Wut he said

CoyoteBlog on DeLong:

[This is] one of the most immoral statements I have read in a long time

Uhh...yeah...and it's thoroughly mistaken too.

The Laffer Curve is a graph of how to maximize tax revenue.  However, that's not what we want.  What we're really interested in...as anyone more intelligent than an average garden gnome should know...is maximizing social benefit.  Given that

(a) unless you work for the government, you have to make your money by trading with someone...exchanging value for value...And
(b) if you don't work for yourself...they pay you based on how much money they estimate you bring in (over long time frames)...
Therefore
(c) your working has created stuff with value greater than that of the forgone money.

If you want the welfare of the citizens, the goal should be to maximize the value created by the value-creators, not the tax-take.  Once one considers the value wasted on tax loopholes, and the foregone work...we note that the amount of value destroyed for the non-rich citizenry is substantially above the tax-take...at a rate of $2 or $3 per dollar taxed.

IIRC, I've linked Dan Mitchell here with the math before.

Annoyances

Ezra Klein is rather obtuse in multiple ways in this post of his:  There was a reason conservatives once supported the individual Mandate.  Rather obtuse.

1. Who is the brains behind the takedown of the individual Mandate?  Libertarians.  A Libertarian.  Randy Barnett, who was a flaming anarchist libertarian a while back, IIRC.  Conservative?  Not even close.  All the rest of it is culture war, with both liberals and conservatives switching sides.
2. Obamacare has a lot of parts, only one of which is the mandate.  The (cost-wise) worst part of Obamacare was the requirement to force people into the worst method known to man for containing health costs: government-subsidized first-dollar insurance.  Had Obamacare not effectively prohibited HSAs (from 2016), it would be just mostly hideous, but not deadly to the profile of health costs in the country.
3. As usual for liberals, EK dismisses the "Constitution of specific enumerated powers" line. 
4. Tax credit is nowhere near equivalent to the mandate.  Tax credit is hugely preferrable because it removes the single most distorting feature of the insurance market: the government tax subsidy for employer health purchases.
5. Tax credit is also nowhere near the Obamacare issue...individual tax credits allow HSAs...which could move to a sane health care system, where people only pay for stuff that's useful.

QoTD

Wow!  Long.  OMG!?!  Read, then think:

Yes, this is the standard story about the origins of China's growth. I refer to it myself my own recently-published book. But I also acknowledge—which these authors do not—that this emphasis on the role played by Deng Xiaoping in essentially mandating a new institutional structure for a country of 1 billion people is highly contested. 

An alternative and very persuasive story about the origins of China’s development is that, during the two years of near-anarchy that prevailed in China in the two years after Mao’s death, but before Deng’s ascent, peasants abandoned collectivized agriculture and embraced household and market-based approaches—reforming the system on their own. Into this new reality stepped Deng Xiaoping, who had risen to power once before, in 1962, following the catastrophic failure of an effort at the mass collectivization of agriculture cruelly named "The Great Leap Forward." (When I say catastrophic, that's what I mean: 20 million people died.) What was Deng Xiaoping going to do at that point? Deploy the army to reinstate a system that had already been abandoned? Or simply validate the “facts on the ground” as national policy? Proponents of this view argue that he chose the second of the two options. (See great books by Yasheng Huang and Kellee Tsai for more on this topic; also an as yet unpublished draft by Iqbal Quadir.)

Did he just say that we think that *not only* was China's growth caused purely by decentralized capitalism, but that that policy had NOTHING to do with the leaders?  It was accomplished by the people, while the leaders were looking the other way?  The uneducated peasants of China changed China's growth rate, and the Leaders followed, because they didn't have any other decent choices?  Chinese leaders aren't responsible for a damn thing there, except the screwups?  Or did I misread that?

I find that model very easy to believe.  One more stake in enlightened leaders theory.

Rhyme oTD

Landsburg finds it.  Long link chain over there:

There once was an X from place B,
Who satisfied predicate P,
The X did thing A,
In a specified way,
Resulting in circumstance C.

Assorted links

• Paging Roissy.  We need snark and gloating, now!
• Paging Sailer.  We need less legalistic language.
• Really good discussion from Sarah Hoyt, objecting to Marxist-class/gender analysis.(HT: Insty)
• Reason on beating poverty, worldwide, with anti-communist snark for free.
• Sarah Kliff pointing out something good (the only thing?) that ACA was trying to do.  Apparently they were to some extent trying to move to the 2nd best health-care approach.

In the future that is now

• Sebastian Marshall here.  Life 10 ago?  How different in daily content.  
• And via Klein, this statistic.  Nearly frightening.

Limiting Principle

While you could go read staid and sober analyses and critiques of the mad scramble to find a limiting principle, say at Volokh, I found it ever so much more fun to read RWCG today, mocking mercilessly various brands of idiocy.  You should read it all...I would have said some of the same things (indeed my thoughts on screw-it-up-first were identical, upon reading Yglesias), but not as well as he did.

QoTD

Jehu's title:

The universal cry:  Structure the Status Rules Such That I Rank Higher.

The post is worth reading as well.
If you assume all political discourse...birth-control mandates or anti-immigrationism...sums to this, you're not far off.

On Conservativism

ImNotHerzog links to and comments on Nathan Schlueter on "Why I am not a Conservative".  There is a strong response from Nikolai Wenzel...but it's rather opaque...not said properly for the average listener...apparently his very powerful answers were lost on ImNotHerzog.

Before addressing Nathan's post, there are three insuperable reasons why pro-government conservativism (as understood by Schlueter and is confused.

