Product Description

Steven Landsburg's writings are living proof that economics need not be "the dismal science." Readers of The Armchair Economist and his columns in Slate magazine know that he can make economics not only fun but fascinating, as he searches for the reasons behind the odd facts we face in our daily lives. In More Sex Is Safer Sex, he brings his witty and razor-sharp analysis to the many ways that our individually rational decisions can combine into some truly weird collective results -- and he proposes hilarious and serious ways to fix just about everything.

When you stand up at the ballpark in order to see better, you make a rational decision. When everyone else does it too, the results, of course, are lousy. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of individual sanity and collective madness. Did you know that some people may actually increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases when they avoid casual sex? Do you know why tall people earn more money than shorter competitors? (Hint: it isn't just unfair, unconscious prejudice.) Do you know why it makes no sense for you to give charitable donations to more than one organization?

Landsburg's solutions to the many ways that modern life is unfair or inefficient are both jaw-dropping and maddeningly defensible. We should encourage people to cut in line at water fountains on hot days. We should let firefighters keep any property they rescue from burning houses. We should encourage more people to act like Scrooge, because misers are just as generous as philanthropists.

Best of all are Landsburg's commonsense solutions to the political problems that plague our democracy. We should charge penalties to jurors if they convict a felon who is later exonerated. We should let everyone vote in two congressional districts: their own, and any other one of their choice. While we're at it, we should redraw the districts according to the alphabetical lists of all voters, rather than by geography. We should pay FDA commissioners with shares of pharmaceutical company stocks, and pay our president with a diversified portfolio of real estate from across the country.

Why do parents of sons stay married more often than parents who have only daughters? Why does early motherhood not only correlate with lower income, but actually cause it? Why do we execute murderers but not the authors of vicious computer viruses? The lesson of this fascinating, fun, and endlessly provocative book is twofold: many apparently very odd behaviors have logical explanations, and many apparently logical behaviors make no sense whatsoever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #818122 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-17
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Economics books full of "uncommon sense" are more common after the success of Freakonomics, but this rambling survey of hot-button and quotidian issues viewed from a libertarian economic perspective doesn't measure up. Landsburg (The Armchair Economist) is sometimes pleasantly counterintuitive, but too often simply contentious. In using cost/benefit calculations to argue in favor of racial profiling or why we shouldn't care about the looting of Baghdad's museums, he strains to celebrate "all that is counter, original, spare and strange." While positing multiple solutions to interesting problems, he forces logical readers to confront uncomfortable positions—as in the title essay, urging chaste citizens to sleep around, thereby diluting the pool of potential sex partners with AIDS. But the chapters typically conclude without resolution—at one point, the author shrugs: "It's not easy to sort out causes from effects." One suspects that a rival economist could swiftly debunk many of Landsburg's arguments—for instance, his chapter praising misers (who produce but don't consume) depends on the assumption that all resources are fixed and finite. By the time he makes the head-scratching case that "it's always an occasion for joy when other people have more children," the reader may be in the mood for some plain old common sense. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Economist Landsburg sets out to explain extraordinary findings and logical arguments about the economics of everyday life. In the same vein as the recently popular Freakonomics, this book aims to assault common sense using the tools of evidence and logic to describe reality. Drawn from evidently popular response to the author's magazine column, the book's title and lengthy first chapter on sex and AIDS could be found tedious by some. Yet his wisdom in subsequent chapters is thought-provoking. His ideas on beauty and ugliness, why insurance rates in Philadelphia are so high, compassion and economic considerations, gains from population size, daughters and divorce, concentrating charitable giving to one recipient, and views on Social Security are a few topics the author tackles with a lighthearted perspective. He tells us, "These are carefully considered arguments about important issues. But they're also surprising arguments, and surprises are fun. This book will give you new insights about how the world works." Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Steve Landsburg is one of my favorite economics writers, and his new book is no exception. While I don't always agree with him, he usually gets me thinking, and he always entertains."-- Greg Mankiw, former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and author of Principles of Economics

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
I was expecting something thoughtful and thought-provoking, like Freakonomics or Blink, but instead I found lots of half-baked suggestions that seem intended to shock rather than enlighten.

Here's an example. Landsburg argues that the big barrier for people getting their first loan is that banks don't believe they will pay, so he argues that "If the government wants to provide meaningful assistance to first-time home buyers, it should probably consider capital punishment for late mortgage payments." That would prove their intent to pay, and make banks feel safer. Does he really believe this? It's hard to tell, because he throws out many of his crazy ideas with little support or comment.

Another suggestion is that Congressmen should be assigned to constituents alphabetically, one representing names starting Aa-Am, another An-Be, and so on, because that would create less incentive for bridges to nowhere. What kind of legislation can you pass to unfairly advantage people whose names start with B? But he completely ignores the issue of representing constituents with common interests, or how a congressman could go about meeting people spread evenly over the whole country. Perhaps there's a nugget of a good idea, but given that he ignores any potential downsides, you can't really tell.

At first these crazy suggestions were amusing, but as they kept coming, I wondered: Is he serious or just screwing around? The crazy unsupported ideas made me skeptical of the ones he seems to be trying to defend more seriously, because it seems he's more interested in shocking people than in reach seriously supportable truths.

In the end, I felt that I hadn't learned much -- just watched a smart guy ramble about with little serious intent.

Dave

Better than Freakonomics
I have long been a fan of Landsburg having read two of his other books. This is his best work yet, and a better read than the popular Freakonomics. This is a great book to introduce the reader to economic ways of thinking about everyday problems and issues in a fun and engaging way.

Here is what I liked about it:

1) Landsburg hits a range of areas, even if sometimes only for a page or two, and many of these topics have important implications for policy or to our own lives. Some examples include his thoughts on pollution, free trade, free markets for organs, child labor, choosing charities and more. This contrasts with Freakonomics, which delves for the most part into interesting topics that are less important(eg, sumo wrestling cheating)
I will say, however, that some of my favorite chapters had little practical value, notably, the chapter on how and why couples with girls are more likely to divorce than couples with boys. Fascinating stuff!

2) As the title suggests, his logic is often quite unconventional. Are there times when he seems to smart for his own good, with some ideas that are a bit too far out? Yes, like his ridiculous suggestion for making lines shorter (in brief, each new person goes the front, not the back of the line... don't ask) HOWEVER, by and large, I found him to be quite convincing with pragmatic solutions to problems, and interesting insights that offer different ways of thinking.

3) As always, I enjoy his writing style, particularly his wit. The book also reads in a way that has you guessing, "What are potential flaws in his reasoning" which he then mentions, and then dispels satisfactorily.

All in all, a great read. I do have to warn readers though, that the first chapter, the one discussing the Safer Sex issue, was, in my opinion, oversimplified and weak. The book does get much better, however.

Interesting Read
Once again, I was initially drawn to this book by its unique title - what a brilliant marketing ploy! But after reading "Freakonomics" last year, I was curious about what this economist had to say about the little (and big) things in life. I found some of his topics to be extremely insightful (such as How to Fix the Justice System and the link between having daughters and the divorce rate), while others had me scratching my head. However, Landsburg does point out in the beginning that "this book will give you new insights about how the world works. Sometimes it might outrage you. I hope it also makes you smile." He doesn't expect everyone to agree with him, just to look at things in a whole new way. It certainly made me do just that.