WTF?!

An Economic Tour of the Weird

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Never have I experienced such a mismatch between a book's presentation and content. As you can tell from the title, the tone is jocular. It's clearly meant to grab the casual reader. There are praising quotes on the back cover from Tim Harford, Steven D. Levitt, Steven E. Landsburg, and Andrie Sleifer, and I've heard of three of those guys. The author, Peter Leeson, is a Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason.

And although the book's subtitle is "An Economic Tour of the Weird", it's a very specific subset of weirdness: offbeat methods and customs in various societies and cultures, usually methods of legal dispute resolution. The author's unusual approach is to pretend he's a tour guide in a museum of oddities. Complete with a diverse group of attendees, who act as foils for his exposition. (E.g.: A woman who looks like Janeane Garafolo; a guy with a glass eye; a priest; a conventional economist he calls "Dr. Spock"). They leave comment cards at the end. The text is filled with personal anecdotes and jokes.

But shorn of all the frippery, the book is an examination of seemingly irrational legal customs, showing that they make a certain kind of rational sense, given the time, place, and underlying beliefs of the culture. For example, the notion of "ordeals", where a defendant whose guilt or innocence could not be established was required to perform a risky feat. For example: plucking a ring or stone out of a vat of boiling water. If wounds show three days later, you're guilty.

How could that be rational? No spoilers, but that chapter was adapted into a Reason article here.

Other topics: wife sales, suing vermin for damages, physical duels, gypsy taboos, cursing as a legal punishment, divination.

I'm sorry to say that, minus all Leeson's bells and whistles, I did not find the underlying topics that interesting. But I am neither a lawyer nor an economist.


Last Modified 2024-01-25 3:04 PM EDT