5 ms·

White collar criminal investigations and prosecutions have declined as counter-terrorism, drug, counter-espionage and politically motivated investigations have

White collar criminal investigations and prosecutions have declined as counter-terrorism, drug, counter-espionage and politically motivated investigations have (greatly) increased. Is it reasonable to expect the majority of people to act virtuously when doing so puts them at great disadvantage in an effectively unregulated environment? This is what Liv Boree might call a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and/or flourish. The private sector attempts to control its own. SCIP, the Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals, has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article. How many SCIP members adhere to that code is a separate question, one I'd rather not know the real answer to. Similarly, hiring managers and recruiters will sometimes interview for phantom job descriptions, the real goal being eliciting competitor information. Patriotism, religion, legalism, altruistic idealism... there's no shortage of things we can cling to when doing the right thing is difficult. But without accountability & enforcement, unrestrained competition makes unethical behavior almost appear to be a necessity. We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
<< has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article I can understand why. There is a lot of innocence that has been largely taken away from Americans. I want to say that prior to 1950 -- maybe even prior to 90s if you want to feel particularly charitable, there is a reasonable argument to be made, that an average American simply had no way of knowing a lot of the machinations behind the scenes. Things were largely under wraps, but between internet, 9/11 and resulting massive expansion of information sharing, IC size alone in terms of absolute numbers increased drastically. It is like being a teen and experiencing with your own eyes what 'adulting' is all about. Your perspective changes. << We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable. I agree. I am becoming increasingly concerned we don't really talk to one another. You can't solve anything if you don't talk to one another; not for long anyway. I like US. I want it to stay semi-nice place to live for my kids.
joe_the_user 3y ago
...a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and/or flourish It's either amusing or annoying that scenes like Effective Altruism may rediscover Karl Marx' analysis of capitalism in a partial, broken form but will never investigate progressive ideas as they stand.
- dymk 3y ago
  You really think they’re not aware of Marx?
- elcritch 3y ago
  Will they also redo the massive horrors relewsed on the world that Marxists did? Wait, FTX seems like a prime example. Capitalism in itself is incomplete, I believe it requires a strong moral principle in a populous to work well. Trying to shoehorn that moral basis into capitalism as Marx did just results in a very destructive system.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    Capitalism also kills a lot of people, but it has a better UX, as it mostly kills people that are invisible to us.
    - elcritch 3y ago
      Sure capitalism kills people, but not nearly the same order of magnitude. The worse cases of unbridled capitlaism killed far less than any one of worse cases of communism where we're talking to the tune of hundreds of millions. Then capitalism helped spawned things like the "green revolution" that prevented mass starvation across the globe since then.
      - maeil 3y ago
        The scientific consensus is that within a century unbridled capitalism will end up killing an order of magnitude more people than any other system ever did.
rcarr 3y ago
This is one of the root problems of Western society today and I think it has its origin in the financial crisis. The perpetrators got off scott free everywhere (except Iceland) and everyone who wasn’t a banker ended up paying the price. The other core component is economies completely dependent on house price rises rather than productive work. The result is a break down of trust, community and decent behaviour.
godelski 3y ago
Most people put their grocery carts back, stop at stop signs and lights at the middle of night on a lone road, and there's plenty of examples where people go out of their way to do the right thing. There's this common misconception that most people are act immorally but in reality the law is only written for the few. For a very clear example, I doubt murder rates would change were it not illegal. Most people don't want to kill and recognize it as intrinsically immoral. The problem is that we ignore normal behavior and this makes us overestimate abnormal behavior.
- corbulo 3y ago
  Your point is parallel to the ideas surrounding the realism of altruism. People return their shopping carts because its the right thing to do, but also there is minimal cost. As the cost ramps up the calculation for a 'selfless' act is effectively inverted to bias self interest instead. This is how you get the current state of the financial sector. Ironically altruism is so cynically dismissed that its actually used as a marketing strategy to pursue self interest, with no one bothering to disassemble it because no one believes thats the motivation anyway (see: subsidizing homeowners with bad credit using homeowners with good credit). Leaving the only people who do believe it functioning out of partisanship and lack of curiosity. 'Abnormal' behavior is exponential in its effects. Much like a fire, it only stops if contained. Thats why total laissez faire deregulation is naïve. Even if most people do the right thing, society is not silo'd from the minority who does the bad things.
  - stametseater 3y ago
    > People return their shopping carts because its the right thing to do, but also there is minimal cost. Apparently in some communities (such as Germany) it is believed that people cannot be counted on to return the shopping cart properly unless the cart holds a small value coin hostage. So the tolerated cost of selfless acts isn't some human constant, even in developed societies like Germany where people have their basic needs met. In fact it's even more complicated than that, because specific kinds of selfless acts have different degrees of perceived importance in different cultures. In some cultures, it's considered very important to feed your guests, even if that means the host has to go hungry. In other cultures, feeding your guests isn't important or expected, even from hosts with comfortable abundance.
thenerdhead 3y ago
This has been the case forever. Society's values ebb and flow. If we were in a society where values were held to a high regard, you might see different headlines like: "Failed actor takes on new role of regulating officials for financial gain". or even a few years earlier: "Selfish man vilifies volunteer firefighters in California for not doing enough to save his house".

