More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg

More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics Reviews

• 
  Anne

  Ugh! The author comes off so cold and calculating I found it difficult to even finish the book. His arguments are based on economic analysis and pretty much nothing else. I get the impression that if he saw somebody drowning he'd pull out his notebook and calculate whether or not it'd economically worthy his time/effort to save the person.
  
  As many others have said before me, read Freakonomics instead.
• 
  Visakan

  I'm distraught by the amount of negative reviews I saw here, but I'm not entirely surprised. I just re-read the book for about the 4th or 5th time over the years, and each time I find myself discovering that my previous frustrations with the author were, in fact, manifestations of my own logical inconsistencies. Landsburg is, in fact, a compassionate man of the highest order- we're just too clouded with our caveman minds to see it. Adam Smith became an economist because he was a moralist who wanted to figure out how to make moral decisions with limited resources. Landsburg carries on that vein of thought.
  
  If you're an idealist who's easily offended by ideas like "disaster relief is bad" or "we shouldn't put poor people on ventilator support" or "sweatshops are a good thing", then you'll hate Landsburg. But if you take the time to carefully study his arguments, you'll realize that he's operating within constraints and limitations- he's being pragmatic rather than idealistic, offering applicable ideas and solutions rather than grand gestures.
  
  At several points, Landsburg demonstrates (painfully, for me) the immorality of our own moralistic thinking. I will be re-reading this book for many years to come, just to get a sense of how sharp and incisive human thought can be.
• 
  Mark

  A not-so-subtle libertarian conservative manifesto masquerading as a "freakanomics" style book to cash in on the trend.
• 
  Hope Harris-Gayles

  Finally, I get to write the review I've been pondering since about page 165. I didn't care for this book AT ALL (so let's just establish that fact). I think the title should've been my first tip-off--a book that so clearly needs sex to sell can't have much going on between the covers. I would be terribly upset if I'd paid money for this book. As it happens it was thrust upon me by Judy (thanks.)
  I'd just read Freakonomics and thought this might be similar. Let me assure you it is not. I know Freakonomics had no unifying theme--this one even less so. The author just kind of aimlessly wanders from point to point sometimes without even giving an answer to the question he raised. When he does provide an answer it's ultra-libertarian, pure costs/benefit analysis. Little Jessica down the well wouldn't have gotten saved if it were up to this guy. Call me crazy, but I like solutions to problems to have a shread of moral fiber running through them. Also, the author has a tendency to assert that anyone who disagrees with him is either A. not following his logic or B. an idiot. Here's a news flash Steven E. Landsburg: We're not morons; we follow your logic and it sucks!
  
  For those who still have a desire to touch this book it's only worth a skim. Also, Landsburg has written some essays for Slate (I don't know how recently, but it seems like a lot of the book is based on those essays). So, find the essays, give them a read, and if you like them then read the book. At least you'll only waste minutes and not days of your life.
• 
  Kaylee

  Let me be clear: I chose to give this book one star not because I thought the writing was horrible or the topic unpalatable; I merely disagreed with most of what he said. If I were to rate this book based on emotional reactions while reading it, it would have had five solid stars.
  
  While I appreciate Landsburg's attempts to "shock and awe" the reader into a new way of thinking about economics, I would like to take him to task for two very major issues:
  
  1) Landsburg has a tendency to point out holes in others' arguments while blithely ignoring the holes in his own. Beat down any argument you want, but for heaven's sake, don't ignore the fact that you're not fleshing out the many possibilities in your own. If he'd stated even once that there were countless other possibilities/outcomes/reasons/etc that he hadn't thought of, I would have read with more pleasure.
  2) Most statements he made were merely based on his own feelings on a subject's importance/relevance. I'm not saying I'm too sentimental to place value on human lives, or that I can't abide by disagreeing with someone on moral issues. I'm saying he shouldn't have written everything as if his beliefs were the right beliefs.
  
