sarahwojtowicz-blog

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

Anything dealing with the economy is so complex in my mind. There are always so many seen and unseen effects that it’s basically impossible to find a single solution, let alone please both sides of the political spectrum. Poverty is one of those issues. You can’t just create more jobs and think that it will solve everything and not have any reproccussions. One single idea won’t solve the poverty issue but more likely a combination in multiple areas like education, healthcare, and of course minimum wage.

Nickel and Dimed

Secondary Source #5

This is a very insightful article. It addresses the many stereotypes that are placed on people who live in poverty, and focuses on a specific family and their struggles.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

I can definitely see the difference between the jobs of the upper and lower classes here. The upper class tends to put emphasis on having a job that they actually enjoy, because they don’t have this constant pressure of money on their shoulders. But the lower class doesn’t even have that luxury, because for them it’s only a matter of survival.

Nickel and Dimed

Primary source #4

A repetitive injury of the spirit. I don’t know how that sounds to you, but that sounds like it came straight from the depths of depression to me. Unfortunately, I have seen people who work jobs (earning way above minimum-wage) struggle with a repetitive injury to their spirit. This feeling of numbness and helplessness is horrible in itself, just imagine also having to carry the burden of only making minimum wage and everything that comes along with that.

The second picture at the bottom talks about how when Barbara was cleaning a home she accidentally spilled dirty toilet water all over her shoes but had to work through it because she didn’t own any other pair of shoes. We can relate that back to the first picture where tunnel vision is mentioned. The only goal of many people who work for minimum-wage to support themselves (and sometimes their family) is to get the job done because that’s what’s engrained in their brains to do. It’s almost like they are drones who see that the goal is just to get to the end of the day, emotionless and oblivious to the hell that they are living in. All they know is that they have to do this to survive no matter how they feel or what the effects are.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

I see how this ties into the poverty cycle. If she become malnourished, she will overwork herself and this will leave to further health problems. And if these health problems get worse, it would result in time off work, making no steady income, and medical treatment which she wouldn’t be able to afford. And how can you get out of a hole that big?

Nickel and Dimed

Primary Source #3

Truly baffling. This woman who is getting paid minimum wage goes long periods of time without eating because she simply doesn’t have money. Rosalie lives with her significant other and an elderly relative and she tells Barbara that she spends $30-$50 a week on food for the three of them. Barbara admits that she spends just slightly under that just for herself for a week. The disparity between the cleaning ladies and the people who own the lavish houses that they clean is dramatic. Not to mention how shitty the maids are treated. Being malnourished basically fucks up every single aspect of your life because your energy levels are extremely low which means you are chronically tired, unproductive and probably severely depressed. The cycle of not having enough money to pay for basic necessities (like eating food) has a domino effect on a person‘s entire life.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

AMERICAN KINGPIN #6

After finishing the book there is still one big question that’s on my mind, is Ross good or bad? Everyone he’s encountered, from his family and friends to a lady at a flower shop, say he was always wholesome and nice. The kind of person to help an old lady cross the street or rescue animals in his free time. His whole purpose for starting the website was to make an impact on society, like any other start up technology company. His website gave people freedom of what they put in their bodies, with no rules, regulations, or limits to what you could and couldn’t sell on the site. But this came at a price. The range of products on the site ranged from weed and mushrooms to guns, human body parts, hardcore drugs like heroine that could ruin someone’s life. He trafficked drugs, ordered for murder hits, and went against the basis of the United States government (giving him his 2 life sentences without the option of parole). I think what sums it up best, is what Judge Forest said before delivering Ross’ sentence, “There is good in you, Mr. Ulbricht, I have no doubt, but there is also bad, and what you did in connection with the Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

SECONDARY SOURCE #6

This is a Fobes Q&A with the anonymous Dread Pirate Roberts aka Ross Ulbricht in 2013. Ross finally got to address the public and explain the purpose behind his website in this article. I found it very interesting that he kept stressing the idea that he wasn’t the original creator of the website, but took it over when it became popular. This isn’t true. Ross created and ran the website throughout the 4 years alone. But, he wanted to publish this idea to give him an alibi.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

In honors econ last year, I remember reading about the poverty line and our discussion on the assistance that comes with it. Our class was so taken back by how when making a few more dollars, your assistace goes down by so much. This puts people around the poverty line in such a bad position. Either you try to advance in your job and lose the money thats keeping you afloat or stay where you are just getting by.

