Freakonomics - the blog Freakonomics - the blog

While looking up the full title to the book "Freakonomics", I found the first author's web site, and from that, his blog. Interesting discussions about his points. Probably though, the most heated has been about Bill Bennett's recent comments about reducing crime by aborting African-Americans.

What almost everyone there keeps forgetting though is that Bennett is stridently anti-abortion, and the book suggested that easy access by the poor to abortion was a big reason that crime rates dropped in the 1990s. So, Bennett made the logical, slippery slope, (or, as he called it, reductio ad adsurdum) argument that crime could be reduced even more by aborting all, or even a greater number, of African-Americans - esp. given that their crime rate is significantly above that of the population as a whole (for reasons having nothing to do with their race, and everything to do with their family and socio-economic condition). The discussion was frustrating, because Bennett was clearly making an anti-abortion statement, not an anti-Black statement, yet it was seen by many as the later.

Not surprisingly though, the author, in his blog, got into a number of other interesting topics, such as putting LoJack on bicycles and the fact that you will find the shortest waiting lines in ERs during major sporting events.