
Is Homo Economicus a Psychopath? - jonathansizz
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo-economicus-a-psychopath/
======
jerf
"Homo economicus, is a creature of coldly calculated selfishness,
dispassionately maximizing its best interests even if that comes at the
expense of others."

For the second time today, I get to point out that in economics is neutral
about "best interests" and is metaphorically happy to accommodate people whom
consider happiness or other such "soft" things as part of their personal value
function. If your definition of "homo economicus" is a psycopath... well, _you
're_ the one who stuck a psychopath there, so ultimately this is a circular
argument in which one asserts that economics is based on the idea of a
psychopath that you put there in the first place. Not exactly a surprising
result there.

There is absolutely no contradiction between "most people act in what they
believe to be their best interests" and "most people take care of their
family", because obviously most people consider "taking care of their family"
to be in their "best interests".

Homo Economicus is still a fictional being, but it's not because "not everyone
is a psychopath", it's because not everyone is perfectly rational all the
time, and humans do have some weaknesses on the rationality front. It was (and
really is) a good _approximation_ because on the whole, people _do_ act
amusingly rationally in a surprising array of situations. (I say "amusing"
because they will often act perfectly rationally in some circumstance, then
cite as their reason some astonishing bullshit reason. Nevertheless, their
actions are often quite rational.)

It's still supposed to be " _Homo_ Economicus" and not " _Robo_ Economicus" or
" _Vulcan_ Economicus".

~~~
DanDanDanDan
Most people do not take care of their family because they think it's in their
best interests. They often take care of their family for myriad reasons--e.g.
a moral call to selflessness, sociocultural norms, a sense of familial duty,
love, etc. The language of "best interests" really doesn't fit here.

Taking care of an ailing parent is in no way connected to maximizing one's
returns on anything (except maybe fulfilling a sense of what you "ought" to
do).

~~~
alexbecker
You're missing his point. "Interests" is a technical term in economics which
means something different from the common usage. In short, it means things you
consciously seek for their own value. Love, being moral, fulfilling duties;
all of these are interests in the sense economists use the term.

NB: Economists largely study specifically monetary interest because it's
something they can measure. A number of criticisms can be made about this, but
there isn't a good alternative.

~~~
defen
> "Interests" is a technical term in economics which means something different
> from the common usage. In short, it means things you consciously seek for
> their own value. Love, being moral, fulfilling duties; all of these are
> interests in the sense economists use the term.

So what is the "utility" (sorry, I couldn't resist) of this term? It seems to
be a tautology - what _else_ could people pursue besides their "interests"? It
seems circular - by definition anything people consciously do is an
"interest", because humans are rational, because they pursue their
interests...

~~~
tikhonj
The core significance "rational interests" is that they are _consistent_. For
example, if you like A more than B and B more than C, you should like A more
than C. The important part is the internal consistency, not the actual
preferences. You could aim at nothing more than helping your fellow man and
behave perfectly rationally, as long as you're consistent about it.

It's not a perfect model because people's preferences are not necessarily
totally ordered, and people are not always consistent, and preferences change
in interesting but sometimes inconsistent (and often predictable) ways. But
it's pretty good.

I think it's a great way to think about things because it makes no judgements
about what your actual goals are. After all, people have different preferences
and interests, and that's fine. More importantly, this also means you could
reuse the same ideas perfectly happily for corporations, organizations,
societies or event AIs and still draw interesting conclusions. It also lets us
create systems that can successfully cater to agents with wildly different
interests and get them all to cooperate willingly—that's one of the most
important features of our market system and capitalism.

------
glenra
A better question might be "Is Homo Economicus a Strawman?"

To which the answer is: yes, it is. Classical economics does not actually
assert that _individual_ humans behave in a purely rational and fully-informed
manner.

A more accurate premise is that _groups_ of humans tend _on average_ to act at
least somewhat _as if_ they were rationally well-informed. We have tools to
determine what "rational" behavior might look like and that turns out to have
predictive power as applied to human behavior because responding appropriately
to incentives is _one_ of the inputs that (in some contexts) shape how people
act.

This idea that economists are stupidly assuming all people are rational is a
myth. People who want to attack "neoclassical economics" should find some
other pretext for doing so.

