MARKETS . HOME OF THE REMOTE BACKSTABBER
Of course banksters are not to blame. Governments
have set up the sandbox such that it pays bankers
to commit crimes and scoff at the law. The
politicians are to blame, but they in turn are funded
by the same banksters.
But, I insist. It's the environment that is to blame.
Too much expensive cologne shrinks the amygdala.
Such remote-control violence is also classed together
with drone piloting and missile firing.
Checkit: Boing boing
How
markets allow people to violate their moral codes
Cory
Doctorow at 3:00 pm Sun, Jun 2, 2013
Here's
a press-release describing a paywalled paper in Science magazine, written by a
pair of University of Bonn Economists. They conducted an experiment that showed
how markets diffused responsibility for actions that ended up violating
individual moral codes, so that people did things in market contexts that they
had previously described as immoral when done individually.
"To study immoral outcomes, we studied
whether people are willing to harm a third party in exchange to receiving
money. Harming others in an intentional and unjustified way is typically
considered unethical," says Prof. Falk. The animals involved in the study
were so-called "surplus mice", raised in laboratories outside
Germany. These mice are no longer needed for research purposes. Without the
experiment, they would have all been killed. As a consequence of the study many
hundreds of young mice that would otherwise all have died were saved. If a
subject decided to save a mouse, the experimenters bought the animal. The saved
mice are perfectly healthy and live under best possible lab conditions and
medical care.
