More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics

By Free Press and Steven E. Landsburg

Steven Landsburg's writings are living proof that economics need not be "the dismal science." Readers of "The Armchair Economist" and his columns in "Slate" magazine know that he can make economics not only fun but fascinating, as he searches for the reasons behind the odd facts we face in our daily lives. In "More Sex Is Safer Sex," he brings his witty and razor-sharp analysis to the many ways that our individually rational decisions can combine into some truly weird collective results -- and he proposes hilarious and serious ways to fix just about everything.When you stand up at the ballpark in order to see better, you make a rational decision. When everyone else does it too, the results, of course, are lousy. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of individual sanity and collective madness. Did you know that some people may actually increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases when they avoid casual sex? Do you know why tall people earn more money than shorter competitors? (Hint: it isn't just unfair, unconscious prejudice.) Do you know why it makes no sense for you to give charitable donations to more than one organization?

Landsburg's solutions to the many ways that modern life is unfair or inefficient are both jaw-dropping and maddeningly defensible. We should encourage people to cut in line at water fountains on hot days. We should let firefighters keep any property they rescue from burning houses. We should encourage more people to act like Scrooge, because misers are just as generous as philanthropists.

Best of all are Landsburg's commonsense solutions to the political problems that plague our democracy. We should charge penalties to jurors if they convict a felon who is later exonerated. We should let everyone vote in two congressional districts: their own, and any other one of their choice. While we're at it, we should redraw the districts according to the alphabetical lists of all voters, rather than by geography. We should pay FDA commissioners with shares of pharmaceutical company stocks, and pay our president with a diversified portfolio of real estate from across the country.

Why do parents of sons stay married more often than parents who have only daughters? Why does early motherhood not only correlate with lower income, but actually cause it? Why do we execute murderers but not the authors of vicious computer viruses? The lesson of this fascinating, fun, and endlessly provocative book is twofold: many apparently very odd behaviors have logical explanations, and many apparently logical behaviors make no sense whatsoever.

About the Author:
Steven E. Landsburg writes the popular "Everyday Economics" column in Slate magazine and has also written for Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He teaches in the department of economics at the University of Rochester.

• Language: English
• Publisher: StreetLib
• Release date: Jan 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9788892542198

Reviews for More Sex Is Safer Sex

[dvf1976 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't know if I agree with some of the conclusions that the author reaches, but I definitely like him expounding how he reached them.* Explaining why parents are 10% more likely to be divorced if they have 3 girls vs. 3 boys* The idea that citizens should have two votes, one for their district, and another for whatever district they want (to cut down on pork spending)* The idea that if non-promiscuous people had more casual sex could lower the number of STD infections.(The author didn't mention it, but it seems like it'd be worth investigating if boys are more likely if the woman climaxes. That could be a cause for both the marriage succeeding and the boy being born)

[spyderella · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

_More Sex is Safer Sex_ prods you to think differently about some entrenched ideas, and this new way of seeing spills over into other everyday questions. It gave me plenty of entertaining nuggets to debate with my husband. If you try to read the book as an actual argument for setting public policy, you'll likely be exasperated with Landsburg, but this is not his intent. He is not arguing for what the laws and your behavior should be, but instead for how you can think about these decisions. On the whole, I found the book too light and trivial, more armchair economics than macroeconomics, but I blame myself for not cluing into the title and setting my expectations correctly.

[sfisk_8 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting, if you like economics you must read Freakonomics !

[kristenz_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I still have not read Freakonomics but this book is supposededly similiar. I absolutely loved this book! I really liked the section on "how to fix everything else". It just seems like such simple solutions to everyday economics, but sometimes it is so radical that it doesn't seem like it would work.

[jahn_27 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read The Armchair Economist and More Sex is Safer Sex back to back and remember them both as cost/benefit analysis stretched to its utmost, replacing all spiritual values. Which can be fun if you do not take it too seriously. There are also some suggestions for establishing added incentives for judges and juries, as well as firemen, that reminds me of Rube Goldberg contraptions and are all good for a broad smile. In short I think Landsburg is good, very good, with a tongue in his cheek that I suspect he just might not have.

[setnahkt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

On the bandwagon with Freakonomics[/i]. Thinking about things from an economic standpoint – i.e., from the way the world actually works as opposed to the way numerous interest groups would like it to work – is always a laudable pastime; the catch being that economists usually don’t know the way it actually works either. In this case, most of the hypotheses proposed are pretty reasonable – alas, though, they are just hypotheses and testing them by experiment ain’t gonna happen.
Ironically, the lead essay in this collection (and also the title for the whole book), More Sex is Safer Sex[/i][/url], is one of the weakest. It was presumably chosen on the assumption that a book with “sex” in the title will sell better; if only my first scientific paper had been titled “Chronostratigraphic accuracy of Ordovician ecostratigraphic correlation and sex” I might be famous today. Author Steven Landsburg clumsily explains his premise with an anecdote involving a hypothetical office Christmas party; a later explanation works somewhat better – suppose you have a community of 1000 married couples and five prostitutes. The women are all content to remain monogamous; the men, however, “need” an additional sexual partner annually. The prostitutes will get a workout and potentially infect everybody with STDs. However, if the women or a reasonable fraction of them cheat, all the men can be satisfied and everybody will stay healthy. Landsburg comments that of course there are some assumptions; I should think so.
The remainder of the essays are similar; some ideas that make you think; many unstated assumptions or failures to account for confounding factors. An interesting one involved a way of thinking about outsourcing jobs overseas; suppose John Doe invents software to perform some valuable service – the example Landsburg uses is automatically analyze MRI scans. People who were previously employed analyzing MRI scans lose their jobs, but for everybody else MRI scan analysis is now cheaper. On investigation, however, it turns out that there’s no fancy software in John Doe’s setup at all; all it does is send the MRI scans to doctors in Mumbai who analyze them and send back the results. In one case, John Doe is a clever inventor and consumer benefactor; in the other he’s an evil and unscrupulous business owner sending American jobs overseas. However, the two situations are economically identical. Landsburg expands somewhat by commenting that John Kerry’s website contained references to keeping “American” jobs for “Americans”, presumably to the enthusiastic approval of his supporters; if, however, Kerry had stated he wanted to keep “white” jobs for “whites”, there would have been a different reaction. The conclusion is “Think Globally” only applies to polar bears, not jobs.
Landsburg’s comment on Third World child labor will also raise hackles among the politically correct; the issue is not one of 13-year old Egyptian girls working all day weaving carpets versus 13-year old Egyptian girls going to school; it’s between weaving carpets and starving. Landsburg is especially hard on American college students with expensive educations and high-tech gadgets “protecting” children in Third World countries from earning enough to eat.
Pretty good overall except for the unfortunate title essay; these were originally written for magazine or newspaper consumption and are thus short and to the point, with the caveat that this sometimes leaves some of the assumptions unstated. Picked mine up in the remainder bin at Barnes and Noble for $2.70 and well worth it.