Customer Reviews

More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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

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.

Surprisingly even with that title, this is a book about economics. This was probably one of the best books I have read in a long time.

The book title comes from the theory that if people who are not infected with an STD were to have more sex everyone would be safer. Note that it's not them that would be safer but the population in general. Therefore since the individual risk is all borne by the person who decides whether or not to have sex, people have less sex and partners than would be "good" for society.

Interesting stuff and just the tip of the iceberg. I've read Steven Landsberg's columns for years on Slate and some of the chapters in the book are expanded versions of his Slate articles. Go and read them but do NOT feel like you are getting ripped off. While many of the ideas were explored in Slate they were not as fleshed out, the math wasn't included and there was not as much exploration of related ideas.

This book was completely mindbending and was so good that I stayed up until 5:30 to finish it. I didn't quite make it and stopped three pages short but the point is I haven't had a pageturner like this in my lap in months. Go and read it now you won't be sorry.

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.

Reading this book is a clearly useful exercise: recognizing incorrect arguments is a useful (and sometimes very fun) skill!

The "unconventional wisdom" from this book is actually a collection of comically oversimplified, misleading, inconsistent, and unverified "theories" (yes, all quotes are intended).

Oversimplification: chapter 6 has six pages plus five additional lines. Its title? Very modest: "How to fix Politics"! Initially, I thought Landsburg is joking, but, no, in the next chapter, the equally modest "How to Fix the Justice System" (22 pages), Landsburg reassures us: "Am I serious? Of course I'm serious!"

Misleading: let's look at the chapter that gives the title of the entire book. As the example goes, Martin and Joan (who like each other very much) plan to leave together from the company Christmas party. But Martin gets scared by an AIDS-awareness ad and decides to skip the party. Joan finds herself alone at the party and leaves with Maxwell, who's HIV-positive. So, if Martin decided to have more sex, Joan would be safer today! Landsburg, a professor of economics at Univ. of Rochester, generalizes this into "More Sex is Safer Sex"! Before you start celebrating, please read on. What he's actually proving is the less interesting statement "if the total quantity of sex (defined as different couples) were equal, then a more uniform distribution of sex maximizes safety". For people who like graph theory, "in a graph with a constant number of nodes and edges, the diameter is likely to be bigger if the node degrees are equal". Notice that this is a quite boring result, clearly not one to generate big sales :) It is also a useless result, as it uses the baseless assumption of a constant quantity of sex (after all, Joan could have gone home alone). There are many instances of this "zero-sum fallacy" in the book.

The Landsburg-style "thinking" culminates in Chapter 14, section "The Sack of Baghdad". There, Landsburg tries to convince us that the sack of the National Museum of Iraq was not such a big deal after all: "A lot of stuff in that museum was five thousand years old. If it were in my garage, I'd have swept it out to the curb a long time ago." Really? I bet he would have sold that "stuff" for a hefty profit. The value of "stuff" is not given by its protein content, nor by what Prof. Landsburg thinks, but by the market (it's shocking that a professor of economics forgets this!). And in the case of the "stuff" from the Baghdad Museum, many buyers were ready to pay a lot of money for it, the same way many people would pay a lot of money for Mona Lisa, another example of old "stuff". Besides, the looting of Baghdad sent a powerful message: the law has collapsed and brutal force rules. No wonder criminals have ruled the streets of Baghdad ever since ...

What an incredible, thought provoking book! There's a common complaint in to reviews that it's not like Freakonomics. Can I just say, Fantastic! The funniest thing about reviews suggesting that this book is trying to "Cash-in on Freakonomics" is the fact that Landsburg published The Armchair Economist in 1993, one of the first books of the genre that Levitt would capitalize on 12 years later. More sex is certainly not a book that looks at correlations in data in order to make you smile. If that's what you're looking for, buy a different book.

The purpose of More Sex, in my opinion, is to show you how economic logic and reasoning can get you to surprising solutions to problems. This review is addressed to the easily offended because some of the solutions and ideas presented will go against your moral intuition. This does NOT make them bad ideas! Many of the ideas, such as using more sex in order to slow the spread of STD's, make me cringe to the point that I would never support them. Nevertheless, I found the logical journey showing that the ideas would indeed work (if it were possible to implement them) absolutely fascinating.

Bottom line - If you're looking for a fuzzy book that will give you some facts for your "gee-whiz" file, this probably isn't the book for you. If you're looking for a book of sound economic reasoning that will make you cringe and that will leave you thinking, this book is outdone only by Landsburg's prior book, The Armchair Economist. Kudos to Landsburg on another great piece of work!

Landsburg's arguments are certainly provocative, but his style (both of argument and of writing) get in the way of enjoying this book. It reads like what it is: a series of magazine articles collected somewhat arbitrarily under a provocative title.

