Never seen it (don't have tv) but with all these recommendations, maybe I should order it over netflix?

That's how my wife and I saw it. I thought it was well worth it, although it went downhill after the first couple seasons.

I was able to enjoy The Wire, as I enjoy most entertainment that doesn't beat me over the head with whatever message it wishes to spread, without really paying any attention to said message. It's something I've long since grown accustomed to. Heck,...

Never seen it (don't have tv) but with all these recommendations, maybe I should order it over netflix?

I gather that the creator thinks that The Wire is a diatribe against "unencumbered capitalism" (which I further gather is supposed to mean 'raw capitalism without a social contract'). That strikes me as a monumentally insipid message, since no such thing has ever existed, nor will ever exist (the "raw capitalism" of The Game in the show isn't capitalism, it's a caricature of capitalism drawn by someone who doesn't understand what he's caricaturing. The Game only exists because of the government fiat that makes drugs illegal and even in the shadow market that said criminality creates there's some sort of a social contract; the players don't live by the same rules that govern the well-lit capitalism of acceptable society, but they do have rules).

So I'm glad I had no idea that was what he thought he was peddling until just now. One of the many things that makes The Wire good is that that nonsense isn't necessary to the plot. There are two plot arcs that are borderline outrageous (Bunny Colvin's 'experiment' in S3 and McNulty's faking a serial killer in S5), but only because they strain one's capacity to suspend disblief. So, while dubious creative decisions might sometimes interfere with the storytelling, the sending of political messages rarely does.

Mr. Goldberg oversimplifies the morals of The Wire, but it is hard not to because it is so complex and multi-threaded with many threads interweaving and mirrored in obvious and non-obvious ways. David Simon was actually fairly explicit in interviews about his desire to deliver a political message, and it wasn't a Libertarian message. Not necessarily a Democratic message either, but certainly a Progressive one.

Anyway, Mr. Goldberg isn't right about the stoop kids and the corner kids. Randy was certainly a stoop kid who lost badly. Really badly. Namond was a corner kid who couldn't cut it and was turned into a stoop kid, but only through a near miraculous intervention. And Duquan was never a corner kid, but, sadly, he never had a stoop to be on when it got dark, so he lost badly too.