Freakonomics
A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

     Maybe I have been reading too many mysteries or solving too many puzzles lately, but Freakonmics seemed to me a guidebook through a labyrinth antipathy and apathy. Freakonomics may be one of the most important books published in the early 21st century because it honestly speaks of painful truths that have to be changed. The tongue-in-cheek delivery keeps you entertained while the authors, through the use of statistics and humor, bring to the surface one of America's dirtiest secrets. It is not the fact that children with unmarried, low-income, undereducated, teenage black mothers have less of a chance to succeed or even be born, we knew that; it is the fact nothing we have done about it in our society is working to change it. Another alarming conclusion to be drawn is that every time a person looks at the taxes withheld from their paycheck their concern about the poor is minimalized because the wage earner has done their part by supporting the programs that are supposed to be working. Where do you get the incentive to do right when you feel like you are already doing it?

      The authors have given us a few fundamental ideas to find the "hidden side of everything," with these we are going to look at their book.

    Conventional Wisdom is often wrong.

    A reasonable piece of conventional wisdom would be that a book about economics should be full of words like "Gross National Product", and things that you can't really do anything about because you don't own a major corporation. Buy low, sell high. Freakonomics is not that kind of book. It states simply that money and morality are linked. If you can clean your conscious with money, you will. If the only thing between you and preserving yourself is compromising your values, there will be a point at which you will crack.

    Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so -

     My dad always said, 'Figures lie and liars figure', when confronted with page after page of numbers and graphs to convince him of something he didn't understand. The numbers are never the only story. They are not as soulless as some people would have us believe, and they are crying out in Freakonomics.

      "Experts" - from criminologists to real-estate agents- use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.

      As do economists and authors; so what is the agenda behind the publication of Freakonomics? I believe it was supposed to be public outrage. That we were supposed to be offended the manipulation and unreasonable cost, the inconvenience and furor that has gone into statistically insignificant but morally compelled, and now legally obligated, child safety devices. We are supposed to be offended that jail time and fines do not inhibit criminals, but we are building more jails. And we are supposed to be horrified by the casual acceptance of the fact that low-income black babies still die more often than their white counterparts.

     Using Mr. Dubner's own words: "The very issue of black-white inequality has, in recent years, been practically driven from public view...There have been countless distractions -- wars, economic gyrations, political turmoil -- and, perhaps just as significantly, fatigue. The proven voices and standard ideologies have lost much of their power. So there is an opportunity, and probably a need, for a new set of voices..." - The New York Times Magazine (2005)

Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life, and often, ferreting them out is the key to solving just about any riddle.

      So what is the incentive behind publishing this book? This is something you will have to ask the authors, but there are many options, both economic and moral:, bring all schools up to a common standard, stop wasting tax dollars on programs that don't work, tzedaka, publishing is a requirement in the academic community, income generated for the authors by the book and subsequent speaking engagements; pick one or pick them all. It may be a riddle with no simple answer.

     Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes

      The publication of Freakonomics may have gently opened a dialogue on the issue of black-white inequality that will move American race relations to the next level of communication. Levitt and Dubner have become part of that set of new voices.