žive u getu, jeste krek kokain. I to negativan - ne pozitivan, već negativan. Imao je ogroman uticaj na život.
So what was it about crack cocaine? 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 than snorting it. And it turned out there was this audience that didn't know it wanted crack cocaine, but when it came, it really did. And it was a perfect drug; you could buy the cocaine that went into it for a dollar, sell it for five dollars. Highly addictive -- the high was very short. So for fifteen minutes, you get this great high, and then when you come down, all you want to do is get high again.
Pa, u čemu je stvar sa krek kokainom? To je bio odličan način za "dizanje" mozga. Jer krek kokain se može pušiti - kokain u prahu ne može se pušiti - a pušenje je mnogo efikasniji mehanizam za "dizanje" od ušmrkavanja. I onda se ispostavilo da postoji "publika" koja nije ni znala da želi krek kokain, ali kada se pojavio, stvarno ga je želela. I to je bila savršena droga. Mogao se prodati - kupiš kokain koji se stavlja u njega za dolar, prodaš za pet dolara. Stvara jaku zavisnost - "dizanje" traje kratko. Na petnaest minuta, dobiješ neviđeno "dizanje". A onda, kada se spustiš, sve što želiš je da ponoviš iskustvo.
It created a wonderful market. And for the people who were there running the gang, it was a great way, seemingly, to make a lot of money. At least for the people on the top.
Stvorilo se sjajno tržište. A za ljude koji su bili u tome kao vođe bandi, bio je to, naizgled, odličan način da se zaradi puno novca. Barem za ljude na vrhu.
So this is where we enter the picture. Not really me -- I'm really a bit player in all this. My co-author, Sudhir Venkatesh, is the main character. He was a math major in college who had a good heart, and decided he wanted to get a sociology PhD, came to the University of Chicago. Now, the three months before he came to Chicago, he had spent following the Grateful Dead. And in his own words, he "looked like a freak." He's a South Asian -- very dark-skinned South Asian. Big man, and he had hair, in his words, "down to his ass." Defied all kinds of boundaries: Was he black or white? Was he man or woman? He was really a curious sight to be seen.
Na ovom mestu mi stupamo na scenu. Zapravo ne ja - ja sam ustvari sporedan lik u ovoj priči. Moj koautor Sudir Venkateš je glavni lik. On je bio student matematike na fakultetu, a dobro srce ga je povuklo da se opredeli za doktorat iz sociologije. Došao je na Univerzitet u Čikagu. Uzgred, tri meseca pre dolaska u Čikago proveo je prateći "Grateful Dead" na turneji. I po sopstvenim rečima, "izgledao je kao čudak". On je poreklom iz južne Azije, veoma tamnoput azijat. Krupan čovek, sa kosom, po sopstvenim rečima „do dupeta“. Prkosio je svim kalupima: da li je bio crnac ili belac? Muškarac ili žena? Uistinu je bio neobičan na prvi pogled.
So he showed up at the University of Chicago, and the famous sociologist William Julius Wilson was doing a book that involved surveying people all across Chicago. He took one look at Sudhir, who was going to go do some surveys for him, and decided he knew exactly the place to send him, which was to one of the toughest, most notorious housing projects not just in Chicago, but in the entire United States.
I tako se pojavio na Univerzitetu u Čikagu. A poznati sociolog Vilijam Džulijus Vilson radio je na knjizi za koju je trebalo anketirati ljude po celom Čikagu. Bacio je jedan pogled na Sudira, koji je trebalo da radi ankete za njega i znao je tačno na koje mesto da ga pošalje - u jedan od najžešćih, najozloglašenih blokova. I to ne samo u Čikagu, već u celoj Americi.
So Sudhir, the suburban boy who had never really been in the inner city, dutifully took his clipboard and walked down to this housing project, gets to the first building. The first building? Well, there's nobody there. But he hears some voices up in the stairwell, so he climbs up the stairwell, comes around the corner, and finds a group of young African-American men playing dice.
Tako je Sudir - dečko iz predgrađa koji zapravo nikada nije ni bio u getu - poslušno uzeo fasciklu i, pogađate, odšetao u te blokove. Stigao je do prve zgrade. Prva zgrada? Pa, tamo nije bilo nikoga. Ali on je čuo glasove gore na stepeništu, i popeo se uz stepenište. I kada je izašao iza ugla - naišao je na grupu mladih afro-amerikanaca koji bacaju kockice.
