Are you more honest than a banker? Under what circumstances would you lie, or cheat, and what effect does your deception have on society at large? Dan Ariely, one of the world’s leading voices on human motivation and behaviour is the latest big thinker to get the RSA Animate treatment. Taken from a lecture given at the RSA in July 2012. The RSA is a 258 year-old charity devoted to driving social progress and spreading world-changing ideas. See more information about the RSA here. Here is a direct link.
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Cory’s Chart Corner
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Just read one of Dan Ariely’s books very interesting stuff on honesty. He mentions a study measuring an honesty index for countries of the world and concluded that those countries that had a higher honesty index score also had higher GDP rates and were generally more prosperous than those countries who scored low on the index. It was rationalized that it was easier to do trade with a country that scores high on an honesty index, because you were more likely to get a fair deal when trading with them. So it would seem honesty still is the best policy.
Romney: [The] former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead, was also the former head of the New York Federal Reserve. And I met with him, and he said as soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing—which they’ve been doing, the Fed’s buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that’s over, he said we’re going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We’re living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money. You know, we borrow this extra trillion a year, we wonder who’s loaning us the trillion? The Chinese aren’t loaning us anymore. The Russians aren’t loaning it to us anymore. So who’s giving us the trillion? And the answer is we’re just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, “Here, we’re giving it.” It’s just made up money, and this does not augur well for our economic future. You know, some of these things are complex enough it’s not easy for people to understand, but your point of saying, bankruptcy usually concentrates the mind.
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