Freakonomics

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23 May 2006, 06:16 PM
Burky

Freakonomics

The TNL book club seems to have disappeared, and I wanted to share this book with the rest of you all.

Official site
When I started reading this book, I thought it was going to be really dull as it was fairly thick, and about economics.
But in fact it was one of the most interesting, and down-to-earth books (extremely contreversially so) that I have read.

It discusses lots of trends, facts and phenomena throughout the US and other parts of the world in the last hundred years, such as the real (and dark) reason as to why the huge amount of crime throughout the 1990s dropped, whether or not your name, or race affects your success in life, how Chicago crack gangs work, how the Ku Klux Klan came to its downfall and several other discussions.
It also goes into the hidden side of how most business practitions work, and gave me a different perspective on things.

I can't guarentee that everyone will have found it as good a read as I did, but I do recommend that if you are remotely interested in some of the topics above, that you read it.

I found it very easy to read, and was drawn in by it immediately, so do not be put off about it being about economics.

If you have read this already, what did you think of it?
23 May 2006, 07:49 PM
Brisco Bold

Interesting book but too scatter brained. He'd jump from one topic to another way too quickly. By the end, I tired of the helter-skelter layout.
23 May 2006, 08:26 PM
g0zen

Watch out, SpoDaddy is going to come troll this thread like mad.
23 May 2006, 08:37 PM
JefmcC

I have it as an audio book, didn't listen to the whole thing yet. The bit Sumo wrestlers is interesting.
23 May 2006, 11:06 PM
Beefy Hits

You've piqued my interest. I'll check it out.
23 May 2006, 11:10 PM
Diff-chan

I've wanted to read this book for a while. My company has a lending library and this one guy has had it since late December (they say 2 weeks only on the lending sheet)... but here's the thing... the guy is an executive director, like one of the top 5 in the company. Bleh.

I heard "The Undercover Economist" is even better, that guy does an article in Slate and it's very good. I fear this may lead to a deluge of "economist writes about dumb shit in every day life", but whatever.

I plan to get a PhD in Economics in my early 30s.
23 May 2006, 11:28 PM
Yoshi

Quote:

Originally Posted by diffusionx

I plan to get a PhD in Economics in my early 30s.

Why the hell would you want to do that? That's almost as useless as a PhD in English or History.
26 May 2006, 06:48 PM
Beefy Hits

I've got a reserve on it at the library. Took a peek at Borders and thought the chapter about drug dealers living at home was interesting. It's somewhat shocking, but not surprising to find a College grad was in charge of a drug ring. One of my next door neighbors in college was a huge raver and graduated with a double major in chemistry and business.
26 May 2006, 06:50 PM
Diff-chan

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoshi

Why the hell would you want to do that? That's almost as useless as a PhD in English or History.

Im not gonna be a working stiff my whole life.
27 May 2006, 01:14 AM
NoboruWataya

Quote:

Why the hell would you want to do that? That's almost as useless as a PhD in English or History.

Probobly because it interests him.
27 May 2006, 03:51 AM
Fe 26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beefy Hits

I've got a reserve on it at the library. Took a peek at Borders and thought the chapter about drug dealers living at home was interesting. It's somewhat shocking, but not surprising to find a College grad was in charge of a drug ring. One of my next door neighbors in college was a huge raver and graduated with a double major in chemistry and business.

that doesn't suprise me at all. My next door neigbor got busted two weeks before school got out for dealing. Everyone knew about it, but the only way he got found out was becuase one of his "friends" ratted him out when they got pulled over and they found drugs on him.

But yeah, the kid had been going to college for 4 years for fucking auto mechanics and had been dealing the entire time. Better yet, you all paid for him to go to school.
27 May 2006, 07:02 AM
Burky

That happened here to a guy I knew too, but on a bigger scale. He was dealing quite a lot of weed, and got caught, and interrogated, and he told the police who his supplier was, who was importing I think.
The guy got beaten half to death by some gang soon after.
27 May 2006, 07:12 AM
Fe 26

Sucks that he got beat down, but you know, when you play those games and you rat...
27 May 2006, 06:50 PM
Burky

Well yeh. I guess most people getting mixed up in that stuff have it coming sooner or later.

In the Freakonomics, the stats about crack-gangs were really interesting. This was in the 1990s, so it won't apply for today.
As a foot-soldier (street dealers), you had I think a 1/4 chance of being killed each year, and they only got paid $3.30 an hour, compared to the $8 minimum wage (roughly). It then went into why would anyone do such a dangerous job. The given answer was it was like Football, journalism or any other field where you have to work right from the bottom, with virtually no pay, and then if you're the best out there, you get to the top and make megabucks. These foot-soldiers could become promoted, and go higher up in the gang, and the leader of an 18 block area in the given case took in $18k per month, with a $10k profit. If you go higher than that, then you could make millions a year. So these kids who are pedalling risk their lives for this kind of a chance for that kind of money.

However, it doesn't apply now, as the price of crack dropped dramatically, which meant that profits went way down, making the whole thing not such a great job to go for. This also explained partly why murder rates dropped in the US, as if the profits were down, then it wasn't worth fighting turf wars anymore, and so deaths within the gangs also fell.