This is about 1990, peak of the crack epidemic. This is a very dangerous job, being in a gang. You don't like to be surprised. You don't like to be surprised by people who come around the corner. And the mantra was: shoot first; ask questions later. Now, Sudhir was lucky -- he was such a freak, and that clipboard probably saved his life, because they figured no other rival gang member would be coming up to shoot at them with a clipboard.
Ovo se dešava 1990 - epidemija kreka je u jeku. Biti u bandi je opasan posao - ne želite da vas neko iznenadi. Ne želite da vas iznenade ljudi koji se pojavljuju iza ugla. Mantra je bila: prvo pucaj pa postavljaj pitanja. E, Sudir je imao sreće. Delovao je tako čudno - a i ona fascikla mu je verovatno spasila život, jer su shvatili da niko iz suparničke bande ne bi došao da ih upuca sa fasciklom. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
Nije naišao na naročito topao doček, ali su rekli,
So his greeting was not particularly warm, but they did say, well, OK -- let's hear your questions on your survey. So -- I kid you not -- the first question on the survey that he was sent to ask was: "How do you feel about being poor and Black in America?"
pa, 'ajde - da čujemo ta pitanja iz tvoje ankete. I, ne zezam vas, prvo pitanje u anketi koje je poslat da pita bilo je: "Kakav je osećaj biti siromašan crnac u Americi?“
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Makes you wonder about academics.
Da se čovek zapita o tim naučnicima, jel’ da?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So the choice of answers were:
A ponuđeni odgovori su bili: veoma dobro, dobro, loše, veoma loše.
[A) Very Good B) Good C) Bad D) Very Bad]
(Laughter)
What Sudhir found out is, in fact, that the real answer was the following: [A) Very Good B) Good C) Bad D) Very Bad E) Fuck you]
Kako je Sudir otkrio, ustvari, pravi odgovor je bio sledeći - (Smeh)
(Laughter)
The survey was not, in the end, going to be what got Sudhir off the hook. He was held hostage overnight in the stairwell. There was a lot of gunfire, there were a lot of philosophical discussions he had with the gang members. By morning, the gang leader arrived, checked out Sudhir, decided he was no threat, and they let him go home. So Sudhir went home, took a shower, took a nap.
Anketa na kraju nije bila od pomoći da se Sudir izvuče iz situacije. Držali su ga kao taoca na stepeništu tu noć. Bilo je puno pucnjave - puno filosofskih rasprava sa pripadnicima bande. Do jutra, stigao je vođa bande. Procenio je Sudira - zaključio da nije pretnja i pustili su ga kući. I Sudir je otišao kući. Istuširao se, pa odremao.
And you and I, probably, faced with the situation, would think, "I guess I'm going to write my dissertation on The Grateful Dead, I've been following them for the last three months."
Vi ili ja, najverovatnije bi u toj situaciji pomislili, šta je tu je, izgleda da ću pisati disertaciju na temu "The Greatful Dead". Njih sam pratio poslednja tri meseca. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
Međutim, Sudir se odmah vratio - odšetao do blokova.
Sudhir, on the other hand, got right back, walked down to the housing project, went up to the second floor, and said: "Hey, guys, I had so much fun hanging out with you last night, I wonder if I could do it again tonight." And that was the beginning of what turned out to be a beautiful relationship that involved Sudhir living in the housing project on and off for 10 years, hanging out in crack houses, going to jail with the gang members, having the windows shot out of his car, having the police break into his apartment and steal his computer disks -- you name it. But ultimately, the story has a happy ending for Sudhir, who became one of the most respected sociologists in the country. And especially for me, as I sat in my office with my Excel spreadsheet open, waiting for Sudhir to come and deliver to me the latest load of data that he would get from the gang.