  I guess I just don't like arrogance.
• 
  Ensiform

  The author, an economist and columnist, uses cost-benefit analysis to tackle some thorny social issues, from the polygamy of the title to such varied topics as giving to charity, overpopulation, euthanasia, the global preference for baby boys vs. girls, disaster relief, the benefits of being tall and/or beautiful, the American propensity for self-denial, flaws in the justice system, and outsourcing jobs. Not only does he apply the principle of costs vs. benefits to these issues, he argues that this is the only rational way to approach them, dismissing in most cases such flimsy notions as patriotism or religion or human compassion. (In fact, he would say that cost-benefit analysis is the only compassionate route in the case of, say, taking a comatose woman off a respirator, since that respirator is then freed for someone who will presumably gain more benefit from it). He’s an intelligent writer who argues deftly, and his writing has the cocksure tone of the experienced professor, mixed with the somewhat defensive attitude of one who has heard many counter-arguments and gotten a lot of mail about his opinions before. The crux of his political thought is that if you’re not “footing the bill” (in various ways, not always with actual dollars), what others do is none of your business; this free-market libertarianism allows him to argue that, for instance, companies are doing the right thing by outsourcing jobs, as the jobs in India are just as “valuable” in an economic sense as an American one. That this should not be true to an American is lost on him.
  
  Reading this book, which of course I found much to disagree with about, I was reminded of Thaler and Sunstein’s
  Nudge, which makes a distinction between Humans, who do not always act rationally and have preferences for things that sometimes are not valuable, and Econs, who think everyone always knows what their neighbor is doing and include all available data in their calculations before acting. Landsburg is the consummate Econ – absolutely uncompromising, equating rationality with validity in every case, and nearly pod-like in his refusal to understand why his solutions would not work in the real world of irrational, patriotic, religious, humans, who cry over a picture of one hurt puppy but don’t blink at news reports of human massacres. This leads Landsburg to some bizarre conclusions, such as his argument that the world needs more people or that the world’s oil will not be over-used: since over-population and oil use must, according to Econ-style analysis, be voluntary, it will always serve our needs. (This is, of course, total nonsense; even if there was one person in the world and one can of oil, he could burn all his oil in one day and then be cold for the rest of his life, thus over-using it; and in the real world no one knows what others are doing with their oil use.) Landsburg’s Econ analysis also leads him to appear creepy and off-putting, as when he describes his daughter as a “cost.”
  
  At times he is being jocular, as when he suggests that firefighters should be paid in the loot they save from fires; at other times he seems to be serious when he suggests the President of the USA be paid in land grants across the country, as if anyone becomes president for the big cash salary. All the time, his insistence of every action being a “cost” makes him appear downright obtuse, as when he claims that while a polluter might be costing a swimmer the ability to swim, the swimmer is costing the polluter the chance to dump gunk in the water! He really goes off the rails when he equates conservation with robbing the poor (people today) to give to the super-rich (our grand-children, who will surely be more prosperous than us!) – he seems truly unable to understand that a conservationist is not interested in transferring income but slowing consumption. Finally, although he’s clearly a very smart guy, he cheats on some of his own arguments, as when he claims that a husband who wants to bury his brain-dead wife is “preventing” the woman’s parents from feeding her and thus the parents have the greater claim – but he never classifies the parents as the “preventers,” who are stopping the husband from enjoying his right to bury. He also ignores his own respirator argument from earlier in the book: in feeding the daughter, the parents are selfishly “preventing” others from benefiting from the respirator, but he never mentions this. In short, some of Landburg’s arguments made me consider my assumptions. Some made me want to be in his class so I could ask follow-up questions. Some made me want to punch him in his stupid face. This must be, then, a very successful book: it captivated me and made me think about some things from an angle I’d never considered. I was engaged and enraged, and isn’t that a good thing?
• 
  Derek

  Landsburg's crafty way of illustrating the basic nature of trade offs and the application of cost/benefit analysis was not only refreshing but entertaining.
  
  I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to look at the world throught the wacky eyes of an economist.
• 
  Melanie

  This book is so, so awful. The only thing worse than the author's flawed logic is his insistence on being purely vitriolic towards anyone who dares to offer a counterpoint. Arrogant a**hole economist thinks he's better at understanding HIV prevention than an M.D. That's only one example of the many times that he chooses to PERSONALLY ATTACK critics of his ideas instead of engaging in intelligent debate/discourse. A lot of the time I just felt uncomfortable reading this. So far, he's spent 25% of the book describing legitimate phenomena, another 25% proposing wackjob "only in theory" ideas based primarily on the logic of cost-benefit analysis (like, say, firefighters being allowed to keep whatever they save since that would be the only TRUE way for them to benefit from working their hardest???), and the remaining 50% launching angry, spiteful personal attacks on anyone who proposes a different viewpoint. I'm just grateful that I took this book out from the library and didn't waste money on it; I saved my money for Superfreakonomics! At this point I'm just finishing this book because I'm stubborn and hate quitting in the middle. Can't wait...
• 
  Andrew Flack

