Affluenza Vs Freakonomics

Posted on 14. Aug, 2009 by GoRealer in Education, Literature

I remember waking up on a Monday morning and finding myself alone in my ex girlfriends campus room after she had gone to her lecture. This offered me a great opportunity to chill out, or as some of my mates would say an opportunity to inspect her draws for any suspicious clues of infidelity. But boring old me was more curious about a dodgy retro looking hardback book strangely titles ‘Freakonomics’ that was on her study desk. Initially I had thought it to be some sort of sex book, and was excited to see what she had learnt. But my sexual expectations changed into a more intellectual one after seeing the subtitle that read: ‘A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything’.

This led me to looking at the index and see if there is anything remotely interesting. Well let’s just say five hours later, my poor -then partner- had to cancel the plans that we had previously made for the day, as she found herself blanked out of my universe, as I was so intrigued in what seemed at the time to be the greatest book ever written.

The author Steven D Levitt, uses some traditional economic theories to cover diverse subjects. Not only did I think it was genius, I also found the book mentally stimulating.
Ironically having thought that this was a sex book, the book actually had an opposite effect, because that night I found myself spending more time with Sumo wrestlers, drug dealers and estate agents rather than the then Mrs. I bet she wishes she had never taken that book from the library.

Although a majority of the theories work, in particular the sumo wrestler and the abortion theories, I did find the assumption about Swimming pools being more dangerous than guns a bit too daring and forced. But who could blame the author attempting such a claim after creating such a sense of enlightenment from his previous theories.

I still found myself going back to the book months after completing it. This was until I bumped into Psychologist Oliver James’ Affluenza. The book had a lot of press coverage and great marketing on the London Underground.

Being that I was specialising in marketing in my Business course, I had even more reason to read this book. As I would simply put it, this book was to my field what ‘democracy’ is to Mugabe, or was I being too cynical?

The book was trying to highlight how that the over consumption within English speaking counties stemmed from the unethical impact of mass marketing. Did it make me feel bad, yes for a bit, but what I appreciated more was the way the book covered the Affluenza virus influence on peoples self esteem, which seemed so accurate when measured up with the people around me, at the time myself. This book got me in the right track, pre credit crunch it was able to highlight the difference between needs and wants. But I think it failed to point out anything that the general public was not previously conscience about.

Either way it did not manage to take away from the overall message of the danger of consumer culture.

So which of the two is a better read?

Well it depends on what you are looking for. If you are intellectually curious then Freakonomics is the book for you. If you wish to be reminded of how you got yourself into this capitalistic mess, then Affluenza is your prescription. Personally I enjoyed both, but as I had studied economics in A-levels, I was always more drawn to Steven’s publication.

So I will conclude that Freakonomics is the better book, but it will be dim-witted to merely take my word for it and not to read both books and make your own judgment.