1. Deep epistemic uncertainty.  Do you know what's right or wrong?  Best or not?  No you don't.  You can't.  Full stop.  You can guess, and I can guess.  You can make estimates and I can make estimates.  Eventually, anyone addressing the issue intelligently and meta-ly enough concludes that we have, at best, educated guesses...and any case where other intelligent, seemingly honest people disagree makes our certainty plummet like a rock.  Hume won this discussion 250 years ago...and hasn't even been seriously challenged since (except by folks who say Hume wasn't strong enough).  Certainty is an emotion, not a truth-assessment.  (I'm happy to meta-out on this...I can play in this space probabilistically, and certaintists simply cannot).  If you don't know what's correct, you are stupid enforcing your low-probability guess on others.  However...I could tenatively entertain the position that for folks less intelligent than Socrates...fundamental unknowability is an unreachable position, as it contradicts their feelings and interests too strongly.  The conservative position is very strongly an "I know" position, in the face of strong disagreements.  That's an automatic bouncer-ejection at the disco of ideas.  "Next?"  Natural rights theorizing, by the way, loses here rather badly.
2. Methodological Individualism.  Good must have a predicate.  "Good for whom."  And the whom must be an individual.  If the conservative wishes to speak coherently...they need to say "good for everyone" ... or they need to say good for 3/4 of the people in the group, but really crappy for the other 1/4th.  Or good for all the germans and bad for all the jews.  The notion of the common good is, in theory "good for everyone", and in practice, good for some of us who are making the argument.  I don't object to "good for every individual" lines.  I do object to anything the conservatives advocate as being good for every individual.  Rather, basically all positions (by roughly everyone) are good for some and bad for others.  Talking about the common good is an attempt to shortcut this awareness.  Let's say things are good for the group, and ignore the members of the group, or members outside the group who are just getting reamed.
3. Feedback systems.  All good solutions arrive evolutionarily.  Solution 1...crappy.  Solution 2...better.  Solution 3...worse.  Solution 857...pretty good.  Any system wherein the evolution of the system is retarded sucks over time.  Allow change = win.  Force change = lose.  Prevent change = lose huge.

As to Nathan's argument....it's ignoring most of the important issues.  The ones above are the big ones, even though he thinks he's addressing them.  Let's take it point by point.

Point 1:

“The Founders of the American political order were libertarian.” Although the American Founders believed in limited government, they were not libertarian.

Basically True.  The US was founded by a mix of people, some libertarian, some conservative, some egalitarian.  Whichever side you're on, you tend to play up the tendencies of the founders towards your side, and play down the tendencies of the founders towards other sides.  Libertarians do it, and conservatives do it.  Progressives too, but less so.

Point 2:

American conservatism seeks to conserve the principles of justice that lie at the root of the American political order, what might be called Natural Law Liberalism.

This is largely bullshit.  Some conservatives seek to preserve Natural Law Liberalism because it advances their other goals.  Also, NLL is epistemologically broken.

Point 3:

Every human association, whether a marriage, business partnership, or sports team, has a common good, or why would it exist?

1.  See above.  

2.  Every human association that is voluntarily entered into joins together for a purpose that many in the group share at various levels, intensities, and strengths in comparison to competing purposes.  Fortunately, most groups are voluntary, and people can exit when the goals the group pursues don't match the goals of the individual.  A nation just isn't like that.  And neither is a family.  In neither case is membership  a choice for many/most of the participants.

Point 4:

The argument, “We don’t know what is right or wrong, therefore it is wrong to do x,” is obviously invalid

Person A and Person B disagree over what is good.  Person A and Person B cannot know who is right.  Person A therefore uses force to stop person B from doing something that doesn't otherwise impact Person A.  A is obviously unjustified.  Epistemelogical claim about ethics creates epistemological conclusion, not moral conclusion.  Sloppy thinking, or Straw man...you decide. 

Point 5:

Nathan drops back to his "knowledge" of natural law, and disagrees without arguing against the libertarian position.  I see no argument, just assertion.

point 6:

Aretae's Summary:  In fact, virtue cannot be coerced is false by the evidence.

Ok.  

Point 7:

Conservatives value the free market as much as libertarians,

Bullshit.  Pardon the french.  The free market is fundamentally about unpredictable unplanned, un-knowable outcomes.  Which is precisely what the conservatives are trying to prevent.  Free markets are about process.  Conservatives are about outcome (in many areas).  In those areas, free markets are unacceptable  

Point 8:

The only alternative to libertarianism is totalitarianism. This is a false dilemma.

Mostly true.  Argued much better by Will Wilkinson, liberaltarian, in a dozen places over the last 10 years.

Point 9:

Un-quoteable.  What is human nature?  Conservatives & Libertarians have different conceptions.  And the conservative one is better.

Yes they do, and no it's not?  Public Choice + Real, honest disagreement causes real problems for the conservative case here.  It actually mitigates strongly against point 8.

Point 10:

Standard conservative line about Liberty != freedom.

Horsepuckey.  There is no content to this assertion, when you dig down besides I want to stop you from doing X.  The Spanish proverb says it best:  "And God said: Take what you want; And pay for it".  Liberty and Freedom are identical.  Of course if you hallucinate that you "know" the truth, you could probably believe otherwise.

Epistemology, taken seriously, does big damage to the conservative position.  There are conservative responses in the epistemology space...but they land awful close to a libertarian politics.

Lots of good content

• McArdle discusses issues related to index-investing in response to Timothy Lee.  The same ones that have been discussed in the more general epistemological context here.  Rough issue:  If everyone indexes, the strategy fails.  If anyone doesn't index, they have a lower EV than the indexers.  Same picture as we contrarians...we contrarians are wrong a lot more than the average social epistemologist...but if there were only social epistemologists and no contrarians, we'd all be screwed.
• Wilkinson is excellent here discussing the faux-equivalence between conservatives and pro-liberty positions.  He especially attacks claims about hypocricy.  In complete agreement, ImNotHerzog finds and elaborates on anti-libertarian conservativism.  I'll have a lot to say about ImNotHerzog's line in a further post.
• Zwolinski has a great property rights dilemma.
• On democracy in California.

Corporate governance

Yglesias explains corporate governance models well:

In theory, the shareholders of a company control it. In practice, a board of directors tends to operate as a self-perpetuating oligarchy that's closely aligned with incumbent managers. There are some specific elements of American law that lead that to be the case, but the larger issue is that it's intrinsically much simpler for shareholders to express dissatisfaction through "exit" (i.e., sell your shares) than through "voice" (i.e., change the Board of Directors). 

THe BBdM model of coalitions screwing everyone else seems to hold in corporations just as well as it does elsewhere. How shocking.

On the Constitution

Sonic Charmer rightly castigates/ EK regarding his can't afford health-care-drift line.  SC:

I am trying to be as neutral as possible in saying that: constitutionality is just not something they care about. What they care about are (what they think or at least pretend to think will be) cost savings, getting a ‘comprehensive system’ in place, and that sort of thing. They DO NOT CARE whether what they seek and hope for and argue for is constitutional. 

