12 ms·

The Gangster's Guide to Upward Mobility

117 points by dullcrisp 12y ago

mercurial 12y ago
Interesting. I think the article downplays the brutality of the mafia, but the takeaway I've gotten from it is simple: if you want to lower organized crime, offer genuine, legal opportunities of advancement to those who currently don't have them.
- tomp 12y ago
  I think this lesson can be applied to many conflicts in the modern world. Why are EU youth joining the ISIS? They don't have any other opportunities in life. Why are Palestinians attacking Israelis? They have no other means of achieving anything meaningful in life. Why are people protesting in Occupy Wall Street? Their lives have turned to shit, and they can't improve them. The most dangerous people are those who have nothing to lose. Give them something to lose, (their hopes, their future), and you will not only improve their lives, but also avoid revolutions.
  - firasd 12y ago
    This is very facile I'm afraid. Did George Washington not have anything to lose? Osama bin Laden, born to an incredibly rich family? No, sometimes people actually risk losing what they have to struggle for what they believe in.
    - tomp 12y ago
      Osama didn't do it alone. Hitler didn't do it alone. They both had a number of people that were disillusioned with their lives, hopeless about their future, looking for someone to hate, and wanted to be a part of a cause. (I'm not sure how George Washington is relevant, though.)
      - firasd 12y ago
        You don't see how George Washington is relevant to analysis of motivations behind conflicts and revolutions?
        tomp 12y ago
        No; probably because I don't know enough about the history of the US (AFAIK, he was one of the founding fathers).
        firasd 12y ago
        Ah ok. Well, the founding fathers did their founding after a pretty momentous revolutionary war as you may know. And the British subjects settled in America weren't doing so badly that they had to rise up in desperation for hope or a future. They wanted political independence and self-determination (in much the same way Palestinians want today, although different factions among Palestinians have varying territorial and other desires.) I agree with you that many of the restless and unhappy masses become the actual front-line fighters in conflicts; I just disagree that providing people with financial and social stability would necessarily avoid a conflict. Sometimes people just won't stand for something.
        tomp 12y ago
        But wasn't the problem also the fact that US (whatever it was back then) was basically a UK colony, which meant that the UK was basically levying lots of tax and taking whatever they could back to the UK? Also, it's not like the people of the US attacked another country... they just thought that they would do better without a foreign overlord. Probably, if the UK let them go (like they would let Scotland go), there would be no war. Or am I mistaken?
        firasd 12y ago
        Yeah they were a colony. And that's sort of my point; they weren't hopeless and desperate--in fact my understanding is that the average American (not counting slaves) back then was better off than the average person in England--but they were exploited and subjugated to some extent. And they decided the final fix would be to change the whole political order of things, and to fight a revolution over their desired new order.
    - csomar 12y ago
      IMO, these are exceptions. Osama did have a lot to lose, but his supporters didn't.
  - peterfirefly 12y ago
    "Why are EU youth joining the ISIS? They don't have any other opportunities in life." That's an utter and complete lie. Even if you believe it explains the Arabs who join the ISIS (which it doesn't), it certainly doesn't explain why the European converts do.
    - tomp 12y ago
      It's probably not the whole story, but the way I see it: First, it's not "the European converts" that join ISIS, it's the Muslims that live in European countries (so no converting necessary, in the religious sense). Second, I haven't had much contact with this immigrant minority, but from the media, I get the feeling that they are not really "respected" - their culture and heritage is demonized left and right, they are "foreigners" and "people of color". Probably, this got much worse after 9/11 and other terrorist attacks (e.g. in the UK), and was quite bad even before (e.g. in France, from what I hear). Thirdly, the economic melt-down. It affects all people, but it affects the youth disproportionately, and I assume the immigrant population also. Immigrant youth -> affected really really badly. They see that people from the older generations got it much better (essentially, for most of their lives, things were getting better), while their (our?) future is full of problems (unemployment, both from the recession and from automation; climate issues and ecology; terrorism; dwindling natural resources). Is it really so hard to believe that they feel really disillusioned? Anyways, you say it's a lie, what's the truth then, in your opinion?