As an entirely separate matter, economists all the way back to Adam Smith have
known that humans have "fellow feeling" \- how other people feel is one input
to our own utility functions. The idea suggested in OP that rational behavior
must be _entirely_ greedy with no regard for others is also not an inherent
part of classical economics. If that premise is used in some strategy
calculation, it's rebuttable.

To say "people aren't perfectly greedy, so economics is broken" is a bit like
assuming in a physics model that bee wings don't flex, proving they can't fly
given that assumption and thereby concluding not that the assumption turned
out to be inaccurate in this context but rather that physics itself is broken.

~~~
ddebernardy
> A better question might be "Is Homo Economicus a Strawman?"

> To which the answer is: yes, it is. Classical economics does not actually
> assert that individual humans behave in a purely rational and fully-informed
> manner.

(Actually, classical economics does, in the sense that markets follow a price-
demand curve rather than a wiggle as seen experimentally.)

Worst yet, though: it's sheer lunacy. In the words of Steve Keen:

> Consider, for example, your regular visit to a supermarket. The typical
> supermarket has between 10,000 and 50,000 items, but let’s segment them into
> just 100 different groups. How many different shopping trolleys could you
> fill if you limited your decision to simply whether to buy or not buy one
> item from each group? You would be able to fill two to the power of one
> hundred shopping trolleys with different combinations of these goods: that’s
> 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 trolleys in total, or in words
> over 1,000 million trillion trillion shopping trolleys. If you could work
> out the utility you gained from each trolley at a rate of 10 trillion
> trolleys per second, it would take you 100 billion years to locate the
> optimal one. Obviously you don’t do that when you go shopping.

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Homo_economicus](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Homo_economicus)

~~~
chimeracoder
This is like claiming that physicists are "wrong" because they spend time
thinking about a frictionless vacuum[0].

> (Actually, classical economics does, in the sense that markets follow a
> price-demand curve rather than a wiggle as seen experimentally.)

That's the difference between the limitations of an idealized model and the
limitations of experimental process. That doesn't mean that either one is
"wrong", any more than it would in the physical sciences.

> Obviously you don’t do that when you go shopping.

Correct - classical economics describes the behavior of rational actors with
perfect and symmetric information. In this case, there are significant, non-
zero costs to obtaining perfect information. That doesn't mean that the
principles behind classical economics are false, were those assumptions to
hold. And it doesn't mean that the model is useless even absent those
assumptions.

Just as physicists can reason about frictionless vacuums and use that to
inform their understandings of the real world (with friction and air),
economists can reason about perfectly rational actors with perfect and
symmetric information, and use that to inform their understandings of the real
world (with possibly irrational actors and asymmetric and/or imperfect
information).

[0] [https://xkcd.com/669/](https://xkcd.com/669/)

~~~
nickff
> _" classical economics describes the behavior of rational actors with
> perfect and symmetric information."_

Where does it describe the problems this way? Smith's "An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" is not a theoretical exercise in a
moral and emotional vacuum, but an explanation of how development and
prosperity come to be in the real world.[1] There are some examples laid out
by classical economists which make the assumptions that you describe, but
those assumptions were not key tenets of the classical school. Men like
Ricardo and Bastiat spent their time addressing the real world, with all its
corn laws, broken windows, and import tariffs; instead of the physicist's
"friction-less vacuum".

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations)

------
gordaco
My biggest gripe about the concept of Homo Economicus is the huge ideological
component that often gets ignored. The article mentions it, but doesn't focus
on it.

An ideal HE behaves rationally, yes, but that doesn't tell the whole picture;
being rational is about discussing with oneself all the possible behaviours,
choosing the one that gives him the outcome closest to his desires. But also,
and this is very important, it seems like the only thing an HE cares about is
his own benefit, especially his own monetary benefit. So he has friends only
because "who you know" is valuable and can help him get more money; he doesn't
care about poor people because their misery doesn't affect him; the welfare of
society in general is not relevant unless he can benefit from it; etc. Many
people, including me, find all this very troubling, since this is the kind of
people that makes this world far worse than it could be. And yes, I would say
that it's clearly psychopathic behaviour.

Some economists that present, either tacitly or openly, the HE as a positive
ideal, try to hop over this troubling issue by using the ill-defined term
"utility", saying that an HE is someone who maximizes the perceived utility;
and then they proceed to basically define the behaviour of the HE as
economically-oriented, making the whole "utility" concept useless.

Contrast with this Marxist slogan: _From each according to his ability, to
each according to his need_. One can be perfectly rational and follow it; it's
just about using reason to fulfill a completely different goal. So being
rational is about means to attain a goal, while being an HE also includes the
goal of hoarding money and not caring about what happens to other people.

