, 1 min read
How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang
Comparing the academic industry with a rather disparate industry, thereby highlighting a number of shortcomings of the current situation in academia.
Also see Marcio von Muhlen: We Need a Github of Science, documenting the "Profzi"-scheme.
Interesting article from Alexandre Alfonso on How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang:
In 2000, economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics about the internal wage structure of a Chicago drug gang. This piece would later serve as a basis for a chapter in Levitt’s (and Dubner’s) best seller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) The title of the chapter, “Why drug dealers still live with their moms”, was based on the finding that the income distribution within gangs was extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, while the rank-and-file street sellers earned even less than employees in legitimate low-skilled activities, let’s say at McDonald’s. They calculated 3.30 dollars as the hourly rate, that is, well below a living wage (that’s why they still live with their moms).