      - peterfirefly 12y ago
        It's definitely also converts :( Your second point is not even wrong. There's plenty of respect for decent people who treat others right. There is a growing dissatisfaction with religious nutcases and criminals and layabouts. There is outright fear and hatred for those who terrorize their neighbourhoods. And why shouldn't Islam be disrespected? Is it a good religion? Is it tolerant? Is it really the religion of peace? And why should honour killings and clannishness be respected? Besides, schools are free, secondary and tertiary educations are free or heavily subsidized. As to your third point, the economic meltdown and the enormous youth unemployment is mostly a Southern thing. Having a large unofficial economic sector is also mostly a Southern thing -- so the real unemployment rates are thankfully lower. The youth unemployment has more to do with rigid and stupid labour markets than with the global finance crisis or the Euro crisis. At least those who speak English (or a Northern language) have a chance to emigrate. The migrant workers in the South who are hard hit by the crisis are mostly Africans, not Arabs. The ISIS terrorists are mostly Arab. I haven't heard of a single Sub-Saharan African in ISIS. The truth is that the (economically) Western European countries have been bending backwards for years (decades) to help them and that we have been treated badly every step of the way. The truth is, unfortunately, that not everybody is a good person, not everybody is equally aggressive and violent, not everybody is equally intelligent, and not every culture is good. And what's worse, aggression, violence, trust, and intelligence are all partially inherited.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Rather than see it as downplay the brutality of the mafia, consider that when you hear about the mafia, it tends to be the brutal aspects you hear about. Not the parts that were most successful at avoiding unwanted attention.
Decade 12y ago
The presidential Bush family also gained some of their riches through slavery. I'm not going to draw any conclusions from this right now. I think a lot of African Americans are getting a bum deal out of life. Murder and drug dealing are wrong, but society doesn't give them a lot of other realistic options. But this is just feeding into the pessimism that David Brin was complaining about.[0] There is no silver bullet. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614
- nadam 12y ago
  "I think a lot of African Americans are getting a bum deal out of life. Murder and drug dealing are wrong, but society doesn't give them a lot of other realistic options." I think this is bullshit. I am living in an eastern European country (Hungary), do you think it is a place where poor people can advance more easily than in the USA? And we don't have the kind of brutal gun violence that is present in the USA. This is very much a cultural thing. It has nothing to do with being poor, or having few opportunities to 'advance'. These people are making their own life miserable due to very very bad cultural influences from their peers. It is not the case that someone could starve in the USA or anywhere in the first world. They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village) if they would have that kind of culture... Now avoiding the cultural influences of your environment is hard. Very very hard.
  - tomp 12y ago
    > They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village) Did you read the article? This kids grew up in partially-destroyed houses, to drug-addicted, low income parents. They were probably never given good guidance about what's important in life, might have been physically abused. Their upbringing showed them that you should use violence to solve any kind of problems. No wonder they can't see the benefit of school and hard work, they can't sit still in the classroom and fight other kids in the yard. Then they fall behind, get penalized, the school system spits them out. Their only legitimate possibility for advancement is taken away from them, and they are back to their basements getting bitten by rats. No wonder they seek any kind of escape, including organized crime. Getting killed doesn't sound so bad when you have nothing to live for, no hopes for the future. The only way out is to earn enough money (via crime) and physically move away (into safer neighborhoods, better houses). The difference between this and formerly-communist countries is that under communism, people didn't really live that bad. Sure, we didn't have the latest technologies, and we couldn't talk about certain things, but we all had a place to live and food to eat, and there were no significant social differences, no one to look up to. No wonder so many people nowadays feel nostalgic for the "good old days". (Not sure if that was also the case in Hungary, but it was in Slovenia.)
MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
This is a slap in the face to everyone who tries to get ahead in life by, you know, learning stuff (like programming) and improving their skills. The gangster route is for people who don't like the modest work to reward ratio that ordinary work brings - they want to risk more to get more. And by doing that, they make other people's life miserable. Malcolm Gladwell has just lost every respect I ever had for him. The way he argues is like saying: "Yeah well, they were bad guys back then, but only because weren't rich yet, so they kind of had to be gangsters".
- recalibrator 12y ago
  Did you read the article? In almost every instance, most good jobs were unavailable to immigrants and members of a cultural or racial minority. These criminals only wanted respect and the same things other Americans had a birthright to. They believed organized crime was the only way to achieve the same standard of living.
  - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
    I have, from start to finish. Everyone wants respect, that doesn't mean its ok be a gangster. What about the loan shark victims that could never repay their debt? What about the little store owners that had to pay protection money? Now running a little store by yourself will not get you the same respect as having your daughter ride horses in some rich part of town, but seriously - does that make it suddenly ok to become a criminal?
  - meh_master 12y ago
    Perhaps he's a part of the "meritocracy" of Silicon Valley's start-up culture? The ~99% white male meritocracy, apparently they're the only ones who are where they are due to merit.
    - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
      I'm from Europe, and let me say we had very little money in our family. Software devs in the US are apparently well paid and in high demand - are people that racist they they wouldn't hire black devs? Of all lines of work, I have the impression that IT is one of the most open and socially conscious fields there is.
supahfly_remix 12y ago
This article is very similar to the thesis of Sudhir Venkatesh's "Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York City" which studies how low level criminals (crack dealers, prostitutes) try to cross racial and economic classes to expand their businesses in NYC. They aren't criminals by nature but, as Gladwell writes, this is one of the few avenues open to them.
jorleif 12y ago
This is a very interesting idea and has some good potential for social change. So much energy, so misplaced. As a scandinavian my first thought is: Don't Americans realize that there might a point where it is cheaper to provide (or more exactly, force) better education and social security on those at risk, than increasing the police force and incarceration rates? There is something that is not quite right with this narrative that Gladwell spins though. His past examples are about the winners of their era. On the other hand, the contemporary examples are losers who end up killed and squeezed by the police. Presumably, in the earlier mafia era there were also plenty of losers, we just don't hear about them. The main thesis which I think is sound, though, is that innovation often (usually) involves a certain amount of breaking societal norms (which includes laws). It can take violent forms, such as the mafia, but also less violent law-breaking is often present. Think Napster, as a clear example but why not include Uber and AirBnB as well? Often innovation is not just about new technology, but rather re-negotiating social contracts. For this reason, when technological or social change introduces new economic opportunity, often it becomes populated by people who are willing to violate laws. I think as societies, we should try to figure out how to better utilize the violent and rebellious behvior of people, while limiting the detrimental effects. The same adrenaline addict might kill himself and a few pedestrian on a motorcycle when evading the police, but could instead be allowed to risk his life in some space exploration program or why not a technology startup.
- vasilipupkin 12y ago
  Note that just because something works in a country of 10mln, that doesn't mean it will work just as well in a country of 300mln. It's unlikely that Scandinavian style policies scale linearly. You can always find a sample of 10mln Americans that does just as well on all metrics as Sweden or better.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Last time I checked, the US had 50 states, giving 6 mln people per state on average. I think such solutions implemented on state level should work exactly as well as for a country of 10mln.
JacobAldridge 12y ago
Like a lot of Gladwell yarns, it's a lovely theory with some nice stories (and wonderfully written - a real New Yorker burying of the lede). And he's more hypothesising than suggesting this should be the case. But still - 'except when they were killing people, the PSI was an example of American exceptionalism' won't fly with me.
