Not How They Wanted to Be Remembered

Last Wednesday two executives for the private AI/data services company Astronomer were spotted by the "kiss cam" at a Coldplay concert (see above video). President Andy Byron and Human Resources chief Kristin Cabot, who are married to other people, were caught in a friendly embrace and tried to conceal their identities too late.

Days after a video of Byron canoodling with the company’s HR chief nearly broke the internet, the company said Byron had resigned from his position. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met,” Astronomer said Saturday...

In an instant, the video became a lightning rod for the public’s conflicting views on wealth, power and simmering frustrations toward the executive class, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of management at Yale University. “There’s a certain schadenfreude associated with this,” he said. “Here’s a takedown of the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots.’”

The online furor erupted shortly after the camera at the Coldplay concert panned to Byron and Cabot. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Coldplay frontman Chris Martin said from the stage, as Byron quickly ducked out of frame and Cabot covered her face and turned.

The viral popularity of the video taps into the state of the culture:

A relationship between senior executives can send a message that “the rules don’t apply to us,” said Deb Muller, chief executive of HR Acuity, a technology platform that helps companies track employee investigations and complaints. Employees, vendors, customers and investors may also question the integrity of leaders.

“You have to start using some judgment when you’re in senior-level positions,” Muller said.

It’s unclear what Astronomer’s policy is, but the company said Friday it had initiated a formal investigation into the matter.

Because of the risks associated with such clandestine relationships, corporate boards are less tolerant today of executive romances than they once were. McDonald’s in 2019 fired then-CEO Steve Easterbrook because of his consensual relationship with an employee. BP CEO Bernard Looney resigned in 2023 after the oil giant said he hadn’t been fully transparent about past personal relationships with colleagues. And last year, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw was fired after a board probe found that his relationship with the railroad giant’s chief legal officer violated company policies.

None of those incidents, though, sparked the glee and gloating that the video of the Astronomer CEO and his HR chief have generated.

The schadenfreude that comes with the public takedown of a CEO, said Yale’s Sonnenfeld, “is elevated even more right now.”

CEO Andy Byron has resigned his position, and as of this writing there's no update on HR chief Kristin Cabot. Financially both should land on their feet, but their children will undoubtedly be damaged. Meanwhile, the mockery continues.

Make America Virtuous Again?

At one point in high school someone told me that character is destiny, which at the time seemed profound. (The quote is attributed to Heraclitus, who is also famous for "you can't step into the same river twice," but I digress.)

After a few years under their belt, most people come to realize that being of good character does not guarantee secular success. Bad things happen to good people, and bad people can be found at the pinnacle of government, business, entertainment, sports, law, media, and even churches and other non-profits. However, the importance of good character still persisted in a society that believed in an after-life when Final Judgment would be rendered.

When fewer people believe in a Deity, and fewer are members of an organized religion, does virtue have relevance, especially since virtue may be the only reward?

Answering in the affirmative, Harvard history professor James Hankins sees similarities in today's predicaments to 14th century Italy, when the philosopher-poet Petrarch saw virtue as the solution:

it was precisely the collapse of institutions and the twin diseases of violent partisanship and tyranny that drove the great political thinkers of the Renaissance to invent a new instrument of statecraft. They called it the studia humanitatis, or the humanities...

Italy was recovering from the Black Death and the collapse of its financial system. The Catholic Church was divided and corrupt, the Holy Roman Empire was fatally weakened and the Ottoman Turks were knocking at the door of Constantinople...These leaders were ignorant of the past, unable to express themselves truthfully or decently, and driven by their unbridled lust for power and riches to neglect the common good. Feared and hated by their subjects, they were unable to inspire loyalty.

Petrarch’s solution was a new kind of politics: virtue politics...Following Plato, the humanists defined tyranny as the absence of good character, so the ruler who lacked good character could by definition be considered a tyrant. Those who possessed political power by hereditary right didn’t deserve that power unless they were also virtuous—that is, unless they possessed moral excellence and practical wisdom. Virtue was made a necessary condition of legitimate rule, and virtue could be taught and learned—through an education in the humanities.

