Guest MINDSETTER Erlin Rogel: Jordan Sneakers and Friedman
Monday, February 09, 2015
I've worked with kids for the past five years or so in difference capacities- As a classroom instructor, as a mentor and tutor, as a team leader, but most significant to me, as a big brother. I gathered the most insight from them when I set aside the formalities of a teacher-student relationship and got them to open up as children.
The most salient aspect of their attitudes on life was there vexation towards their poverty. They hated it - a sentiment I so passionately share being a south side native myself. The feeling of poverty is truly inexplicable as there are no words that can adequately capture the hatred, hopelessness, and frustration that can overcome the most resilient of souls. I could provide them the only solace that had ever been given to me: stick with school.
We would have long conversations about how education could be the key to a vault full of money, but I could tell they had heard this so many times, I felt like destined loser on Shark Tank. My investors weren't buying it. They had heard this proverbial guarantee and were beaten over the head with it since they were in kindergarten, the mantra past it's expiration and I could provide little evidence that it still bore truth.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn my conversations I learned however, that many of them had taken their elevation out of poverty into their own hands.
One of the conversations involved Jordans, the Nike sneaker brand that has developed a religious following in the inner-city. I too had amassed a collection in my teenage years and understood the status symbol that a pair of Bred XIs could provide: instant coolness. This rite of passage had been passed down to my students, except some of them had turned the Jordan obsession into a venture business.
"Why do you guys camp out for an entire night just to buy a pair of sneakers?"
"Cuz mister, I buy the sneakers at $150 and sell them to other people who want them for $250."
A 67% return on an investment is genius. If eager beavers wanted to get their hands on the newest pair of Jays, they would have to pay a premium for not standing in line. The basic principles of supply and demand, and some of my students were making really good money by being the middlemen.
Not only was resale a booming business but many other students had started ancillary businesses that involved cleaning and repair of Jordans, custom designing, among other services. It was a beautiful underground symphony of free market flute players.
Entrepreneurialism
This got me thinking about how a few of my childhood friends had opted for entrepreneurialism over a liberal arts education and had done really well for themselves; I'm talking of course about drug dealing. If you know anything about drug dealers it's that they understand the free market dynamic as well as your Wall Street bankers. They understand price fluctuations, bear markets, customer service relations, branding, and quality control. They understand inventory control, business expansion, and reinvestment.
Both scenarios made a lot of sense to me. No other occupation in the history of the world has generated more wealth than entrepreneurship in such a small length of time. Small businesses, venture businesses, innovation, determination, development of technology, cures for diseases and medicine, comfort and quality of life developments can all be attributed to our capitalist system.
My students had realized that without ever understanding the terms capitalism and free markets; they had adopted a way of life that has been cemented as the foundation of the freest and most wealthiest nation the world has ever known.
I thought about this for a while and reflected on my own experiences as a student. Capitalism had always been taught to me as a system that rewards greed and yields two crops of people: the haves and the have-nots. The haves were hardworking and determined, the have-nots were lazy and stupid. Communism on the other hand, had made the most sense to me as a child. It represented sharing and equality and unity and no one else could own more than no one else: a characteristic that spoke poetry as the despair of my poverty made me rebel against a system that had rendered me a have-not.
Propped up in my chair and facing my students I realized however, that their orchestration of a free market machine had provided them the only hope that truly spoke to them. Intangible ideas like a college degree, earning capacity, professional occupations didn't mean anything to them. Only one thing mattered to them: Money.
My inner city youth were as American as anyone else.
I then wondered why entrepreneurialism and investing wasn't taught in our schools? Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped banging them over the head with feel-good tenets and were conscious of their actual circumstances and what they truly yearned for, some of these kids could transfer their proven money management talents over to the mainstream economy. They could then maybe open up businesses in their communities and hire their peers.
Anybody want to buy a pair of Blue Legends?
Erlin Rogel is a third year law student at Roger Williams University School of Law, founding member of the Rhode Island Hispanic Bar Association, and Providence fanatic. Photo Credit: ididj0emama/Flickr
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