Popeo se na sprat, drugi sprat, i rekao: „E ljudi, toliko mi je bilo dobro zezanje sa vama sinoć, da li bismo mogli da ponovimo večeras?“ Bio je to početak, ispostaviće se, divnog odnosa, gde je Sudir povremeno i živeo u bloku tokom deset godina: visio po krek kućama, išao u zatvor sa članovima bande, doživeo da mu pucnjem raznesu staklo na kolima, da mu policija upadne u stan i ukrade kompjuterske diskove - šta sve ne. Ali na kraju, priča ima srećan kraj za Sudira, postao je jedan od najcenjenijih sociologa u zemlji. A posebno za mene, jer sam sedeo u kancelariji sa otvorenim "Excel" listom, čekao Sudira da dođe i isporuči najnoviji paket podataka - koje je dobijao od bande.
(Laughter)
It was one of the most unequal co-authoring relationships ever --
Naša saradnja ubraja se među najmanje ravnopravne svih vremena -
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
But I was glad to be the beneficiary of it.
ali ja sam bio zadovoljan onim što sam dobio iz nje.
So what did we find? What did we find in the gang? Well, let me say one thing: We really got access to everybody in the gang. We got an inside look at the gang, from the very bottom up to the very top. They trusted Sudhir, in ways that really no academic has ever -- or really anybody, any outsider -- has ever earned the trust of these gangs, to the point where they actually opened up what was most interesting for me -- their books, the financial records they kept. They made them available to us, and we not only could study them, but we could ask them questions about what was in them.
I šta smo saznali? Šta smo naučili o bandi? Pa, jednu stvar ću reći. Stvarno su nam svi u bandi bili dostupni. Imali smo pogled iznutra na bandu, od samog dna do samog vrha. Verovali su Sudiru - zaista nijedan naučnik ikada - zapravo iko, bilo koji autsajder - nikada nije imao takvo poverenje bandi, dotle da su mu omogućili pristup onome što je meni bilo najzanimljivije: poslovnim knjigama, finansijama koje su vodili. I stavili su ih nama na raspolaganje. I ne samo da smo mogli da ih proučavamo, već smo mogli i da im postavljamo pitanja o nihovom sadržaju.
So if I have to kind of summarize very quickly in the short time I have what the bottom line of what I take away from the gang is, it's that, if I had to draw a parallel between the gang and any other organization, it would be that the gang is just like McDonald's, in a lot of different respects -- the restaurant McDonald's.
Ako bih morao da ukratko opišem, smestim u par minuta koliko imam, neko osnovno saznanje koje sam stekao od bande, ako bih morao da povučem paralelu između bande i bilo koje druge organizacije, zaključio bih da je banda skroz kao Mekdonalds. U pogledu mnogih stvari - restoran Mekdonalds.
So first, in one way, which isn't maybe the most interesting way, but it's a good way to start -- is in the way it's organized, the hierarchy of the gang, the way it looks. So here's what the org chart of the gang looks like. I don't know if you know much about org charts, but if you were to assign a stripped-down and simplified McDonald's org chart, this is exactly what it would look like. It's amazing, but the top level of the gang, they actually call themselves the "Board of Directors."
Kao prvo, jedna stvar - koja možda nije najzanimljivija, ali je dobra za početak - jeste način organizovanja. Hijerarhija bande: kako izgleda. Evo kako izgleda grafikon organizacione strukture bande. Ne znam da li iko od vas zna puno o grafikonima organizacione strukture, ali ako biste prikazali osnovnu, uprošćenu organizacionu strukturu Mekdonaldsa, grafikon bi upravo ovako izgledao. A zanimljivo je da vrh bande zapravo sebe i zove „upravnim odborom“.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And Sudhir says it's not like these guys had a very sophisticated view of what happened in American corporate life, but they had seen movies like "Wall Street," and they had learned a little bit about what it was like to be in the real world. Now, below that board of directors, you've got essentially what are regional VPs -- people who control, say, the South Side of Chicago, or the West Side of Chicago.
A Sudir kaže da ovi ljudi nemaju baš istančanu sliku o tome šta se dešava u životu američkih korporacija. Ali, gledali su filmove kao što je Vol strit,i nešto su kao naučili o životu u stvarnom svetu. Sad, ispod tog upravnog odbora, nalaze se regionalni direktori - ljudi koji, na primer, kontrolišu južni Čikago, ili zapadni Čikago.
Sudhir got to know very well the guy who had the unfortunate assignment of trying to take the Iowa franchise, which, it turned out, for this black gang, was not one of the more brilliant financial endeavors they undertook.