Your humble blogger buys into much of what Professor Hankins advocates, that widespread education in the humanities is a societal good. However, with regard to the humanities I am referring to the canon as it was 50 years ago, not that which prevails today with restrictions on speech and thought, promulgation of "social justice" through an expansion of State power, and tribal politics that sees everyone through the prism of group identity.

But...teaching men to be virtuous will not make them so. One of the major premises of American constitutional government is that individuals cannot be trusted with too much power, hence the system of checks and balances. That system, while infuriatingly slow at times, has proved to be remarkably stable regardless of the character of those who inhabit political office.

Also, virtue isn't everything. One of the least successful Presidents of the 20th century--but arguably the most virtuous--was Jimmy Carter.

Success in the sacred does not make one successful in the profane. We can support Donald Trump or Bill Clinton for their effectiveness, not their saintliness.

While we wish that our leaders would be both, they are rarely so.

Of Specks and Logs

Part of the lesson I read aloud today:

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. --- Ephesians 4.

In these politicized times, we like to point out how angry and maniacal the other guy is. But Paul's words are meant as a reminder to ourselves, not as a scold for others.

(Related - Rule 6 of Jordan Peterson's Rules for Life: Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world.)

Organizer Shelley with some of the backpacks blessed today.

On a happier note, this was the first year our church participated in a backpack drive for foster kids at the beginning of the school year.

The goal was to collect 25, but we actually received 40 backpacks, plus supplies and cash donations, not bad for a congregation with 70-80 attendees every Sunday.

Why I Didn’t Flush the Urinal

Hint: this one makes a loud noise.

The guy on the toilet next to me was on the speakerphone talking to a girl. Yes, he ought to know better or maybe the girl didn’t care. But I wasn’t going to be the one to harsh his mellow by pulling the handle.

There are a lot of new trade offs that Emily Post never had to consider.

Let the Seller Beware

Accounting irregularities and insider manipulation--much more prevalent in China than America--would seem to make the Hong Kong stock market ripe for short selling. However, betting that a Chinese stock will go down is an especially risky proposition: [bold added]

Sly humor:  junks in Hong Kong (WSJ photo)

Hong Kong’s market structure has made life difficult for the short sellers. The presence of large controlling shareholders in many listed Chinese firms makes it is easier for friendly parties to defend them against short sellers’ attacks. Dali Foods, for example, has only a 15% public float.

Another difficulty is the growing influence of money flooding into Hong Kong from mainland China to defend beleaguered stocks.

The WSJ calls moves to prop up questionable securities as "threats to the Hong Kong market’s integrity." But such indignation merits attention if integrity is a bedrock principle; it's not, but State Capitalism is. Wrote the Economist in 2012:

state capitalism...tries to meld the powers of the state with the powers of capitalism. It depends on government to pick winners and promote economic growth. But it also uses capitalist tools such as listing state-owned companies on the stockmarket and embracing globalisation....

State capitalism can claim the world's most successful big economy for its camp. Over the past 30 years China's GDP has grown at an average rate of 9.5% a year and its international trade by 18% in volume terms

Hong Kong market participants have been amply warned. They should adjust their predictions to account for the Chinese government's direct and indirect support of stocks. Let the (short) seller beware.

Note: U.S. markets aren't exactly free of government interference. For decades there has been a strong belief in the "Fed put", that the U.S. Federal Reserve would be a buyer of last resort if equities collapsed, or at least infuse the economy with cash so that private investors would prop up prices.

Data Sneak

When I see a product or service that I'm interested in, I fill out a contact form on the Web. When the request gets too personal (date of birth, social security number, income), I usually stop and don't submit the information. In the case of Quicken Loans the entries are transmitted as soon as you type it on the form, whether or not you hit "enter."

You change your mind and close the page before clicking the Submit button and agreeing to Quicken’s privacy policy.

But it’s too late. Your email address and phone number have already been sent to a server at “murdoog.com,” which is owned by NaviStone, a company that advertises its ability to unmask anonymous website visitors and figure out their home addresses. NaviStone’s code on Quicken’s site invisibly grabbed each piece of your information as you filled it out, before you could hit the “Submit” button.

