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Freakonomics chapter summary
Freakonomics chapter summary
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Freakonomics has been an incredibly interesting read and opens up with, what appears to the reader to be, a writing style that somehow personifies the text in a way that only the book itself can articulate. The authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, do an amazing job describing basic economic concepts and rules using intriguing and nontypical examples all while entertaining facts and figures that leave the reader with a dropped jaw. The economist, Levitt, received his bachelors degree in economics from Harvard University, his Ph.D. from M.I.T., and has been a professor of economics at the Chicago School of Law since 1997. On the opposite side of the cover, the award-winning writer, journalist, TV and radio personality, Dubner, has …show more content…
More specifically, this chapter is about how people, organizations, and businesses often use information they are fortunate enough to have access to against not only their competitors but also against their own consumers. First the authors point out how journalist Stetson Kennedy exploited information to assist the downfall of the racist group, the Ku Klux Klan. Later in the text, Levitt’s research of real estate agents and how they also exploit exclusive information offers a whole other viewpoint on the dialogue. The research shows that real estate agents behave very differently when selling their own homes to ensure that they get the best offer. This type of information exploitation can be seen in many other industries and markets as well as journalism where it can be used to sway …show more content…
Freakonomics is an important book written to open the eyes of not just next year’s economics graduates, but to the consumers that will learn from the easy to understand text and also find Levitt and Dubner’s research fascinating. I believe the authors wrote this book so that people will begin to analyze and understand for themselves that economics is not merely numbers, but it is data that can be used to explain many different aspects of everyday
Summary In chapter one of Freakonomics, the beginning portion of the chapter discusses information and the connection it shares with the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents. The Ku Klux Klan was founded right after the Civil War, in order to persecute and subdue the slaves that were newly freed. The popularity of the Klan increased in the early 20th century, around the time of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Klan had only discriminated, persecuted, and subdued Blacks, but in the 20th century they did these things to Blacks, Jews, and Gypsies.
On the front cover of Freakonomics, the subheading reads, “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” which is the purpose of the book. The economist Steven Levitt and the author Stephen Dubner wrote this book using several rhetorical devices to achieve that purpose. A few of those devices, style, ethos, pathos, and logos, were prominent within the book and helped to convey the message and purpose well.
Written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics is built upon three major philosophies: incentives are the fundamentals of life, experts on a subject use their knowledge as an advantage to serve their own wellbeing, and orthodox wisdom is wrong most of the time. This book goes into detail to explain the mindsets of humans, from school teachers to sumo wrestlers, through statistics. Levitt and Dubner claim that when the data is closely examined it can relate to more concepts than originally hypothesized. The style of this informative piece is very precise yet, at the same time, very concise and to the point. The tone carried throughout the book is informative and knowledgeable. The authors use distinct tactics to get points across
Michael Parenti (2002) declares media in the United States is no longer “free, independent, neutral and objective.” (p. 60). Throughout his statement, Parenti expresses that media is controlled by large corporations, leaving smaller conglomerates unable to compete. The Telecommunications Act, passed in 1996, restricted “a single company to own television stations serving more than one-third of the U.S. public,” but is now overruled by greater corporations. (p. 61). In his opinion, Parenti reveals that media owners do not allow the publishing of stories that are not beneficial and advantageous. Parenti supports his argument very thoroughly by stating how the plutocracy takes control over media in multiple ways: television, magazines, news/radio broadcasting, and other sources.
Toxic Sludge is Good for You is an accumulation of real life PR situations that depict the worst of the worst in the American public relations industry. The authors tell one side of the story by naming names and revealing how they worked their magic to manipulate and deceive the public. The book exposes bogus news, made up ‘grassroots” organizations, public relation spies, and other methods to demonstrate how information that comes from corporations, politicians, and other governments can be skewed and controlled before it reaches the masses.
Conventional wisdom would argue that all crack cocaine dealers make an obscene amount of money. Despite the danger of dealing drugs in Chicago (or anywhere for that matter), many people still do it. Lower paying jobs generally have a large supply pool, and higher paying jobs generally have a smaller supply pool. Realizing that these crack dealing organizations and gangs operate like a normal business flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that crack dealers are all rich. The American idea of working hard and eventually becoming successful is what the lower level dealers believe in and what makes them stay in that horrible job. There is a multitude of lower level jobs to fill, but there is a significantly smaller number of higher paying jobs available. The people in charge would like things to stay as
Revealing the hidden side of life in clarity, Freakonomics draws in all economists with unmentioned assumptions which are upheld with reasoned correlation, bonding subjects that unveil misconceptions, concluding on economic pattern limitations. Effectively, they lead their audience on their conviction route as smoothly as possible. Nice job on not screwing the map up. Allowing them to achieve their goals, this was to change people’s views. By the time a person puts down Freakonomics, they have been led to conviction about all their claims because Dubner & Levitt know that in order to change someone else’s way of thinking you must change your own.
Modern society is fixated on the existence of bias in media. They have recently discovered that every news outlet and journalist holds ulterior motives that drive their perspective on noteworthy events. However, this “political phenomena” is far from a recent development in news publications. Propaganda has been a persuasive tactic in advertising for as long as there have been differing political opinions. By any means, one of the most notable pieces of propaganda ever written, was penned by Frederick Douglass in 1845, at the height of the abolitionist movement.
This chapter's main idea is that the study of economics is the study of incentives. We find a differentiation between economic incentives, social incentives and moral incentives. Incentives are described in a funny way as "means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing", and in this chapter we find some examples public school teachers in Chicago, sumo wrestling in Japan, take care center in Israel and Paul Feldman's bagel business of how incentives drive people and most of the time the conventional wisdom turns to be "wrong" when incentives are in place.
21st Century Economics (Vol. 1, pp. 58-59. 163-172. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference.
Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006. Print.
Kroon, George E. Macroeconomics The Easy Way. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 2007. Print.
Lynching, which occurred most frequently in the southern states, resulted in the hanging, mutilation, and death of many blacks at the hands of a powerful white ruling class. While lynchings of this type have not occurred as frequently as in previous decades, it has morphed into a new form, a form that is arguably just as devastating. Instead of unjustly prosecuting blacks, this new form of lynching targets celebrities and politicians and media to accomplish what is commonly referred to as “hi-tech lynching”. The job of the media is to relay information to a general public.
O'Sullivan, A., & Sheffrin, S. (2005). Economics. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Levitt, Steven D., and Dubner, Stephen J. Freakonomics:A Rouge Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything. New York: Harper, 2009. Print.