"The rich are different from you and me"

The title is a slightly abbreviated misquotation from the short story "The Rich Boy" (1926), by fellow-Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."

A good example is given in yesterday's Wall Street Journal account of the divorce of a fund manager:

* The couple owned six homes–including a $4 million home in Rancho Santa Fe and a penthouse in Manhattan–and had two more under construction. The total value of the homes was more than $40 million...

* Mr. Brandes owned 10 Ferraris (valued at more than $4.4 million) and an “extremely long driveway” to race sports cars, dirt bikes and ATVs.

* She had gambling bills of as much as $30,000 a month.

* Mr. Brandes paid Elton John somewhere from $1 million to $1.5 million to perform at his wedding when he remarried in 2006. He paid Christina Aguilera $1 million to perform at a Halloween party...

While the investments generated about $154,881 a month, she said she needed more, citing her clothing budget ($70,000 a year), art spending and gambling bills. Her support increased to $500,000 a month, or $6 million...

She may indeed be entitled to far more than she has already received, since his monthly income is reported to be more than $16 million.

Yet hearing someone say that $6 million a year isn’t enough to live on shows just how removed the economy of the rich has become from the rest of the country...

And today the Telegraph features a story about how "wealth inequality" is under discussion at the Davos summit:

“The increase in inequality is the most serious challenge for the world,” Min Zhu, a special adviser at the International Monetary Fund and a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, told delegates at the Davos gathering...

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, also warned that inequality “exacerbates political instability”...

Mr Zhu said raising taxes on the rich would not address the core of the problem. “It’s not just about tax, we need to go further. We need to look back at how and where this wealth is being created,” he said...

State-sponsored sterilization

What these people had in mind was the raising of the genetic good through... forced "asexualization" of the lesser elements of society--forced sterilization of inmates in state-run mental and correctional institutions...

The Human Betterment Society put the issue quite simply in their slim little pamphlet, Human Sterilization--to save ourselves from "race degeneration" society had to act and restrict 'defective" men and women from bearing and rearing children... the country was burdened by as many as 18 Million people with mental disease, who "put a charge and a tax on the population" and who would "cost a billion dollars a year" to take care of...

Dr. William Hutton makes the case for the humanitarian treatment of the treatment espoused in the title of his A Brief for the Sterilization of the Feeble-Minded (1936). "It would be unjust and anti-social to withhold the privilege of sterilization from the victims of mental disorders (the insanities)..."(emphasis mine). He dives into the deep-end of the sterilization issue, making the cse for dealing with the "blind, deaf-mutes, haemophilicacs and brachydactyly (deformed fingers)" in the same manner...

Some states--like Kansas--reached across these lines into the lives of epileptics; Michigan did not hunt for epileptics but did so for "imbeciles". Oregon seemed to cast the widest net, including the "feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexual perverts" found in any institution maintained at the public's expense who condition was found to be "inadvisable for procreation".

Further details at Ptak Science Books

Fake fruit in your cereal?

The nonprofit Consumer Wellness Center reported that its investigation found "blueberries" that were nothing more than a concoction of sugar, corn syrup, starch, hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors and artificial food dye blue No. 2 and red No. 40.

The offenders are well-known manufacturers such as Kellogg's, Betty Crocker and General Mills, and the fakes were found in bagels, cereals, breads and muffins. Some products contain real blueberries mixed with fakes. For example, the blueberry bagels sold at Target contain some real berries but the "blueberry bits" listed in the ingredients aren't real blueberries...

Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin variety has no blueberries but does have "blueberry flavored crunchies" made from the sugar-and-dye concoction mentioned above. Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal, from General Mills, contains no blueberries and no pomegranates...

This is all quite legal, of course, as long as the label specifies "fruit-flavored clusters," or something equivalent. But it's still intentionally deceptive, and a scummy corporate behavior, IMHO.

Placebo power bands

From a report at the BBC about a new trend among celebrities and athletes:

It's a Power Balance bracelet - a silicone band with a hologram. They are an increasingly common sight on the golf course, and away from sport both Robert De Niro and Kate Middleton have been spotted wearing them...

The bracelet's distributors in Australia have just had to apologise and change their marketing and advertising text after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took action. The commission said that the local distributors had claimed the bands would "improve balance, strength and flexibility". They also criticised the slogan "Performance Technology". The distributors admitted no credible scientific basis for the claims, the commission said.

On the US website of Power Balance it explains the bands thus: "Power Balance is based on the idea of optimising the body's natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body."..

John Porcari, a professor in the department of exercise and sport science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, recently tested 42 student athletes in an experiment. Balance, flexibility, strength and vertical jump were tested, while the athletes wore either a Power Balance band or a generic rubber band. Both the athletes and the testers did not know which was being worn while the experiment was conducted.

