Mini-Review: More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven E. Landsburg

Steven E. Landsburg is my favorite economics writer. Admittedly, it's a small field of competition, but I'd have to say I don't think I really began to understand what economics is all about until I read his The Armchair Economist back in 1993. Economics is not about money, let alone money and banking, gross domestic product, or even supply and demand. Sure, that's the stuff that gets covered in an economics survey course, but the underlying theme, apparently lost on the vast majority of those who take the course, is about choices and the consequences and trade-offs of those choices. Money is only a convenient method of measuring. No contemporary economist I know (including, e.g., David D. Friedman, Steven D. Levett, Todd G. Buchholz and Tim Harford) does a better job of making the underlying "Big Picture" of economics more clear or more entertaining than Landsburg.

His latest book, More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics (Free Press, 288 pp.) is a delight and highly recommended, even though I find that I don't always agree with Landsburg (for noneconomic reasons) in some of his views. Well, that actually adds to the fun.

I will almost certainly write more about several of the themes and topics in Landsburg's new book when time becomes available. In the meanwhile, I encourage you to check out his "Why I Am Not an Environmentalist" and, for the libertarian crowd, I offer a bit of red meat from More Sex Is Safer Sex, as follows:

... Cabinet departments like Agriculture, Commerce and Labor have powerful constituencies that make it impossible to eliminate them one at a time. But what about eliminating them as a package?

The Agriculture Department helps farmers steal from workers and businesses; the Commerce Department helps businesses steal from farmers and workers; the Labor Department helps workers steal from farmers and businesses. With a plan to abolish all three, you could promise every American that he was losing one friend and two enemies.

Several readers took issue with my criticism of Ron Paul's performance during the Republican candidates' 'debate.' Let's not kid ourselves, folks, Ron Paul is not going to be our next president. Still, instead of confusing people with talk about the "inflation tax" and fumbling over why the Founding Fathers wouldn't want Arnold Schwarzenegger to be eligible for the presidency, the above quote is precisely the sort of thing he should be saying in his all too brief media exposure. So here's my current Paul campaign contribution: Dr. Paul, read Steven Landsburg's books and steal from them flagrantly every chance you get!