zxcvvcxz 12y ago
I found this interesting: >Avellino’s mission was to rationalize the industry, to enforce what was called a “property rights” system among the carters. Individual firms were allowed to compete for new customers. But, once a carter won a customer, he “owned” that business; the function of Avellino’s P.S.I. was to make sure that no one else poached that customer. It kind of reminded me of Peter Thiel's monopoly theory. At some point, competition for certain things becomes counter-productive. If the need is simple enough and adequately served, better to let it be served than waste energy undercutting and re-negotiating customers. There's a bigger world out there anyways. Obviously this colusion is all in the interest of the businessmen, rather than the customer. But the point stands in (at least how I interpret) Peter's mafia theory: don't get into a line of business where it's easy to poach customers and competition is incredibly fierce. Like the restaurant business in San Francisco. The antithesis of this is something like Palantir I suppose, selling specialized solutions to governments.
bjourne 12y ago
I don't believe more than a small fraction of all gangsters and criminals ever made it. Most were poor, stayed poor and had children that also grew up to be poor. Focusing on the few who became millionaires is an extreme form of survival bias. It's writing history so that it fits the rich. What they had in common with others in the upper classes is that they found a way to make other peoples labour work for them. Maybe that's called "working hard" but it could also be called "getting others to work hard for you." It's how wealth is amassed and it doesn't matter whether it's on the legal or illegal side of the law.
- nawitus 12y ago
  I think it's called "working hard getting others to work hard for you." If it was not hard work to get others work hard for you, it would be more prevalent.
  - crpatino 12y ago
    No, it's the economics. The inherently scarce number of "others" to work for you means not everybody can amass wealth. The ability to bring other non-human categories of "others" can move the balance in the supply side (not necessarily talking about high tech, if you can train a horse - or pay someone who can - and ride it, you are ahead of the guy on foot, by example).
- vidarh 12y ago
  > "getting others to work hard for you." It's how wealth is amassed and it doesn't matter whether it's on the legal or illegal side of the law. It would seem the point of the article was exactly to make the point that many of these people were not gangster to be gangsters, but to build wealth and gain social respectability. And so becoming gangsters was something many of them chose because they found other avenues inaccessible, and for some of them once they had sufficient success that meant looking for ways to legitimise their businesses to various degrees.
  - bjourne 12y ago
    No, the point of the article was to claim that it was easier for some groups to get rich using criminal means than lawful ones. My point was that it is roughly equally hard no matter which side of the law - you need to be able to exploit someone elses labour. The average hourly wage of a crack dealer (according to Freakonomics) is $3.30, so obviously, not everyone is going to get rich of it.
lordnacho1980 12y ago
Interesting piece, and written in a compelling way. However, some things don't fit the narrative. Gladwell mentions the various waves of immigration (Irish, Jewish, Italian) and suggests that crime is a way to get up the ladder. But weren't the African-Americans there long before these groups? Shouldn't they have been the first to do this journey? He mentions Merton's 6 ways and suggests crime is innovation. But how innovative is it really, crime? Is forming and running a cartel not something that has occurred quite often in the minds of people who compete? Is bootlegging innovative? To my mind, it's not innovative. It's just taking more risk than the average person takes.
cheriot 12y ago
I was really excited to see Malcolm Gladwell writing this just after I finished reading one of the books he's talking about, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoyed Gang Leader for a Day. The US is in desperate need of a mind shift from seeing all criminals as hopelessly dangerous people that can only be dealt with by force. When the same problems come up in every single poor community, it's a reflection of deeper social issues. These sort of well written stories showing the humanity involved can help with that. I just searched for the other book mentioned in the article and the ONLY copy available for sale (as in there's exactly one book) is $59 on amazon. The publishing industry strikes again.
angersock 12y ago
There's something deeply uncomfortable about one of the reported quotes: I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.” Do we really want to be teaching this?

