Reflecting on Freakonomics

As I suspected, I’m enjoying Freakonomics and moving through it somewhat rapidly. Yesterday a few passages especially caught my attention, so I made note to include them here for futher reflection.

From the second chapter, entitled “How the Ku Klux Klan Is Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents,” we have this line in reference to Stetson Kennedy, who is described as having worked dilligently to topple the influence of the Klan:

What drove Kennedy was a hatred of small-mindedness, ignorance, obstructionism, and intimidation.

For me I feel like that is an unwritten, innate charter of what it should mean to be a memeber of this society.

From the third chapter, “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with their Moms?” the quotes attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith about conventional wisdom resonated:

We associate truth with convenience, with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation in life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem.

That also serves as a reminder to me of words President Kennedy shared at Rice University in 1962:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Things of worth are often not easy, not easy to accomplish in and of themselves (splitting atoms, going to the moon, treating disease, self-governing, etc.) and not easy to get past our own tendencies to address them with the dilligence and perserverance they require to face constructively.

I was shocked and impressed by the story of Sudhir Venkatesh, which considered his time working with drug dealers in Chicago during the early 1990s, in that same chapter. Making an unwelcome, cold call approach to drug dealers armed with only a univerisity questionnaire, which lists as its first question “How do you feel about being black and poor?” is insane. But I particularly enjoyed how he felt that it would be appropriate to add “Fuck You” to the list of multiple choice answers from which receptients could choose alongside the more standard “Very Bad,” “Bad,” “Neither bad nor good,” “Somewhat good,” and “Very good.”

That actually got me thinking that adding “Fuck You” as a response to multiple choice tests could be generally interesting. In some cases it would simply be correct. In others it might be paired with another response to give the recepient bonus points. And there would also be some cases where the response would simply be an automatic failure. Something feels genuine about a test like that.