Thursday, November 5, 2009

Book Review - SuperFreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

As I've said earlier, I read this book on day 2 of jury duty and I think I was already halfway through by 10 AM, so it's a pretty quick read. 

I was pretty much fascinated by the whole thing.  I most enjoyed the sordid subjects.  In the first book, there was a whole thing on the economics of dealing drugs.  This time, there's a whole chapter on the economics of prostitution.  I just thought it was interesting how the price of prostitutes have plummeted since the sexual revolution and the whole concept of season prostitution was new to me.  Apparently, there's a huge surge in prostitution around the Fourth of July.  And apparently, it's good for prostitutes to have pimps; there's more money and fewer arrests.

Now, there's a controversial chapter on global warming on possible solutions to that.  It didn't really bother me, but it might considered too radical.  Just a warning.

In general, there are good explanations of basic economics and how it applies to all of these situations, which is good for me as I never took economics in college.  And it's amazing to me the correlations that can be picked out of all the data that we now have.

So in general, I would recommend the book, especially if you enjoyed the first one.

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