I completely agree.  100%.  And neither does anyone else.  The constitution is being used as a weapon by conservatives against liberals because they can on the Obamacare issue.  And on the gun issue.  On the other hand, it was used the other direction on prayer in schools.  And on flag burning.  And more or less by the libertarians on almost all topics....bceause we don't (any of us) care about what the constitution says.  We care about getting things to work our way.  The constitution is sometimes strong support...and sometimes in the way.  Usually, the constitution is a bolstering argument for the libertarian vision (It was written by folks whose views count as mostly libertarian today)...and so libertarians usually like it.  However, libertarians don't (usually) fall in the reverentialist camp...we fall in the pro-liberty camp...and the constitution is an argument that other people pretend to care about when it suits them...so we call out their hypocricy.  If it ever made a strong anti-libertarian argument...we'd drop it like a hot potato.

But I agree that that liberals don't give a **** about the constitution.  And  neither does anyone else.

Health Care Drift

Ezra Klein titles a post "We can't afford another 18-year health-care drift".  While Sonic Charmer has a great response...I'd like to address that later.  Rather...just a quick response to Ezra.

What we can't afford is another 18 years of heavy government intervention in health care.  In the last 18 years, we managed a lot of correction to the idiotic system of employer-sponsored insurance, and moved towards a sane model of paying for services.  Recollect...from worst to best in order of cost efficient large systems, the order is:

Private, employer provided tax-subsidized health insurance paying first-dollar for services.
Public single payer.
HMO/Kaiser/Germany Doctor incentives.
HSA/Catastrophic or Singapore.

Roughly, each system is 4% of GDP average costs below the prior one.

Obamacare wants to lock in the worst possible system.
The Single Payer advocates want to lock in the 2nd worst system.
I'd like to stop distorting the market with tax incentives for the worst choices, and allow a market to work.  I looked into insurance in '05...then worked for Blue Cross for 3 years after that.  My conclusion:  If you're in the USA, and you're NOT doing a HSA with catastrophic insurance, you're crazy  (or your employer sucks).  There are exactly zero benefits to normal insurance as compared to HSA/Catastrophic...and quite a few negatives.  I had an HSA when working for Blue Cross, before and since.  It's nuts not to.

Even more interestingly to EK's quote...HSAs appeared during that 18-year drift.  The only good idea in medical financing since the 80s...and they (until Obamacare made rules illegalizing them) were growing like gangbusters, because it's a damn good idea.  So...PLEASE let us have another 18 year health care drift.  We MIGHT reach a point where medicine is approached sanely.

UPDATE:  Oh...and in case you didn't know...every dollar spent by an employer on health care reduces the employee's wages by the same amount.  Let's all get poorer by getting better health coverage.

Reblogged QoTD

I've been trying to convey this idea for some years now, but this quote, today reblogged shamelessly from Boudreaux, is magnificent:

There can be no capitalism, as distinguished from select capitalist practices, without a culture of capitalism, and there is no culture of capitalism until the principal forms of traditional society have been challenged and overcome.  But it must be said – and is not often enough said – that the mores of a more traditional organization of society do not die out with the dominance of capitalism.  Rather, they regroup to fight again with new leaders and new causes.  Any history of capitalism must contain the shadow history of anticapitalism, sometimes carried out in the name of a new theory, but often as a reexpression of values that prevailed before the eighteenth century.  -- Joyce Appleby 

Read Stuff, you should

Freako-stats on immigration.  If you haven't been reading Garth for a while, you might ought to consider backing up and trying to read several of his other posts before jumping into this one.  This has lots of hot button comments...and becoming familiar with his method of analysis first seems like a wise position.

PoTD

Scott Adams sounds like me.  HT:  Commenter Joseph.

Tetrahedral Politics part III

I read at least 2 analyses smarter than mine today...and maybe 3, plus a very good one yesterday.  Two were by Jon Haidt in his book.  One comment by Orphan Wilde at his blog.  Yesterday, another smart comment here grew into a post at Perfidy's..

Because you can read Perfidy and Orphan at their places, I'll just point out what Haidt said:

1.  There are 3 deep foundations for morality:
A.  Individualistic -- We are all individuals.
B.  Communitarian -- We are first parts of a community, and 2nd individuals
C.  Divine -- We are first of all vessels that the divine animates

I personally live and breathe A...and I'm pretty sure it's genetic.  Certainly my mom and my youngest son live there as well.  Everyone else in my family to a lesser extent, but the 3 of us (mom, son, me) are ready to pull out the drones for that proposition.  I encountered position B in Europe in 1993/4, trying to explain American libertarians to communitarians in Europe...and hitting a conceptual, non-language barrier.  The notion "Community is a convenient, sometimes useful fiction...it is JUST individuals" did not compute at all...it was too foreign.  I ranted about the difference in perspective for years after that.  I don't understand C, and as far as I can tell, I am incapable of understanding C.

 So long as you treat humans as atomic units...one ethics falls out (Harm/Care, Fairness, Liberty/Oppression).  Indeed, libertarians like me are effectively moral dwarfs because we bail mostly on Harm/Care and Fairness/Cheating as well, and live exclusively in the political realm of Liberty/Oppression ... but it turns out (unsurprisingly) we live very strongly in the moral realm of liberty/oppression as well, and are relatively unimpressed by either fairness or harm/care claims, as compared to anyone else.  

On the other hand, if you treat people as first units in a community (I am not, dammit), then the next 2 tribalist ethical lines fall out pretty quickly.  Authority/subversion and Loyalty/betrayal are huge here.  Community-first-ers automatically see them...and individual-first-ers automatically are blind.  More likely...folks with strong authority and loyalty receptors drift towards a communitarian view, and folks with weak authority & loyalty receptors drift individualist.

Divinity-approaches also include strong components of the sanctity/degradation ethic.  While I have huge disgust responses to food and bodily fluids...I think I'm nearly entirely free of them with respect to other stuff.    Which makes religion in general very emotionally flat to me, as it's primary added appeal is to the disgust/sanctity/degradation ethic.

Aside...this makes hbdchick's obsession with inbreeding/genetic stock ever so interesting.  America (and Australia)  were founded by the folks who couldn't fit in with authority, and so the american people's natural constitution should be measureably different than that of those who stayed behind (on the authority/subversion and loyalty/betrayal lines).  Also...the nuclear family structure of specifically Anglo- culture led to the strongest pro-liberty line in all of humankind.  Asians and americans of other european, ( especially scandinavian) descent should like the authority model a lot better.

