14 ms·
Drug-dealers are finding the always-on culture a chore
- FabHK 5y agoGreat punchline, after describing "Dealing, with stress": > “There is never a break. You are always on…always at the beck and call.” > As a result, dealers are feeling under pressure and overwhelmed. Liam, a part-time, on-and-off dealer from the south of England (the name is assumed), says the job consists of “being harassed, basically, all the time”. He has returned to college—though the pressures of connectivity have followed him there. In the past year his lecturers have adopted Zoom and other online teaching methods. “Now, my lecturers can message me whenever they want,” he says. Of the two careers, he considers that “definitely education is more stressful”. And that, kids, is why we hire college grads, and not drug dealers...
- yowlingcat 5y ago> And that, kids, is why we hire college grads, and not drug dealers... C'mon, you had a decent point going until you went for the lazy punchdown. Do you know any drug dealers personally? My guess is no, because I have met drug dealers who absolutely wipe the floors with most of the tenured corporate sales professionals I've met in my life, in terms of raw sales acumen (leaving ethics and society aside for a moment). I'm not the only one who notices this.
- sumnole 5y agoBattleworn grad students have already mastered dealing with stress. They've seen some shit.
- nvahalik 5y agoSo have a lot of drug dealers. Many of them have been physically beaten, shot at, shot, stolen from, and lived their lives practically as soldiers from a young age. You can leave but the price is high.
- technofiend 5y agoNo doubt! I admire those willing to spend years of their lives working towards a singular goal even when they know all the while a) they will eventually have to carve out some novel approach in their area, and b) defend it to a panel of experts. Well done to all of them. At least in the operations space all the stress is generally transitory; fix the problem and move on. Plus you don't usually schedule outages three years in advance.
- yowlingcat 5y agoMastering dealing with completely artificial stress isn't a substitute for real work experience. In fact, it gets in the way because as a manager you have to actively coach them into unlearning those unhealthy habits.
- jasonhansel 5y ago> leaving ethics and society aside for a moment A fairly important caveat. (Though, granted, some corporate salespeople may actually be worse for society than drug dealers.)
- didericis 5y ago> some corporate sales agents may actually be worse for society than drug dealers Pharmaceutical sales agents are drug dealers. People sell incredibly dangerous and addictive substances legally all the time. Arguably this site is full of button mashing dopamine dealers. The worst part about illegal drug dealers is not the substance they sell. Dangerous destructive things have value and utility, including the worst drugs (to a degree). It’s the lack of transparency and resultant lack of accountability that does the worst societal harm.
- xfitm3 5y agoThis is a charged topic but I do want to point out there is a delta between the actual impact of drugs and the impact that is publicized. In my opinion the war on drugs has little to do with drugs itself and it's more about power and control. Despite the efforts of many governments, including the US government, Pablo Escobar was a force to be reckoned with. His power was built on the drug war.
- 252452d 5y agoYou're probably a useless parasite if you're the typical person here. I know some real mid-level drug dealers and they're usually troubled people but they have a better sense of justice compared to pricks like you.
- coding123 5y agoYeah but try to sell a system that records patient data vs drugs.
- akudha 5y agoNot saying you’re wrong (I have never met a drug dealer in real life) but I have a question - shouldn’t it be much easier for drug dealers to sell their product vs say, a furniture salesman? After all, there are no furniture addicts but there are plenty of drug addicts, right?
- xfitm3 5y agoUsers sometimes have their choice between dealers, so the sales and personality skills will materially impact their reputation and ultimately sales volume. Just because you have a primed customer base at your disposal doesn't mean your duties have been downgraded to being a cashier. You need to be personable, appear tough enough to be too much trouble to rob, reliably have good products, and simple to reach/do business with. There's a reason why Malcolm Gladwell picked the crack business in The Tipping Point. A great book you should read if you ever want to know how analogous drug businesses are to corporate america.
- sokoloff 5y ago> I have never met a drug dealer in real life If you’re an adult living in the US, I’d wager you probably have and just didn’t know it.