There was no difference between the bands, but there was a marked improvement in tests which were being done by an athlete for the second time. This suggests that once people know what is coming, they prepare themselves and perform better in the test. And that's without even considering the possible placebo effect, the idea that the psychological boost of believing in the bands can improve performance...

"I was really impressed by the marketing. They have managed to get away without deceiving anyone in the sense of an overt lie. There are no claims on the packaging itself. "They don't make any reference at all to any health outcomes. They leave that as an inference that most people will draw."

Even the £30 cost may help with the psychological effect of a band. "There is some evidence to show that the more expensive a placebo is, the more of a placebo effect it has."

I don't believe the cricketers and golfers and celebrities believe in the power of the band. They are well paid to wear it, just like the logos on their clothes.

"Adultification" of young girls

The above is one of five photos assembled at Sociological Images, from a photo spread in the December issue of French Vogue (article title Cadeaux = "gifts").

The series of photographs is another piece of evidence of the adultification of young girls, an adultification that looks suspiciously like child porn, given the sexualization of adult women. New York Magazine reports that the girls are 6 years old. Don’t miss the lipstick, high heels, and disinterested pouts.

More at the source, with links to previous posts on this rather disturbing topic.

Separate hotel entrances for ladies

From Frost’s Laws and By-Laws of American Society: a Condensed but Thorough Treatise on Etiquette and its Usages in America, Containing Plain and Reliable Directions for Deportment in Every Situation in Life, Besides One Hundred Unclassified Laws Applicable to All Occasions, by S. A. Frost, 1869.

Via Centuries of Advice and Advertisements.

Dog fights in Afghanistan

A dog waits to fight during the weekly dog fights on January 07, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dogfighting was banned under the Taliban for being un-Islamic but it is now common practice. By Majid Saeedi/Getty Images.

Via The Daily Dish's Face of the Day feature.

They shoot pets, don't they?

From an article at Audubon Magazine about the increasing popularity of "canned hunts."

In most canned hunts tame or semi-tame game species, reared in captivity, are placed in enclosures of varying sizes, and the gate is opened for the client, who has been issued a guarantee of success. Canned hunts are great for folks on tight schedules or who lack energy or outdoor skills. Microchip transponder implants for game not immediately visible are available for the proprietor whose clients are on really tight schedules. And because trophies are plied with drugs, minerals, vitamins, specially processed feeds, and sometimes growth hormones, they are way bigger than anything available in the wild. Often the animals have names, and you pay in advance for the one you’d like to kill, selecting your trophy from a photo or directly from its cage. For example, Rachel, Bathsheba, Paul, John, and Matthew were pet African lions that would stroll over and lick their keepers’ hands before they were shot in Texas...

There have been major changes in canned hunts since I last wrote about them 19 years ago. For one thing, they’re vastly more popular... One of the club’s most prominent members is rock star Ted Nugent, who runs his own canned-hunt operation in Jackson, Michigan. Five of Nugent’s kills have made it into the club record book, including a feral boar he shot during a canned hunt in Texas and a bison he shot on, of all places, Alaska’s Kodiak Island, where they’re being raised to be crossed with cattle for “beefalo.” “Lunatic fringe” is how Nugent describes people who think canned hunts “degrade the heritage of American hunting.”

Another big change in canned hunting since 1992 has been the composition of its critics, which now include more fair-chase hunters. Because the general public has scant understanding of canned hunting, it frequently doesn’t differentiate it from real hunting. “If we don’t protect our image, we may not have a heritage,” says the Colorado Wildlife Federation’s treasurer and board member, Kent Ingram, a leader in the recent well-fought but failed battle to ban canned hunts in the state.

He reports that he was informed by a Denver taxidermist that half the elk coming in to be mounted had tattooed lips, which identify captives. Ingram also said he had reliable information that one canned-hunt customer had flown into Colorado and paid $40,000 to kill a Minnesota-raised bull that had been trucked in for the one-day shoot...

Not all product is shot. What’s considered “best” for canned-hunt production is sold to other breeders. Russell Bellar of Peru, Indiana, paid $100,000 for Xfactor, a yearling whitetail with a freakishly large rack. Some bucks are plied with antler-growing concoctions and as they age are kept on life support with meds and surgeries. Their function is to produce semen for other breeders who buy it for as much as $28,000 per standard unit, or “straw.” A prime buck might produce 500 straws a year. And there’s additional income from photographers who sell phony wildlife images to outdoor magazines and calendar publishers. Old, decrepit males with waning semen and antler potential are sold to canned-hunt operations as shooters...

