Freakonomics
Freakonomics is a revolutionary group effort between Levitt and Stephen Dunbar who are award wining journalists and economists. They have started with having a collection of a variety of data and a few simple unasked questions. A number of these questions concern issues of life and death while other has freakish quality. These are what have formed the base of the book: Freakonomics. The two have used the art of forceful storytelling and sardonic insights. They try to show that economics is a study of incentives at root. That is, how people get what they require more so when there are other people who want the same things. They try t explore the hidden side of say everything in what can be termed as an inner work of a crack gang. This includes the truth about real estate, the telltale of a cheating schoolteacher, the campaign finance myths and the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.
All these are united frm the belief of the modern world that it is not impenetrable and are unknown despite the great ever-changing complexity and deceits. They believe these would change if people ask themselves the right questions and be more intriguing than they are currently. They just need to think and look at things from a different perception. The book establishes this unconventional premise: they claim that if morality represents how the world should operate the economics would be how it exactly operate. There are enough riddles and stories to back these claims that are said would last quite a number of cocktails to exhaust them. It does this with the aim of changing how people view the modern world.
The book was published in the United States in the year 2005 and sold more than 4 million copies globally in thirty-five languages. This inspired the duo to do a follow-up book called SuperFreakonomics which is a high-profile documentary film, a radio program, and an award winning blog. That has been referred to as the ‘most readable economics blog in the universe.’ The book is brilliant, provocative and investigative to motives by trying to find out what they are, what people do, or how they affect. It is also deceptively an easy read since it uses a light style, a sunny tone, and has a lot of sense of humor. This is a motive that is seen to make it difficult to realize how the concepts of Freakonomics challenge the most common basic assumptions about how people and the society works.
Most economists have critics the duo for misleading a lot of innocent people who rely on their information on climate change. John Abraham (2013) who is an economist feels that misguiding the people on matter s on climate change would cost the real money of clients and audience. There are investors who pay respect to what they find published and they should not be misled by a few errand professionals. It is important for people to use the right information while they are making decisions. John claimed that misleading information from the media houses would not be much of a course of alarm but misleading information from sources regarded as reliable would have adverse effect to those who use it.
John also felt that by Stephen and Levitt should have consulted the environmental scientist before writing on issues of climate change since the information that they ignored would deny the investors great opportunities to protect and grow their assets. He condemned Levitt for using case studies to yet he is a business professor from the University of Chicago. John said that Levitt is infamous among other professors since his work has very many errors that are so elementary that students in their first year of college would identify them. John has identified some of the errors that Levitt who is a business professor has done. In their book Freakonomics, Levitt claim that human account for two percent of the atmospheric greenhouse gases against the correct figure of over forty percent. As a business professor, Levitt did not differentiate between the gross and net emissions thus this was misleading.
There is a chapter on global warming that has a significant part that involves a description of entrepreneurs that attempt to find geo-engineering solutions with regard to the problem of global warming. Dr. Levitt has written that the carbon dioxide gas is not poisonous and continuous to claim that the amount of carbon dioxide in the modern building can be significantly higher than the atmospheric levels. He also claims that it would be safe for human to breathe it. This is in contrast to what the carbon dioxide gas does to the atmosphere by causing global warming. He claims that the gas does not cause global warming. He continues further and writes that the solar panels cause global warming. This is wrong and would contradict the right information that states that the solar technology reduce the amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This means that it would not be advisable to invest in the solar panel as alternative to the fossil fuels like natural gas and coal.
He advised, in the Freakonomics book, that instead of investing in reducing the greenhouse gases, the investors should trust the fate of the unproven technologies for the purposes of geo-engineering the planet. He proposed that geo-engineers should spray particles into the atmosphere to reflect light back into the atmosphere. Basically this is wrong since this would be polluting the environment and the pollution would still cause further pollution in the sky. John claims that Levitt did these mistakes since he did not consult with a climate scientist who would have explained the concept of the solar cell technology. This was misleading to possible geo-engineers and investors who would want to venture into solar cell business since he would discourage them or give them wrong information thus misleading them.
Describing Levitt as “Contrarian” would be more opt than calling him a “Rogue”. He is misleading the smart people who could know nothing about climate change. In fact, Levitt has relied upon another “contrarian” who was the form CTO of Microsoft called Nathan Myhrvoid. With close analysis of what is included in the Freakonomics, it contains wrong information about the technologies that have been invested into amounts of billion dollars. This is with regards with the environmental crisis that have affected the way business work and the risks that they are exposed to. By following the content that is in the Freakonomics, it would mean that people would not address the real issue of climate change and would dwell on unreliable data that would cause further climate crisis. Therefore, it is true that this book relates to investment and finance since it tries to encourage solutions in geo engineering and climate change that would cause more problems and hence leading to collapse of the economy or investors lose their real money.