Nickel and Dimed secondary source #1

In this podcast by Terry Gross on fresh air, he interviews Stephanie Land who wrote a memoir about her life living in poverty. The 35 minute podcast goes over her trials and tribulations that she had to endure post leaving her abusive boyfriend who she had a child with. She never went to college before getting pregnant so the only jobs that she could get paid very low wages she lived in homeless shelters and used, at one time, seven different government supplements. She was struggling tremendously working as a maid who got paid very little for laborous work. A point that stood out to me was that some of the government assistance made it so that there was less of an incentive to make more money, because if you made even just a little bit more money, then the amount of assistance that the government would give you could decrease. Something that I wish they talked more about would be how she eventually did go to college and how when she was in college did she have money to support her children?

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

SECONDARY SOURCE #5

I chose Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes as a secondary source, not because I’m comparing Ross to Ted Bundy, but because of the similarities I see in the law enforcement and the investigations. In the tv documentary, it shows how Bundy kept escaping law enforcement because he was constantly moving from Seattle to Utah to Colorado and Florida. And because of this, the officers weren’t communicating with one another to put the clues together and catch their common suspect. When I was watching, it definitely showed that this happened because of the lack of technology and organization in the 70s. But I noticed the same thing happening with the Silk Road case in 2013! All the different government agencies (FBI, IRS, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency), had vital clues to catching Ross Ulbricht, including his personal email, IP address, and even some cops that interviewed him, but they wouldn’t communicate with each other to piece it together! Each agency wanted to be responsible for finding the biggest drug lord in America that they selfishly kept their information from each other. I found myself having the frustration of law enforcement messing with the investigation both while reading the book and watching this documentary.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

I’ve thought about these constant unknown variables that you mentioned and the high rates of mental health issues in the lower class before. But I never made the connections between them.  It makes so much sense that the constant stress and pressure they are under will take a toll on their mental health.  And like you said, living comfortable in the middle class, you experience large amounts of stress, but comparing it to not knowing if you will have shelter or a job next week is undeniably different. 

Nickel and Dimed #2

This passage from my book stood out to me because I think that it relates to my life or at least the social class that I think I reside in. The highlighted portion is what I feel is true about many middle-class Americans like me. Barbara Ehrenreich talks about how when living a low-wage life, anxiety levels heightened for her because she has been used to stability since she was very young. This experience is opening her eyes to the fact that people in poverty or who are struggling to make ends meet can have significant mental health problems and struggle with great amounts of stress because of all the different unknown variables in their life. Unknowns such as: where they will find shelter, have food, where their life will take them, or if they will ever truly be happy or satisfied with their life of constant uncertainty.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

SECONDARY SOURCE #4

In 2015, Alex Winter directed a documentary called Deep Web focused around the arrest and trial of Ross Ulbricht. I had never heard of this documentary before so I was very surprised to see the high reviews.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

SECONDARY SOURCE #3

This quick video does a great job of describing how crypto currency, specifically Bitcoin is used in illegal transactions. And it also describes how this process was used to keep everything anonymous on The Silk Road which is why it became so successful.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

AMERICAN KINGPIN #5

Chapter 44 particularly stood out to me. The chapter changes perspectives between Ross’s weekend camping and a 16 year old dying in Australia. These two events are totally unrelated but ironically linked together by The Silk Road. This was the first weekend that Ross got away from his job as the CEO of The Silk Road. His time away from the website being surrounded by nature rejuvenated him. But on the other side of the world, an Australian teenager tested out drugs from The Silk Road after his prom. Because of this, he ended up jumping off his hotel balcony and dying.