~~~
jerf
You've touched on the strawman about HE, but you've misidentified the source.
It is the Marxists that want you to believe the psychopath claim, in their
desire to stereotype capitalism as blind greed. Good capitalists that
understand economics will perfectly happily include happiness and such in the
value functions they use, because it turns out economic theory stops
functioning without that assumption; it's built in at the ground floor. By
this, I mean, the _math_ stops working, at the deepest and most profound level
economics is _built_ on the idea that entities have different value judgments,
down at the microeconomics level where economics is actually meaningful.

And note the Marxists then wish to slide in the idea that _they_ ought to get
to set your value function, when you aren't looking. (Which is part of the
silliness at the core of the whole idea when they think they can set the same
valuations for everyone, because, again, the math stops making sense and, what
a surprise, indeed systems that truly attempt to function in a fully Marxist
manner really do break down in a horrifyingly complete manner, as if they were
trying to build an economy on the proposition that 1+1=3.)

The strawman idea comes from the Marxists, who generally don't want you
engaging with capitalist theory particularly fairly, since they would lose a
big rhetorical weapon if you do.

You can not understand the anger about HE until you understand that Marxists
desperately _need_ humans to not behave "slightly irrationally under some
circumstances" (the real scenario) but need humans to be _profoundly_
irrational, so they can justify their handing over all sorts of power to the
government so they can save everyone from themselves. Of course explaining
exactly how the government will transcend being made out of irrational humans
is conveniently left unexplained, since that is impossible. But, if humans
were really _profoundly_ irrational, we wouldn't be having this argument,
because our species would be long dead. People who want to believe that people
are _profoundly_ irrational on a massive scale must grapple with the problem
that such behaviors lead to death in the real universe, and tend to be evolved
out pretty quickly. (This is where the "amusing" comes from in my other post;
humans are not _entirely_ rational, but we've been tuned to be _surprisingly_
rational in many ways... our _claimed reasons_ however have not been so
tuned.)

So the problem with HE isn't that he's utterly, utterly nonexistent... the
problem with HE is that it's a slightly imperfect model, and iterative systems
like the economy being what they are, that imperfection can end up magnified
in surprising nonlinear ways and have bizarre consequences, in a system that
often has nonlinear and bizarre behaviors even if everyone _was_ totally
rational. So it important that science is done to determine the ways in which
real humans deviate from HE... but these will generally be in relatively small
ways, rather than the massive total failures of the model that the Marxists
are searching for.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> You can not understand the anger about HE until you understand that Marxists
> desperately need humans to not behave "slightly irrationally under some
> circumstances" (the real scenario) but need humans to be profoundly
> irrational, so they can justify their handing over all sorts of power to the
> government so they can save everyone from themselves.

You had me until that sentence. I don't think the Marxists need humans to be
profoundly _irrational_ , they need humans to be profoundly _exploited_ , and
for the exploiters to be rational. That means that you can't appeal to the
exploiters to stop, because continuing is in the exploiters' best interest;
you can only stop them with force.

I agree with your overall conclusions (that the Marxists were/are the ones
pushing the HE strawman). I just think that you're off in your next-to-last
paragraph. In fact, I think that the psychopath claim (which you cite in the
first paragraph) is in contradiction with your argument in the fourth
paragraph.

~~~
cmdkeen
You mean Marxist-Leninists, Marxism in and of itself doesn't require violent
revolution.

The real irony is that if governments are rational actors, and power is in
their best interest, then the Leninist insistence on the need for proletariat
dictatorship as a step to true Communism (where the government isn't needed)
is undermined by the rationale that the government won't give up power.

Which is of course what has happened with every state that has tried it.
Marxist Communism on a state level has never been reached, merely various
forms of socialist dictatorship that claim to be working towards it.

