Here is another provoking, hilarious and yet very informative book from a shrewd economist, professor Steve Levitt in collaboration with a journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The authors are extremely intriguing and present their ideas about how people behave in the real world in ways that will really blow up your mind. They state that “Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, whereas economics represents how it actually does work.” That the crux of the matter.
The book is short, engaging, easy to read and it covers six different topics through fun questions. All questions foster sensible thinking about how people behave in the real world. You will learn how legalizing abortion is the most effective way to reduce crime, which I think is the most controversial claim in this book, but the economist’s research seems to support it. You will also learn in What Makes a perfect Parent? that it isn’t so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it’s who you are, whom you married and what kind of life you lead. What sparked my interest was to learn why and how fear gives experts greater leverage.
“But fear best thrives in the present tense. That is why experts rely on it; in a world that is increasingly impatient with long-term processes, fear is a potent short-term play. Imagine that you are a government official charged with procuring the funds to fight one of two proven killers: terrorist attacks and heart disease.
Which cause do you think the members of Congress will open up the coffers for? The likelihood of any given person being killed in a terrorist attack are infinitesimally smaller than the likelihood that the same person will clog up his arteries with fatty food and die of heart disease. But a terrorist attack happens now; death by heart disease is some distant, quiet catastrophe. Terrorist acts lie beyond our control; french fries do not.”
I recommend this book. This is a kind of book that will make you more sceptical of the conventional wisdom. Overall, “Freakonomics” is a good book except the final chapter on baby names which was really boring and it was difficult to keep reading.
