Doing a Thing, Seat of Pants

Keyhole Confessions Mark II begins here. How goes it?

I just finished reading Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh's book Off the Books: [lol: but it's a book!] The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, which came strongly recommended by Tyler Cowen, the economist who's (chiefly) behind the ever lovable blog Marginal Revolution. I'm not sure that I share Cowen's unreserved enthusiasm for Venkatesh's work — I found the prose dull and distracting (similar, in fact, to Cowen's in In Praise of Commercial Culture, which is nevertheless also worth reading), and textual déjà vu cropped up in way too many places, as if no one at Harvard University Press could have been bothered to read over the whole book in one sitting before sending it off to the printers. But regardless: the book's about the underground/"shady" economy of a particular ghetto neighborhood in Chicago. I use the word "ghetto" advisedly: it's more or less isolated from outside influences and resources, it's almost entirely black, and it's desperately poor. But as Venkatesh shows, drawing on years of observations accumulated by hanging out with the people who live in this place, high rates of (official) unemployment and anemic streams of income don't testify to economic idleness. Actually, the ghetto has a crazy, amazing, inspiring economy, vital and active and testifying to the irrepressible human impulse -- dare I say it? -- to truck and barter. There are tons of "small-business owners," even if the small business is stealing socks and selling them in the park, or selling drugs, or sleeping on the floor of a convenience store to serve as a makeshift security guard (as some homeless people do).

Problems: two thriving sectors in the ghetto are super-illegal and taboo: drug-selling and "sex work." Also, even legit-ish business activities, which keep everyone alive and kicking, typically involve wages below the minimum, entrepreneurship without the proper permits, use of spaces in violation of building and zoning codes, etc. So the law is almost never on these people's side: the pseudo-contracts and property rights on which they rest their livelihoods have no legal standing. Uh oh. Also: in the absence of much policing or government, gangs stand in as sovereigns, taxing businesses (quite literally) in exchange for sham protection and attempting to secure a monopoly on the means of violence. Also: partially because of overly fearful assessment of the risks of trying new things outside of the comforting familiarity of ghetto life, people don't try to expand into radically new areas or ways of doing business or even different parts of the city. Too scary, too risky. They always nurse dreams of the big time, but they don't dare to try to live them out. And they're probably right: the world would probably fuck them, as things now stand.

Solutions: legalize prostitution and drug sales, but don't replace them with monopolistic brothels or "Big Pharma." A profusion of competing sellers should yield, in classical fashion, lower prices and better output, while preserving employment within the territory. Less violence and exploitation because the law can now be invoked. Puritans will object, but: whatevs. Slash regulations, grant amnesty to existing quasi-legal enterprises, institutionalize and regularize and accord legal existence to block associations and, hell, even gangs, as long as they stop killing people. These neighborhoods are already more organized than the boldest civic-participation leftist fantasy world; what we need to do is grant the organizations the respect and power they deserve and have earned. Energize and empower and liberalize. Fuck it: make these places islands of libertarian experiment, dispensing with the bugbears of the minimum wage and lengthy permit processes. Maybe it'll work. Beats doing nothing, and at least it would mark out a direction: not weeping over the ghetto as a hopeless den of sin and crime but recognizing, purifying, and radicalizing the elements within it that command respect and spark hope. Don't fucking hand it over to the homogenizing powers of shopping malls and yuppies and blah blah, although such things may occasionally help, as long as they're in service of the larger trajectory. The point is to preserve the diversity of activities, the competing nodes of authority, the casual amenability to individual initiative so alien to us white-collar office drones -- but to give them greater scope, more power, and a larger setting on which to play out. Other thoughts? I'm in a mood. Maybe we can put our money where n+1's mouth is.