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago

<< has a code of ethics that wouldn't approve of this article I can understand why. There is a lot of innocence that has been largely taken away from Americans. I want to say that prior to 1950 -- maybe even prior to 90s if you want to feel particularly charitable, there is a reasonable argument to be made, that an average American simply had no way of knowing a lot of the machinations behind the scenes. Things were largely under wraps, but between internet, 9/11 and resulting massive expansion of information sharing, IC size alone in terms of absolute numbers increased drastically. It is like being a teen and experiencing with your own eyes what 'adulting' is all about. Your perspective changes. << We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable. I agree. I am becoming increasingly concerned we don't really talk to one another. You can't solve anything if you don't talk to one another; not for long anyway. I like US. I want it to stay semi-nice place to live for my kids.

joe_the_user 3y ago

...a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and/or flourish It's either amusing or annoying that scenes like Effective Altruism may rediscover Karl Marx' analysis of capitalism in a partial, broken form but will never investigate progressive ideas as they stand.

dymk 3y ago
You really think they’re not aware of Marx?
elcritch 3y ago
Will they also redo the massive horrors relewsed on the world that Marxists did? Wait, FTX seems like a prime example. Capitalism in itself is incomplete, I believe it requires a strong moral principle in a populous to work well. Trying to shoehorn that moral basis into capitalism as Marx did just results in a very destructive system.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Capitalism also kills a lot of people, but it has a better UX, as it mostly kills people that are invisible to us.
  - elcritch 3y ago
    Sure capitalism kills people, but not nearly the same order of magnitude. The worse cases of unbridled capitlaism killed far less than any one of worse cases of communism where we're talking to the tune of hundreds of millions. Then capitalism helped spawned things like the "green revolution" that prevented mass starvation across the globe since then.
    - maeil 3y ago
      The scientific consensus is that within a century unbridled capitalism will end up killing an order of magnitude more people than any other system ever did.

rcarr 3y ago

This is one of the root problems of Western society today and I think it has its origin in the financial crisis. The perpetrators got off scott free everywhere (except Iceland) and everyone who wasn’t a banker ended up paying the price. The other core component is economies completely dependent on house price rises rather than productive work. The result is a break down of trust, community and decent behaviour.

godelski 3y ago

Most people put their grocery carts back, stop at stop signs and lights at the middle of night on a lone road, and there's plenty of examples where people go out of their way to do the right thing. There's this common misconception that most people are act immorally but in reality the law is only written for the few. For a very clear example, I doubt murder rates would change were it not illegal. Most people don't want to kill and recognize it as intrinsically immoral. The problem is that we ignore normal behavior and this makes us overestimate abnormal behavior.

corbulo 3y ago
Your point is parallel to the ideas surrounding the realism of altruism. People return their shopping carts because its the right thing to do, but also there is minimal cost. As the cost ramps up the calculation for a 'selfless' act is effectively inverted to bias self interest instead. This is how you get the current state of the financial sector. Ironically altruism is so cynically dismissed that its actually used as a marketing strategy to pursue self interest, with no one bothering to disassemble it because no one believes thats the motivation anyway (see: subsidizing homeowners with bad credit using homeowners with good credit). Leaving the only people who do believe it functioning out of partisanship and lack of curiosity. 'Abnormal' behavior is exponential in its effects. Much like a fire, it only stops if contained. Thats why total laissez faire deregulation is naïve. Even if most people do the right thing, society is not silo'd from the minority who does the bad things.
- stametseater 3y ago
  > People return their shopping carts because its the right thing to do, but also there is minimal cost. Apparently in some communities (such as Germany) it is believed that people cannot be counted on to return the shopping cart properly unless the cart holds a small value coin hostage. So the tolerated cost of selfless acts isn't some human constant, even in developed societies like Germany where people have their basic needs met. In fact it's even more complicated than that, because specific kinds of selfless acts have different degrees of perceived importance in different cultures. In some cultures, it's considered very important to feed your guests, even if that means the host has to go hungry. In other cultures, feeding your guests isn't important or expected, even from hosts with comfortable abundance.

thenerdhead 3y ago

This has been the case forever. Society's values ebb and flow. If we were in a society where values were held to a high regard, you might see different headlines like: "Failed actor takes on new role of regulating officials for financial gain". or even a few years earlier: "Selfish man vilifies volunteer firefighters in California for not doing enough to save his house".