Sad, Sudir je dobro upoznao lika koji je imao nesrećni zadatak da pokuša da uspostavi franšizu u Ajovi. (Smeh) Što se ispostavilo, za ovu crnačku bandu, kao ne tako sjajan
(Laughter)
finansijski poduhvat.
But the thing that really makes the gang seem like McDonald's is its franchisees.
(Smeh)
The guys who are running the local gangs -- the four-square-block by four-square-block areas -- they're just like the guys, in some sense, who are running the McDonald's. They are the entrepreneurs. They get the exclusive property rights to control the drug-selling. They get the name of the gang behind them, for merchandising and marketing. And they're the ones who basically make the profit or lose a profit, depending on how good they are at running the business.
Ali stvar koja je bandu stvarno činila tako sličnom Mekdonaldsu jesu vođe franšiza. Činjenica je da su likovi koji su vodili lokalne bande - područja pojedinih blokova sačinjena od 4x4 ulica - na neki način isti kao likovi koji drže Mekdonalds restorane. Oni su preduzetnici. Imaju ekskluzivna imovinska prava da kontrolišu prodaju droge. Iza sebe imaju ime bande, za prodaju i marketing. I oni su ti koji u osnovi stvaraju ili gube dobit, zavisno od toga koliko dobro vode posao.
Now, the group I really want you to think about, though, are the ones at the bottom -- the foot soldiers. These are the teenagers, typically, who'd be standing out on the street corner, selling the drugs. Extremely dangerous work. And important to note is that almost all of the weight, all of the people in this organization are at the bottom -- just like McDonald's. So in some sense, the foot soldiers are a lot like the people who are taking your order at McDonald's, and it's not just by chance that they're like them. In fact, in these neighborhoods, they'd be the same people. So the same kids who are working in the gang were actually, at the very same time, typically working part-time at a place like McDonald's. Which already foreshadows the main result that I've talked about, about what a crappy job it was, being in the gang. Because obviously, if being in the gang were such a wonderful, lucrative job, why in the world would these guys moonlight at McDonald's?
E sad, zapravo, grupa o kojoj bih da vas navedem da razmišljate jesu oni na dnu, pešadija. Obično su to tinejdžeri, koji stoje na ćošku i prodaju drogu. Krajnje opasan posao. I važno je da se zapazi da skoro sva težina, svi ljudi u organizaciji jesu na dnu. Znači, baš kao u Mekdonaldsu. U neku ruku, pešadinci su kao ljudi koji uzimaju vašu porudžbinu u Mekdonaldsu. I stvarno, nije sasvim slučajno da liče na njih. Zapravo, u ovim delovima grada, to su isti ljudi. Isti klinci koji rade za bandu u stvari - istovremeno, po pravilu rade i pola radnog vremena na nekom mestu kao što je Mekdonalds. Već samo to, po meni, najavljuje osnovni nalaz koji sam već pomenuo, kako je pripadnost bandi zeznut posao. Očigledno je, ako je pripadnost bandi divan, unosan posao, što bi iko od ovih momaka imao drugi posao u Mekdonaldsu?
So what do the wages look like? You might be surprised. But based on being able to talk to them and to see their records, this is what it looks like in terms of the wages. The hourly wage the foot soldiers were earning was $3.50 an hour. It was below the minimum wage. And this is well-documented. It's easy to see by the patterns of consumption they have. It really is not fiction -- it's fact. There was very little money in the gang, especially at the bottom.
A kako stvari stoje sa platom? Možda ćete se iznenaditi. Ali na osnovu pravih - znate, priče sa njima, pregledanja finansija, ovako stvari stoje sa platom. Nadoknada koju su zarađivali pešadinci bila je 3.50 dolara po satu. To je ispod minimalca, da? I ovo je podržano dokazima. Jasno se vidi, po njihovim navikama trošenja. Zaista se ne radi o izmišljotini - to je činjenica. Jako je malo para u bandi, naročito na dnu.
Now if you managed to rise up, say, and be that local leader, the guy who's the equivalent of the McDonald's franchisee, you'd be making 100,000 dollars a year. And that, in some ways, was the best job you could hope to get if you were growing up in one of these neighborhoods as a young black male. If you managed to rise to the very top, 200,000 or 400,000 dollars a year is what you'd hope to make. Truly, you would be a great success story.
