Freak Out!

WS: 'Freakonomics' An Interesting And Controversial Book

(Weekly Standard)  But Levitt is just getting warmed up. Another chapter details the similarities between the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents. Levitt and Dubner relate a hilarious anecdote about an intrepid southerner named Stetson Kennedy, who, over 50 years ago, turned the Klan from a frightening, shadowy entity into a national laughing-stock by leaking their previously secret nomenclature to the Superman Radio Show. The show then proceeded to have Superman take on the Klan. Having their ridiculous and child-like terminology (Klavern, Klaliff, Kludd, Exalted Cyclops, etc.) broadcast on the air as Superman vanquished them irrevocably humiliated the Klansmen.

The point of the comparison between the Klan and realtors is to show that both entities "make their money" (so to speak) the same way -- by hoarding information. For the Klan, the organization's dark secrecy was the information the Klansmen hoarded. Once their secrets were revealed and the Klan's pathetic nature made widely known, the KKK was almost instantly a spent force.

For real estate agents, the hoarded information is the actual condition of the real estate market; real estate agents tend to deny this valuable information to the customers they are purportedly serving. As is the case throughout the book, Levitt supports his assertions regarding the slippery nature of real estate peddlers with thorough and impressive statistical analysis.

It is actually one of the many small miracles of Freakonomics that, in spite of the dense and complex nature of its many arguments, it is from start to finish a good read. Much of the credit for this doubtlessly belongs to Levitt's co-author Stephen Dubner. So skillful is Dubner that even a two page definition of regression analysis passes by not just painlessly, but pleasurably.

Freakonomics is most likely to become controversial (and perhaps notorious) because of its chapter on crime and abortion. During the first half of the 1990s, a bewildering variety of experts forecast that America would soon be engulfed in a virtual tsunami of crime.

Happily, these prophecies of doom proved wildly off base. To paraphrase an old saying, failure is an orphan but success begets a thousand politicians vying for the credit. In this case, there were several seemingly plausible explanations for the non-explosion (and indeed reduction) of crime. Some experts said Rudolph Giuliani's and William Bratton's innovative way of implementing Jams Q. Wilson's "broken window" theory of sociology saved the day. Others pointed to tougher gun laws. Still others suggested more policemen or more widespread use of capital punishment deserved the credit.