Freakonomics and the Incentives of Cheating Behind One's Actions

What are the incentives to making a parent loose fear? Parents often fear a lot of things that aren't really their fault but feel the importance of making sure their child is safe and successful. In the text Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner explained, “a parent after all, is the steward of another creature's life, a creature who in the begging is more helpless than the newborn of nearly any other species.” Parents are overprotective when it comes to their child because anything could happen to the child in matter of seconds, in the text, a girl and her best friend have different living styles and one of them has a gun in the house and another a pool, so the parents fear what might happen if she's at a house with a gun and much rather have her at a house with a pool, whereas the child can drown. Experts have said parents should not lose their energy trying to fear what could happen, because it just makes them too overprotective and the child might not be self-sufficient or independent. Experts always sit to the extreme of one side of a parenting issue, because experts who are not firm in this way rarely get any attention. Another problem with experts is that they abuse their own authority and manipulate irrational fear to the public and trust for conventional wisdom, to further their interest in the process. The authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner did a groundbreaking collaboration in creating Freakonomics, they are award winning author and journalist. Freakonomics tells truth about real estate agents, crack gangs, Ku Klux Klan, and tells the everyday life of cheating, crime, to parenting and sports. In the text freakonomics, Galbraith wanted the text to be dedicated to fighting conventional wisdom. Why are experts important? They are a large result of fear and conventional wisdom, in which people have a lot of trust.

Why was abortion illegal in Romania and what do experts have to say? In the text freakonomics, Romanian Nicole Ceausescu's made abortion illegal and once said, “the fetus is the property of the entire society” and “Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.” in the year 1966, every woman would be tested if pregnant and would if they failed to conceive, they would be forced to pay, “Celibacy tax.” after abortion was banned the Romanian birth doubled within one year. If children were born after, then ban they would live miserable lives and would be less successful in school. whereas in the united states the abortion law is legal, because every woman should have the right to be able to decide whether they want the child or not, not only because they want to hurt a baby that’s not born but they don’t want the baby to be born and not be financially stable or have a baby from someone who sexually molested them.

In chapter 2, both Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents have in common their derive power from their knowledge. An example from the book is that, “The Klan covets beliefs and members feelings of scaredness towards organization are what makes it so powerful” and “Realtors use their inside knowledge of the true price of a house, and the amount of information they choose to share with the buyer and seller is where they get their power and manipulate the seller and buyer for realtors interest.” Dubner explained, how they are both the principle of economic principle of expert, to criminologist and to agents and how they use their information to serve their own agenda.

What were the incentives of cheating between sumo wrestlers and schoolteachers? Schoolteachers cause of cheating was to secure their job, whereas wrestlers cheated to have financial stability. Why do people cheat? When people want the same thing and need the same thing, they get what they want or what they need. Experts say, many people cheat because if the stakes are right, they’ll do it. Levitt and Dubner said “every person is clever and gets into the trouble of cheating which is an incentive scheme. Cheating may not be a human nature thing, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor.”

To conclude, Levitt and Dubner wrote the book freakonomics, it's about cheating schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers, as well as baby names, bad parenting, self-dealing realtors, and crack sellers who still live with their moms. Their book was published in 2005 in the U.S. and sold 4 million copies around the world and is the study of economics based on principle of incentives.