Sad, ako se uspete lestvicom - recimo do lokalnog šefa, lika koji je u rangu vlasnika Mekdonaldsove franšize - zarađivali biste 100,000 dolara godišnje. I to je, na neki način, najbolji posao kome biste mogli da se nadate ako ste odrasli u jednom od ovih krajeva grada, kao mladi crni muškarac. Ako biste se uspeli na sam vrh, 200,000 ili 400,000 dolara je ono čemu biste mogli da se nadate kao zaradi. Uistinu, to bi bila super priča o uspehu.
And one of the sad parts of this is that, indeed, among the many other ramifications of crack cocaine is that the most talented individuals in these communities -- this is what they were striving for. They weren't trying to make it in legitimate ways, because there were no legitimate channels out. This was the best way out. And it actually was the right choice, probably, to try to make it out this way.
I ono što je tužno u svemu ovome je da zapravo, uz druge nepredviđene posledice krek kokaina, najtalentovaniji pojedinci u ovim zajednicama - to je ono čemu su težili. Nisu pokušavali da ostvare uspeh na legitiman način, jer nije bilo legitimnog izlaza. Ovo je bio najbolji način da se pobegne odatle. I ustvari je to bio pravi izbor, najverovatnije, pokušaj da se izlaz nađe na ovaj način. Pogledajte sledeće.
You look at this, the relationship to McDonald's breaks down here. The money looks about the same. Why is it such a bad job? Well, the reason it's such a bad job is that there's somebody shooting at you a lot of the time. So, with shooting at you, what are the death rates? We found, in our gang -- and admittedly, this was not really a standard situation; this was a time of intense violence, of a lot of gang wars, as this gang actually became quite successful. But there were costs. And so the death rate -- not to mention the rate of being arrested, sent to prison, being wounded -- the death rate in our sample was seven percent per person per year. You're in the gang for four years, you expect to die with about a 25 percent likelihood. That is about as high as you can get.
Poređenje sa Mekdonaldsom ovde se prekida. Novčana strana izgleda približno isto. Zašto je to tako loš posao? Pa, loš je stoga što vrlo često neko puca na vas. I, sa pucnjavom, kolika je stopa smrtnosti? Kako smo videli u našoj bandi - i, treba reći, ovo nije zapravo bila uobičajena situacija. U to vreme dešavalo se intenzivno nasilje - puno ratova bandi - dok je ova banda postala dosta uspešna. Ali cena je plaćena. Tako da je smrtnost - da ne pominjem učestalost hapšenja, odlaska u zatvor, ranjavanja - stopa smrtnosti u našem uzorku bila je 7 procenata po osobi godišnje. Ako ste u bandi četiri godine, gledate u verovatnoću da ćete umreti od 25 procenata. Ovo su naviše moguće stope.
So for comparison's purposes, let's think about some other walk of life you may expect might be extremely risky. Let's say that you were a murderer and you were convicted of murder, and you're sent to death row. It turns out, the death rates on death row from all causes, including execution: two percent a year.
Poređenja radi, razmislimo o nekim drugim zanimanjima za koje možete očekivati da su izuzetno riskantna. Evo, recimo da ste ubica osuđen za ubistvo, i na listi ste za izvršenje smrtne kazne. Ispostavlja se da je stopa smrtnosti ljudi na listi za pogubljenje - uključujući pogubljenje i druge uzroke smrti - dva procenta godišnje.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So it's a lot safer being on death row than it is selling drugs out on the street.
Tako da je mnogo sigurnije čekati izvršenje smrtne presude nego prodavati drogu na ulici.
That gives you some pause, for those of you who believe that a death penalty's going to have an enormous deterrent effect on crime. To give you a sense of just how bad the inner city was during crack -- and I'm not really focusing on the negatives, but really, there's another story to tell you there -- if you look at the death rates just of random, young black males growing up in the inner city in the United States, the death rates during crack were about one percent. That's extremely high. And this is violent death -- it's unbelievable, in some sense.
