Super Freakonomics

I had to read Super Freakonomics. Freakonomics had blown me over, shattering my belief that most management books are easy prescriptions for lazy people who refuse to think on their own. Freakonomics changed the way I think, forever edging me to seek causal relationships between freakishly unrelated things. It forced me to think. Sadly while writing Super Freakonomics Levitt and Dubner forgot to think. Super Freakonomics come across like a hurriedly put together Bollywood economic pot boiler. It is a pot pourri of ideas thought to be imperative to the success of any formula Bollywood film of the 80s. There is sex and violence, a touching story of man and his best friend, chimps in this case, medical marvels, the story of the underdog and for green peace good measure there is a global warming story piped in. And then you wonder why it failed to deliver. Precisely why all Bollywood formula films fail because it is not insightful, the authors were not inspired and it was not a story waiting to be told but a tale concocted to be published.
However I need to objectively review the book and I shall list down some of the thoughts in some chapters that interested me. The first chapter was for instance really about gender inequality however it was masquerading in the book as the hitch hikers guide to the prostitute galaxy. It doesn't really take a nuclear scientist or a freakonomist to know why prostitutes with pimps fare better and why being a madame in the 1910s paid better than being a prostitute in Kamathipura today. It really is just good ols common sense. However they did start an interesting train of thought on how women and men are not motivated by the same things and that is probably the real reason for the proverbial glass ceiling. Men, no surprises, are motivated by money but what women are motivated; by we never got to that in the book. The chapter on altruism and apathy seems to be totally off center. The economists undertake study after study to explain why no eye witness reported a gruesome murder, however the answer to that one was simply in understanding that the sample space for the research was not unbiased, a no go in any statistical study. I was particularly looking forward to the chapter on global warming hoping that Levitt and Dubner had actually found the solution to this impending disaster called irreversible climate change. No such luck, infact I could not fathom why the chapter was included in the book.
The one freakonomic tale worth mentioning is the one on simple fixes. A doctor finds the cure to puerperal fever, the number one cause of mortality amongst mothers and children in the 1800s. This story is classic freakonomics, the doctor peruses data after data but it is a freakish unrelated incident that leads him to the cure. A very simple cure: Handwashed and Scrubbed doctors! I really do enjoy simple stories especially the ones with happy endings. Or the chapter on chimps and humans, it was sufficiently edgy and tried answering questions that I had not thought of.
All in all, the book is a breezy read but not an inspiring one. Much like a Karan Johar film, it has the right actors and grandeur sufficient for many films, it touches topical subjects but just fails to inspire or even impress you. The formula helps you leaf through but fails to get you back.
If there was ever a hypothesis on how the second book of a best selling author is never as good as the first one Super Freakonomics would be a prime exhibit. Having said that I did find my “aha” moment in the book again in the last chapter but what stayed with me was this line “In economics, as in life, you'll never find the answer to a question unless you are willing to ask it, as silly as it may seem”. Well that is a thought.