Yes, child, we used to get our apps on "CD's"

We've been actual customers of Intuit for nearly 20 years and use Quicken, Quickbooks, and Turbotax on both the Mac and PC platforms. All the products contain sensitive financial data, much more extensive than on a web inquiry or contact form.

We will be much more guarded in our future dealings with Intuit and will consider switching to their competition.

whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
---Luke 16:10

Biased News

Desiree Fairooz confronts Condoleeza Rice in 2007. She
attempted to intimidate her with red-stained hands, but Dr.
Rice responds with a fearless expression. (Guardian photo)

There are several techniques to bias a news article without lying. One way is to leave out important facts that may cause the reader to take the opposite position from the writer (example: advocates of compact fluorescent bulbs omitted mention of mercury poisoning).

Another is to bury countervailing information at the bottom of the article. Example from the Guardian.

Headline: Woman who laughed at Jeff Sessions hearing convicted for being 'disorderly'

Desired Reaction: someone was convicted for laughing at the Attorney General. He sounds like a hypersensitive jerk who throws his weight around.

Lead sentence: A jury in Washington has convicted a woman who was arrested after laughing during a confirmation hearing for the attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Desired Reaction: Yep, the article matches the headline. Arrested for laughing? This is America!

Well, if you make it to paragraph 10 [bold added]:

A spokesperson for the jury that convicted Fairooz, who spoke to the Huffington Post on condition of anonymity, said: “She did not get convicted for laughing. It was her actions as she was being asked to leave.”

While newspapers now take advocacy positions in the news section, most still retain enough journalistic ethics so as not to deliberately mislead. The Guardian isn't one of them.

Unforced Error

Though my politics are more in tune with Republicans than Democrats, I'm under no illusions about the wisdom, intelligence, or character of some Republican members. One of the first items that the House Republican majority put on the agenda was to "reduce the power of an independent ethics office":

Republicans had voted 119-74 in a secret House GOP Caucus meeting Monday night to hobble the Office of Congressional Ethics as part of new rules to govern the incoming Congress.

Not everyone who voted in favor of this item was motivated by venality (the Office had a history of tying up Members with spurious claims by activist groups, as well as investigating legitimate accusations), but surely there are more important things to do in the first hundred days.

It took a tweet from the President-elect to shame the Republicans to remove the provision.

With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017

The un-politician seems to have more political sense than those with many years of experience.

No Class

The plastic was torn at bottom left and one bottle removed.

Costco sells its branded Kirkland water at $2.99 per 40 bottles. At 7½ cents a bottle it's one of the deals that keep us coming back, just like the $4.99 whole rotisserie chicken and the $1.49 hot dog-and-soda.

If a shopper wants a chilled bottle immediately, he can buy one from the vending machine out front for 25 cents, another bargain.

I couldn't understand why someone would steal one of the room-temperature bottles, "saving" 7½ or 25 cents and making the 40-pack unsellable. Some people.

(BTW, a few feet away I found another case in the same condition.)

Courtesy at Costco

One of the benefits of shopping at Costco is the abundance of free food samples. One of the disadvantages is that the tables seem always to be placed at the mouth of crowded aisles. Eaters plant their carts where no one can get past; stares and other nonverbal signals don't move them, so I must usually circle around.

Rule #1 of courteous Costco shopping: park the cart in a low-traffic area and come back for the sample. Added benefit: without the cart you'll be less inclined to buy food that you probably don't need. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

The Rest of Us Don't

(Yale photo)

Billionaire short-seller Jim Chanos (Yale '80) now teaches Financial Fraud through History: A Forensic Approach at his alma mater. Chanos says that financial reform legislation such as Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley has done little to stem the fraud and chicanery in our capital markets [bold added].

Corruption is everywhere in the business world, he warns, citing a survey in which 45 percent of chief financial officers said their CEOs had asked them to falsify financial results.