To čini da se čovek zamisli - daje materijal za razmišljanje -- za vas koji verujete da će smrtna kazna imati ogroman uticaj na sprečavanje kriminala. Da bih vam dočarao koliko je zapravo bilo loše stanje u getu u doba kreka - i nije da se fokusiram samo na negativne stvari, ali stvarno moram da vam ispričam još jednu priču - ako pogledate stope smrtnosti - nasumice, mladih crnih muškaraca koji odrastaju u getu u SADu - stope smrtnosti u doba kreka bile su jedan odsto. To je izuzetno visoko. I radi se o nasilnoj smrti - to je neverovatno, na neki način.
To put it into perspective: if you compare this to the soldiers in Iraq, for instance, right now fighting the war: 0.5 percent. So in some very literal way, the young black men who were growing up in this country were living in a war zone, very much in the sense that the soldiers over in Iraq are fighting in a war.
Da stavimo to u kontekst, ako uporedite to sa podacima o vojnicima u Iraku, koji na primer, upravo sada vode rat: 0.5 procenta. Tako da su bukvalno mladi crni muškarci koji su rasli u ovoj zemlji živeli u ratnoj zoni, na isti način kao vojnici u Iraku koji se bore u ratu.
So why in the world, you might ask, would anybody be willing to stand out on a street corner selling drugs for $3.50 an hour, with a 25 percent chance of dying over the next four years? Why would they do that? And I think there are a couple answers.
Pa zašto bi onda, možete se pitati, iko pristao da stoji na ćošku i prodaje drogu za 3.50 dolara na sat, uz verovatnoću od 25 procenata da će umreti u naredne četiri godine? Zašto bi to radili? Mislim da ima nekoliko odgovora.
I think the first one is that they got fooled by history. It used to be the gang was a rite of passage; that the young people controlled the gang; that as you got older, you dropped out of the gang. So what happened was, the people who happened to be in the right place at the right time -- the people who happened to be leading the gang in the mid-to-late-'80s -- became very, very wealthy. And so the logical thing to think was that they are going to age out of the gang like everybody else has, and the next generation is going to take over and get the wealth.
Prvi se mislim nalazi u tome da ih je prevarila istorija. Nekada je banda predstavljala deo odrastanja. Mladi ljudi su kontrolisali bandu - a, kako se odrasta, izlazi se iz bande. A desilo se da su ljudi koji su se našli na pravom mestu u pravo vreme - ljudi koji se se našli na čelu bande sredinom i kasnih osamdesetih -- postali vrlo, vrlo bogati. Tako je logično bilo razmišljanje: „Pa, sledeća generacija - dakle oni će prerasti bandu, kao što su i svi drugi i sledeća generacija će je preuzeti i obogatiti se".
There are striking similarities, I think, to the Internet boom. The first set of people in Silicon Valley got very, very rich. And then all of my friends said, "Maybe I should go do that, too." And they were willing to work very cheap for stock options that never came. In some sense, that's what happened, exactly, to the set of people we were looking at. They were willing to start at the bottom, just like, say, a first-year lawyer at a law firm is willing to start at the bottom, work 80-hour weeks for not that much money, because they think they're going to make partner. But the rules changed, and they never got to make partner.
Dakle postoje upadljive sličnosti, čini mi se, sa naglim usponom Interneta, zar ne? Prva grupa ljudi u Silikonskoj dolini postala je vrlo, vrlo bogata. A onda su svi moji prijatelji rekli: „Možda bi i ja trebalo da odem i krenem time da se bavim.“ I bili su spremni da rade za male pare, za deonice koje nikada nisu ni dobili. Na neki način, isto to se desilo ljudima koje smo mi izučavali, oni su bili spremni da krenu sa dna. Kao, recimo, pravnik u advokatskoj firmi - pripravnik je spreman da krene sa dna, radi osamdeset sati nedeljno za malo para, jer svako misli da će postati partner. A desilo se da su se pravila promenila i da nikada nisu postali partneri.
Indeed, the same people who were running all of the major gangs in the late 1980s are still running the major gangs in Chicago today. They never passed on any of the wealth, So everybody got stuck at that $3.50-an-hour job, and it turned out to be a disaster.
Zaista, isti ljudi koji su vodili sve veće bande krajem osamdesetih i dan danas vode velike bande u Čikagu. Nikada nisu prepustili deo bogatstva. Tako su svi ostali na poslu koji se plaća 3.50 na sat, što se ispostavilo kao prava katastrofa.