~~~
icebraining
> You mean Marxist-Leninists, Marxism in and of itself doesn't require violent
> revolution.

Well, maybe not require, but

 _In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat,
we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society,
up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the
violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the
proletariat._

Marx/Engels -- Manifesto of the Communist Party

------
wahsd
The answer is yes, in the current form of human economy. A non-psychopathic
personality type has approaching zero percent chance of meritocratic reward
beyond a certain glass ceiling. There are, of course, exceptions, but they do
not make the rule. The rule is that the overwhelming majority of the most
"successful" beneficiaries of current and past human economy have all been far
more psychopathic personalities than not.

The ironic thing is that it's one of those things that is so blatantly obvious
and right in front of people's face that they can't see it; the proverbial
forest in spite of all the trees.

------
swatow
People misunderstand classical economics, because it is subtle.

The prisoner's dilemma is an interesting game because it is extreme: people
are able to lower the total welfare while raising their own.

But classical economics asserts that these situations arise only when there
are externalities or market frictions, and only in proportion to how large
these are (there are also issues of wealth distribution, but this could be
thought of as a friction to perfect taxation).

If there were no market frictions, and people could be taxed according to
their innate ability to earn money, then it wouldn't matter whether people
aimed to maximize their own utility, or the sum of everyone's utility: they
would engage in exactly the same actions.

Altruism vs selfishness only becomes an issue when there are externalities or
frictions. E.g. do I choose to pollute a stream, even though I know I won't be
punished. Or do I choose to work less than I would otherwise, because some of
my income is taxed (if people didn't work less for this reason, we could have
a tax system with much more redistribution).

So neoclassical theory isn't nearly so tied to the idea of selfishness as
people think. One thing it does do, is make very clear that people are
selfish. I could buy a coffee every day, or make a donation that would (on
average) save one life in Africa. And yet I chose to buy the coffee anyway. As
a believer in classical economics, I have to conclude that I am that selfish.

------
yourapostasy
Following Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the answer the article answers is
"no", but it is a qualified "no".

Homo Economicus according to the article "is a creature of coldly calculated
selfishness, dispassionately maximizing its best interests even if that comes
at the expense of others".

The researchers concluded: "We see a person who is intelligent, driven to
excel and to dominate other people, and capable of impulse control and of
working toward long-term goals. In other words, Homo economicus is the
prototypical member of the social and economic elite."

I wish the researchers went further and went back to the biographies of their
participants to evaluate whether or not their conclusion fit the participants'
social and economic standings.

Nonetheless, this is one of the few better-controlled and quantified studies
I've seen about the over-representation of sociopathic and psychopathic traits
in leadership. Keep this in mind the next time you work under/alongside them.
Many hackers tend to have a meritocratic ideation of how the world _should_
work, but the reality is sociopaths and borderline psychopaths are mostly the
ones that rise to the top, and many a hacker is easily taken advantage of
until they learn how the world really works (for now, at least).

~~~
raarts
Can you point to some other studies? This is an interesting topic.

~~~
yourapostasy
You will get a deluge by Googling "sociopathy leaders" and "psychopathy
leaders". Most are unfortunately not as quantified as I prefer (and I'm not
aware of any longitudinal studies at all), but personally I've experienced
enough anecdata corroborating the studies to appropriately take action in my
daily life. The exceptions in the business world especially are so rare that
they prove the rule. The interesting questions to me, that haven't really been
explored as far as I can find, come out of asking why as a species we have
evolved to generally enshrine this group as leadership.

------
BradFinkle
The terrifying thing about this analysis, if we presume as the author does
that it is correct and could be applied to society, is that this small
percentage of our society ("the prototypical member of the social and economic
elite") holds the power that creates the logic by which most of us must act
within. Even if we have more altruistic and communitarian values, our life is
not a neutral experiment whereby we can demonstrate these values. The logic of
our social sphere seems to hinder the expression of communitarian values even
for those of us whom are naturally inclined this way. For me this article
exemplifies that which we worry about most - that the logic of Homo Economicus
which we can be seen to adhere to is championed by those who run the game
rather than those playing it.