Remember...conclusions come first...reasons come second.  If you have strong moral tendencies in any direction, you tend strongly to reach the conclusions that match your tendencies. Your brain is good at finding reasons...and higher IQ doesn't help you find contrary reasons at all.  As far as we can tell, IQ purely for ex-post-facto justification of preferences.

2nd Law

Aretae's 2nd law, that is.  Wealth is the only social metric.

It's beginning to annoy me the modern discussions of Marriage failure, slut shaming, etc...as if we can fix stuff.  See Susan Walsh today, for instance.

Economics drives it.  Marriage is a tool used by farmers to manage their economic interests.  In the event that the farmer economic model dies (It's 3/4 dead, in case you haven't noticed), there is no reason whatsoever to assume that what follows will bear substantial resemblance to the marriage model we're used to.  Last non-farmer model we have to go off was 10K years ago, and we can't ask them.  Slut shaming? Whatever...applies to farmers.

The future will be weird.  How it'll be weird is non-obvious right now.  Trying to preserve the farmer culture that you know, even though it fits the future world as well as horses and buggies?  Good example of classic conservativism, coupled with a human inability to understand that things don't have to be the way they are now.

Term oTD

HADD -- Hyperactive Agency Detection Device -- HT: Cowen.  Think about it.

Shoes review

So...around a year (year and a half?) ago, I started wearing barefoot shoes.  More or less, in the last year and a half, I haven't worn any other kind of shoe, and I've tried 5 pair of shoes, from 3 manufacturers.  Not only that, but my 15yo kid also hasn't worn any other kinds of shoes in the last 9 months, since I loaned him mine, and his feet stopped giving serious pain at basketball practice.  He's about the same shoe size, so we've done a fair bit of swapping shoes.

I've worn:

Vivobarefoot Evo
Softstar Runamoc LITE original 5mm (Hiking) sole -- x2
Softstar Runamoc Dash 2mm (Street) sole
Zem Playa Roundtoe Lo


For the last year, my work-shoe (I wear a suit to teach in) has been the Runamoc Dash.
I've also tried on, but not purchased
Merrill Barefoot shoe
Nike Free
One of the Sanuk shoes.

If I were picking just on what the most fun to wear is?  I easily pick the Zem Playa.  I have a minor issue with insufficient toe splay in those, but I love the shoe...it's been my go-to for a good 6 months now.  Of course, it was starting to fall apart after 1.5 months, and had identifiable holes after 2...but I still love the shoe...and I can get away with that in California as a hippy.  My wife has also been wearing these (Zem Ninja Hi), and loves them as well.  It's a nylon sock with a tough sole, so you can walk on concrete and not tear the sock.

The softstar shoes:  More durable, could wear this shoe forever:  I much prefer the thinner sole.  After a year and a half in barefoot shoes, 5mm is just way too thick.  You don't feel the ground the same way.  But the runamoc LITEs I had originally just died.  9 months of heavy (daily) use, and they had small holes in several places.  Light leather just doesn't hold up to hard use (Hiking, running with children).  Go figure.   Also...I've been wearing the more professional looking softstar for almost a year now, and they still look good.  No heavy usage, but much nicer on my feet than other shoes when I'm standing, talking all day.

The Evo:  Not really in the same category.  Very rigid sole, but still very thin (5mm?) and very flat.  My kid took the inner shoe out, and now has a mesh rubber shoe-shell that is really quite nice as a working barefoot tennis shoe.  He does basketball practice in those just fine.  They slip on and off easier than any of the others (that's funny talking about the Zem's, but true)...and so I wear these if I am going out of the house for a few seconds, then coming back.

Merrill Barefoot?  I put them on, and felt off-balance for the whole time I was wearing them.  They built the sole of the shoe to match the normal moon-shaped foot-ground-contact area, which constantly gave my legs a tilting-inward feel.  I didn't like it.

Nike Free.  Pure marketing when I looked.  It doesn't even resemble a barefoot shoe.

Sanuks?  Do you like Homeless Beach Bum chic?  Might be a good shoe.  I don't know...that ain't my style.

My next purchase WAS going to be the Vivobarefoot Ra...but during the production of this post, I just discovered www.theprimalprofessional.com.  That might be my new goal...but it's price competitive with the god of barefoot dress shoes: www.flexiblefootwear.com dress shoe.  If anyone wants to donate so I can review, I'll set up a tip jar next week.

Term of the Day

Buried in a long post discussing all sorts of things...Alrenous pulls out a Nick Szabo insult that I like a great deal:  Hello Kitty People.  I quote:

Human trust requires being able to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys." That only occurs among people who know each other well (and otherwise, in fiction). People who have gotten a close look underneath often misleading robes. For every other kind of relationship we depend on those loathsome processes and rules, as objective as possible. Whether we like to admit it or not, and we usually don't. And the people who don't are proud to say so. They sound like much more agreeable people if they just trust everybody, and expect everybody to trust them, regardless of how well they know or are known. Call them the Hello Kitty people. Until proven otherwise, each and every one of the six-plus billion people on the planet are angelic and adorable fuzzballs who can be fully trusted by everyone. Until disillusioned, Hello Kitty people purr with content. And thereby they come across as the most adorable of us all. As opposed to computer programmers or lawyers with our cold hard rules.

The Hello Kitty people are those teenagers who put their personal lives on MySpace and then complain that their privacy is being violated. They are the TV viewers who think that the Hurricane Katrina rescue or the Iraq war were screwed up only because we don't, they belatedly discover, have actual Hello Kitties in political power. When inevitably some of world's Kitties, unknown beyond their cute image, turn out to be less than fully trustworthy, the chorus of yowling Kitty People becomes unbearable cacophony. 

Please begin using it.

QoTD

From Haidt's book.

Context:  Experiment -- David Perkins -- gives complex issue:
"Please write down your initial judgement"
"Please write down all the reasons for and against your initial judgement".

Result 1. School utterly useless for teaching reasoning.  IQ does 100% of the lifting.  School identifies high IQ.
Result 2. Money quote

[IQ] predicted only the number of my-side arguments.  Smart people make really good lawyers and press secretaries, but they are no better [ed: emphasis added] than others at finding reasons on the other side.

Did you hear that?  Smart people justify better, they don't find truth better.  I wanted to bold, caps, italicize, change font size, and blink...but I refrained.  The other side is not bad.  The other side is not the problem.  Your reasons are not about finding truth.  Repeat the Litany of Cowen 100x.