The other thing the gang was very good at was marketing and trickery. And so for instance, one thing the gang would do is -- the gang leaders would have big entourages, and they'd drive fancy cars and have fancy jewelry. So what Sudhir eventually realized as he hung out with them more, is that, really, they didn't own those cars -- they just leased them, because they couldn't afford to own the fancy cars. And they didn't really have gold jewelry, they had gold-plated jewelry. It goes back to, you know, the real-real versus the fake-real.
Sledeće je da su bande bile vrlo, vrlo dobre u marketingu i prevari. Tako, recimo, banda bi - znate, vođe bandi su imali brojnu svitu, i oni su vozili strava kola i imali fensi nakit. A Sudir je na kraju shvatio, nakon što je dosta vremena gluvario sa njima, da u stvari, oni nisu posedovali te automobile. Samo su ih iznajmljivali - jer nisu mogli da priušte sebi da kupe strava kola. A ni zlatni nakit nisu stvarno imali - imali su pozlaćen nakit. Svodi se na to da ima razlike između stvarnosti i isfolirane stvarnosti.
And really, they did all sorts of things to trick the young people into thinking what a great deal the gang was going to be. So for instance, they would give a 14-year-old kid a whole roll of bills to hold. That 14-year-old kid would say to his friends, "Hey, look at all the money I got in the gang." It wasn't his money -- until he spent it, and then he was in debt to the gang, and was sort of an indentured servant for a while. So I have a couple minutes.
I zaista su svašta radili da bi navukli mlade da pomisle kako će banda biti sjajna stvar. Na primer, dali bi četrnaestogodišnjaku - da drži celi svežanj novčanica. I taj četrnaestogodišnjak bi rekao: „Opa...“ Shvatate, rekao bi svojim prijateljima: „E, pazi koje pare dobijam od bande.“ Nije to bio njegov novac, sve dok ga ne potroši. A onda bi u suštini bio dužan bandi, i dužan da im služi neko vreme. Dakle imam još nekoliko minuta.
Let me do one last thing I hadn't thought I'd have time to do, which is to talk about what we learned more generally about economics, from the study of the gang.
Preći ću na poslednju stvar za koju nisam mislio da ću imati vremena da pomenem; pričaću o tome šta smo naučili, generalno gledano, o ekonomiji kroz izučavanje bande.
So, economists tend to talk in technical words. Often, our theories fail quite miserably when we over the data, but what's kind of interesting is that in this setting, it turned out that some of the economic theories that worked not so well in the real economy worked very well in the drug economy, in some sense, because it's unfettered capitalism. Here's an economic principle. This is one of the basic ideas in labor economics, called a "compensating differential." It's the idea that the increment to wages that a worker requires to leave him indifferent between performing two tasks, one which is more unpleasant than the other. Compensating differential -- it's why we think garbagemen might be paid more than people who work in parks.
Ekonomisti kad pričaju obično koristeći tehničke termine. Često, naše teorije kolosalno propadnu kada stignemo do konkretnih podataka. Ali zapravo, zanimljivo je da u ovom okruženju, neke od ekonomskih teorija koje su se slabo pokazale u pravoj ekonomiji, funkcionišu vrlo dobro u ekonomiji droge - donekle jer se radi o slobodnom kapitalizmu. Evo jednog ekonomskog principa. To je jedna od osnovnih ideja u ekonomiji rada, zove se "kompenzacijska razlika". Ideja je da se razlika u plati koju radnik zahteva da ne bi pravio razliku između obavljanja dva zadatka - pri čemu je jedan neprijatniji od drugog - naziva kompenzacijska razlika. Zbog toga smatramo da đubretari mogu biti više plaćeni od ljudi koji rade u parku, da?
The words of one of the members of the gang, I think, make this clear. So it turns out -- I'm sort of getting ahead of myself -- it turns out, in the gang, when there's a war going on, they actually pay the foot soldiers twice as much money. It's exactly this concept. Because they're not willing to be at risk. And the words of a gang member capture it quite nicely, he says: "Would you stand around here when all this shit ..." -- the shooting -- "... if all this shit's going on? No, right? So if I gonna be asked to put my life on the line, then front me the cash, man." I think the gang member says it much more articulately than the economist, about what's going on.