He lambasts the audit profession:

Chanos constantly nudges his students to challenge established opinion. When one of them remarks that a scandal-ridden firm had a reputable auditor signing off on its reports, he says, “They all have reputable audit firms. That’s one thing I want you to take away from this course: every big fraud had a great audit firm behind it.” He likens auditors and government regulators to archaeologists. “They’ll tell you what happened after the damage has been done.”

I wish that my school counselor had taken me aside before I went into accounting and said, "You won't get rich, you'll be ignored--there's a reason why they call it a back-room job, and you'll be blamed when things fall apart. The only consolation is that you'll be one of the few who know what's going on." Jim Chanos also knows what's going on, and short-sellers like him take some of the blame when businesses fail. The difference is that he's got $ billions to console him, and the rest of us don't. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Plus C'est la Même Chose

When one is offered enormous power, what should be the response?

Gandalf, a fictional wizard:

With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly....Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.

Jesus (Matthew 4:8):

the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’

The good individual's instinct is to fear the corrupting effect of power on themselves. If power is thrust upon them nevertheless, the self-aware wield it with great restraint. Based on the revelations of the past month, there is little self-awareness to be found in Washington. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Hangin' at the Food Court

The shopping center was built on the Tanforan Park racetrack.

I like hangin' at the Tanforan Food Court.

Lured by $5-7 lunch prices, young families line up at the food kiosks. The crowd is noisy, young, and working class, reflective of a suburban shopping center that has Sears, J.C. Penney, and Target as anchor stores.

It's a world away from the tony Peninsula country clubs that are just up the hill.

The Starbucks provides free Wi-Fi, and I can surf to my heart's content.

Since high school, I've acquired the ability to tune out ambient noise and focus on the book or video display in front of my nose.

Of course, one man's focus is another man's obliviousness. My wallet had fallen out of my pants pocket and was under a chair. The bus "boy"--actually a guy who was about 40--pointed it out to me, then hustled away to clean tables, empty garbage cans, and sweep the floors.

I glanced at him periodically over the next  hour. He was always rushing about, pouring his energy into a job that likely didn't deserve him. I thought about how much trouble he saved me because I had not lost my wallet stuffed with credit, debit, and membership cards, not to mention my driver's license.

I walked up to him and slipped him a twenty. Initially he wouldn't take it, but I insisted. It was a win-win for both of us, and I got the better end. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Toil and Trouble

One subset of the higher education bubble--in which tuition increases far outpaced the ability of students and their families to pay for them--is the law school bubble [bold added]

the legal industry is stagnating, and suffers from a severe overabundance of young graduates, many of whom applied to law schools under the false pretenses that their degree would be an express ticket to a six figure salary. Instead, many graduates are now contending with six figures of crushing debt and murky career prospects.

These new statistics are the latest evidence that young Americans are getting the hint that the market for lawyers is perhaps not what it once was....The number of applications also dropped dramatically, which could force law schools to ease up on their mind bogglingly expensive tuition.

When a bubble begins to deflate, data are fudged in a desperate attempt to keep the party going. (Recent instances are real estate appraisals and tech companies' reported earnings.) Law schools are no exception. A WSJ article reports how three law schools consistently under-reported the amount of debt their students accumulated before graduating.

The errors weren't insignificant. The originally reported / corrected debt loads were: Barry Law School - $41,190 / $137,680, University of Kansas - $41,574 / $67,598, and Rutgers - $27,423 / $80,446. If the errors were random, one would expect to see over- as well as under-reporting, but of course the mistakes weren't random but self-serving.

Not a proud chapter in the life of a profession that hounds everyone else for their ethical lapses.

Say--or Yelp--It Ain't So

Trying to live up to the motto.

I'm a regular subscriber (and occasional contributor) to Yelp reviews. I've checked out restaurants, plumbers, doctors, and just about everyone I buy from. With Yelp having such influence over consumers like me, it's no surprise that vendors are trying to game the widely used review website.

