Prompt
Look carefully at the question asked by Chapter 2 of Freakonomics: "How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real Estate Agents?" What do you think was the subject that started the process of research for this chapter? What topic do you think led Levitt and Dubner to the question asked by the chapter? Does the question solve a problem or raise an issue that readers care about? Why or why not?

When you reply to this discussion, you must do more than just answer those questions. You must explain your reasoning. Quote from the text as PART of your response, remembering to practice correct use of signal phrases and in-text citations.

Here is a sample response based on the question asked by Chapter 3 of Freakonomics, so that you can see what a complete response looks like:


In Chapter 3 of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner ask, "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" I think they are always interested in the book's main subject of incentives. However, it seems like they focus a lot of their interests on the subject of crime because criminals often have some kind of economic incentive for committing crimes, but they also tend to have complicated backstories. In this case, it seems like they focused on the topic of drug dealers and their lifestyle choices because they saw an opportunity to challenge a lot of common views about the drug trade. They explain that the lower level drug dealers take most of the risk but receive lower rewards. The "foot soldiers" (the people moving drugs and money on the streets, "earned just $3.30 an hour, less than minimum wage. So the answer to the original question—if drug dealers make so much money, why are they still living with their mothers?—is that, except for the top cats, they don't make much money. They had no choice but to live with their mothers. For every big earner, there were hundreds just scraping along" (Levitt & Dubner 93). To put it simply, drug dealers are often poor. I think Levitt and Dubner's question answers a question people may not realize that they care about what motivates drug dealers. They want to show that the conventional beliefs about why people sell drugs for money are more complicated and connected to concerns that really impact us all.