Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion in Fishtown

Details

Our standard discussion venue is the Front Street Cafe in Fishtown on the corner of Front & Girard Streets. SEPTA's Girard Station is just a block south, and there's also usually spaces available for street parking in the surrounding neighborhood. If you can't find a spot on the street, there's a paid parking lot called "Park America" a half-block north at 1320 N.Front Street.

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In our past 2 meetups, we covered the problems of crony capitalism and rent-seeking. Economists & sociologists have found that when it becomes increasingly difficult for people to get ahead in the formal economy, some of them almost inevitably turn to the "informal economy" (grey markets) and the "underground economy" (black markets). For a brief overview of these terms, see Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_sector

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market

This meetup will cover the basics of black & grey markets, including how economists infer economic activity in the "informal sector", the basics of the emerging cryptocurrency market on the dark web, and what sociologists have discovered about the socio-economic dynamics that motivate people to seek out these markets. We'll also briefly discuss the ethics of participating in black market activity, and whether we should legalize activities currently relegated to the black market. Lastly, we'll look at how the "sharing economy" that's evolved on the internet is enabling the anarchist ideology known as "mutualism", while the dark net & cryptography is enabling "agorism" which favors using grey/black markets to evade the formal market that is taxed & controlled by the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharing_economy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism

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Although we won't have time to focus heavily on any one aspect of the black market in this discussion, we can definitely hold in-depth discussions in the future on some of the issues we'll touch upon like drug policy, prostitution & human trafficking, organ donor markets, the darknet & cryptocurrency, etc.

Note: If you're interested in seeing some stats on the illegal gun market, we covered it briefly in our previous discussions on gun violence & gun control. See the 4th section of the "gun violence" discussion outline where we talked about the University of Pittsburgh study that revealed that only 20% of gun crimes are committed by legal gun owners: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/233187944/ And see the 4th section of the "gun control" discussion outline that pertains to Phil Cook's research on the "time-to-crime" of gun sales/thefts: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/233239574/

** Note: There will be a "Skeptics in the Pub" discussion immediately following this discussion that looks at some of the popular misconceptions & media myths surrounding illegal drugs and drug prohibition. For more information, check out the meetup event: https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/237619544/

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I've divided our discussion into 4 sections, and I found some short videos that may be more accessible than long articles we've used in the past. If you're pressed for time and cannot watch all 7 videos, which I certainly don't expect, please just pick one from each section. That should only take you from 30 minutes to an hour. Note that for Video #5, it's actually 2 very short video clips which I've labeled 5a & 5b - please watch both of them together, as these are co-authors of the recent book, "Markets Without Limits", and their arguments are complimentary.

If you'd prefer to read/skim articles rather than watch videos, be aware that videos 2, 3, 6 & 7 all have transcripts that you can click to open & read. For videos 5a/b & 8, I've included links to short articles that summarizes the main points from the videos. I've also included article 4, which is Matt Yglesias's short summary of Malcolm Gladwell's longer essay, "The Crooked Ladder".

HOW THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY & DARK NET WORK:

Adriene Hill, "Crash Course Econ #32: The Underground Economy" (8:32 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joG6-QZc-fw

Jamie Bartlett, "How The Mysterious Dark Net Is Going Mainstream" (14:15 minutes)

https://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_bartlett_how_the_mysterious_dark_net_is_going_mainstream

SOCIO-ECONOMICS OF THE ILLEGAL DRUG MARKET: WHY DOES THE AVERAGE DRUG DEALER MAKE LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE? AND WHY CAN'T THEY MOVE UP OR MOVE ON?

Steven Levitt, "The Freakonomics of Crack Dealing" (21:15: minutes)

https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_economics

Matt Yglesias, "Have the Cops Gotten Too Good at Catching Criminals?" (short article)

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6050119/gladwell-crooked-ladder-ferguson

This short article in Vox summarizes Malcolm Gladwell's longer New Yorker article, "The Crooked Ladder - The Criminal's Guide to Upward Mobility", which reviews the anthropologist Francis Ianni's classic A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime (1972) and sociologist Alice Goffman's recent book On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (2014). Ianni's work showed how the Italian mafia in the early 20th century allowed poor immigrants to earn money in the underground economy, which often allowed them to move to a better neighborhood & their children to move into the middle class & work in the legitimate economy. However, Gladwell argues that Goffman's work shows that this "crooked ladder" to upward mobility is no longer available to the African-American underclass in today's inner cities.

THE ETHICS OF CONTROVERSIAL MARKETS & REGULATION SCHEMES: CAN PAYMENT CHANGE AN ACT FROM MORAL TO IMMORAL? SHOULD WE PROTECT PEOPLE FROM THEMSELVES, NO MATTER THE COST?

5a) Jason Brennan "Key Theme of 'Markets Without Limits'" (1:21 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSQRVe_qCGs

5b) Peter Jaworski, "How Bone Marrow Markets Could Save Lives" (2:10 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQOmQc-bBkQ

Or read Brennan & Jaworski's article, "If You May Do It for Free, You May Do It for Money"

https://fee.org/articles/if-you-may-do-it-for-free-you-may-do-it-for-money/

NOTE: Although Brennan & Jaworski don't mention it, Samuel Konkin's conception of the "Five Markets" (taken from his pamphlet, Counter-Economics) helps distinguish illegal activities from unethical activities - see the diagram below:

https://a248.e.akamai.net/secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/6/9/1/e/event_458366910.jpeg