Steven D. Levitt

This book seems to be everywhere. Hard to look in a bookshop and not see it featured heavily...and the sequels....."Super Freakonomics" etc.. So, I felt obliged to read it to be informed. And, whilst I was reading it at my usual coffee shop it was commented upon by others...."Fascinating book!" etc. Well yes. It is interesting. I was interested to learn about the breakdown of the financial structure of drug distributors with the clever punch line that the foot soldiers have to live with their mothers because their income is so low. But I didn't see any thoughtful suggestions coming out of this such that ......if these poor guys had a reasonable shot at getting a decent job then the incentive to distribute drugs would vanish in a flash.......So here's some suggestions for doing this.
I also found it fascinating that the decrease in crime rates could largely be attributed to the Roe vs Wade case that legalised abortion in the USA and allowed women to reduce the number of unwanted babies (who tended to grow up and commit crimes). Do I buy this? Well, after finishing the book, I admit to lingering doubts that maybe they were underplaying the role of aging population, increased policing, etc. But, I've just re-read the section on abortion and I must confess that they have convinced me. They seem to have done all the right kind of checks: early abortion States saw a decrease in crime before the later adopters. ...and so on. So, seeing the US Supreme Court (stacked by Donald Trump) revoke Roe vs Wade seems to be a very sad day for the USA. I guess, this will be a decent test of the Freakonomic's assertion that crime will start to rise.
There are some interesting things there but the only one that really stood out for me was the link between crime and legalised abortion. Oh...there was the demise of the Ku Klux Klan because of exposure of their secret (and stupid) rites and passwords. Seems that nothing quite like shining the light on the secrecy to undermine it all. And interesting that the guy who was given most of the credit had a few secrets of his own....namely he was claiming credit for infiltrating the Klan when some other guy (John Brown) had actually done all the really risky stuff. But scary that the Klan should have become so powerful and a real force for evil deeds.
I enjoyed reading the book and it gets four stars from me.… (mere)

Some interesting ideas here, but not nearly as world-shattering as the authors seem to think. Definitely more storytelling than science, and some of the data they used was obviously off. Also, I don't get why so much of the book is an advertisement for the book and one of it's authors. Show, don't tell, people. Don't tell me 20 times Levitt is a brilliant young rogue economist, show me his ideas and his research and make me conclude that he is. Don't give me 10 pages with blurbs about the very book I'm trying to read.
It all started to feel rather repetitive to me after a while. The only part that felt novel and interesting was the introduction, everything after that was just more details and praise of brilliant young rogue economist Levitt, then more details. The articles at the end were just another set of repetitions and the interview added nothing at all.

I liked the writing style in general, and I liked some of the ideas. 4 stars for those, 2 stars for the implementation.… (mere)