It looks obvious

A should be simple upgrade of the blog’s platform become a rather hectic mess today, but with the assistant of my hosting service everything seems to be in order now. In the meantime here are some links I collected today: 

A new research that checked people cooperations in different cultures had rather interesting finding:

Researchers use economic games to investigate how people cooperate in real-life. Now a team led by Benedikt Herrmann, at the University of Nottingham, have identified striking differences in the way university students from different countries play one such game known as The Public Goods Game. Compared with students from developed Western nations, students from less democratic countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman and Belarus tended to punish not only free-loaders, but also cooperative players, with the result that cooperation in their groups plummeted.

[...]

When players had the option to punish, the groups tended to display more cooperation, which is consistent with past research showing that the ability to punish can help foster cooperative behaviour. However, in some countries, ’selfish’ players also punished cooperative players, perhaps as a means of revenge for punishments they had suffered, or maybe as a way of punishing do-gooders for showing them up. The researchers called this ‘anti-social punishment’, and the groups where this occurred tended to cooperate less.

Anti-social punishment occurred more in those countries, including Belarus and Saudi Arabia, shown by surveys to have less faith in the rule of law and less belief in civic cooperation. In a commentary on the findings, published in the same journal, Herbert Gintis of the Sante Fe Institute, said the results challenge the way people have tended to view capitalist democracies. "The success of democratic market societies may depend critically upon moral virtues as well as material interests, so the depiction of civil society as the sphere of ‘naked self-interest’ is radically incorrect," he wrote.

I saw two interesting stories related to Clinton’s campaign today. The first, how ironic, discuss the fact that Clinton’s campaign is failing to pay its share in its employees healthcare insurance:

Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out.

Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda.

[...]

But the unpaid bills to Aetna were at least two months old, according to FEC filings.

They show the campaign ended last year owing Aetna more than $213,000 for “employee benefits.”

During the first two months of the year, the campaign did not pay down any of that debt. In fact, it accrued another $16,000 in unpaid bills last month, and it finished the month owing Aetna $229,000.

The second story is about Clinton’s campaign manager involvement with the same sub-prime mortgages Clinton now attacking so fiercely:

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager, Maggie Williams, earned about $200,000 on the board of a Long Island subprime lender that charged prepayment penalties - a practice that Clinton, a critic of the subprime industry, now seeks to eliminate.

Williams, who took over the reins of Clinton’s campaign in early February, served as a director on the board of the Woodbury-based Delta Financial Corp. from April 2000 until the firm declared bankruptcy in December, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records. 

[...]

Williams, 53, isn’t the only Clinton insider who made money from an industry the candidate has demonized. A month ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton ally and former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros grossed more than $5 million in stock sales and board compensation from Countrywide Financial, one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders. 

The truth is that both stories aren’t, in by themselves, important at all. The importance of these stories, for me, is to demonstrate how during political campaign we are being distracted by flood of unimportant information that aim in creating images that have very little with the reality. We are being told that Clinton is amazing executive, which she might or might not be - her struggling campaign isn’t the best demonstration of high quality management. And we are being bombarded with guilt by association which is many times completely irrelevant.

One comment about the sub-prime mortgage is due here. The fact that Clinton, and many other politician, choose to attack the practices of lending for minorities is noting but typical hypocrisy. Well into the crisis, lender were encouraged to use easier criteria when lending to minorities and poor families, a practice that is now being called predatory and irresponsible. I’m not arguing that those lenders aren’t guilty of being horrible bankers, but the involvement of other , political, motivations played major role in the creation of those lending practices - as we can see from the occupations of those Clinton’s aides.

When discussing political campaign, and campaign rhetoric - I find this story, which I scanned from William F. Buckley book - The Unmaking of a Mayor - hilarious:

The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man. For once let us look him up and consider his case, for the characteristic of all social doctors is, that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all the parts of society hold together, and that forces which are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an equilibrium is produced by a re-adjustment of all interests and rights. They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion - that the State cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.

The Forgotten Man

This story make me angry, really angry:

“Clinton also proposed a fund of as much as $5 billion to help communities suffering from high rates of foreclosures. The moratorium on foreclosures would be at least 90 days and only apply to owner-occupied homes.”

When We bought are house we took a conservative mortgage, based on our current income, and didn’t listen to all those advises to take riskier loans. Obviously I wanted bigger house, or actually a bigger lot, but my ability to pay the mortgage - and to afford other things that are important to us - were a major consideration when we bought are house. This should be the normal process, not the exception. The idea that I, that saved my pennies to afford my house, should pay for those who bought above their means is simply outrageous. The idea that I need to cut on other plans I had for my hard earned money to pay for those who bought houses they couldn’t afford is immoral.

And what is really upsetting is the appearance of morality and generosity of those who suggest this idea.