{"id":314,"date":"2008-09-21T17:05:14","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T01:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=314"},"modified":"2008-09-21T17:05:14","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T01:05:14","slug":"the-greed-canard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/the-greed-canard\/","title":{"rendered":"The greed canard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit I&#8217;m desperately searching for a good explanation about what went wrong this past month.  The problem is complex, and the root(s) of it are, I&#8217;m guessing, rather subtler than most people think.  But there is one explanation&#8211;the most common one out there&#8211;that I&#8217;m certain is useless:  greed.<\/p>\n<p>Blaming the financial crisis on greed is like blaming a raging fire on oxygen.  Greed is a pervasive aspect of humanity, visible on both sides of every trade, at every level of society, except perhaps for the guy sleeping in a box near a steaming grate, although I bet he would hungrily grab a better box or squat a warmer grate if he could find it.<\/p>\n<p>I also don&#8217;t buy the idea of mass stupidity, complacency, or irrationality.  The more likely explanation is perfectly sensible, rational behavior of thousands or millions of people under perverse incentives.  The most fruitful line of inquiry is likely to be:  What were the incentives?  How did they arise?  Who did they affect?  Why did they manifest the way they did now?<\/p>\n<p>Or, we can shortcut rational inquiry and go for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2008\/09\/17\/opinion\/smith\/main4455121.shtml\">cheap morality tale<\/a> and the inevitable witch hunt that follows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit I&#8217;m desperately searching for a good explanation about what went wrong this past month. The problem is complex, and the root(s) of it are, I&#8217;m guessing, rather subtler than most people think. But there is one explanation&#8211;the most common one out there&#8211;that I&#8217;m certain is useless: greed. Blaming the financial crisis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}