Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't

This book doesn't settle for presenting the theory of why the free market works, it goes into detail and digs into history to prove it. One of the most refreshing sections is where Lott refutes the nauseating theory of the Left that the drop in the crime rate in the 90's happened because a lot of the potential criminals had been aborted. The Left really is amazing; they don't want the death penalty for someone who has actually committed several brutal murders, but they're okay with it for an innocent person who is statistically likely to someday commit murder, rape or burglary. Lott painstakingly demonstrates that the real cause was the increase of the death penalty, higher arrest rates, and the larger number of citizens carrying concealed weapons. He also tells us some things we didn't know about the history of public education. It started in the 1820s in an attempt to educate Catholic children as Protestants, because legislators believed that Catholics were more prone to commit crimes! It's a disappointment to me that he doesn't also mention that education became compulsory because of pressure from labor unions, who wanted children forced out of the job market so that their members could have them instead. One of the most intriguing sections, which is bound to also be the most controversial, is where he demonstrates that women's suffrage always leads to expanded government. He presents the evidence and leaves the reader to face the obvious conclusion. Very few people have the courage to point this out today, and it is badly needed.

I'm a professor of economics, and I'm very familiar with the work of John Lott. I bought this book because I enjoy reading arm-chair econ books ... just can't get enough econ! Normally I'm disappointed because the examples and applications are usually stolen and reworked material that's been around for years. Not so with Lott's book. The great thing about the book is not just the refreshing topics, but Lott's gifted approach to understanding them. Take, for example, the growth of government. Many bright minds have worked to explain why did governments grow so fast after WWI? Dozens of theories have been spun, none very successful. Not only does Lott have an ingenious answer (women's suffrage), but he also has an ingenious test and exploits the fact that some states voluntarily granted the right, while other states had it forced on them. It is Lott's ability to come up with clever and convincing tests and evidence that separates him from others. I don't like the title of the book, and I don't like the sub-line "a rebuttal to Freakonomics." The book is much more than this, and I'm sure the publisher had more to do with the cover than the author. If the cover turns you off, I'd open the book and read a few pages. The book is well written and accessible to anyone interested in social behavior. A very good read and highly recommended.

Even though I have no background in economics I picked up Dr. John Lott's Freedomnomics the other day and was somewhat surprised to find it as fascinating a read as it was. It's designed to be a direct response to the wildly successful Freakonomics, and the text here was definitely written with laymen in mind. In other words, the statistics he presents are more educational than they are overwhelming. As far as the politics goes, Dr. Lott is obviously a man of the right but the book is not a partisan affair. It is a sincere attempt to demystify the innerworkings of economics. There's no plugging of any candidates or of a party here. It's kind of sad to acknowledge but recognizing the inherent inefficiency of government, along with the way in which private individuals spend their earnings more efficiently, is often a partisan issue in this country but it really shouldn't be. Dr. Lott emphasizes the liberty and justice inherent to capitalism, and debunks numerous arguments about the limitations of the free market along the way. The bottom line here is that capitalism is what has allowed America to become as well-off as we are. In how many other countries is the overeating of poor people a major concern? As far as what positions struck me as being the strongest, I'd have to say that his link between women's suffrage and the swelling of government was ironclad. Further, in but two pages, he gave one of the best explanations that I've heard for why college faculties are ideologically skewed. I also have to admit that the Myth of Double Giving was completely unknown to me before opening this book. I always just accepted the idea that corporations covered their bets by giving to both political parties simultaneously. Upon reading this I discovered that the press reporting of these figures is completely inaccurate. The company net for donations is a total of what private donators, who happen to work for a particular corporation, give. They do not come from the company itself. Nowhere was Dr. Lott stronger than in his examination of the fashionable theory that increased abortion rates decrease crime. He found the opposite to be true and was most persuasive--in fact, the whole book is most persuasive. The whole country would be better off if half of our young people were lucky enough to read the chapter, "Government as Nirvana?"

Personally, I liked Freakonomics. By pointing out "the hidden side of everything," it forces the reader to think about how things are connected in ways the average non-economist might not imagine. However, that's all the book is really good for. There's not a lot of serious economic analysis in there, only interesting ideas thrown about at almost at random. Thus, reading Freakonomics for the conclusions makes about as much sense as reading Playboy for the articles. For this reason, a book responding to Freakonomics shouldn't have been necessary. Given the buzz created by Freakonomics, though, it probably was, and Lott is as good an economist as any to do that. For example, Levitt and Dubner wrote in Freakonomics that realtors keep their homes on the market a little longer than their customers do, and also make a bit more profit upon selling them. From this, Levitt and Dubner jumped to the conclusion that this meant realtors are systematically scamming their customers. Lott rightly countered with a much simpler and more straightforward explanation: every realtor follows his own sage advice, but not every realtor's customer does. Lott's conclusions regarding the interplay between crime and abortion are a bit more questionable. True, the fact that the U.S. and Canada experienced a similar drop in crime at the same time in the early 1990s, while Canada's version of Roe came a decade too late to fit neatly with Levitt and Dubner's theory, does appear at first blush to be problematic for their theory. However, at second blush it's not clear how how problematic that factor is, given that the very few Canadians live more than a couple hundred miles from the U.S. border, meaning that nearly all could have easily availed themselves of Roe in the interim. Lott is on shakier ground still when he argues that legalized abortion caused an increase in crime, while citing data equally consistent with the view that some other factor, e.g., the sexual revolution, caused both the increase in uncommitted sex (with or without contraception) and the push for legalized abortion. Given the relatively short history between Griswold and Roe, in which Americans enjoyed a "constitutional" right to contraception but not abortion, it's not clear we will ever know which factor caused the other. That said, Lott does appear to have made as strong of a case for the view that abortion causes crime as Levitt did for the view that it prevents it, thereby neutralizing the abortion-as-crime-control argument with which Levitt himself stops short of fully endorsing. Lott has plenty of books filled with tables, linear regressions, and all that other geeky stuff few of us could understand if we tried. Freedomnomics is not such a book. Rather, it reads as exactly what it purports to be: a conservative reply to Freakonomics. Like Freakonomics, it is written to be accessible to the layman, not to provide the reader with a mountain of data supporting every conclusion. For t

Excellent book showing the power of free markets and the harm that manifests when governments interfere in markets. Many economists claim that free markets work great in theory but there are many types of market failures that require government intervention. Lott points out how markets themselves can overcome these so called market failures and how government attempts to correct these failures often makes the situation much worse. Lott takes on very politically incorrect topics that the mainstream media would never touch such as how affirmative action influences police effectiveness and how giving women the right to vote has influenced the size of the government. The book is very readable and is clearly intended for a general audience. I would strongly recommend it to people who enjoy the writings of columnists such as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell.