Getto-Anarchy

[tracysaboe]

http://www.slate.com/id/2155111/pagenum

Tracy

[David]

Good to know you're still with us Tracy, despite the hand injury.   

Desparate people do desparate things.  They were doing things some of which I could never do.  But, they were not hurting anyone.  And they were even able to influence the gang leader into not selling drugs around kids in the local park after school hours.  It is a messy system, but it seems consistant with the ZAP, in which the participants undoubtable benifited.  Else they wouldn't do it. 

[error]

I see sadness in it, sure, but primarily because the government has created the problem.

I also see hope, because it shows how people, in the absence of government interference, can come together to solve their own problems without resorting to violence.

[David]

The article was so insightful, I decided to post it in full.   

      
jurisprudence
Ghetto Capitalism
Sudhir Venkatesh's new book unravels the mystery of the underground economy.
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Posted Friday, Dec. 8, 2006, at 6:07 AM ET

America's underground economy stubbornly resists reliable study or measurement. Its overall size may be anywhere from 5 percent to 10 percent of America's GDP. Estimates of annual unpaid taxes range from $200 billion to $500 billion. Even the low ballparks are high. So, why do the dynamics remain so mysterious?

One answer is that under-the-table deals are by their nature surreptitious, and whether you're paying an undocumented immigrant to rake your lawn, underreporting the money your restaurant made on a Saturday night, or dealing crack in a schoolyard, you're not likely to expound on those activities to an academic (much less an IRS investigator). It doesn't help that social scientists tend to employ the bluntest of tools. In their best-seller Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner tell the story of a grad student, Sudhir Venkatesh, who entered poor black Chicago neighborhoods armed with a wonky questionnaire while studying urban poverty in the late 1980s. The typical response to questions like, "How do you feel about being poor and black?" was so contemptuous that Venkatesh wondered whether, in addition to the multiple choice answers ranging from a) Very Bad to e) Very Good, he should perhaps have appended f) for Fuck You.

Eventually, Venkatesh jettisoned the survey and adopted a less orthodox methodology. He calls it "hanging out." He spent years in a 10-square-block neighborhood on Chicago's South Side observing the clandestine work of gangbangers and mechanics, prostitutes and pastors. The result, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, suggests that in some American neighborhoods, the underground economy is a source not just of sustenance but of order, and that while shady transactions may be illegal, they adhere to a distinctive and sophisticated set of laws.

Off the Books differs from most studies of underground economies in both scope and perspective. Venkatesh goes micro. His statistics are based on tiny areas: Only two of the 21 families on one residential block are traditional nuclear families; only 10 percent of the shop owners along one commercial strip have good credit. Eschewing the objective distance often prized in the social sciences, he gains the trust of the people he is hanging out with, sometimes by mediating their disputes. (He's a little sheepish about this, saying he remains "not entirely comfortable" with his involvement.)

On that one residential block, Venkatesh focuses on three women: Bird, a prostitute; Eunice, an office cleaner who sells home-cooked meals on the side; and Marlene, a nanny who is president of the block's neighborhood association. (All the names in the book are pseudonyms.) The women share tart observations about their respective livelihoods: Bird thinks gangsters should "let the pimps show them how to run a business." Through them, we come to meet a diverse cast of locals, "nearly all linked together," Venkatesh writes, "in a vast, often invisible web that girded their neighborhood. This web was the underground economy."

Licit and illicit economies tend to be entwined, and in a closely knit urban neighborhood, this mutual dependence means that public-minded civilians and hardened criminals are regularly forced to negotiate. In the spring of 2000, an entrepreneurial gang leader, Big Cat, was elevating the criminal activity in a local park. Marlene and a preacher, Pastor Wilkins, arranged a tense summit with the kingpin in a church basement. Venkatesh talked his way into the room and watched as Big Cat agreed to stop peddling drugs in the park during after-school hours. For this concession, Pastor Wilkins promised to persuade a nearby store owner to allow Big Cat's gang to deal in his parking lot, and Marlene agreed to ask the cops to leave the dealers unmolested in their new location.

"I can't figure out who's crazier," Big Cat chuckles, once the deal is struck. "Me, or you niggers."

The people in Off the Books are struggling, and their many informal transactions represent a kind of adaptive strategy ?and often an indigenous social safety net. Private property is a luxury in the neighborhood, so for $300 a pop, a restaurant doubles as a gambling hall on the weekends; prostitutes use the back room of the dollar store; the currency exchange sells fake Social Security cards obtained by a local pastor. All of this gives new meaning to the urban planning notion of "mixed use."

Similarly, neighborhood residents get around bad credit by borrowing what money they need within the community. Debts aren't always repaid with money. Venkatesh charts the degree to which promises and payments in kind substitute for cash. Small businesses give homeless people a place to sleep in exchange for food because it's cheaper than paying a night watchman; a prostitute and a grocer transact business without ever opening their wallets. Leroy, a mechanic, eventually gets rid of his cash register, because "his customers seemed unable to pay with our nation's legal tender."

In his efforts to demonstrate that this shadow economy is anything but the desperate Hobbesian scramble an outsider might assume, Venkatesh can at times sound like Jane Jacobs extolling the civic merits of Manhattan's West Village. "Beneath the closed storefronts, burned-out buildings, potholed boulevards, and empty lots, there is an intricate, fertile web of exchange, tied together by people with tremendous human capital and craftsmanship," he writes. In this view, even Big Cat is a "stakeholder" in the neighborhood, with an interest in seeing norms adhered to and order preserved. "It's not a crack house," as an old Onion headline had it. "It's a crack home."