Finally, there’s the disease issue. Game farms and the canned-hunting operations they supply are spreading bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, chronic wasting disease (the wildlife version of mad cow), and brain worm (carried by white-tailed deer and fatal to ungulates that didn’t evolve with it, such as moose, elk, caribou, and pronghorn). So far the worst epidemics have been in Canada, but they apparently were touched off by animals imported from the United States...

So terse and tight is the prose of Montana’s fair-chase hunters that they were able to pack everything I’ve been trying to say in this column into a single sentence. Maybe you’ll read that sentence this month on one of their trucks, if you venture into Montana’s wild, beautiful deer and elk country, because MADCOW adopted it for a slogan during its ballot-initiative campaign. It goes like this: “Real Hunters Don’t Shoot Pets.”

More at the link, via The Daily Dish.

This is how Congress works...

The Senate Armed Services Committee prohibits its staff and presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation from owning stocks or bonds in 48,096 companies that have Defense Department contracts. But the senators who sit on the influential panel are allowed to own any assets they want. And they have owned millions in interests in these firms...

The prohibition is representative of how members of Congress set strict rules on investing for others in sensitive posts in the corporate world and government while allowing themselves to manage their finances however they please...

Nineteen of the 28 senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee held assets in companies that do business with the Pentagon between 2004 and last year, according to an analysis of financial disclosure forms by The Washington Post. Those holdings were worth a total of $3.8 million to $10.2 million...

Ethics laws allow senators to hold stocks in industries they oversee. They also may push and vote for programs that could improve the bottom lines of companies in which they own stock. They are precluded, however, from taking official actions that could boost their personal wealth if they are the sole beneficiaries...

During a closed-door hearing held before the 1961 confirmations of Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and other presidential appointees, some committee members said it was time to address the differing standards. "We have got to go the whole way and put the same rules on ourselves that we put on these people in the government," said Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.), according to a transcript of the hearing...

"When you pass a law like that, you will have the greatest mass resignation that the world has ever seen," said Sen. Prescott Bush (R-Conn.), whose son and grandson were both president. "For heaven's sake, if you want to bring together a lot of people that do not have any touch with reality in this country to make the laws, God help the United States, in my judgment."

The matter never came to a vote, and the exemption continued.

More at the Washington Post link.

A Qur'an "etched in Saddam Hussein's blood"

Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors.

The very existence of this item is creating some ethical dilemmas for Iraqi authorities, discussed at the Guardian link.

"It was wrong to do what he did, to write it in blood," says Sheikh Samarrai. "It is haraam [forbidden]."

Sudanese woman publicly flogged

Some version of the disturbing clip, which seems to have been filmed with the knowledge of the officers, were reportedly removed from YouTube, but dozens of copies remain on the video-sharing site. One copy, which has been viewed nearly half a million times, was edited to add English subtitles, and some music. (Warning: the images in the video are graphic and may upset many viewers.)

As the [Reuters] explained, “Floggings carried out under Islamic law are almost a daily punishment in Sudan for crimes ranging from drinking alcohol to adultery. But vague laws on women’s dress and behavior are implemented inconsistently.”

Via The Lede at the NYT.

WikiLeaks and the secret world of government

Excerpts from an editorial by David Samuels at The Atlantic online:

The true importance of Wikileaks -- and the key to understanding the motivations and behavior of its founder -- lies not in the contents of the latest document dump but in the technology that made it possible, which has already shown itself to be a potent weapon to undermine official lies and defend human rights. Since 1997, Assange has devoted a great deal of his time to inventing encryption systems that make it possible for human rights workers and others to protect and upload sensitive data. The importance of Assange's efforts to human rights workers in the field were recognized last year by Amnesty International, which gave him its Media Award for the Wikileaks investigation The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, which documented the killing and disappearance of 500 young men in Kenya by the police, with the apparent connivance of the country's political leadership.

Yet the difficulties of documenting official murder in Kenya pale next to the task of penetrating the secret world that threatens to swallow up informed public discourse in this country about America's wars. The 250,000 cables that Wikileaks published this month represent only a drop in the bucket that holds the estimated 16 million documents that are classified top secret by the federal government every year. According to a three-part investigative series by Dana Priest and William Arkin published earlier this year in The Washington Post, an estimated 854,000 people now hold top secret clearance - more than 1.5 times the population of Washington, D.C. "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive," the Post concluded, "that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

The result of this classification mania is the division of the public into two distinct groups: those who are privy to the actual conduct of American policy, but are forbidden to write or talk about it, and the uninformed public, which becomes easy prey for the official lies exposed in the Wikileaks documents: The failure of American counterinsurgency programs in Afghanistan, the involvement of China and North Korea in the Iranian nuclear program, the likely failure of attempts to separate Syria from Iran, the involvement of Iran in destabilizing Iraq, the anti-Western orientation of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and other tenets of American foreign policy under both Bush and Obama.