Yelp uncovered what it dubbed a "review-swapping ring" composed of members of a Los Angeles-area business networking group. Yelp said it was a coordinated effort by members to boost their ratings by posting glowing reviews about one another's businesses. [snip]

Concerns are growing about the authenticity of online ratings. People making comments often don't give their full or real names; others don't disclose their relationship with the business they're reviewing. That can allow business owners to pad their scores with rosy testimonials from friends, family, even themselves. Some pay so-called review mills to churn out positive statements. Others have trashed rivals with negative comments.

As many as 4 out of 10 online reviews are phony or biased [bold added] in some way, said Bing Liu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago who develops software to detect fake reviews. Liu said the challenge for Yelp and other review sites is in keeping pace with the latest tactics.

"It's going to be a problem forever because the incentive is too high," he said. [snip]

To fight back against cheats, Yelp has developed sophisticated algorithms to root out phony testimonials. And it employs a team of staffers whose job it is to detect fraudsters. The company also relies on tips from its users who flag reviews that appear to be bogus. Yelp's policy also bars members of networking groups from reviewing one another because of the conflict of interest.

It's a shame but not surprising that a high percentage of reviewers have motives other than giving an honest assessment to other consumers. It's in Yelp's interest to excise the fakers. I hope that it succeeds.

Reducing Accounting "Shenanigans"

We can't change human nature, but we can organize ourselves not only to prevent malfeasance but also to make it easier to adhere to ethical standards in situations that aren't black and white. The accounting profession is currently discussing whether to impose term limits on the auditor-client relationship.

The statement of the problem:

Auditors work for the same company for so long that instead of being independent, they end up co-dependent.

The most common objection to term limits:

Rotating audit firms every few years would raise costs, reduce the familiarity of accountants with a company's books and impair the quality of audits.

Given the complexity of modern information systems, there's some truth in the argument against auditors' term limits. However, this is one instance where the greater cost to society may be in the audit failure of a "too-big-to-fail" institution, versus the higher cost of individual audits spread across the universe of public companies.

The WSJ writer also calls for restrictions on the revolving door between audit personnel and their clients. I've witnessed many instances of companies hiring accounting talent from their CPA firms. (I've never seen it done for nefarious purposes; if one works with someone who is likeable and smart, why waste time going through hundreds of resumes and dozens of interviews?)

But if you're going to impose the revolving-door rule on auditors and their clients, create one as well for government employees and lobbying firms. In the latter case the damage to the budget and society has been obvious.

Not Always The Best

Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio wants brutal honesty from everyone who works for him:

Mr. Dalio's basic philosophy is what he calls "hyper-realism," a notion that brutal honesty, no matter how uncomfortable, yields the best results. Principle No. 8: "There is nothing to fear from truth....Being truthful is essential to being an independent thinker and obtaining greater understanding of what is right."

You may speak your mind, but you can’t hide in the shadows.

At Bridgewater [Associates], being truthful also requires being a bit ruthless. Employees aren't allowed to talk critically about someone unless the person is present. Principal No. 11: "Never say anything about a person you wouldn't say to him directly. If you do, you are a slimy weasel." If an employee breaks the rule three times, they can be fired.

Living by this philosophy sounds liberating. Our politically correct way of speaking can confuse others; masking what we really think leads to misunderstandings and delayed, if not wrong, group decisions. 

It's one thing to apply them to the workplace, but I know that I can’t live by Mr. Dalio’s rules in my personal life. I regularly deal with mentally challenged (see, there I go with euphemisms) people, and only very rarely would I say to them that they are unlikely to live a normal life or that some things they deeply desire they can never have. Speaking with brutal honesty to the clinically depressed can have dire consequences.

Ray Dalio's billions permit him to have luxuries afforded to few mortals.  One such is the privilege of speaking his mind without consequence or of having to associate with those for whom brutal honesty is not the best policy. 

Body Worlds 2

Disease and death have always been mankind’s lot, but in the decades following the war Americans did their best to avoid these aspects of the human condition. We shunted the terminally ill and injured to hospitals where they expired quietly out of view. Cancer was a subject to be discussed in hushed whispers. Mass media and entertainment showed violent death, but with reduced horror and blood.

Today we have the proliferation of uncensored sources of information, the popularity of hospital and forensic-science TV shows where we can watch autopsies in prime time, and attendance at live births in delivery rooms. What was once witnessed by medical professionals, soldiers, and undertakers is now witnessed by all.

