PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ The Wire
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of Brokernomics, I take a look back at The Wire, a TV series that looks at the drug trade in Baltimore in the early 2000s, and draw some economic and political lessons from it.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Brokernomics. Now, in this episode it has occurred to me that I have been
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neglecting the full breadth of culture within the Western canon and I specifically wanted to
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do something this week celebrating black culture and give that the time and attention that it
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deserved and I thought the best way to do that would be to take a look at The Wire which was a TV
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series back from early in 2000s when they looked at the the drug trade in in Baltimore in American
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City. It's a good series so I don't know I don't know if you've seen it you should have done
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if you haven't go and watch it but it's very good and it's like a I think it's like five seasons
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and it kind of follows you know both the police department a few civilians and the drug traffickers
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and sort of interplay that goes on between them. It's really good TV quite engaging so if you're
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just looking for something to watch I think it holds up. There's a lot of economic lessons you
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can actually draw from it interestingly. The reason I watched it again is because I went on a camping
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holiday with the kids and the thing with women and kids is they fall asleep really early so I had the
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evenings to myself and I sort of took along The Wire and re-watched it. Fascinating watching it again
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all these years later for a number of reasons. One because it shows how good the 2000s were even
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in Baltimore. Even crime ridden Baltimore kind of basically worked all the functions and you know
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the institutions they worked badly but they worked which is an interesting contrast with today even
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in Baltimore. Also I quite liked it because obviously the 2000s was the early 2000s was it was a great
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time in human history. Now I wonder if perhaps I'm saying that because it is a tendency of old men to
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think back to whenever they were in the 20s was the very height of civilization and they're just
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confusing the fact that you know they could run around a lot and you know get up to all sorts of
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stuff that young men do and they kind of miscalculate that with being the you know the high times. I don't
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think that's the case because I don't think any zoomers will be looking back on now and saying that
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that now was a great time. But anyway 2000s was good so it was a bit of a bit of a blast from a past
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watching people carry around um cd walkman's and you know stuff like that. Um but no 2000s early 2000s
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was a good time we had mobile phones and we had a we had a bit of internet and um you know stuff was
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was generally good uh all more or less sensible. Hey yo lesson here bae you come at the king you best
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not miss. And then we some good tv so I thought let's yes let's dive into that. The Wire has been
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not just why it wasn't just me who liked it a lot of lefties liked it. Obama really liked it. In fact
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there was a there was an interview with um uh let's put the phone on silent before somebody
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interrupted. Yes uh Obama did an interview with um somebody and he was asked what he likes watching
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and he singled out the Wire as an excellent example of uh tv. So um a lot of people have watched it you
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know because it was good and because of his recommendation and there's a lot of analysis
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of the Wire because it's quite gritty it's quite real and so loads of papers have been written on
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it courses have been done on it. Almost all of those have been done from a left-wing Marxist
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perspective. So you know you can imagine all these people going through university who are trained in
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Marxist deconstruction of basically well uh people do bad things if they're not white uh because of
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capitalism and systemic failures and stuff like that. Not entirely my takeaway I've got to say I
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think I've come up with something you know a little bit different um but yes worth worth covering um all
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the same. The other thing that I found quite interesting watching it all these years later is I
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I have a slightly different lens now 20 years later on should we say group dynamics so I was able to
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draw a lot more steeper stuff on character motivation than when I watched it the first time around
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20 odd years ago um so so that was uh yes that that was interesting let's hint at some of that maybe
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maybe after the YouTube people have gone um but yes rather than the Marxist perspective I actually
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think this series can be summed up quite beautifully in the very first scene of the very first episode
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so I mean I'll spoil that bit but don't worry it's not much as a spoiler because I say it's the first
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scene of the first episode there's been a murder and the um kind of not really but kind of our main
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character um Jimmy McNulty is sat there talking to a witness of this murder to figure out what
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happened because he's a he's a he's a homicide detective and basically you get this story
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unfold of this uh character um what was he called it was called snot I think um that was his nickname
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they all get nicknames the the the hood guys they get well actually the cops get nicknames as well
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um this this guy you know he he forgets to wear his coat one day and it's a bit cold
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and uh he gets lumped with a nickname snot for the rest of his life and basically what was happening
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is these chaps were having a probably wasn't poker they were playing some sort of card game
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every Friday and the money would build up on this table and when it got to a certain point there'd be
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a big stack of cash on the table the uh recently deceased snot could not help himself but grab the
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money and run out the door he just couldn't help himself he just couldn't do it and normally what
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happens is they would chase him and they'd give him beating and they get the money back and then
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next week he would do the exact same thing and when the money built up he would he just couldn't
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help himself he'd steal it run out the door and on this particular occasion somebody new came to the
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game and when and he was winning and when he saw this money being grabbed and the guy running out
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the door he shot him which is well it's bad i i happen to think that you know fair enough and um
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yeah and there's a whole interplay it's quite interesting interesting on that now actually
