Freakonomics - The Documentary

"If you can understand what people's incentives are, you have a good chance of knowing how they're going to behave".

Those were the words of Steven Levitt who, along, with Stephen Dubner, wrote the book: 'Freakonomics'. It's hard to see what the general topic of this documentary was about, as you move along you begin to understand the words mentioned at the beginning of the documentary; its about incentives. Maybe it was just me not used to a certain theme being described at the beginning of every documentary. I like watching documentaries, whether they're about science, history, life, or economics. I think the best stories are told in the format of documentaries. This film portrays 4 different topics which revolve around the idea of incentives and shows how sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.

I never knew how a name could impact someones life so much. The movie shows a small story of a girl who was named 'Temptress' by mistake. She ended up doing everything wrong in life, the question asked 'was her name the cause of that?' It was interesting to see that names reflect peoples positions, class, and ethnicity of all things, among Americans (and probably other nations). Some people believe that if you had a name like Barbie or Cindy you could end up a striper; or if you had a name like Ashley or Sarah, you're most likely to be an upper class white woman. Did you know that there are 228 unique versions of the name 'Unique' amongst Americans? examples include: 'Uneek' 'Uneqqee' and 'Uneque'. What drives people to do that? What are their 'Incentives'?

With Sumo wrestling regarded as a very pure and holy sport, it seems to carry an image that is contrary to some of the match fixing scandals that go on unpunished. Japan apparently regards image very highly, to the point that police pick out the crimes they want to solve or not, sometimes covering up other crimes in order to keep the conviction rate up.

From talking about those issues all the way to paying students to get better grades, to teaching a child how to go 'pee-pee'. It was a very interesting watch. It makes me love documentaries all the more. The book and documentary truly depict 'The hidden side of everything'

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