Summary Of Dubner And Levitt's Superfreakonomics, The Fix

The fourth chapter of Dubner and Levitt’s Superfreakonomics, The Fix is in, discusses how the modern world has improved significantly from the past. Even though people continue to complain about exactly the opposite, the authors set out to explain that the world has indeed enhanced and simple and cheap solutions to costly problems are the reason for it.

The chapter begins with the authors providing the problems of the past, for instance; death in pregnant women caused by puerperal fever. In this case, the women infected were to blame for contracting the disease. However, in later years, there was much research done and it was suggested that the problem actually lied within the doctor’s ward. The solution to this problem was as simple and cheap

The concepts related to Dubner and Levitt’s Superfreakonomics- What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have in Common are also rationality and cost, marginal and opportunity, as well as maximizing satisfaction.

According to Barbiero’s lesson on chapter one of The New World of Economics, rationality is getting more of what you want, and less of what you don’t. It would be rational for someone that is hungry to purchase food to eat. In this case, the individual wants food and does not want to be hungry. Thus, eating this meat is rational because it fulfills their needs at that point in time. Even knowing that consuming what are called ‘ruminants’ is contributing to global warming, some may still choose to consume it in moderation. Maybe they choose to consume meat every so often and only so much of it.

If people were to give up eating meat, there would be less of a need for ruminants. Less ruminants would mean ridding the world of some of the gases they produce that contribute to global warming. However, many people may not see a problem with their warm environment thus they would not see a reason to change their behavior from consuming meat to