Super Freakonomics Report

To be completely honest, when I first signed up for the course entitled ‘AP Macroeconomics,’ I truly had no idea what the ‘macro’ in the word meant. Of course I knew the meaning of economics—it’s everywhere in these trying times of the economy, plus, it was a vocab word in middle school. Now that I’ve read Super Freakonomics, I have an understanding of what the prefix in the word actually means and I find it interesting, perhaps even a future career option, or major in college. This book made me think in different ways, ways that I never imagined to think of before; in one way, I may even say it changed my life in opening my mind to different outlooks on numerous topics such as prostitution and life insurance, to using seat belts and making
So though I do enjoy helping others, is it truly to help them, or my own ego, mindset, conscience? In the third chapter entitled ‘Unbelievable Stories about Apathy and Altruism,’ the first story is about a woman brutally murdered by her apartment and no one around; none of the numerous witnesses did anything to help this woman, or to stop what was going on. This sickens me. If one was to even help out in this situation, I wouldn’t even consider it altruistic; I’d consider it a moral duty. Unfortunately, I do not believe in anyone being simply altruistic, as much as I want to, and it’s sad. Humans are selfish animals. In this chapter, the authors write about an experiment done in a lab to see if altruism actually did exist by playing a game with money (a person was given a certain amount of money in which they had to split with somebody else). The average amount of money given away was twenty percent of their own, and although the scientists believe this to be an example of altruism, I have to disagree. I believe the people did that since it wasn’t their own money to spend in the first place—they hadn’t earned the money themselves, they were just receiving it, so why not give some away? Also, it would make themselves feel a little bit better; getting free money, it’s only fair to share some, correct? Their conscience came into