The Smug Annoyance That is Freakonomics

Rogue like Prince Charles

In both the book and subsequent media manifestations, the Freakonomists spin themselves as cha-cha bright sparks: ‘rogue economists’ is their publicists' favoured term; wild and wacky yet with theoretically brilliant new takes on life and the universe.

Reality check: the Freakonomists are as rogue as Prince Charles with a watercress sandwich at a Buckingham Palace tea-party, as anarchic as Bill O'Reilly with a falafel hors d'œuvre at Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Christmas party. They portray themselves as so-out-of-the-box-its-not-funny zany freethinkers, the economists' Andy Kaufman: at the edgy fringe of their calling, always on the verge of ostracism. A much more accurate analogy would be Bob Hope: safe, comfy, and cosy.

Dr Levitt in fact parks his backside in a plush appointment in the very heart of complacent economic academic orthodoxy; not at its edgy avant-garde fringes. His generous pay-cheque {paycheck} is guaranteed for years to come. His is the cheeky face of a very long established smug economic regime known as Ration Action Theory (RAT). In thousands of papers, in hundreds of conferences, and in dozens of professorial appointments, this church has spent decades creating a vast theoretical apparatus to justify one simple statement:

‘rich white American males like us rule, and so we should. Cope with it.’.

We disagree.

The smug annoyance that is rational action theory

Our target here is the smug RAT theorists, rather than the whacky Freakonomists in particular (although they have willingly put their heads above the parapet). In the table below, we give a fruity characterization of the RAT ideas compared to those of our own Bourdivin guru.

RATs	Bourdivins
People act rationally.	Without doubt the most stupid assumption made in the history of the social sciences. One so manifestly false that only an elite professor with a guaranteed job at a wealthy university could believe it. Oh, wait. At best, people act reasonably.
To rephrase that: People have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them.	You mean like the Bush administration in Iraq? Or the superheroes at Bear Sterns? Really? Really? People have interests and they follow strategies. Mostly, they just slosh about.
Choices are based ever and only on maximising rewards.	Choices are based on the dispositions that people inherit from their history, and the opportunities and constraints of the field in which they operate.
People make decisions about how they should act by calmly comparing the costs and benefits of different courses of action.	Right: like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, David Hasselhoff, the Yorkshire Ripper, and the guys who ran Enron? You seriously want us to accept this proposition?
We RATs are objective. We see a higher picture, and can transcend the petty viewpoints of those we write about. We are not influenced by our social positions as upper-class members in the highest echelons of academia. Frankly, most of us are well-to-do: because we are smarter, sharper, and better.	We Bourdivins are embedded in the real world, with own desires, expectations and rewards. We struggle for symbolic rewards, just like everyone else. This will affect what we say: we can never be objective. Frankly, most of us are well-to-do, and that influences what we see and say.
The existing economic and social system is at is. Our job is to describe and explain it. We make no judgement. We're just here to say how things work: slavery, child abuse, drug gangs, struggling householders ruined by in the subprime meltdown, whatever.	There are some pretty horrible things about the current economic and social system. So horrible, we should try to change them. We don't like what we see. We're here to change things: slavery, child abuse, drug gangs, struggling householders ruined by in the subprime meltdown, whatever.
Three cheers for capitalism, which produces the best of all possible worlds.	Two cheers for capitalism. It produces higher standards of living for many, but can often produce great misery.
The market rules, thank God! The less that governments interfere in markets, the better.	The market rules, alas! Governments have a significant role to play in reducing the misery of the world.
Lower-class and poor people are so because they are stupid and cannot calculate rationally; like the rubes who had to abandon their homes in the subprime mortgage crisis. They have what they deserve: poverty.	Lower class people may find themselves trapped in their situation because they do not understand the covert ways that the upper-classes have of excluding newcomers.
Upper-class and successful people are so because they calculate better then poor people; like the bankers and brokers who sold subprime mortgages to the rubes. They have what they deserve: wealth.	Upper-class people are so because they have constructed the entire social system to give them hidden advantages through their whole course of life. They find things happen smoothly, and that doors open magically to them at every turn. Because they are smarter? No. Because they come from the appropriate class background.
A caricature tabular comparison of the idea of the rational action theorists (RATs), compared to those of Dr Garry's own guru, Pierre Bourdieu.