tauriner reviewed More sex is safer sex by Steven E. Landsburg
Don't worry about it
2 stars
I didn't actually finish this. And while I'm always game for a good counterintuitive argument, there are just too many bad ones here, where the author plays the contrarian for the sake of, well, just doing that, I guess. The problem with economics is that it's a pseudoscience in which creative thinkers gravitate toward conservative assumptions in order to extrapolate fanciful outcomes, while pretending all of it is ironclad, unassailable logic. Some of this might make for a pretty decent science fiction premise, but despite professing to represent reality, those assumptions really don't hold up well in 2025.
The attention-grabbing book title has a point, though, because better sex education, communication, and mental and physical support (healthcare, etc) is safer for society, and yet, somehow, Landsburg doesn't hit on any of that. Instead, the entire point is just encapsulated by a story about some guy (authorial self-insert perhaps) who probably …
I didn't actually finish this. And while I'm always game for a good counterintuitive argument, there are just too many bad ones here, where the author plays the contrarian for the sake of, well, just doing that, I guess. The problem with economics is that it's a pseudoscience in which creative thinkers gravitate toward conservative assumptions in order to extrapolate fanciful outcomes, while pretending all of it is ironclad, unassailable logic. Some of this might make for a pretty decent science fiction premise, but despite professing to represent reality, those assumptions really don't hold up well in 2025.
The attention-grabbing book title has a point, though, because better sex education, communication, and mental and physical support (healthcare, etc) is safer for society, and yet, somehow, Landsburg doesn't hit on any of that. Instead, the entire point is just encapsulated by a story about some guy (authorial self-insert perhaps) who probably should have banged his coworker because that would save her -- and presumably, society, somehow -- from potentially catching a venereal disease from a different, more sexually experienced guy. Okay. I decided to make a good economic decision and stop wasting my time on this book.