How Academia Sometimes Behaves Like a Drug Cartel.
1st December 2013
Not least in sampling their own toxic wares….
“If you take into account the risk of being shot by rival gangs, ending up in jail or being beaten up by your own hierarchy, you might wonder why anybody would work for such a low wage and at such dreadful working conditions instead of seeking employment at McDonald’s. Yet, gangs have no real difficulty in recruiting new members. The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth. Rank-and-file members are ready to face this risk to try to make it to the top, where life is good and money is flowing,” wrote Alexandre Afonso, a lecturer in political economy at King’s College London.
He cites the work of the economist Steven Levitt and the sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh in understanding drug gangs. “With a constant supply of new low-level drug sellers entering the market and ready to be exploited, drug lords can become increasingly rich without needing to distribute their wealth towards the bottom,” he writes. “You have an expanding mass of rank-and-file ‘outsiders’ ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of ‘insiders’ securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass. We can call it a winner-take-all market.”
Then he turns to academe and finds very similar conditions.