117 points by dullcrisp 12y ago

Interesting. I think the article downplays the brutality of the mafia, but the takeaway I've gotten from it is simple: if you want to lower organized crime, offer genuine, legal opportunities of advancement to those who currently don't have them.

tomp 12y ago
I think this lesson can be applied to many conflicts in the modern world. Why are EU youth joining the ISIS? They don't have any other opportunities in life. Why are Palestinians attacking Israelis? They have no other means of achieving anything meaningful in life. Why are people protesting in Occupy Wall Street? Their lives have turned to shit, and they can't improve them. The most dangerous people are those who have nothing to lose. Give them something to lose, (their hopes, their future), and you will not only improve their lives, but also avoid revolutions.
- firasd 12y ago
  This is very facile I'm afraid. Did George Washington not have anything to lose? Osama bin Laden, born to an incredibly rich family? No, sometimes people actually risk losing what they have to struggle for what they believe in.
  - tomp 12y ago
    Osama didn't do it alone. Hitler didn't do it alone. They both had a number of people that were disillusioned with their lives, hopeless about their future, looking for someone to hate, and wanted to be a part of a cause. (I'm not sure how George Washington is relevant, though.)
    - firasd 12y ago
      You don't see how George Washington is relevant to analysis of motivations behind conflicts and revolutions?
      - tomp 12y ago
        No; probably because I don't know enough about the history of the US (AFAIK, he was one of the founding fathers).
        firasd 12y ago
        Ah ok. Well, the founding fathers did their founding after a pretty momentous revolutionary war as you may know. And the British subjects settled in America weren't doing so badly that they had to rise up in desperation for hope or a future. They wanted political independence and self-determination (in much the same way Palestinians want today, although different factions among Palestinians have varying territorial and other desires.) I agree with you that many of the restless and unhappy masses become the actual front-line fighters in conflicts; I just disagree that providing people with financial and social stability would necessarily avoid a conflict. Sometimes people just won't stand for something.
        tomp 12y ago
        But wasn't the problem also the fact that US (whatever it was back then) was basically a UK colony, which meant that the UK was basically levying lots of tax and taking whatever they could back to the UK? Also, it's not like the people of the US attacked another country... they just thought that they would do better without a foreign overlord. Probably, if the UK let them go (like they would let Scotland go), there would be no war. Or am I mistaken?
        firasd 12y ago
        Yeah they were a colony. And that's sort of my point; they weren't hopeless and desperate--in fact my understanding is that the average American (not counting slaves) back then was better off than the average person in England--but they were exploited and subjugated to some extent. And they decided the final fix would be to change the whole political order of things, and to fight a revolution over their desired new order.
  - csomar 12y ago
    IMO, these are exceptions. Osama did have a lot to lose, but his supporters didn't.
- peterfirefly 12y ago
  "Why are EU youth joining the ISIS? They don't have any other opportunities in life." That's an utter and complete lie. Even if you believe it explains the Arabs who join the ISIS (which it doesn't), it certainly doesn't explain why the European converts do.
  - tomp 12y ago
    It's probably not the whole story, but the way I see it: First, it's not "the European converts" that join ISIS, it's the Muslims that live in European countries (so no converting necessary, in the religious sense). Second, I haven't had much contact with this immigrant minority, but from the media, I get the feeling that they are not really "respected" - their culture and heritage is demonized left and right, they are "foreigners" and "people of color". Probably, this got much worse after 9/11 and other terrorist attacks (e.g. in the UK), and was quite bad even before (e.g. in France, from what I hear). Thirdly, the economic melt-down. It affects all people, but it affects the youth disproportionately, and I assume the immigrant population also. Immigrant youth -> affected really really badly. They see that people from the older generations got it much better (essentially, for most of their lives, things were getting better), while their (our?) future is full of problems (unemployment, both from the recession and from automation; climate issues and ecology; terrorism; dwindling natural resources). Is it really so hard to believe that they feel really disillusioned? Anyways, you say it's a lie, what's the truth then, in your opinion?
    - peterfirefly 12y ago
      It's definitely also converts :( Your second point is not even wrong. There's plenty of respect for decent people who treat others right. There is a growing dissatisfaction with religious nutcases and criminals and layabouts. There is outright fear and hatred for those who terrorize their neighbourhoods. And why shouldn't Islam be disrespected? Is it a good religion? Is it tolerant? Is it really the religion of peace? And why should honour killings and clannishness be respected? Besides, schools are free, secondary and tertiary educations are free or heavily subsidized. As to your third point, the economic meltdown and the enormous youth unemployment is mostly a Southern thing. Having a large unofficial economic sector is also mostly a Southern thing -- so the real unemployment rates are thankfully lower. The youth unemployment has more to do with rigid and stupid labour markets than with the global finance crisis or the Euro crisis. At least those who speak English (or a Northern language) have a chance to emigrate. The migrant workers in the South who are hard hit by the crisis are mostly Africans, not Arabs. The ISIS terrorists are mostly Arab. I haven't heard of a single Sub-Saharan African in ISIS. The truth is that the (economically) Western European countries have been bending backwards for years (decades) to help them and that we have been treated badly every step of the way. The truth is, unfortunately, that not everybody is a good person, not everybody is equally aggressive and violent, not everybody is equally intelligent, and not every culture is good. And what's worse, aggression, violence, trust, and intelligence are all partially inherited.
vidarh 12y ago
Rather than see it as downplay the brutality of the mafia, consider that when you hear about the mafia, it tends to be the brutal aspects you hear about. Not the parts that were most successful at avoiding unwanted attention.

Decade 12y ago

The presidential Bush family also gained some of their riches through slavery. I'm not going to draw any conclusions from this right now. I think a lot of African Americans are getting a bum deal out of life. Murder and drug dealing are wrong, but society doesn't give them a lot of other realistic options. But this is just feeding into the pessimism that David Brin was complaining about.[0] There is no silver bullet. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614