- akudha 5y agoWoah, that is a very dark view to take
- 252452d 5y agoLOL dude, the only reason it's "dark" is because the government has created a "black" market. I sold cocaine for many years, and now I'm a vegan who travels everywhere by walking or bicycle. In fact I live by a code of not destroying anything that isn't destructive to other ordered (and especially living) matter. You wouldn't know me, because for my own safety I avoid associating with anyone that thinks like you! There are plenty of awful people right here on this website and it's evident from their posts, so you have it wrong if you think drug dealers, some of whom are professional about what is an entirely consensual transaction, are any worse than the typical American slob or FAANG parasite.
- ShaneMcGowan 5y agoDrugs sell themselves
- FabHK 5y agoI'm awfully sorry to have caused offence to the drug dealing community, and rest assured, I don't wish to besmirch their raw sales acumen. The whole point of the joke was that according to this one individual, education is more stressful than drug dealing, thus presumably getting through the education system is a better indicator of stress resistance than drug dealing. (I personally find that hard to believe, but all I know about drug dealing I know from Netflix shows, and The Economist, of course, so what do I know.) FWIW, even if that individual was mistaken, and drug dealing is more stressful than getting a degree, I would still recommend a college grad over a drug dealer for most jobs, if that is all you know about them (individual cases vary).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- monocasa 5y agoA lot of college grads these days are drug dealers. The high margins, low capital investment, and large client base at college make for an increasingly attractive alternative to college loans, or filling the gap between actual expenses and grad student stipends. I just imagine the quotes from this article are cherry picked to line up with the author's thesis.
- klyrs 5y ago"These days?" One wonders where Feynman got his supply. Rando street dealer, or a friend in the organic chemistry lab?
- monocasa 5y agoLolz, 'these days' as in making the argument to someone who would normally be against such actions that the economics increasingly tilt one way for rational actors. Obviously dealers on campus have been a thing as long as there have existed items to be dealt on campus. : P But it's funny you bring up Feynman. I actually have it on very, very good authority that most of the LSD in the southwest for decades came from someone at Los Alamos who would put an eyes only sign on a lab for a project name that didn't exist to get privacy. When you combine that with the YouTube video of Feynman playing the bongos and singing about orange juice, along with his well known subversion of lab security rules... I'm not saying Feynman made LSD, but I bet he knew who did.
- herbst 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lookalike74 5y agoI worked at a rehab, and every 'career' drug dealer I've ever met would say the author is more into writing about drugs than knowing about them. No one makes a living selling drugs by being fussy about their customers and their hours (just as no one in this story is a "serious" drug dealer.)
- sumthinprofound 5y agoEspecially considering prime business hours are late nights and weekends.
- nextaccountic 5y agoHow is this particular author famous among drug dealers?
- bschne 5y agoI think the point was that anyone familiar with the scene/business would readily infer that from the text, not that they knew the specific author.
- np_tedious 5y agoI think there's a disconnect her between retail and the dealers who sell to dealers
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Tenoke 5y ago>No one makes a living selling drugs by being fussy about their customers and their hours Not true. There are many operations - most obviously tg group based ones - with specific hours and customer requirements (at minimum a solid reference by a current customer). It's perhaps still more common to not be too picky but definitely not by all.
- frombody 5y agoI feel like the author started with their conclusion and worked backwards until they had enough content to meet their quota for the article.
- bogota 5y agoUnfortunately this seems to be how a lot of articles at the economist are produced now. Im having trouble finding any news now that the economist has also gone way down hill.
- wutbrodo 5y agoForeign Affairs is fantastic. It takes more concentration and has less content, but for the small portion of the news audience that read news to be informed, I highly recommend it.
- kijin 5y agoWe hear from time to time about how Mexican drug cartels are using drones and submarines to carry their product across the border, or co-opting local cell towers for their own communication needs. But the rest of the supply chain, and especially the last mile, seems so low-tech. It's just a mishmash of people connected by random chat apps. Maybe, one day, one of the drug lords who is fed up with these inefficiencies will invest a few million dollars to develop an "Uber for drug dealers" (only to get hacked by the DEA on day 1).
- smogcutter 5y agoThe feds are also happy to cut out the middleman and just make the app themselves: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/08/fbi-app-arrests-australia-crime/%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/world/20...
- selectodude 5y agoThe FBI got a bunch of sophisticated career criminals to pay them for a chat app. Us normies don’t stand a chance.