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rather than all the sort of marxist deconstruction of capitalism i think that that opening scene of
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the entire thing basically captures the whole story you know it was certainly season one but
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but all of it it is the battle between high time preference and low time preference individuals
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with the majority of the low time preference individuals falling on the drug side but
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actually it's it's rife within the police department as well you know avon you got to
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think about what we got in this game for man huh was it the rep was it so our names can ring out
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on some ghetto street corners man nah man there's games beyond the fucking game i'm not going to
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explain that particularly well at this stage but i will go through it and and you'll see what i'm
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thinking but jimmy mcnulty our homicide kind of main character guy um he has a lone tie preference
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he wants to achieve results and he's willing to forego immediate gratification
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and this snock chap who's lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood um
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uh he is a very hind tie preference you know he he just he just he just wants it now
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um and he can't help himself when he sees it in front of him and that goes for i mean that goes
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right up to the um the chief of police this preference for let's just get a quick win now
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and pass it on and that for me is is is if you if you haven't watched it and you watch it in that lens
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it kind of explains all of it so uh the wire for those of you who who may not be familiar like i
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say really good tv um it was made by a guy called um david simon and he had spent 20 years working
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for the baltimore sun newspaper as their police correspondent and so he's got a really deep
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understanding of baltimore how the police work how the drug trade works i mean he was reporting on it
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and they used a lot of real characters in this tv series they brought in a lot of real expertise
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so one of the detectives that you're introduced to later on and he's not he's not in it much but
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he pops up now and again um he was a former police chief they actually put him in the show and it
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turned out he could act a bit um one of the majors that you spend a lot of time with in season three
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he's got a lieutenant who was also uh a fairly senior uh police officer you can he he's not quite
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as good at acting he's a bit wooden but that's because he is actually he was a real policeman
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they've got a um a a christian pasture guy who actually was a drug lord in baltimore i mean he's old
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in the series uh but in his youth he he was a he was a drug kingpin and he's in the series and
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there's there's a whole bunch of characters in it in tertiary roles um that have actually from that
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life so that along with the show writer meant that this thing i mean i've never been to baltimore
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but i've been told that it is um very accurate um gritty real um you know people who are familiar
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with that life say it is remarkably accurate so it is a useful um representation as you can get in
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fiction for a deconstruction of a of an issue that you can relate to and see it work and and draw
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relevant economic lessons so yeah so you've got this diverse range of characters um
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not just the the the uh the drug runners and the kingpins and the police and so on but you also
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um dive into other aspects of it so season one is just about the cops and
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drug guys season two they bring in uh the seaport system so the stevedores the people who unload the
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ships um and i mean i'll talk more about that later but the way that is basically falling apart
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because america doesn't make anything more but it is still a route in for drugs and other stuff
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we used to make shit in this country build shit
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now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket uh season three that was about um government and
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corruption season four was the schools and season five was the media the newspapers
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influenced by real world events very gritty very real so great yeah i ain't no suit wearing
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a businessman like you you know i'm just a gangster i suppose
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and i want my corners where a lot of the left wing analysis of this and you will find hundreds
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of videos on youtube about an analysis of the wire and as far as i know this is going to be the only
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one which is from a from a right wing perspective but if you watch any of the other ones they're going
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to tell you how the drug trade is not just criminal activity but they will say something like it's a
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complex parallel ecosystem um with its own rules hierarchies economic pressures agree with all of
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that and then they go on to say and it's a shadow economy which is for those who have been excluded
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from the mainstream job market um not really no go back to that lens that i talked about at the
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beginning it is a parallel economy for those who lack the characteristic traits that you would need
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to be basically functional in any real world economy job one of them does actually make it so one of the
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secondary characters from the first and second and third season he does eventually get out of the
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drug trade and he goes and works in a shoe shop or something but for even a basic job like working
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in a shoe shop there are certain set of skills that you need to have you need to have basic level
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conscientiousness i mean you need to turn up every day on time for a start and for people with
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um screwed up time incentives even that is is something that they fail at
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they're not necessarily some of them are quite dumb some of them actually have a half decent brain on
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them but what they lack is that level of conscientiousness that would be a starting requirement
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and also they are unable to respond to the incentives that a normal job would impose because
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because a normal job would have fairly basic set of incentives turn up on time do the work
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even though they are demanded in the drug trade
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as as one of the younger characters talks about
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you get a beating because you know one of them is
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and he was trying to show him a basic algebra calculation
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that they are actually going to effectively respond to
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if you follow some of the higher up individuals in this series