nadam 12y ago
"I think a lot of African Americans are getting a bum deal out of life. Murder and drug dealing are wrong, but society doesn't give them a lot of other realistic options." I think this is bullshit. I am living in an eastern European country (Hungary), do you think it is a place where poor people can advance more easily than in the USA? And we don't have the kind of brutal gun violence that is present in the USA. This is very much a cultural thing. It has nothing to do with being poor, or having few opportunities to 'advance'. These people are making their own life miserable due to very very bad cultural influences from their peers. It is not the case that someone could starve in the USA or anywhere in the first world. They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village) if they would have that kind of culture... Now avoiding the cultural influences of your environment is hard. Very very hard.
- tomp 12y ago
  > They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village) Did you read the article? This kids grew up in partially-destroyed houses, to drug-addicted, low income parents. They were probably never given good guidance about what's important in life, might have been physically abused. Their upbringing showed them that you should use violence to solve any kind of problems. No wonder they can't see the benefit of school and hard work, they can't sit still in the classroom and fight other kids in the yard. Then they fall behind, get penalized, the school system spits them out. Their only legitimate possibility for advancement is taken away from them, and they are back to their basements getting bitten by rats. No wonder they seek any kind of escape, including organized crime. Getting killed doesn't sound so bad when you have nothing to live for, no hopes for the future. The only way out is to earn enough money (via crime) and physically move away (into safer neighborhoods, better houses). The difference between this and formerly-communist countries is that under communism, people didn't really live that bad. Sure, we didn't have the latest technologies, and we couldn't talk about certain things, but we all had a place to live and food to eat, and there were no significant social differences, no one to look up to. No wonder so many people nowadays feel nostalgic for the "good old days". (Not sure if that was also the case in Hungary, but it was in Slovenia.)

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago

This is a slap in the face to everyone who tries to get ahead in life by, you know, learning stuff (like programming) and improving their skills. The gangster route is for people who don't like the modest work to reward ratio that ordinary work brings - they want to risk more to get more. And by doing that, they make other people's life miserable. Malcolm Gladwell has just lost every respect I ever had for him. The way he argues is like saying: "Yeah well, they were bad guys back then, but only because weren't rich yet, so they kind of had to be gangsters".

recalibrator 12y ago
Did you read the article? In almost every instance, most good jobs were unavailable to immigrants and members of a cultural or racial minority. These criminals only wanted respect and the same things other Americans had a birthright to. They believed organized crime was the only way to achieve the same standard of living.
- MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
  I have, from start to finish. Everyone wants respect, that doesn't mean its ok be a gangster. What about the loan shark victims that could never repay their debt? What about the little store owners that had to pay protection money? Now running a little store by yourself will not get you the same respect as having your daughter ride horses in some rich part of town, but seriously - does that make it suddenly ok to become a criminal?
- meh_master 12y ago
  Perhaps he's a part of the "meritocracy" of Silicon Valley's start-up culture? The ~99% white male meritocracy, apparently they're the only ones who are where they are due to merit.
  - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
    I'm from Europe, and let me say we had very little money in our family. Software devs in the US are apparently well paid and in high demand - are people that racist they they wouldn't hire black devs? Of all lines of work, I have the impression that IT is one of the most open and socially conscious fields there is.

supahfly_remix 12y ago

This article is very similar to the thesis of Sudhir Venkatesh's "Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York City" which studies how low level criminals (crack dealers, prostitutes) try to cross racial and economic classes to expand their businesses in NYC. They aren't criminals by nature but, as Gladwell writes, this is one of the few avenues open to them.

jorleif 12y ago

This is a very interesting idea and has some good potential for social change. So much energy, so misplaced. As a scandinavian my first thought is: Don't Americans realize that there might a point where it is cheaper to provide (or more exactly, force) better education and social security on those at risk, than increasing the police force and incarceration rates? There is something that is not quite right with this narrative that Gladwell spins though. His past examples are about the winners of their era. On the other hand, the contemporary examples are losers who end up killed and squeezed by the police. Presumably, in the earlier mafia era there were also plenty of losers, we just don't hear about them. The main thesis which I think is sound, though, is that innovation often (usually) involves a certain amount of breaking societal norms (which includes laws). It can take violent forms, such as the mafia, but also less violent law-breaking is often present. Think Napster, as a clear example but why not include Uber and AirBnB as well? Often innovation is not just about new technology, but rather re-negotiating social contracts. For this reason, when technological or social change introduces new economic opportunity, often it becomes populated by people who are willing to violate laws. I think as societies, we should try to figure out how to better utilize the violent and rebellious behvior of people, while limiting the detrimental effects. The same adrenaline addict might kill himself and a few pedestrian on a motorcycle when evading the police, but could instead be allowed to risk his life in some space exploration program or why not a technology startup.

vasilipupkin 12y ago
Note that just because something works in a country of 10mln, that doesn't mean it will work just as well in a country of 300mln. It's unlikely that Scandinavian style policies scale linearly. You can always find a sample of 10mln Americans that does just as well on all metrics as Sweden or better.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Last time I checked, the US had 50 states, giving 6 mln people per state on average. I think such solutions implemented on state level should work exactly as well as for a country of 10mln.