- sgregnt 5y agoThat reminds me of telegrass [1], which is highly organized place on telegram to order cannabis (not sure about other drugs though) shipment in Israel (cannabis is illegal in Israel). At some point telegraass had more than 200k members, which is fantastic for a such a small country like Israel (that would probably put it among some of the largest telegram channels in Israel). However, the main purpose of it's creators, as the story goes, was not for profit but to promote cannabis legalization in Israel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegrass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegrass
- chunky1994 5y agoThey don't need to do that. The majority of (monetary) value add in the supply chain is large-scale refinement and transportation of the drug product from a region of lower economic value to a region of higher economic value (i.e smuggling). Both the production and last-mile distribution are very decentralized and limited in terms of monetary compensation. If you've already made 95% of your profit in the central steps of the value chain, taking an increased risk to increase efficiency of last mile distribution is not worth it. Especially when centralization in an uber for drug dealers type of application heavily increases the risk of being neutralized and prosecuted by law enforcement rather than decentralized street level dealers who can never effectively compromise those higher up in the supply chain.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago> Information technology makes it hard for them to switch off. There's this button on every device that makes it switch on and off. Sheesh. It's almost like the technology makes it easy!
- mschuster91 5y agoThe problem is that the customers expect to be able to order 24/7 since they can do the same on Amazon, Delivery Hero, whatever. Additionally, if I were a drug user and I could not reach my pusher, I'd expect that the cops have busted him and will now work through their phone.
- hobs 5y agoYou've clearly not bought drugs (also lol pusher) - drug dealers are notoriously late, slow, uncommunicative, and often you dont have a bunch of other options because to your point, you're in a low trust situation. You might text a guy and anywhere between 1 minute and 4 days later get a response.
- mschuster91 5y agoFor what it's worth I was a pothead in my youth, but then again you have it easy in Germany since you just need to go to a club or to a park (every city has at least one hotspot) to get offered all kinds of stuff on the streets.
- axegon_ 5y agoI don't think the culture and drugs are linked in any way, shape or form. I've met a number of drug addicts over the years and they all came from very differnt backgrounds: poor as hell, filthy rich, uneducated as well as highly educated and everything in between. Most[] of them shared one thing in common however: whatever misfortune they have in their live, they blame it on someone else. Most often that's the "government". Note the quotes here, by government I don't mean the government as any institution but more as a global conspiracy of evil masterminds that controls their lives and actively work against them at every step they make(which is a surprisingly common belief). At least see that as the common denominator across all the cultures in the last 50 years or so - the hippy movements, the heavy metal movements, the punk movements, the rap movements, and whatever is happening today(I've lost interest and so I have no idea what is popular today). It's an easy way to be part of a community and have the feeling that you are fighting back by doing the exact thing that you are told not to do, without suffering from(immediate) consequences, the way you would if you crash at 200km/hour for instance. And because producing and distributing drugs is illegal, then drugs are clearly not part of the status quo, so that cannot be a part of the conspiracy, right? I'm aware that's an oversimplification of the issue but you can go down that rabbit hole almost infinitely and you can see how that ties all cultures together. [] There are a few exceptions which are a consequence of stress combined with fame for instance but those are the exception, not the rule, at least in Europe and North America.
- newsclues 5y agoI used to sell booger sugar and would go to sleep with a burner in my hand and wake up at all hours at night to conduct commerce. When I quit, it took a few months for my leg to adjust to not having phones in my pocket constantly vibrating. The lifestyle is terrible for your health.
- jonwest 5y agoYou’re also kind of easily disproving the thesis of the article. Drug dealing has always had an “always on” culture and this is nothing new or novel. They want to push that FaceTime and location tracking contribute to dealers feeling as though they’re “always on”, but that’s largely false. Before these were commonplace, if a dealer wanted to get a hold of someone they’d call them, page them, or otherwise “find” them. There are new tools now, sure, but the always on culture, I’d argue, has always been there.
- newsclues 5y agoYes, but there were others who set hours and enforced them by turning phones off. Depends on where you are in the food chain and how much you need to work.
- fragmede 5y agoAs an on-call SRE, this sounds familiar. One-person rotation and all hours is a well-known recipe for burnout. Of course professionally as a software programmer the risks are somewhat different, so I imagine scaling an SRE team is a bit easier (assuming you have revenue/funding). I am extremely grateful that the company I'm at has a follows-the-sun rotation as well being on a well-sized team (imo the ideal size is 8). I've done ops on a tiny team and it burned me out real quick.