Iskoristiću reči jednog pripadnika bande koje po meni objašnjavaju stvar. Ispostavlja se - malo sam požurio sa poentom. Ispostavlja se, u bandi, kada je u toku rat, zapravo plaćaju pešadince duplo više. To je u potpunosti isti koncept. Jer oni nisu voljni da se izlažu riziku. To se lepo vidi iz reči pripadnika bande. On kaže: „ Je l’ bi ti stajao ovde kad se svo ovo sranje“ - u prevodu pucnjava - „svo sranje dešava? Ne, a? Pa ako će da mi traže da rizikujem glavu, ima da pljunu pare, brate“. U suštini, mislim da pripadnik bande mnogo bolje formuliše kako stoje stvari, nego ekonomisti.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Here's another one. Economists talk about game theory, that every two-person game has a Nash equilibrium. Here's the translation you get from the gang member. They're talking about the decision of why they don't go shoot -- One thing that turns out to be a great business tactic in the gang: if you go and just shoot guns in the air in the other gang's territory -- people are afraid to go buy drugs there, they're going to come into your neighborhood.
Evo još jednog. Ekonomisti pričaju o teoriji igara - kako svaka igra sa dva igrača predstavlja Nešov ekvilibrijum. Evo i prevoda koji daje pripadnik bande. Pričaju o odluci da ne odu i pucaju - stvar koja predstavlja jako dobru poslovnu taktiku bande, ako odu i jednostavno pucaju u vazduh - samo pucaju iz pištolja na teritoriji druge bande - svi se plaše da odu tamo da kupe drogu. Doći će u njihov kraj.
Here's what he says about why they don't do that: "If we start shooting around there, the other gang's territory, nobody, I mean, you dig it, nobody gonna step on their turf. But we gotta be careful, 'cause they can shoot around here too and then we all fucked."
Ali evo šta ima da kaže o tome zašto to ne rade. Kaže: „ Ako krenemo da pucamo tamo,“ - na teritoriji druge bande - „niko i mislim, kontaš, niko, neće da im zađe na teritoriju. Ali sa tim moramo oprezno, jer mogu i oni da pucaju ovde, a onda smo najebali“. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
To je potpuno isti koncept.
So that's the same concept. Then again, sometimes economists get it wrong. One thing we observed in the data is that it looked like -- the gang leader always got paid. No matter how bad it was economically, he always got himself paid.
A opet, ponekad ekonomisti pogrešno shvate stvari. Ono što smo uočili u podacima, izgleda da, u pogledu ... Vođa bande uvek dobije pare, da? Nema veze koliko loše stoje stvari u ekonomiji, za njega uvek ima para.
We had some theories related to cash flow, and lack of access to capital markets, and things like that. Then we asked the gang member, "Why is it you always get paid and your workers don't always get paid?" His response is, "You got all these niggers below you who want your job, you dig? If you start taking losses, they see you as weak and shit." And I thought about it and said, "CEOs often pay themselves million-dollar bonuses, even when companies are losing a lot of money. And it never would really occur to an economist that this idea of 'weak and shit' could really be important."
Mi smo imali teorije da je to vezano za protok novca i nedostatak pristupa tržištu kapitala i slične ideje. Ali kada smo pitali pripadnika bande: „Pa zašto ti uvek dobiješ pare, a tvoji radnici ne dobiju uvek pare?“ Odgovorio je: „Imaš gomilu crnčuga ispod tebe koji hoće tvoj posao, kontaš? Ako kreneš da prihvataš gubitke, gledaju te k'o slabića i ta sranja“. Razmislio sam o tome i rekao: "Direktori kompanija često sebi isplaćuju milionske bonuse, čak i kada kompanije gube mnogo novca. A nikada ne bi palo napamet ekonomisti da ideja „slabić i ta sranja“ možda tu ima značaja“.
(Laughter)
Ali, možda - možda „slabić i ta sranja“ -
Maybe "weak and shit" is an important hypothesis that needs more analysis.
možda je „slabić i ta sranja“ važna hipoteza koju treba dodatno analizirati.
Thank you very much.
Hvala vam puno.
(Applause)