17 Pages Posted: 19 Jun 2014 Last revised: 8 May 2017

Date Written: June 17, 2014

Abstract

We use the classes of systematized ethics in Deirdre McCloskey's "The Bourgeois Virtues" to understand characters in HBO’s "The Wire" and the story of "The Wire" to understand the bourgeois ethics of the marketplace. McCloskey argues that the introduction of a new system of bourgeois ethics, distinct from the age-old ethical systems of the aristocrat, peasant, and priest classes, is responsible for the exponential growth in world GDP per capita since 1800. We explore the difference in ethical systems present in both "The Wire’s" West Baltimore drug economy in the 2000s and the world economy around 1800, aristocratic and bourgeois, and the challenge in transitioning from the broad poverty maintenance of the former system to the wealth-creating potential of the latter. The story of "The Wire" provides a rich case study in this clash.