TEDTalks

I've just discovered a very bad time sink at the exact wrong time in my life, but have y'all see TEDTalks?

I found this one on Classical Values (H/T Insty) and it is awesome. Here's the description:

Steven Levitt is an economics professor at the University of Chicago and the best-selling author of Freakonomics. In this talk, filmed at TED2004, he goes inside an inner-city gang to examine economic principles at work in the real world. (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 22:00)

The series is sponsored by BMW, and I went a Googling (actually, I’m a Yahoo guy still) for TED and TEDTalks.

The editorial slant looks distinctly left of center, but they advertise a talk by Bjorn Lomborg that we're worrying about the wrong thing with Global Warming, and they have a couple talks by his VicePresidentness himself, Mr. Albert Gore, Jr.

I prefer blogs to podcasts and most video because I find it easy to read a column while I wait for a machine to reboot or a program to compile. Double-digit minutes of devoted attention are productivity sappers. But there are a pile of these TEDTalks I have to see.

I wanted to post about this one and not the series, because it speaks to something that was very important to me before 9/11. I took some of the same ideas Levitt takes from the research from the novel "Clockers" by Richard Price. The problem is the lure of money in illegal drug sales as recruitment for gang membership.

Levitt points out that it's "the worst job in the world" but also that the idea of rising in the organization to a senior level is pretty alluring against other inner city opportunities. The drug war is government intrusion into economics as surely as ethanol subsidies. Levitt points out how the economics changed with the introduction of crack cocaine.

Whether you agree with my libertarian view of the drug war or not, this is a fascinating, entertaining, and smart piece on application of economic principles. At the end, you even enjoy economic principles translated into gangspeak.

On the web Posted by jk at February 27, 2007 10:01 AM