WARNING: SPOILERS AHEADThe Wire is that rare cultural creation that is even better than the overwhelming praise would suggest. The show's explorations of urban inequalities, the failures of institutions, and the ambiguities of how people survive (and don't) are truly epic, yet manage to stay grounded in the experiences of its many and sharply drawn characters. Central to the show however is the emphasis David Simon, Ed Burns and co. place on the failures of the current economic model to provide opportunity and decent lives for so many people. One only need to watch the tragic story of Frank Sobotka, head of a local dockworkers’ union, to get a sense of Simon’s deep understanding of the way, particularly since the Reagan presidency, that the "profits before all" economic model has bred an increasingly unequal and in many ways dysfunctional society.
One of The Wire's main arguments centers on how deindustrialization and the failure (as of yet) for the transforming economy or our political system to ensure some matter of economic security for everyone (especially people of color in urban centers) contributes mightily to creating the array of issues associated with illegal drugs. Ironically (as the creators take delight in pointing out), although the drug trade exists outside many societal norms, it is at the same time as thoroughly capitalistic an enterprise as selling footwear or electronics. One can imagine a world in which, if they were legal, some of the despised drug kingpins might be hailed as innovative CEOs.
Building on the idea that the depictions of the drug gangs can teach us about business dynamics, I would like to suggest that watching The Wire contains lessons not only about the present, but also the past. As I plan to help show in a series of posts, watched at a metaphorical level,The Wire presents a solid introduction to the history of how organizational structures and the worldviews of U.S. business have transformed repeatedly over the past hundred years. That may sound a bit outlandish, but given that one of the leading scholars of the urban crisis in the United States, William Julius Wilson, is teaching an entire class based on the show, perhaps not. I'll have more to say about this, but for the moment, here's a sneak peak of what's to come:
1) "Games beyond the game": Avon, Stringer, and the Rise of the Corporation
2) "Making sense of this game": Prop Joe, Stringer, and the Post-War "Consensus"
3) "I ain't been one for meets no how": Marlo and the Robber Barons
4) "And of course, I'm not even Greek": The "Greeks" and the Multinational Corporation