It is a fact of the current media landscape that the chilling effect of threatened legal action routinely stops reporters and editors from pursuing stories that might serve the public interest - and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or lying. Every honest reporter and editor in America knows that the fact that most news organizations are broke, combined with the increasing threat of aggressive legal action by deep-pocketed entities, private and public, has made it much harder for good reporters to do their jobs, and ripped a hole in the delicate fabric that holds our democracy together...

Bumper stickers

This photo was originally labeled "Hatred."  I agree with the comments at Reddit that...

Ignorance leads to fear, and...

"Fear leads to anger.

Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to suffering."*

*(Yoda, The Phantom Menace)

Photo source. 

"Trickle-down" economics proven valid

Just ask Sotheby's, Manhattan jewelers, upscale restaurants...

The video presentation was created for RT, which I presume is Russia Today (not Radio Times of the BBC), so they may have an agenda.  Of course, everyone has an "agenda" - the larger question is whether the information presented is incorrect in any way....

Harry Potter toys and the Salvation Army

CALGARY — The Salvation Army says it refuses to distribute Harry Potter and Twilight toys collected for needy children because they’re incompatible with the charity’s Christian beliefs...

...he was told by Salvation Army officials that the two kinds of toys are “disposed of” and not given to other charities....

“I was told to withhold a six-inch Harry Potter figure, but when I picked up a plastic M-16, I was told, ‘That’s for the 10-year-olds,’” he said.

Via Cynical-C.

Update Dec 15: Reader Glenn Whidden found evidence that the incident cited above may have been the policy of only one Salvation Army group in Canada, and that the Salvation Army as a whole does not have a policy against Harry Potter toys.  Story here.

Re Assange and Wikileaks

The image comes from BoingBoing, which cites a U.S. Department of State Press Statement addressing UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day, which the U.S. will host...

The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21^st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.

Also of interest is a lot of material in a lengthy Guardian column, which has essentially been live-blogging events in the case, including the following:

The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts: the US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties.

The law Mr Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law makes it a felony for an unauthorised person to possess or transmit "information relating to the national defence which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation".

Speaking to the media scrum Jemima Khan said she did not know Julian Assange. She said she was offering support for him because of her backing for freedom on speech.

The Ku Klux Klan website directs users to a site called Christian Concepts. It takes Visa and MasterCard donations for users willing to state that they are "white and not of racially mixed descent. I am not married to a non-white. I do not date non-whites nor do I have non-white dependents. I believe in the ideals of western Christian civilisation and profess my belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God."

Julian Assange is currently leading Time's online readers poll [for Man of the Year].

The two Swedish women who accuse WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of sexual misconduct were at first not seeking to bring charges against him. They just wanted to track him down and persuade him to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, according to several people in contact with his entourage at the time.

More information here.

Congressman Ron Paul addresses the Wikileaks affair

His address to the House floor yesterday takes five minutes.  TL:DR(L) = he notes that Assange is not the "leaker," but more a publicist of information leaked by U.S. government employees.  He asks why more of the outrage is not directed at the leaker rather than at Assange, and asks if Assange is to be prosecuted for publicizing the material, will the same charges be leveled at the NYTimes, WaPo, The Guardian, etc.

Glenn Greenwald's comments re WikiLeaks

Excerpts from a column this week at Salon:

Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S...

First we have the group [Sarah Palin, among others] demanding that Julian Assange be murdered without any charges, trial or due process... The way in which so many political commentators so routinely and casually call for the eradication of human beings without a shred of due process is nothing short of demented... After a decade's worth of American invasions, bombings, occupations, checkpoint shootings, drone attacks, assassinations and civilian slaughter, the notion that the U.S. Government can and should murder whomever it wants is more frequent and unrestrained than ever...

These are usually the same people, of course, who brand themselves "pro-life" and Crusaders for the Sanctity of Human Life and/or who deride Islamic extremists for their disregard for human life. And the fact that this mindset is so widespread and mainstream is quite a reflection of how degraded America's political culture is...

Then, with some exceptions, we have the group which -- so very revealingly -- is the angriest and most offended about the WikiLeaks disclosures: the American media, Our Watchdogs over the Powerful and Crusaders for Transparency... Then there's the somewhat controversial claim that our major media stars are nothing more than Government spokespeople and major news outlets little more than glorified state-run media... It's just so revealing that the sole criticism of the Government allowed to be heard is that they haven't done enough to keep us all in the dark... As the headline of John Kampfner's column in The Independent put it: "Wikileaks shows up our media for their docility at the feet of authority."

