Freakonomics

I just finished reading Freakonomics. I've been trying to get it read since summer, but it's a hard book to get from the library. This was an astoundingly good book that really takes good shots at conventional wisdom and the difference between morality and economics: Morality is the way people would like the world to work and economics is the way it actually works.

My favorite topic was Why do drug dealers still live with their moms. It's because drug dealing is not the profitable enterprise that it seems to be to an outsider. There are very few really successful dealers and they're at the top of the organization. The low level street dealers don't really make any more than a typical clerk at McDonalds.

The chapters on what makes good parents were also interesting. Shots are taken at the overprotective parents that watch the news for the newest dangers to their children. Swimming pools kill more kids than guns do by a wide margin, but if you asked the average person on the street they wouldn't think it was even close. The simple equation involved is Risk = hazard + outrage. The hazard is an almost fixed amount but any hazard can turn into a major risk if enough outrage is added.

This book really does show that our media and elected officials do a horrible job of pointing out things that we should really be concerned about, instead focusing on the issues that have the most outrage attached. This book would be on my required reading list if I actually believed in requiring others to do something.