{"id":447,"date":"2008-12-16T14:39:23","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T22:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/?p=447"},"modified":"2008-12-16T14:39:23","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T22:39:23","slug":"freakonomics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2008\/12\/freakonomics\/","title":{"rendered":"Freakonomics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Freako\u00adnom\u00adics: A Rogue Eco\u00adnom\u00adist Explores the Hid\u00adden Side of Everything<\/a> was pub\u00adlished a long time ago, way back in 2005, but it took my book\u00adclub until this year to decide to read it. Hey, no point in being too fast, if a book is worth\u00adwhile it will still be worth\u00adwhile a couple of years later, right? In this case, it is. There is an updated ver\u00adsion, but even the older ver\u00adsion has a way of look\u00ading at the world that\u2019s worth pon\u00adder\u00ading. Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia<\/a> and the offi\u00adcial book site<\/a> have sum\u00admar\u00adies, and there\u2019s now a related blog<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The most fam\u00adous part of the book is the one that asks how far the decrease in crime in the 1990s was due to the poten\u00adtial crim\u00adin\u00adals nev\u00ader hav\u00ading been born; there has rightly been a lot of dis\u00adcus\u00adsion about that (Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia<\/a> has a decent sum\u00admary of some of the points). That dis\u00adcus\u00adsion has ten\u00added to over\u00adshad\u00adow the oth\u00ader parts of the book, some of which bear more think\u00ading about. One good example is the way that gangs were organ\u00adised So how did<\/i> the gang work? An awful lot like most Amer\u00adic\u00adan busi\u00adnesses, actu\u00adally<\/q>, which, if taken ser\u00adi\u00adously by people try\u00ading to get rid of gangs, might lead to dif\u00adfer\u00adent ways of tack\u00adling them. The dis\u00adcus\u00adsion about how the Ku Klux Klan was made ridicu\u00adlous by incor\u00adpor\u00adat\u00ading it into the Super\u00adman radio show was good, even if who did exactly what when<\/a> is unclear. <\/p>\n

Above all, the book appeals if you\u2019re someone who asks wheth\u00ader there are oth\u00ader explan\u00ada\u00adtions for things, past the seem\u00adingly obvi\u00adous. Like the book says, con\u00adven\u00adtion\u00adal wis\u00addom is often wrong, and it\u2019s refresh\u00ading to read about some of the ways in which it is. Nor\u00admally we don\u2019t dis\u00adcuss non-fic\u00adtion books for very long at book\u00adclub, but this book was an excep\u00adtion. Most of our dis\u00adcus\u00adsion was along the lines of \u201cdoes it make sense that\u201d or com\u00ading up with altern\u00adat\u00adive hypo\u00adtheses to explain some of their data. It would have helped if we\u2019d seen some more of the actu\u00adal math\u00adem\u00adat\u00adics so we could have been a little more sure of how they did the regres\u00adsion test\u00ading, but that\u2019s a minor quibble and I\u2019m sure most of the book\u2019s audi\u00adence did\u00adn\u2019t miss it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Freako\u00adnom\u00adics: A Rogue Eco\u00adnom\u00adist Explores the Hid\u00adden Side of Everything was pub\u00adlished a long time ago, way back in 2005, but it took my book\u00adclub until this year to decide to read it. Hey, no point in being too fast, if a book is worth\u00adwhile it will still be worth\u00adwhile a couple of years later, \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cFreako\u00adnom\u00adics\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}