------
otikik
I find strange that the HE's decided not to lie on the tests.

Given that it was a game, and they knew they were being tested, I would have
thought that "appearing generous and well-disposed to the testers and other
participants" (even if they were not like that in real life) would benefit
their self-interest more than "winning fictional money" (and risking looking
like a self-centered person). The first benefit is small but takes place in
the real world, the other one is bigger but fictional.

I must be missing something. It seems to me that in order to maximize your
benefit in such games the _obvious and selfish_ thing to do is appearing
infinitely generous.

~~~
woodchuck64
The HE psychopaths identified might be better described as narcissistic, and
if so, the easiest way to identify a narcissist might be just to ask him or
her: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-
science/wp/20...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-
science/wp/2014/08/05/you-only-need-a-one-question-test-to-identify-a-
narcissist/) It would follow that a true narcissist wouldn't see self-
absorption as something negative.

------
vorg
> about 7% of people were consistent HEs, never endowing their partners with
> any coin. They discovered that another 9% were quasi-HE (or qHE), giving
> their partners money a small proportion of the time. About a quarter of
> people consistently gave them a hefty chunk of change. These people were
> called Consistent Cooperators or CCs. And everyone else was in the middle,
> so the researchers called them Ordinary People (or ORDs)

According to another notation out there...

* the 16% HE+qHE's are called "Sociopaths"

* the 60% ORD's care called "Clueless"

* the 25% CC's are called "Losers"

------
Animats
This subject was covered recently in "Assholes, A Theory", by Aaron James.
This is a serious study of assholes and why they rise to the top in certain
types of organizations. It's not a joke. It's worth reading.

------
chrismealy
Cosma Shalizi on this very good:

[http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/bulletin/homo-...](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/bulletin/homo-
reciprocans.html)

------
_nedR
"Smart, non-manipulative people shun them, perhaps even refuse to mate with
them."

Not helpful. All the A-hole jock-types have hot girlfriends and wives.

------
joshjkim
This reminds of a thought I had a few months ago: how have there not been more
thought pieces relating Uber-the-business's recent/relentless PR-debacles to
Nietzsche's Ubermensch concept? I guess I'll give it a go.

Uber/Travis and his execs seem to demonstrate the belief that they are
"overmen" in that they seem to believe that they transcend the rules of
society and are destined to shape society and its values rather than the other
way around (probably something not too uncommonly shared with HN readers…).

A few fun/funny/serious examples (in no particular order):

1\. They outrightly express resistance to laws-as-is, and regularly threaten
to ignore and sometimes do break those regs as necessary to conduct their
business / benefit themselves and their consumers.

2\. They hire lobbyists and other high-level political actors to change the
laws they don't like and/or influence lawmakers - not atypical for a large
company, but they did this earlier than most companies at their stage, with
much more specific agendas in place and with a lot more PR surrounding it (the
last may or may not have been their doing, hard to say). They have a belief
(probably well-founded) that they can use the political process to make the
law bend to their will. “Creating New Values” as any good uberman should.

3\. They call their central system “Godmode” which implies that they, the
viewers, are like God (a bit of a stretch I know…couldn’t resist)

4\. They are proud that using the data in Godmode they can track, predict and
identify specifics of other human being’s behavior.

5\. The whole “we’ll pay our own researchers to smear journalists” thing -
another good example of Creating New Values and constructing narratives.

6\. The general feeling that Uber (perhaps correctly) operates against
“states” and “sovereigns” and “systems” more than corporate competitors (who
even writes about Lyft anymore these days…)

The funny thing is that after thinking this through, all (good?) CEOs of major
corporations basically operate like this (and so do many other tech-leaders -
it is often associated with libertarian-leaning individuals like P. Thiel,
etc.) - the difference is that Uber (1) has a name that calls it out and (2)
seems to be especially prone to doing this in public and (3) sometimes appears
to relishes their “overlord-iness” a little too much. You can call it being
crass or being honest.

In any case, they seem to be getting hip to the system and playing nice which
of course can be viewed as just another level of the game, etc. - still, glad
to see them do it because I overall think that playing nice is best
(especially when you can afford to do it) and with a $40b val. and a couple
billion raised, I think they can spare some good behavior, at least for now =)

Note on Uber: I think Uber is a great business and has a significantly net-
positive impact on society, and I reserve judgment w/r/t whether TK and the
other Uber execs are good or bad people - I can't conclude they are good
because they run a good business, and I can't conclude they are bad because
they say stupid things in public.

Note on Nietzche: In Thus Spake Zarathrusa, the "uberman" concept is (maybe)
considered a positive that humanity should work towards in the absence of
belief in God, and I think it can still be understood as such. The fact that
history has attributed some very negative actions to the belief in this
concept (Hitler, Leopold & Loeb's murder, etc.) is, in my opinion, not
definitive but at the same time not entirely insignificant, but I'm also a
Christian that believes in capital-M Morality so I'm biased against nihilism
in general.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Note on Nietzche: In Thus Spake Zarathrusa, the "uberman" concept is (maybe)
> considered a positive that humanity should work towards in the absence of
> belief in God, and I think it can still be understood as such.

The problem is that, in the absence of God, there is no absolute morality that
is not the result of an arbitrary choice. When the "uberman" arises, he/she
creates a new morality, which is needed in the morally nihilistic vacuum that
arises due to the absence of God. _But because there is no objective basis for
morality in the absence of God, that means that the new morality is the result
of the "uberman's" arbitrary choice._ Is that going to be the magic spark that
leads us into a golden age? Only if we get very, very lucky in the "uberman's"
arbitrary choice.