Then we have the Good Citizens who are furious that WikiLeaks has shown them what their Government is doing and, conversely, prevented the Government from keeping things from them... our government and political culture is so far toward the extreme pole of excessive, improper secrecy that that is clearly the far more significant threat. And few organizations besides WikiLeaks are doing anything to subvert that regime of secrecy, and none is close to its efficacy...

The central goal of WikiLeaks is to prevent the world's most powerful factions -- including the sprawling, imperial U.S. Government -- from continuing to operate in the dark and without restraints. Most of the institutions which are supposed to perform that function -- beginning with the U.S. Congress and the American media -- not only fail to do so, but are active participants in maintaining the veil of secrecy. WikiLeaks, whatever its flaws, is one of the very few entities shining a vitally needed light on all of this. It's hardly surprising, then, that those factions -- and their hordes of spokespeople, followers and enablers -- see WikiLeaks as a force for evil. That's evidence of how much good they are doing.

Much more at the link. Highly recommended reading.

Helen Thomas continues to speak her mind

I introduced readers of this blog to Helen Thomas in April of 2008 (biography at the link), blogged one of her confrontations with Obama in June of 2009, and linked to her final interview as a press corps member in June of this year.

Although she is now retired, she has not stopped being outspoken. 

Thomas, who grew up in Detroit the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, was in Dearborn today for an Arab Detroit workshop on anti-Arab bias... In a speech that drew a standing ovation, Thomas talked about "the whole question of money involved in politics."

"We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is… We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way."

Asked by the Free Press how she would respond to those who say she's anti-Semitic, Thomas said:  "I'd say I'm a Semite, What are you talking about?

"We all know the Arabs are much maligned. They are automatically terrorists. I was called the Hizballah at the White House, Hamas, and everything else. But I never bowed to those kinds of slurs because I know who I am. I'm an American."

"Seven years of war now with Iraq. They did nothing to us. They are totally innocent, and they were just demonized. I'm not saying Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrible man. But how many thousands of Iraqis did you kill, for what reason?… They've never explained the war. No weapons of mass destruction. No ties to Al-Qaeda. What is this? Why are we killing those people. And why are we there?"

Thomas said she's proud of her Arab roots, but stressed that she's fully American.  "I never felt hyphenated. I never felt I was an Arab-American. I felt I was an American," she said.

At the end of her speech, Thomas spoke about bias against Arabs and then recalled the words of a rabbi at Martin Luther King's 1963 civil rights march on Washington D.C., when he made his, I Have A Dream speech. Thomas said that the rabbi, who survived Nazi concentration camps, told the crowd "the greatest sin of all in the Nazi era was silence."

"And so we have to speak up for our rights, even at price, even at a cost."

Addendum Dec 4: As a result of this speech, Wayne State University has announced that it is discontinuing their Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award.

An interview with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

From an interview by Andy Greenberg, posted at Forbes:

In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”

You once said to one of my colleagues that WikiLeaks has material on BP. What have you got?

We’ve got lots now, but we haven’t determined how much is original. There’s been a lot of press on the BP issue, and lawyers, and people are pulling out a lot of stuff. So I suspect the material we have on BP may not be that original. We’ll have to see whether our stuff is especially unique...

Continuing then: The tech industry?

We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage...

Do you have more on finance?

We have a lot of finance related things. Of the commercial sectors we’ve covered, finance is the most significant...

How do businesses need to adjust to a world where WikiLeaks exists?

WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this. I think about the case in China where milk powder companies started cutting the protein in milk powder with plastics. That happened at a number of separate manufacturers.

Let’s say you want to run a good company. It’s nice to have an ethical workplace. Your employees are much less likely to screw you over if they’re not screwing other people over.

Then one company starts cutting their milk powder with melamine, and becomes more profitable. You can follow suit, or slowly go bankrupt and the one that’s cutting its milk powder will take you over. That’s the worst of all possible outcomes.

The other possibility is that the first one to cut its milk powder is exposed. Then you don’t have to cut your milk powder. There’s a threat of regulation that produces self-regulation.

It just means that it’s easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more effected negatively by leaks than honest businesses. That’s the whole idea. In the struggle between open and honest companies and dishonest and closed companies, we’re creating a tremendous reputational tax on the unethical companies.

No one wants to have their own things leaked. It pains us when we have internal leaks. But across any given industry, it is both good for the whole industry to have those leaks and it’s especially good for the good players.

The full interview is here, via Reddit.