His complex arguments with multiple assumptions are presented as if they were simple arguments with no unstated assumptions. Many are reduced to three or four terse sentences. I found myself thinking more about his starting points than his conclusions.

In fact, I would not say that I either agree or disagree with his conclusions. Some seem inevitable, others seem insane. There are at least a couple that I believe could be demonstrated as blatantly false (if the underlying assumptions were enumerated and evaluated). But mostly I feel like I do not have enough supporting information to make a truly informed response.

If his goal was to teach readers how to use economic principles in decision-making, the goal was not met. If his goal was to show how making decisions using economic principles leads to surprising conclusions, again it was not met. If his goal was something else, it is difficult to discern. Ultimately, I see little point for this book. It was only modestly entertaining.

But I think the biggest sin in these essays is that they are all logic and no heart. Throughout all of the "cost-benefit" reasoning, there is no acknowledgment that feeling good about a decision (regardless of its soundness) must be tallied in the "benefit" column.

Yes, this is irrational (see Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions) and generally leads to bad decisions, but it must be considered. Mr. Landsburg is not only rather dismissive toward such a notion, he writes with a somewhat arrogant tone which discourages further conversation.

There are lots of popular books out there about economics. I found this one to be rather disappointing.

'More Sex Is Safer Sex' is packed with inconclusive economic analysis that seem to shock readers, rather than enlighten them with coherent insight. While I feel neutral with Landsburg's cost/beneift analysis & conclusions, I find his witty writing style entertaining. I enjoy the book more than Levitt's 'Freakonomics', & a key success of it is that Landsburg has shown how economic reasoning can provide unconventional solutions/perspectives to problems.

Although Landsburg generally does a good job of entertaining and teaching economic principles via the use of unusual examples and thought experiments, one often gets the feeling that he is mostly vying for the title of Cleverest Economist on the Planet. A few of his examples address economic principles but the issues explored are completely theoretical and very implausible. The one from which the title comes is a good example of this. One of the principles taught is that undervalued services will be underprovided. In this case, it's sexually conservative men who, if they increased somewhat their sexual activity, would "purify" the pool of available men and thereby be less likely to pass on AIDS. The problem with this is that no conservative man would actually do this. The "incentives" that Landsburg suggests are ludicrous. Another example is the one where he suggests firefighters should be allowed to keep whatever they save in a fire. Interesting idea but one with no possibility of real world application. Landsburg leaves the details of figuring out disincentives to arson-for-profit to others. Thanks a lot.

There are other situations he explores that are worthwhile reading, like the sections on Scrooge, the birth rate and economic growth, and solving the kidney shortage. About 80 percent of the book is like this: interesting topics, economic principles explained and taught, plausible solutions or valid concepts aired. The other 20 percent makes the reader feel like he is wasting his time reading an application essay for the prize of Cleverest Economist on the Planet.

Landsburg starts with the premise that every rational decision making should involve the rules of costs and benefits. According to him, everything should have costs and benefits and the consequences of our action spill over onto other people. By applying costs and benefits analysis to encompass everything from sexual behaviour, population growth, gold mining, beauty, child workers in the third world, and election, to justice system, invention, fire fighting, shopping carts, donation, racial profiling, life and death, and auto insurance, he assaults prevailing common sense and makes use of economic reasoning to celebrate his findings that are extremely counter and strange.

Landsburg believes that an action can be justifiable in any circumstances when its benefits exceed its costs. For instance, sexual conservatives are encouraged to increase moderate amounts of sexual activity in order to improve the odds for people who seek a safe match. Unlike Malthusian economists, population growth promotes economic prosperity because more people can generate higher level of innovation and creativity. To Landsburg, juries should be punished for getting the wrong verdict whereas incentives should be fixed for FDA commissioners, fire fighters, and even the US President. A scrooge is more generous than a philanthropist because he eats less so that there is more food for other people. Moreover, Landsburg highlights witty remarks on the difference between correlation and causation to readers. Boys hold marriages but girls break them up because parents prefer boys to girls. The obesity epidemic is due to some combination of medical advances and low-fat foods but is not statistically correlated with income changes.

In this book, Landsburg makes use of economic reasoning to tell readers right from wrong and truth from fiction. He does not restrict himself to pure description but tries to prescribe how people should behave. Putting culture, moral judgement, and ethics aside, readers can find the power of economic reasoning in demystifying the workings of everything from a different perspective. However, the use of the rules of costs and benefits remains controversial to some of the issues in which moral judgement should be taken into account. Nobel laureate Thomas Shelling maintains that people are different from livestock so that it is difficult to assess their costs and benefits as a result of life or death.

This book stimulates readers to look into issues from a different perspective. Readers who are not too familiar with the power of economic reasoning should find this book very witty. However, readers might be squirm in their chairs when economic reasoning mixes with moral judgement.