~~~
jasonisalive
The Übermensch realises that the pre-existing god-based morality was in itelf
fully arbitrary, as it was invented by the weak to defend themselves against
the predations of the powerful.

There's not really any way to avoid the necessity of making an arbitrary
decision about which values to promote and live for, because even to stick
with the status quo is an arbitrary decision to live by originally arbitrary
values.

~~~
jqm
Good comment. I agree.

There is no way to avoid the necessity of making a value decision. Even if one
chooses the "will of god", they still are making an arbitrary choice. (Never
mind at this stage in history the vast smorgasbord of "divine wills" to choose
from...).

It all comes down to human valuation. Create your own or follow someone
else's. Inevitably.

~~~
joshjkim
Hm, I can't disprove what you are saying outside of my own experience but I'm
also not sure you can prove that all value decisions are arbitrary.

Aside from the fact that such conclusion (which I assume is based on
logic/rationalism - but you can pretty much sub any other
scientific/philosophical concept here) itself appears to be as constructed
(aka. arbitrary) as any other value system, I also think that while
arbitrariness may be a logical conclusion when viewing
experience/existence/etc. in abstraction, I would argue that at the very
least, experience/consciousness gives humans some evidence/reason to believe
that value decisions are not or may not be arbitrary, and I consider our
direct experience/consciousness to be a very significant data set to consider
in spite of how non-rigorous it might be. Put another way, through observation
I have concluded that while many people do say all value systems are
arbitrary, I have yet to see one person who I would say lives their life as if
that were actually true - even my most sociopathic friends (dead writers or
real people I know haha) appear to have a strong preference for self-
preservation or rationalism.

I'm mostly interested in the concept of self-preservation, aka. the assumed
value in continuing one's existence in the first place - I would argue that
almost everyone I know makes decisions assuming that their life has value, and
that such value decision does not feel arbitrary at all even if logically it
seems that way - I think this conflict drives a lot of very smart people crazy
or at least annoys them, and to me the existence of this conflict is not
insignificant.

As I've said before, I started paying attention when was I 14 and I'm 29 now,
so my 15 year data set trends strongly as described =) Of course yours or any
other persons experience of consciousness may differ greatly, that's the crazy
part about it all I guess.

------
debacle
> HE makes up only a small portion of the population.

But enough to control it.

~~~
vorg
The HE's control the CC's by using ORD's as intermediaries.

------
gdonelli
Is it me or this sounds like a portrait of Steve Jobs?

------
productcontrol
I work in an investment bank. Here I see a lot of people with psychopathic
tendencies, probably more than in other industries I have worked in, but, what
worries we most, is the ones I don't spot. They are there, after all, finance
offers them a refuge where their singular behaviour is rewarded.