  Really like these kinds of books. Landsburg is a professor at my school and I'd love to take one of his classes after reading this book. The title sums it up: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics. Economics can surprisingly be applied to so many situations in our lives (with results that you might not expect!). Quick and easy to read, very entertaining.
• 
  Jessica

  I liked this book but I didn't love it. I bought it to read since the back cover caught my attention like "Freakonomics" did. It wasn't as good in my opinion. This author confused me a lot and I am not 100% sure why. It wasn't as easy to follow as "Freakonomics" was. It really seemed to me like a lot of what he was arguing was purely from a methodical and calculating viewpoint. Basically the world wants only boys for children and we shouldn't give our money to more than one charity. Overall there were some interesting arguments and the stuff I did understand was thought provoking and nothing more.
• 
  Robert

  A lot of interesting theories. The sub title is The Unconventional Wisdom, and the theories really are unconventional. I had an issue with the theories as they were just presented and did not provide much data to back the them. In the index the author provides the articles and books in which he got the data from, but to find the articles and books and then read them would take much more time. The author must have thought that people would accept the theories without questioning them. More of the theories could have been acceptable if he showed more research and data. An okay book, but not a great book
• 
  Mary

  Pop economics books like this, combined with our imploding economy, make me wish for a technocracy of smart, frank, incentive-conscious economists like Landsburg. At the very least, they'd throw us for a loop. (He claims cutting in line should be the name of the game--when you join a queue, you go to the front, not the back. Then demand would match supply. Or something. Still can't get my head around that one). I'd be interested to read his other one, The Armchair Economist, too.
• 
  Dave Golombek

  Wow, this is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. He ignores obvious arguments against his proposals, picks dumb counter-arguments to make fun of his critics with (while ignoring their good counter-arguments), has his politics and his economics overly intertwined, and several other amazingly frustrating things. And that was only in the first four chapters. I couldn't make it any more, maybe it gets better, but I doubt it. No, this review isn't fair, but nor is his book!
• 
  Ryan

  Landsburg. Truly a brilliant guy. His tone here is a little argumentative, not unlike his blog sometimes. I can see why if you're used to people constantly disagreeing, you feel like you have to hit people over the head with things. Still, this is rare and it's otherwise a very thought-provoking book.
• 
  Anne

  Catchy title, but does not really deliver on the content. If you are looking for a good informational book about economics type stuff, go with Freakonomics instead.
• 
  FAISAL ALMULLA

  على الرغم من قراءتي كتب قيّمة للمؤلف إلا أني لم أتوقع كتاب مشتت بالأفكار وسرد ممل لا يستحق القراءة .
  
  أقل فائدة مرجوة من كتاب تحدي البديهة هو أنه عديم الفائدة ، هنا قد أكون وفرت على القارئ وقتا ومالا وجهدا .
  
  
• 
  Arnab Padhi

  I am a fan of Irrationality and Behavioral Economics and had high hopes from this one but it rather turned out to be a little disappointing.
  
  The concepts and insights could have been concise and the book could have been a 100 pages.
  
  I would suggest to give it a pass.
• 
  Annie

  It's a general principle of economics that things tend to work out best when people have to live with the consequences of their own behavior, or to put it another way, things tend to work out poorly when the consequences of our actions spill over onto other people. 4
  the person who drops the banana peel and the person who slips on it are not usually the same person. 5
  your actions have costs and benefits. As long as you feel all the costs and benefits, you'll tend to get the quantity right. 5
  (significance of adolescent self-esteem) 55
  That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come . . . a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. As a writer, I note with considerable dismay that although Bacon's advice is clear, succinct, profound, and apparently irrefutable, it has been in print for over three hundred years without any discernible effect on human behavior. How could an instinct that is invariably self-destructive have survived the vagaries of natural selection? Political scientists have long recognized that while revenge itself is costly and pointless, the threat of revenge is an effective deterrent. 184
  (true altruism versus "imperfect altruism" - care about how others achieve their happiness) 185
  Laibson argues that we can be imperfectly altruistic towards ourselves - by caring not just about our future happiness, but about how that happiness is achieved 186
  If you love looking forward to parties, and if you know that you love looking forward to parties, then you can never look forward to a party. 186
  Steven Pinker points out that understanding the origin of the Universe is not a terribly useful skill; it confers no reproductive advantage, so there's no reason we should have evolved brains capable of thinking about such a question. 190
  Knowledge of the past is extremely valuable. It does not follow that each additional bit of knowledge of the past is extremely valuable . . . There are more fascinating things in heaven and earth than you'll ever have time to contemplate. When one disappears, you replace it with another. 199
  Ideally, we should tax socially destructive activities and use the revenue in the most socially productive ways we can imagine . . . There's no reason alcohol taxes should be earmarked for alcoholism treatment . . . 201
  outsourcing work is, from an economic point of view, exactly the same thing as discovering a new technology. If you can ship your problems abroad and have them come back solved, that's exactly as good as feeding your problems to a new kind of machine and having solutions pop out the other end. 207
  ***If putting a dollar value on human lives strikes you as cold-hearted, grow up. You implicitly put a dollar value on human lives every time you buy a candy bar with funds that could instead have been donated to the local fire department. No matter who you are, there is a limit to what you're willing to spend to save lives; the only question is whether you're willing to think honestly about what that limit is. Viscusi thought hard not about his own limit but about how to measure other people's limits, through observations of their behavior. That's where the $6.6 million comes from - it's an estimate of what real people in real situations are willing to pay to make themselves safer. 220
  It's usually suboptimal to specialize in just one kind of mistake. If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time in airports; if you never convict an innocent, you're not convicting enough of the guilty. 224
• 
  Brad