This was a direct result of Ross’s libertarian no rule policy on the website, which included no age limit or regulations on drug quality. The most eye opening thing to me was that when Ross got home and logged back onto the Silk Road, his employees informed him that everything went smoothly during his absence. No talk about the tragic death of a 16 year old and the blood on their hands. The only discussions were of sales and potential hacking threats. This made me realize that Ross and his employees didn’t see or care about the unseen effects of their billion dollar business.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

AMERICAN KINGPIN #4

When the website started to make big sales and pop up on the governments radar, Ross wanted to plan an escape just in case the website was traced back to him. He purposely changed his screen name from “Admin” to “Dread Pirate Roberts” (a character from The Princess Bride) in order to have the alibi that he sold the website, although it was still fully under his control. As I was reading, I noticed that Bilton played off this username change and started to constantly use a pirate ship as an analogy of the Silk Road website.

the ship = the website

the journey = fighting the war on drugs

the captain = Dread Pirate Roberts (Ross)

shipmates = users of the website

holes on the ship = hackers

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

SECONDARY SOURCE #2

This is Nick Bilton’s, the author of American Kingpin, weekly podcast where he interviews powerful people from tech and politics. In this episode, Bilton and Tom Conrad, the co-founder of Pandora, discuss the book and if Ross Ulbricht is any different than the successful CEO’s of the tech industry.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

AMERICAN KINGPIN #3

As the website began to grow rapidly, Ross started to experience some major coding holes. He was working day and night to constantly repair the site, but he couldn’t do it all on his own. A user on the site, with the codename Variety Jones, reached out to Ross and offered a helping hand. Soon, Ross was paying Variety Jones thousands of dollars a week for his work on the website. And now Ross finally had a friend to confide in. Ross and Variety Jones were talking 24/7 about not only the website, but their personal lives too. I’ve watched plenty of Catfish, so I am a little skeptical of Variety Jones’ motives. But, this did open my eyes to how lonely Ross was in his real life. Ross couldn’t tell any of this family and friends about The Silk Road because it would pull them into his illegal activities. I can’t even imagine being that alone and constantly in fear of getting caught.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

AMERICAN KINGPIN #2

This passage reveals Ross’ purpose behind The Silk Road. Ross didn’t care about the large generation of wealth he was acquiring and he didn’t need easy access to some hard drug he was addicted too. He created The Silk Road to make a point to the United States government, further his libertarian views, and make his family proud (although in an unusual and definitely illegal way). The driving forces behind his website surprised me because it isn’t exactly normal to create the largest drug smuggling website just to laugh at the government. But in my mind, his reasons for starting the website kind of justified his illegal behavior. It just expresses the idea that he isn’t some crazy, murdering drug lord, but a normal guy who knows how to code.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

SECONDARY #1

This was the 1st article written about the Silk Road after its creation in 2011. It’s about the ease of buying drugs that the website provides. This article was mentioned numerous times in American KingPin because it brought the website to the public and this is how it got onto the radar of not only major media sites, but the governments.

[sarahwojtowicz-blog]

AMERICAN KINGPIN #1

As I read the first couple chapters of American Kingpin, I was surprised by the layout that Nick Bilton chose. The book is about the making of The Silk Road (not the ancient trade route, the drug website), the rise of the website, and the government hunt to find the curator behind it all. I assumed it would be in chronological order, but the author made another choice.

Some books are set up in chronological order, switching the POV each chapter, or the occasional flashback. This book has all 3. At the start of the book, the author tells you what happens in the end, who gets caught, and the effect of it all. Some chapters are from the POV of Ross, the mastermind behind the website, and others are from the POV of government officials and TSA agents gaining knowledge of the website. And each chapter varies in when it took place. I’ve found that this chapter layout has really pulled me in as a reader. As soon as Ross’ story about struggling to find a job gets boring, it will switch to a TSA agent discovering drugs. Also since the reader already knows what is going to happen in the end, the anticipation of how the story will play out grows.