No Morality

Morality represents how we want the world to work
Economics represents how it actually does.
-loose quote of the authors.

I think the focus on corruption/crime etc is simply because that is where the numbers are going to be inconsistent. Levitt looks at the numbers to find inconsistencies and then furthers those inconsistencies to draw a conclusion.
You would not be able to draw an interesting analysis from student's test scores (except if you are very invested in their scores), unless there was an inconsistency, in this case one that indicated cheating.

Baby names...I mean, the original pattern/trends of name selection is interesting, but what makes it more interesting is the indication of who chooses what sort of name when (the socio-economic implications of a baby's name).

I don't think that these sub themes are due to a moral preoccupation on the behalf of either author (“Freakonomics-style thinking simply doesn’t traffic in morality.” (p. 206)), it's just that within corruption is where the fascinating number are. Levitt and Dubner probably decided that to keep with the whole 'proving interesting things' theme, Levitt would have to analyze things that people find interesting, ie crime, corruption on behalf of experts, baby names etc.

That is pretty interesting. I never noticed that. But I am kind of wondering how baby naming or the whole deal with the real-estate agents qualifies as corruption. Aren't the real estate agents just lazy? And the parents of the children just cruel? (unintentionally, as in the case of Temptress, and intentionally, as in the case of Loser Lane) I think it's a little dark to consider all of the topics to be under of the category of sin, as much we enjoy calling ourselves materialistic and evil sinners in America. I think that a lot of what Levitt and Dubner talk about is normal behavior. No, people shouldn't be dealing crack and shooting up rival gangs, and no, teachers shouldn't be changing their students' test scores. But aren't those people and aren't we all just trying to get by? People have been doing bad things for thousands of years. Shit happens, it's how we get by.

But I do agree that there is definitely a theme of corruption, cheating, and crime, even if it doesn't apply to every single chapter. It also relates to another, favorite theme: incentives....

one last note on themes

reading kelly's take on the themes actually reminded me that there was an introduction! so i reread that whole deal and a couple things definitely hinted at themes as well as some sort of thesis and purpose (both of which we need to identify in those questions)

even before they get to the introduction, in the explanatory note on page xi (so far back it doesn't even get a number...) they quote the article that Dubner wrote about Levitt where his "abiding interests" are identified as "cheating, corruption, and crime"

when you look each of the topics mention in the following chapters, i'm pretty sure those three "sins," if you will, are clearly prevalent.

1. School Teachers & Sumo Wrestlers - cheating
2. KKK & Real Estate Agents - corruption
3. Drug Dealers - corruption and maybe this is a stretch but crime and cheating
4. Criminals - crime duh
5. Parents - corruption
6. Baby names - corruption

just thought that was interesting...

5 Main Themes

Everything is connected once you remove a layer or two sounds like a pretty solid theme.
I'm not sure to the exact relevance of this, but in the introduction, the authors state
that:
"This book, then, has been written from a very specific worldview, based on a few fundamental ideas:"
1. Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.
2. The conventional wisdom is often wrong.
3. Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.
4. "Experts"--from criminologists to real-estate agents--use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.
5. Knowing what to measure and how to measure is makes a complicated world much less so.

So these ideas provide the theme for each chapters, and often the reoccur in other chapters as well. (They absolutely love to discuss incentives, and not just for parents picking up their kids at daycare). I took these points as the points the authors were trying to prove as well (the theses, if you will).

I think perhaps the large theme/message goes into each one of those individual themes, and that's how the entire book achieved any sense of cohesion and flow (sorry I know the hate of that word).

Themes vs. Messages

I kind of like that idea, and I'm not sure whether it would be a theme or a message. I'm not even sure what the difference is. Maybe it's that a message is something the author tries to communicate using a theme. If that's the case, then I think what Jordan said would be a message: you can find connections between seemingly unrelated things, and finding this relationship can in turn reveal more about each subject.

I think that if that is the message, it's sort of a minor aspect of what the book is trying to communicate. Because, like we've established, the book isn't really trying to communicate information but explain that economic theory can be applied to unusual subjects and yield interesting information. Maybe the idea that you can find connections between unconnected subjects is just a sort of a subplot. I don't know, thoughts?

hey look i'm blogging!

So I've been thinking a lot about the claim that the book has no unifying theme and that may be true but I think there must be something there because I found the organization of subjects pleasingly cohesive in, I guess, an abstract sort of way.

I'm having trouble articulating this....

Obviously they cover a wide range of topics (who knew parenting skills and crack dealers could be in the same book?). But the thing is, every comparison was equally out there. KKK to real estate agents, abortion and crime... it's all about taking things that are seemingly unconnected and using them to shed light on a societal issue.

If a theme is a repeating idea throughout a piece, I really think that the theme of the book is how every factor of society can be and is connected, and all affect each other.

Unless you'd rather call that the message, in which case this entire post just lost all purpose.....

Very interesting Claire.

I think this is where our idea of the book's purpose differs.
I saw Freakonomics as giving insight to a revolutionary economists ways and methods. It introduced the reader to Levitt's unconventional way of viewing the world.

I do not see it as a source of actual information (although the information presented is valid and generally unknown). I thought the examples provided were intended to act as examples to Levitt's style of economics-- more along the lines of "look at what I can prove using my mind and some numbers!" as opposed to "Here is some valuable information I derived from this data." I see it as an examination of the means, the way he got to those answers, rather than an important report of content. The range of topics was so broad and unconnected that Dubner/Levitt could not have been hoping to inform the reader of the things Levitt derived, but merely teach a new way to see things.
Lets not get caught up in the content; focus on the rhetoric, the structure of economics.
Its structure not information.

If it was information they were hoping to provide, I should think that the organization and content would have indicated so. (The organization of examples is better suited to explain the use of economic tools than to enlighten the audience of the dangers of different things.)

Levitt's organization:
I. "My style of economics is unconventional"
a. random tidbit of information derived from my unconventional style of economics.
b. another, unconnected tidbit of information derived from my style of economics.
c. a slightly more connected (to example b) tidbit derived from my style of economics

and so on for several chapters. If he was informing he would have to have a thesis, and unifying theme (which he himself states his book lacks), etc.