But these very bonds of mutual dependence that hold the neighborhood together can breed severe dysfunction and seriously compromise pillars of the licit establishment. Eunice, who sells soul food for a living, pays a teacher $20 a week to let her grandchildren out of school to make deliveries. Cops take bribes and enforce justice selectively.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Venkatesh's account is the role of neighborhood ministers. Clergy resolve disputes, but they don't do it for free. Numerous ministers accept "contributions" from gangs and drug dealers for their services. They take other forms of payment, as well; Bird, the prostitute, has serviced "most of the preachers in this community." Other ministers have been known to hide guns, drugs, and stolen property for a fee. Nannies rely on preachers for referrals to families but must pay a 10 percent commission. The residents are unshocked by all of this. They conclude that it would be impossible to navigate the community without making certain allowances. "We are poor people. And so are our ministers," one congregant says. "We need [a minister] to be our leader, not perfect or without sin."

If Venkatesh sometimes marvels at the ingenuity of the people he writes about, he does not overlook the essentially tragic nature of the story he is telling. The depredations of daily life mean that for many residents, what Venkatesh calls the "perceptual horizon" does not extend beyond the neighborhood. Sadder still, it doesn't reach beyond the struggles of the day to day. Bird, Eunice, and Marlene each envision a leisurely future of comfortable retirement. But none is clear on precisely when and how that future will come to pass. In the meantime, they hustle to get by, and the hustle means relying on one another. "You have to do things shady," one local businessman tells Venkatesh. "Well, maybe not shady like committing a crime, but shady like you depend on each other."
Patrick Radden Keefe, a fellow at the Century Foundation, is the author of Chatter, which is just out in paperback.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2155111/

Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

[Spencer]

It is inspiring to me.  They are getting along fine with no government, and they are engaged in pure commerce.

[Pat McCotter]

It is inspiring to me.  They are getting along fine with no government, and they are engaged in pure commerce.

Well, Marlene does have to convince the police (gov't) to look the other way.

[SeanSchade]

It is inspiring to me.  They are getting along fine with no government, and they are engaged in pure commerce.

Well, Marlene does have to convince the police (gov't) to look the other way.

If the police weren't there they would just be another group of "enforcers" for her to negotiate with. 

It does show you how powerful commerce is in that not even the government can stop it. 

[David]

Here is a link from strike the root, that I found very interesting. 
(old link, try new link)
If there was an agorism movement inside of a feral city, the prospects could be amazing. 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JIW/is_4_56/ai_110458726

[David]

bump   

[EJinCT]

I find the article to be rather misleading, as many years of surviving on the streets has taught me differently.

They are getting along fine with no government, and they are engaged in pure commerce.

One may think that the case, by simply reading an article that glosses over much of what really happens "on the streets". Most transactions of this nature are not done out of the good of ones heart, but out of the fact that it provides a benefit for them; and I would be willing to wager that many, if not most, are a mutually beneficial parasitic relationship at best.

Just because the article doesn't mention violence, doesn't mean they are "getting along fine". I can attest that violence and aggression are a very real part of daily life for those living this way and is much more the norm than the exception. Also, please do not assume that because there is no govt, there is no power structure. Just because it's not defined or mentioned, does not mean it does not exist. Pimps, prostitutes, bangers, dealers, johns, snitches, preachers addicts, drunks, wing-nuts, etc.... all have a "rank" in this "urban hierarchy".


"in some American neighborhoods, the underground economy is a source not just of sustenance but of
order, and that while shady transactions may be illegal, they adhere to a distinctive and sophisticated set of laws."

Sounds good until the fact that "justice" may equate with a bullet in the skull for even a perceived slight. 


For those that may feel inspired by the article, go live the life for a few years, then come back and tell us how you feel.

[David]

<Most transactions of this nature are not done out of the good of ones heart, but out of the fact that it provides a benefit for them; and I would be willing to wager that many, if not most, are a mutually beneficial parasitic relationship at best.>
Of course it is.  Most people do not have the time to sit around and do things out of the goodness of heart.  The need to earn a living is rather important. 
<Just because the article doesn't mention violence, doesn't mean they are "getting along fine". I can attest that violence and aggression are a very real part of daily life for those living this way and is much more the norm than the exception.>  This story is based on one neighborhood in inner city chicago.  I would agree with you for the most part though, violence is a norm in human society, some areas more than others, but still there. 
<Also, please do not assume that because there is no govt, there is no power structure. Just because it's not defined or mentioned, does not mean it does not exist. Pimps, prostitutes, bangers, dealers, johns, snitches, preachers addicts, drunks, wing-nuts, etc.... all have a "rank" in this "urban hierarchy".>
There is no monopoly power structure.  Keep in mind that their Is a gov't, it has simply either become so corrosive to the people in the area that they have rejected it, or it has become so unimportant to the people they ignore it.  I figure the former. 
The ordering of human beings by rank is as human as the pack mentality, it will always be with us, gov't or no gov't. 
<Sounds good until the fact that "justice" may equate with a bullet in the skull for even a perceived slight.>
Most cops will tell you that most crime is drug related.  This is true in any black market, that disputes turn ugly because there is no widely recognized or available way to solve them.  I am well aware that there are very dangerous people that will hurt or kill others for little or no reason, they are definitely a minority of the violence. 
It is no utopia, and while I do admire the tenacity of human survival, and adaptation, I have no real desire to actually live there. 
To me, this story is another brick in the wall of proof that humans can fucntion without any real gov't.  It is interesting for that reason. 

[dan_sayers]

I enjoy commUNITY, so I enjoyed the article. Street justice isn't pretty, but how much of that is because of the stigmas placed upon it by outside sources that have societally recognized higher ranks themselves to protect?