Jon Haidt's new book -- pre-review

The Righteous Mind is the title.  I haven't finished it...but I have roughly 3 lines of summary.
0.  5 stars.
1.  He writes a lot better, and cites evidence tremendously better than I do.
2.  He doesn't say much about psychology or moral that hasn't been said on this blog.
3.  David Hume is still the smartest person of the past 500 years (Maybe in all of history?).  Every new comment I read about Hume increases my respect for his analysis.  How the F*** did he come up with all his ideas before Evolution or Bayesian analysis had been discovered? This because Haidt references Hume several times on the topic of emotion. Roughly:  Hume was right in 1775...and we're catching up to him now.
4.  If you're not appropriately chastized by the Litany of Tyler Cowen (As a good rule of thumb just imagine that every time you are tell yourself a good versus evil story, you are basically lowering your IQ by 10 points or more.), you need to read this book to become more chastized.

Tetrahedral politics again again

If my commentariat wasn't so damned smart, I wouldn't have to re-address the issue.

Rephrase 3 axes:

• Libertarian:  Freedom is an essential end-in-itself.  
• Progressive:  Help those who are unable to help themselves
• Conservative:  Don't break what works. (And you're not that smart)

Updating position 4 -- name contest:

• Agent-ist (Directorial, leaderist, ...?):  (some) Human beings should decide the results.

Perfidy very intelligently pointed out there was a positive spin on what I was previously calling fascist...I had been calling it fascist because that was the nicest name I could think of for the position.  His spin on the fascist take was that it is largely a moldbuggian pro-order position.  I don't buy it.  Orderliness is simply the extension of the conservative line.  There's something more going on.

Alrenous chimed in with the point that it's not just pro-order, it's human-directed pro-order.  My intent with the 4th position is to point out that the progressive and the pro-government line are completely separate lines, that happen to fall together.  Similarly, there's clearly a difference between Conservative Gingrich (mostly a neo-con) and the Conservative Pauls (mostly a libertarian).  Just as similarly, there's a BIG distinction between liberal Paul Romer and liberal Al Franken.  Clearly both sets are on the same axes (conservative or progressive), but with different elements of other topics.

Further, I want to call out that these axes are mostly orthogonal (should be a tesseract then, not a tetrahedron. ED: will the peanut gallery please shut up!)  What do you call a good Mormon homeschool mom who volunteers at the soup kitchen?  Conservative Progressive. Paul Romer?  Libertarian Conservative.  Al Franken?  Corrupt Progressive Agent-ist.  Perfidy?  Conservative Libertarian Agent-ist.  Romney or Clinton?  Pure Agentist (and it should be him).  Aretae?  Agressively anti-agentist libertarian with both conservative and progressive sympathies..

One more point in favor of Aretaevian meta-epistemology:   The internet is smarter than you are for all U's.

Drug War / Crime / Testosterone

I hid it in the comments, but have to bring out one major factor left out:

Crime is caused FIRST by excesses of testosterone...and second by everything else.

By an insane margin...the best measure you can make to determine if someone will cause violence to another human being is to measure their gender and age.  Men between 15 and 30 are dangerous.  Other human beings are not.  I'd wager that you can do better by taking blood testosterone level...but that's my (moderately educated) guess, not scientific fact.

Patience (should we call it IC: Impulse Control?), IQ, and Conscientiousness are far behind...and I think in that order, but I'm not strictly certain that Conscientiousness loses to IQ in crime-prediction.

Indeed...I'm moving towards the position that if you want to predict anything about a person, the first thing you should measure is their blood testosterone level.  It will tell you more than any other single measurement (top 5 competitors: IQ, patience, conscientiousness, resilience, self-efficacy).

FWIW:  This is a free thesis to an aspiring HBDish social scientist.

Tetrahedral politics again

My assertion for the near-4 years of this blog's existence has been that politics has 3 active poles...folks chasing "the good".  My assertion now is that there are four...and I've as-of-yet been unable to provide a civilized treatment of the 4th pole.  On the 3 poles, however, I am personally of the opinion that anyone NOT acknowledging (a) that the two poles they don't primarily favor are both important/essential goods, and (b) that their ideological opponents are often pursuing a very important good mostly have their heads stuck up someplace dark and smelly.

The poles:

• Libertarian:  Freedom is an essential end-in-itself.  
• Progressive:  Help those who are unable to help themselves
• Conservative:  Don't break what works. (And you're not that smart)
• Fascist: More central control/direction is better.

Of course, in real life, no one argues along the positions, but rather tribally.  Even so...the positions are important when understanding things.  

Largely....the Progressive is constitutionally opposed to the Conservative....with the Conservative attempting to preserve what is working, and the Progressive identifying what is NOT working, and attempting to fix it.

It is basically universally true that the progressive is always right that there are parts that are not working, that are blatantly unfair to some group...and that if we could banish the problem, changing nothing else, things would be better.

It is basically also universally true that the conservative is always right also that there is no ability to banish problems ceteris paribus.  Things will change...and that will break other things that used to work...and some things will get worse.

It is also universally true that as a tribal call-to-battle..."tradeoffs are hard" kinda sucks...and so while that's the correct thinking-discussion in all cases...roughly 10 people in the country are discussing it that way.

Similarly, the libertarian is constitutionally opposed to the Fascist.  And the fascists are always wrong. (see my even-handedness there.  I simply cannot wrap my brain around the fascist position.  Other people are morons is the primary progressive-fascist line [Krugman].  God told me the good is the primary conservative-fascist line [Santorum].  But talk fascist positions very long [~15 seconds], and I start fantasizing about DIY quad-rotor assassin-drones in the tradition of Unintended Consequences.)

Speaking of politicians ... at this point...our presidential race comes down to:

Obama -- Fascist Progressive

Santorum -- Fascist Conservative

Gingrich -- Fascist Conservative-leaning

Romney -- Pure Fascist

And my only strong political position is that I am violently opposed to fascism.  Hmm.

Pro-Drug war

I am a firm opponent of the drug war.  However...it's not wise to argue against a topic without being able to articulate the best case from the opposition.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

People vary across many dimensions.  Among the measured, well known, stable factors on which people vary are:

Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Patience (ability to delay gratification)
IQ

Given the reality of bell curves, we can construct (or find in the wild) a person with average patience, conscientiousness, and IQ.  In the event that said person encounters an addictive substance, be it Marijuana, Cocaine, or Meth, that person's ability to live a productive, happy life will be seriously impaired.  As a means by which to support peoples' long term happiness, we as a society need to keep drugs illegal, so as to prevent long-term-bad-for-the-individual actions.

