Freakonomics
On an impulse, I bought a copy of Freakonomics by Steven J. Levitt and Stephen Dubner yesterday. Full of factoids and interesting conclusions, and an unusual way of looking at economics. The thing I liked best about it was that Levitt's conclusions could be depended upon to be politically incorrect. He drew whatever conclusions the data indicated, regardless of how those results would be perceived morally, the biggest example of that being his research that proved that the precipitous decline of crime that started in the early 90s was a direct result of Roe vs. Wade in 1973.
The book was ultimately unsatisfying, not enough meat on the bones. It could have been written as a lengthy article in the NY Times Magazine or the New Yorker; in fact an article on Levitt that appeared in the former is quoted extensively throughout.
Notebook:
Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. Economists love incentives. They love to dream them up and enact them, stydy them and tinker with them. The typical economist believes the world has not year invented a problem that he cannot fix if given a free ahnd to design the proper incentive scheme. His solution may not always be pretty -- it may involve coercion or exorbitant penalties or the violation of civil liberties -- but the original problem, rest assured, will be fixed. An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonising power to change a situation.
From Adam Smith's first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments:
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
Sunllight is said to be the best of disinfectants.
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
It was John Kenneth Galbraith, the hyperliterate economic sage, who coined the phrase "conventional wisdom". He did not consider it a compliment. "We associate truth with convenience," he wrote, "with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem."
G.K. Chesterton: When there aren't enough hats to go around, the problem isn't solved by chopping off heads.
The per-hour death rate of driving vs. flying is about equal.
LINK | 1:18 AM | TB
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