JacobAldridge 12y ago

Like a lot of Gladwell yarns, it's a lovely theory with some nice stories (and wonderfully written - a real New Yorker burying of the lede). And he's more hypothesising than suggesting this should be the case. But still - 'except when they were killing people, the PSI was an example of American exceptionalism' won't fly with me.

zxcvvcxz 12y ago

I found this interesting: >Avellino’s mission was to rationalize the industry, to enforce what was called a “property rights” system among the carters. Individual firms were allowed to compete for new customers. But, once a carter won a customer, he “owned” that business; the function of Avellino’s P.S.I. was to make sure that no one else poached that customer. It kind of reminded me of Peter Thiel's monopoly theory. At some point, competition for certain things becomes counter-productive. If the need is simple enough and adequately served, better to let it be served than waste energy undercutting and re-negotiating customers. There's a bigger world out there anyways. Obviously this colusion is all in the interest of the businessmen, rather than the customer. But the point stands in (at least how I interpret) Peter's mafia theory: don't get into a line of business where it's easy to poach customers and competition is incredibly fierce. Like the restaurant business in San Francisco. The antithesis of this is something like Palantir I suppose, selling specialized solutions to governments.

bjourne 12y ago

I don't believe more than a small fraction of all gangsters and criminals ever made it. Most were poor, stayed poor and had children that also grew up to be poor. Focusing on the few who became millionaires is an extreme form of survival bias. It's writing history so that it fits the rich. What they had in common with others in the upper classes is that they found a way to make other peoples labour work for them. Maybe that's called "working hard" but it could also be called "getting others to work hard for you." It's how wealth is amassed and it doesn't matter whether it's on the legal or illegal side of the law.

nawitus 12y ago
I think it's called "working hard getting others to work hard for you." If it was not hard work to get others work hard for you, it would be more prevalent.
- crpatino 12y ago
  No, it's the economics. The inherently scarce number of "others" to work for you means not everybody can amass wealth. The ability to bring other non-human categories of "others" can move the balance in the supply side (not necessarily talking about high tech, if you can train a horse - or pay someone who can - and ride it, you are ahead of the guy on foot, by example).
vidarh 12y ago
> "getting others to work hard for you." It's how wealth is amassed and it doesn't matter whether it's on the legal or illegal side of the law. It would seem the point of the article was exactly to make the point that many of these people were not gangster to be gangsters, but to build wealth and gain social respectability. And so becoming gangsters was something many of them chose because they found other avenues inaccessible, and for some of them once they had sufficient success that meant looking for ways to legitimise their businesses to various degrees.
- bjourne 12y ago
  No, the point of the article was to claim that it was easier for some groups to get rich using criminal means than lawful ones. My point was that it is roughly equally hard no matter which side of the law - you need to be able to exploit someone elses labour. The average hourly wage of a crack dealer (according to Freakonomics) is $3.30, so obviously, not everyone is going to get rich of it.

lordnacho1980 12y ago

Interesting piece, and written in a compelling way. However, some things don't fit the narrative. Gladwell mentions the various waves of immigration (Irish, Jewish, Italian) and suggests that crime is a way to get up the ladder. But weren't the African-Americans there long before these groups? Shouldn't they have been the first to do this journey? He mentions Merton's 6 ways and suggests crime is innovation. But how innovative is it really, crime? Is forming and running a cartel not something that has occurred quite often in the minds of people who compete? Is bootlegging innovative? To my mind, it's not innovative. It's just taking more risk than the average person takes.

cheriot 12y ago

I was really excited to see Malcolm Gladwell writing this just after I finished reading one of the books he's talking about, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoyed Gang Leader for a Day. The US is in desperate need of a mind shift from seeing all criminals as hopelessly dangerous people that can only be dealt with by force. When the same problems come up in every single poor community, it's a reflection of deeper social issues. These sort of well written stories showing the humanity involved can help with that. I just searched for the other book mentioned in the article and the ONLY copy available for sale (as in there's exactly one book) is $59 on amazon. The publishing industry strikes again.

angersock 12y ago

There's something deeply uncomfortable about one of the reported quotes: I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.” Do we really want to be teaching this?