The normal response to the above is that while it might be true, it applies just as well to Tobacco, Alcohol, and in the limit case, maybe even sugar.  Of course this is true.  However, practicality intervenes.  The argument, as presented above, applies relatively equally well to both tobacco and alcohol.  In the case of tobacco, we as a society are moving in the direction of illegalizing it, even though to a significant extent, our country was founded using Tobacco profits.  This correctly brings tobacco it into line with our other drug policy.  In the case of alcohol, while it's hard to make any case at all suggesting that alcohol is either less damaging or less addictive than other substances...we've tried alcohol prohibition, and given the fact that the average person in our culture drinks...it is impracticable.  It would take a 100 year culture war, and we've yet to find a way to do that effectively.  Not only that, the abolitionists acted too early, failed, and we'd have to deal with the fallout from their failure.  Not worth it, even if theoretically wise.  Illegal drugs, on the other hand, are consumed regularly by very few people...with the exception of cannabis, drug usage is very low through the country.  Hence... while we'd like to prohibit alcohol as well, our 2nd best, and only realistic preference is to just prohibit all the other drugs.

The average person (or perhaps slightly subaverage on one of the 3 big success factors: conscientiosness, patience, IQ...which is true of most people), when exposed to drugs, has a worse life.  To the extent that we socially make choices, it is 100% appropriate to tilt the playing field so that said average person makes the choice that they would prefer in the long-term, given all the real consequences, and including Kahnemanian limitations.  Illegalize the stuff for a Sunstein/Thaler nudge.  It's sad that we don't have any more effective tools than outright prohibition for the purpose of said nudge...but we don't.

In addition, it's well known that the average low IQ, low Patience, low Conscientiousness person...the same person that is likely to be arrested (caught) for drug use is also the person most likely to commit more serious crimes.  While granted the fidelity of the process is imperfect, and some largely innocent folks are caught in the net as well, the drug war effectively serves as pre-emptive crime detection.  Arrest those people who are otherwise likely to be serious criminals, and crime will fall.

The drug war is therefore the best policy for the average citizen.  It unfortunately sweeps up a few folks who are otherwise harmless...but as a cost of making a safer, more productive society, you don't get much better.

Book Review: Mokyr

The Lever of Riches is the title, Joel Mokyr is the author.

Summary:  Wealth is very important.  All of human wealth that we can measure is a result of innovation.  What causes innovation?  Hmm.  That's a very hard, very complex topic.  Any single answer fails on the evidence.  However, there appear to be combinations of answers that work.  However, of everything else, the Mancur Olson (Mokyr uses different words, Aretae connects the dots) response is perhaps the largest part.   Innovation occurs when the existing powers are unable to stop it, and fails if the existing powers have the ability to stop it.  The English vs. Continental vs. Chinese vs. Japanese vs. Islamic experiences with the industrial revolution.  English had one, because the existing powers were not strong enough to stop the influx of technology.  On the continent, the existing powers were strong enough to delay it, until the competition between England and other nations forced their hands.  In China, Japan, and the Islamic world, the existing powers were very strong, there was no competition, and the revolution never happened.

The line...innovate or become dirt-eating peasants again (in many years).  And the only way to do that is to stop the central authorities who will inevitably stop innovation.  Olson's line is even stronger...there is no way to stop the innovation brakes...so what you need is a fractured system that allows innovation to move elsewhere.  LaTNB or die.

The perfect arc:  Microsoft.  Innovate, while dodging IBM's attempt to stop them.  Become an existing power-player.   Use patents, litigation, bullying, trolling to try to prevent anyone else from dislodging them.

2 thumbs up for a serious analysis of a complex topic.  Required reading if you're sitting in any of the single-factor explanation camps, be that de Soto, Clark, or Diamond.

Advertisement for Homeschooling

I was contacted about a homeschooling infographic, and asked to evaluate it.  I like it a lot.  They've given me an embed-code...so...here it is.
Created by: College At Home

PoTD

You should read Alrenous today.  His thinks are good...I'm not certain that I agree, but it's a righteous cogitation.

Social Realities

How much of your income is due to you, and how much is due to the culture/time you live in?  By my count...the ratio is about 1000:1, in favor of the culture.  Western capitalism has created nearly uncountable improvements in the lives of the average human being, and for every person on the planet living above dirt-farmer subsistence wages (every single human in Europe, Australia, the Americas, or capitalist East Asia, as well as most people in most of the rest of the world )...the existence of Western capitalism is 99.9% of the reason they have the standard of living that they do.

So...by "fairness standards" (not that this is the relevant decision index...just addressing it directly)...how should the proceeds of wealth be divided...given that labor is replaceable.  I mean...it's pretty obvious that Bill Gates (probably, even given patent/copyright bullshit) is and will be over time responsible for FAR more human Quality of Life than his meager Billions represent. Ditto Brin, Bezos, Jobs, etc.

Roughly...we're all trememndously lucky f**k's who got born in the right place at the right time (at least, compared to all of history.  Yet to see how the future holds up...I am strongly inclined to predict continued growth, as I have in the past.)

At the same time...in terms of actual material wealth...it is awful close to the case where it takes ~4% of our population to create all of our material wealth (industry and agriculture)...and probably another 2-10% to handle the software.  10% of the population as usefully productive...with 90% not.  Due entirely to technological improvement .  What is the fair distribution of wealth?

The negative income tax is looking more and more like a good/fair/just thing.  I personally like Kling's formulation, which is something like:  40% flat tax rate (incl. Soc. Sec/etc.), with a $15k flat deduction per person.  Negative owed is paid.... single person with no job makes $6k/year.  Family of four with no income makes $24k.     Family of 4 with 1 working parent making $60k/y pays no taxes.  Family of 4 making $40K pays no taxes, gets $8k extra.

Aretae's model is that we don't (in ideal state) pay for children...we pay for adults who are citizens, and citizenship by blood only.  The Aretae model says 40% flat tax, with a deducation of $25k per adult...giving an unemployed adult an income of $10k/y.  Kids are not paid for...pure cost on the adults...amazing how that changes the incentives.  And the deduction should vary to give revenue neutral budgets.

