Freakonomics

            Overall, I enjoyed Freakonomics. I think that the professed objective of the book (to get people to think more independently, to question everything) is a worthy one. Too often people never examine in any great detail the depth, integrity, or biases of the sources of information that they regularly consume.

            That being said, I have one major qualm with the book. I feel like it had a holier-than-thou/patronizing tone. The choice to include little excerpts praising Levitt before each chapter were really infuriating. By the end of it, I just felt like saying, “Give me a break! Sure, you’re saying some controversial things, your thinking is somewhat innovative (although not quite as groundbreaking as you yourself claim), and some of the things you’re saying require some guts, but really? Get over yourself.” It just left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

            “Steven Levitt may not fully believe in himself, but he does believe in this: teachers and criminals and real-estate agents may lie, and politicians, and even CIA analysts. But numbers don’t.” Oh, really? Numbers lie all the time. It just seems like such an amateurish thing to say. Furthermore, “‘Levitt is considered a demigod, one of the most creative people in economics and maybe in all social science.’” The audacity of including such a quote in one of your own books! Not even on the cover, trying to sell the book, but inside. The work should speak for itself. It ought to stand on its own merit without having to explicitly remind the audience, “See how good this is? Isn’t it revolutionary?” It just seems cheap. The whole book does in a way. It feels like a sort of hodgepodge of what could have been scholarly articles that lack the requisite intellectual and procedural rigor (or at least transparency of method) and that have been watered down and packaged for “the masses.” But Levitt knows this. It all relates back to audience. Levitt admits that there is no unifying theme (repeatedly). If he just wants to get people thinking (which is quite a feat in and of itself), then maybe that’s not such a bad thing.  

            All of this is somewhat tangential. Ranting aside, I really did find the book interesting. The breakdown of the hierarchies within the drug world (well, one example of it) was fascinating—especially reading the book for a second time with some familiarity with Venkatesh’s work (yeah Amherst/Soc 12!). I also found the analysis of the names particularly captivating. I would have preferred a collection of scholarly and peer reviewed articles, but that’s a personal preference. It reminds me of “pop lit.” There is a time and a place (often and most everywhere, hopefully) for what, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I would call “real” literature. But once in a while I want to curl up with just a story, something that I don’t have to work at (but that necessarily in return is much less rewarding to the reader, I think). And that’s what Freakonomics offers. And for some people, it’s “pop lit” or no lit. And I guess if it’s “pop economics” or no economics, I’d rather have people thinking.