  With all the good pop economics book coming out, I really beginning to choosing to study political science rather than the Dismal Science.
  More Sex is Safer Sex treads the same path as Freakonomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, and The Undercover Economist, all of which do a better or more entertaining job of tying economic principles into everyday life. Steven E. Landsburg revels in coming up with unorthodox solutions to problems—truly charitable people should only give to ONE charity, racial profiling ISN’T a terrible thing, and the titular solution of encouraging certain people to have more sex to prevent spreading STIs.
  All of these are thought-provoking, though I think Landsburg drops the ball in his explanation his solutions. I can see that there’s solid math behind his arguments, but after reading through them, many, especially the section on charity, still weren’t completely clear to me. Perhaps this is a personal failing, but I haven’t had this problem with the other pop economics books I mentioned. One section that was quite clear to me was his tirade against xenophobia, calling it the new racism.
  Also, Landsburg’s most common way of remedying problems is either having the government tax or subsidize good behaviors, but in the last section, titled “Things that make me squirm,” he references a chart that shows that economic openness leads to a stronger economy. Thus, subsidies that encourage the behavior he wants would hurt the economy as a whole. This puts a kink in many of his solutions that he doesn’t iron out.
• 
  Larry

  For better or worse, not really about what the title says. This book is often being compared to Freakonomics, which I do not think is quite right. Similar to Freakonomics, but not as effectively, the book gives some examples of why people behave as they do. But as you get deeper into the book it becomes apparent the author is actually putting together an ethical framework for decision making. This could just as easily be classified as a political science or philosophy book.
  
  I don't buy into some of the examples, at least not without more information, and I was going to give the book 2 stars until the last 30 pages or so when the author's goal finally starts to become clear. When he finally gets there, he makes some interesting points. It just takes a while.
  
• 
  Gavin

  Fun Book. The main premise is that when people do not receive the costs of a behavior they do too much—When people do not receive all the benefit of a behavior they due too little.
  
  As for the title, there was only about 10 pages on the subject which is summed up below:
  Having slightly more casual sex benefits others (if you don't have an STD) because you make the communal stream safer from STDs. Therefore there is too little casual sex.
  
  This is the 3rd book that I have read from Landsburg. He does better than any other author I know in explaining ideas in the simplest way with the least amount of words.
  
  3.5 STARS
• 
  Kate

  I can't believe that I'm saying this, but I suppose I've found myself agreeing with the title after reading half this book: statistically speaking, more sex is safer sex. The idea being that by having more people in the "pool", your risk of contracting disease is reduced. Steven Landsburg does a much better job of explaining than I do, I should add.
  There is much about this book with which I disagree, but it has been thought-provoking nonetheless. I recommend this book if only to cause some frustration and active thinking in order ultimately to argue or agree with the author about his various topics - all analyzed from an "economist" standpoint.
• 
  Neosisani

  1) This book is not about sex, while the title says it is.
  
  2) Stories and ideas, while sane to a point have flaws which can not be avoided. For example having more casual sex is not the only way to reduce amount of AIDS. Another way would be to promote long relationships over short one.
  
  3) Author makes lots of incorrect statements which take college level mathematics to figure out. Hence this book might actually be dangerous to people who start applying it blindly. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
  
  This is one of the rare books I didn't finish, but first 180 or so pages tell me to avoid it completely.