A turning tide

There a whole pile of posts (example) recently agreeing with the Aretaevian economics-drives it position on marriage.  As of right now, both economically and emotionally, it's probably a bad deal in many cases for both men and women.

On the other hand...we're nearing an inflection point on the tech curve.  While men tend to do physical jobs that have already been eaten by robots...we're nearing the point at which the average "women's" job in the service industries is also going to be threatened.  I give it 10 years from today before we start seeing the typical female administrative/gofer job threatened by robots as well.  With a failure of the female job market...I expect the marriage equilibrium to right itself again for a short period of time, until the inevitable future state where 90% of people are unemployable at cost.   Chaos will occur before then.

PoTD

For the HBD, pro-IQ folks in the crowd.  Best IQ-ist since Griffe du Lion.

Commentary:  great analysis...but not deep enough after round one.  Jehu will like it a lot.

I think that he ignores the Rationalist argument (Stanovich), and the affiliationist argument (example: Krugman  -- picking conclusions via groupism, regardless your intelligence).  And he ignores critical aspects in epistemology, in particular the map/territory distinction...approaching everything from a school-ist right/wrong approach rather than a real world ignorance model (my model is 70% predictive vs yours which I think is 60% predictive, even though the predictivity doesn't overlap).

Schedule

The year is in full swing again, and contrary my first couple months, I'm ramped up, travel-teaching all over.  IF there's anyone reading this, nearby who wants to meet for beverages...let me know.  My schedule for the next 3 months is basically fixed now:

3/18-22:  Home (course dev)
3/26-4/6: Ft. Collins, CO
4/9-13: ~Salt Lake City, UT
4/16-20:  Home (teaching online)
4/23-24:  Sili Valley, CA
4/26-27:  San Diego, CA
4/30-5/4:  Salt Lake City, UT
5/7-5/11: Austin, TX (maybe? or just course Dev at home)
5/14-5/18: Orlando, FL
5/21-25: Home (Teaching online)
5/28-6/1:  OFF!!!! -- won't last, but it's nice to pretend
6/4-8:  Los Angeles, CA

3 different client training companies, 9 different end-clients, 10 different courses to-be-taught, 2 partial courses on 2 more topics to develop, and one course to review.  We're driving real fast from the coast of California to Ft. Collins on 4/25-26, and driving back (much slower) from SLC on the weekend of 5/4-6.

But anyway...if you live in one of the locations I'll be in...or near...give me a shout-out, and we can do beverages.  Email on the sidebar.

Need

Gosh, that word pisses me off.

Ezra Klein, and all his blogging flunkies have been on an extended rant regarding the necessity of the upcoming transportation bill.  Among the things that's most annoyed me in what's been said is this:

the gas tax is no longer sufficient to fund the needed transportation investments and so it either needs to be raised or supplemented

Need is the big wrong think.  Anybody using "need" in their thinking is likely to be 100% confused.  It's all turtles tradeoffs, all the way down.
Take 3 factors:

1. Cost 
2. Benefit 
3. Other things you could do with the $ or time 

After you've hit all 3 factors...you can talk about which things you would prefer to do.  If you talk need...you're just nuts.  Need talk is an attempt to short-circuit rational behavior, and focus entirely on benefit, and ignore both cost, and opportunity cost.

Santorum, Obama, etc.

Brutus writes a great discussion of Santorum, which is strongly opposed, while remaining respectful.

Near the same time, Insty posted an interview with Mia Love, Utah tea party candidate, in which Mia suggests that she'd vote for an empty shoebox over Obama.  Glenn one-ups her claiming that he's said that he'd prefer a syphillitic camel to Obama.

While I too would definitely prefer a syphillitic camel or an empty shoebox to Obama, I also certainly prefer Obama to Santorum, and might prefer Obama to Romney.  Obama will screw things up in the name of Socialism while really practicing Fascism, while Romney appears to plan to screw things up in nearly exactly the same Fascist way, but call it Capitalism.  Santorum, like Brutus says, is just actively opposed to freedom...and far worse than Obama on that axis.

Aumann disagreement, experimentally

Hanson finds fascinating stuff.  I continue to insist that the primary failing of the LessWrong and Moldbuggian spaces is the same as the primary failing of Paul Krugman: epistemological insularity, with a failure to update on non-insider information.  Hanson finds the mechanism.

Congratulations

To Jimmy Wales.   Back when we were both Kelley-ite Objectivists in the early-/ mid-90s...Jimbo ran the best of the Objectivist philosophy discussion lists: MDOP.  While I've kept very loosely in contact with Jimbo, and we've both moved in largely the same education-spaces with our kids, I haven't ever been seriously involved with Wikipedia, except to add/correct details inside my areas of expertise.  Regardless, it's nice when a distant friend triumphs massively.

Congratulations Jimbo.  You win.

Brain Lag

So...I'm running on several hours of sleep deficit for several days.  That's pretty rare for me because I can usually function decently on 5 hours a night for a week....or 6 hours forever.  I'm averaging below 4 for the week...due to jet lag, time zones, and daylight savings alltogether.  Can't get to sleep before 3...have to be awake, functional at 7.

I've been trying to describe to myself how it feels...and those 90's commercials about drugs and eggs come to mind:
This is your brain.
This is your brain on drugs.
This is your brain with ham on toast.

But my many years of online gaming give a better metaphor:

I feel like I've got heavy lag when I try to communicate with my brain.

Odd's I'll get 6+ hours of sleep tonight?   >10%

Overlooked point re: Fluke

There has been much discussion about Sandra Fluke...most recently read here ... with something hugely important missed in EVERY single comment made on the topic.

How is health insurance paid for?

If you're an individual or a small organization, you pay for the actuarial value of your expected consumption + profit.
However...if you're a large organization...like, say, maybe, the catholic church...
The insurer usually provides ONLY the book-keeping service, (plus volume discounts).  You pay, directly, all the medical costs yourself.

Does anyone else notice how this makes the Obama solution the birth control problem (make the insurer pay for it) not only fail in general at a 2nd level....it fails on it's first goal.  Large catholic organizations "buying insurance" the normal way will be specifically paying for Birth Control themselves.

Why hasn't this been mentioned in the discussion from the anti-thug side of the discussion.

Obama, like Lincoln??

Glenn Greenwald has a piece discussing Obama's continuation of Lincoln's legacy ...

