Freakonomics Post 3

I finished Chapter 3(Drug Dealers Living With Their Moms)the other day. This chapter answered the question of why, if crack dealers make so much money, do they still live with thier moms. It followed the story of Sudhir Venkatesh, who lived with a gang for numerous months and studied their way of dealing crack. He found that J.T., the leader of the pack, earned $8,500 a month, but that he had to take care of his gang. He had to keep the wars down and care for his foot soldiers, so that he still had to live in the same area as his gang. The point of this chapter was to emphasize the role of incentives in every part of every economy. For J.T.'s Foot Soldiers, it was to start a war so they could move up in ranking. For J.T, the incentive was to keep the wars down so that crack heads would come to his area to buy crack instead of going elsewhere in fear of violence.

I found this chapeter to be very interesting. Getting a close up of gang life was of great benifit to the book, for it went off of the legal market and into the black market. It also benefited by showing how life sometimes outweighs the incentives. In this case: money v. life.