Plastination is the process by which flesh is preserved by draining water and fats from the specimen and substituting silicone, plastic polymer, or other permanent material in the cell. We attended Body Worlds, which displayed plastinated body parts and whole bodies, often in “artistic” poses. Once the initial squeamishness passed, I found the exhibit to be unexpectedly fascinating. The captioned signs provided sufficient information in my opinion, but the youngster and a college student both said they found the audio guide to be very helpful.

Although the feeling subsided, I couldn’t shake my disquiet over showing human bodies in this manner. Each donor gave his informed consent, but to display a body peeled like a banana or exploded symmetrically outward seemed disrespectful toward the being who once inhabited his fleshly temple. On the other hand, viewing a “real” spleen, heart, and liver more than made the experience worthwhile.

All in all, I’m glad I spent the $24 entrance fee and 2-3 hours on a Saturday, but I don’t intend to be a repeat visitor. © 2007 Stephen Yuen

Old Material

On Thursday mornings cars prowl our neighborhood. Sleazy (or enterprising, depending on your point of view) individuals hope to harvest cans and bottles from the curbside boxes before the recycling truck arrives. I have no particular love for the garbage company, but scavengers’ actions seem wrong. We don’t sort our plastic, glass, and cans for the benefit of these strangers.

My moral reasoning is: if Allied Waste hauls away our paper and yard waste, it should receive the benefit of our other recyclables that have monetary value. And if Allied Waste gets more incremental revenue, our future garbage rates will be lower (okay, I’m not that naïve).

It does seem silly to stand guard over trash for the benefit of a multi-billion-dollar waste-handling company, but a teaching moment could arise from a dilemma that I recognize is self-inflicted. The youngster has become keenly interested in opportunities to earn extra spending money. For the past three months we have stored aluminum cans and plastic bottles in the garage. Last Saturday was the big day; he would share in half the proceeds from our trip to the buyback center.

We loaded the van with three boxes of recyclables and drove to the Rite-Aid parking lot in nearby San Mateo. Pick-up trucks, each laden with many more times our quantities, were at the front of the line. We transferred our stash to shopping carts, then to plastic barrels for weighing.

Our collection.

Another family's efforts.

The clerk refrained from laughing as we rolled the barrels onto the scales, the needle barely budging. He handed me $6.46, the fruits of three months of collecting and two hours this Saturday morning. I concealed my disappointment and handed the entire boodle to the youngster. He’s still learning the meaning of labor, and I can’t let him think that his time (or mine) is too valuable for certain kinds of work. That "wisdom" will come all too soon. © 2007 Stephen Yuen

His Time is Past

Warren Buffett on how to prevent corporate scandals:

So, at Berkshire, let's start with what is legal, but always go on to what we would feel comfortable about being printed on the front page of our local paper, and never proceed forward simply on the basis of the fact that other people are doing it.

I first read Warren Buffett’s quirky missives during the late1970’s. His life is a good example of the persistence of character. He always charted an independent path and owned up to his mistakes, yet never lost faith in his judgment, which he backed with cold, hard cash. Infusing all his actions is a humility born from his religious beliefs and the chastening lessons of a long life.

Warren Buffett says that the fact that “other people are doing it” doesn’t make it right, echoing the words of millions of parents. But really, how are people these days supposed to chart a moral path? Most of the issues facing us are colored with shades of gray, like whether to answer truthfully to an employee that he might be on a layoff list, or how much financial assistance you should offer your adult child, or whether you should object to an off-color joke told by one of your friends, or whether you should give a dollar to a plainly drug-addicted mendicant.

The best defense against venality is virtue, said the ancients. We know that enforcing good behavior through the passage of laws and hiring of cops is costly. We know that doing the right thing should be voluntary and not prompted by the fear of punishment. Yet, as the authority of religion subsides, our culture acknowledges no higher power than itself. “Other people are doing it” is in fact the truth behind the power. Poor Warren Buffett: his time is past. © 2006 Stephen Yuen