Reading Reflection on The Book Freakonomics

After reading Freakonomics it really opens the reader’s eyes to unseen things in everyday life. The incentives of just any regular person are greatly shown because money or personal gain can take over any man or woman no matter how old. In a few of the chapters the book showed how two groups that someone would think are far opposite could have common goals or mindsets. As dumb as this book was it did at least teach me a new perspective to life and try to think deeper to see if there’s more than meets the eye.

When reading Freakonomics, the first chapter said,” What do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?” I thought this couldn’t even be worth explaining because that’s so ridiculous that someone would compare sumos who are these gigantic dudes with jock straps and then saying they’re like teachers that are correcting my paper right now. That seems absolutely absurd to even think of that until he explains why. The reason why…. Incentives, Incentives and Incentives. He wrote about teachers in California and how there was this decent sum of money that would be given to teachers who had the best scores on their ACT’s. I’m not hating on teachers or anything but they aren’t exactly rich and when the state waves a lot of money in all the teachers’ faces and says this is yours if you have the best scores, some teachers are obviously going to hurdle the boundary of protocol and law to make some easy money. The role sumos play in this is the honor and respect thing in their culture. The more wins they get the more respect and fame they get which is what all sumos are at least most are in the sport for. In sumo wrestling the sumo has to get eight wins to increase in fame otherwise they aren’t likey to go far. The example he gave was a great one, “So a wrestler entering the final day of a tournament on the bubble, with a 7-7 record, has far more to gain from a victory than an opponent with a record of 8-6 has to lose.” Pretend the 7-7 sumo asks the 8-6 sumo to let him win this match. If the 8-6 sumo says yes he’ll most likely want something in return like his money from the match or maybe win a match to raise in the ranks.

In this book it explains that realtors may sometimes not be the best of people even though I don’t really agree that they can be compared to something as big as the KKK, but I do believe some realtors use lack of information to their advantage. Just that chapter showed me that legal jobs like being a realtor can make that person seem almost bad or corrupt to make personal gain. Unless you’re friends with the realtor they may not even care about you and only care about getting paid at the end of the day. So this book even has material that can help when buying or selling a house to catch those filthy realtors in their tracks if they aren’t the good ones.

The shape of argument the author gives is a detailed one for sure. First, the author will talk about the comparison with the exception of when he talks about all the processes, expenses, and how much money can be made when in the drug business. He will go into great detail until the point where it almost bores you to death even though credit should be given for such knowledge of the subject. I didn’t even have to ask questions or think I wasn’t filled in enough on what he was talking about. After all the information he gives he then tries to prove his points and back up his comparisons that he made.

The authors’ purpose almost seems like he’s just trying to make you feel stupid and that you lack so much knowledge showing you that you look at everything inside the box. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner want to give you all the knowledge so you’re not as stupid as you were before and hopefully not end up like the domino's guy twirling signs around on the corner.

Overall, the book had a great deal of information. It wasn’t exactly “Genius.. has you gasping in amazement.” - Wall Street Journal, but it certainly was “slightly” interesting and showed me a new perspective. Also, everyone has incentives and sometimes those incentives get the best of people. All it takes is incentive and it can change anyone’s life for better or worse.