Lincoln's legacy as the first of the American presidents to thoroughly trample free speech and habeus corpus, that is.  "Get in my way and be silenced."  He is Obama's role model, isn't he?  Good show, good imitation.  Haven't seen this good since ... Nixon?

Meta-questions and ex-post Facto

• On the abortion debate, Kent reminds us of some stuff.  RTWT.  A major problem is that the definitions are unclear...and we all have intuitions that we support by making up reasons (as per the normal human reasoning process).  Category error is large here...and unless you subscribe to the crazy position Aristotelian essentialism...then the thought process doesn't work here.
• Last night I was talking with a friend about the very few people I've met in person who I think of as surprisingly smart, because I have watched their brain move, and it impresses me.  I can count the people like that that I've met on one hand.  One of those people, George H. Smith (author of Atheism), has a lead article at Cato this month....on Captial punishment.  Not throughly demonstrative of his strikingly agile intellect, but a good light overview from his point of view, at least referencing many of the issues.  I'd add something about ability to trust government to the end there. 
• Bluntobject looks into correlations.  And even better on Fik Shin.

As usual

I continue to insist that Hume was the smartest guy in the last half of the 2nd Millennium. Here's a link to Hume articulating the Aretavian position on ruler-quality in 1742.  I suppose I don't get to call it the AAretaevian position much longer, eh?

The line again:  Governance quality is a monotonic function on freedom of exit.  To the extent that the populace could easily leave, rulers have to be well-behaved.  If there are many small jurisdictions, with low barriers to migration, then rulers must serve the populace.  If there are few large jurisdictions, with high barriers to migration, then the populace serves the rulers.  Full stop.  Whole question.  Shame that smart folks got there first in '42.

 Does it strike anyone else that the smartest BFF's in all of History may have been Adam Smith and David Hume?

Ethics, Status Quo, Desert

Leftism alert.  Mostly, I'm thinking out loud here [UPDATE:  removed incorrect text].

Why should we support property rights?

Easy, relatively correct answers:

• Data:  It seems to work to increase prosperity, and a rising tide seems like it really does lift all boats.  Therefore for any society that I am in, or any society I am concerned about the general welfare of...I should advocate property rights.  There is no known system that makes the poorest members of a society more better off over time than do property rights. 
• Freedom:  All known leader-selection processes select for the amoral/actively immoral leaders (as judged by any extant moral framework besides might makes right).  Any approach that removes decisions from central authority, and distributes to  is a good one.  Mob rule may or may not compare favorably to evil autocrats (fewer genocides, anyhow), but it certainly ain't much better.  Property rights is both better than mobs and better than autocrat decisions over time in almost 100% of cases...therefore we should support it if we are allowed to participate in the property-ownership business, or if we are disinterested observers preferring maxU.
• Conservativism:  Don't break shit that works  Especially the important stuff.  This is highly underappreciated by all non-conservatives.
• Fairness:  Bob built wealth in circumstance Y.  If you politically switch circumstances to circumstance X ( < Y), then, you're pre-empting Bob's decision...(and screwing with the likelihood of future Bob's creating wealth). 

Reasons that fail fast:

• It's morally right.  Under what model -- we've largely established on this blog that:   ∀u ∈ y'all  : u cannot justify your moral position as socially prescriptive.
• It benefits those excluded from the society, or from the market.  It doesn't.
• Just deserts -- at 95% fidelity, the only factor involved in deserts and the modern world is being born in the right place. SOME folks (Bezos?  Brin?  Gates?  Jobs?) appear to have been irreplaceable.  Also, there are immigrants.  Everyone else...we have our wealth/standard of living 98% because we're lucky to have been born where we were born, or our parents were good country-pickers...and maybe 2% because of your talents.  Someone else could, and probably does do almost exactly what  you do...You're replaceable, and most of what you have is good luck on your part, having been born into a good society (immigrants win on moral status here, but found isn't MUCH better than born into for just desert).

So...how do you justify the existence of a status quo that screws a set of people to those people?  Usually, you don't.  Might makes right, full stop.  

So...back to Caplan's question...who is screwed worse...peaceful immigrants who'd like to work in the USA without welfare, or historical Jim-Crow suffering blacks?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...you have to treat immigrants as massively subhuman in your moral calculus to be.  Or you can just be human...naturally anti-foreign ... and make up reasons why you are after the fact.

Linky

Soft warm up here...

• Bryan Caplan with a threefer
• Competition:  Contestability not contestedness
• Immigration:  Who counts in our moral calculus.  Do we ignore potential immigrants' welfare as much, less, or more than we used to ignore black folks welfare?
• Charles Murray in one post. 
• Angus with a beautiful quote
• Genes make for Asian conformity and British individualism?  HT: hbdchick
• not-McArdle posts on the McArdle blog about the benefits of deregulation in finance.  This is more or less the line that Arnold Kling has been pushing since '08.  Thoughts from my more finance-inclined readers?
• IOZ, snarkiest of the snarkers.  On Democracy.
• Smallest minority, communism qotd.
• Karl Smith on Yglesias on free markets.
• Robin Hanson on productivity, and what it really means. 

Link

I'm still mostly AFK, but I endorse with no reservation this post by Borepatch.

Not much to say

Strangely, I find I have very little to say right now.  Perhaps the topics just suck right now, but for now, I feel a bit like I've said my piece.

We're all wrong a lot.
Modular monkeybrains.
Envy > Greed
Politics is all tribe, and all of the justifications are ex post facto.
Rates not states.
Iterate your way out.
Wealth (growth) is the only social metric.
Learning is 90% motivation, 9% practice, 1% other.
Talk in distributions.
Beliefs are either probabilities, and should change often, or tribal, and shouldn't change.  Best way to check that is how often the belief changes.
Ethics is complicated, but should probably be understood descriptively as a brain module solving for long-term success... and prescriptively we haven't done much better.

Probably my disillusionment is the fact that I'm fully anti-tribal in my values, and 99% of the internet is devoted to individuals opposing the enemy tribes.  I'll probably get over it.

Expect me offline for a week or two.

More on the Upper Classes

Tyler Cowen responds to Jesus.  Robin Hanson responds to Tyler.

If you don't find this all seriously unsurprising...you should get your assumptions checked.

Ethics is the way that we (a) indicate belongingness with the group, and (b) work with ingroupers.  Rich folks need that less...indeed, it's been argued on this blog that this is the purpose of wealth...to need it less.  Therefore rich folks are less ethical.  Shocker.