Why is this, he says? He talks about how the process of mediation - how having proxies around money stand in for money - changes how we perceive cheating or theft. He seems baffled by how white-collar crime is seen as sterile and ineffectual, though more catastrophic, than violent, petty robbery or vandalism against property. Oddly, let's start with the more: his total ineptitude for obvious answers that lie within the sociological disciplines. Dan Ariely fails on these accounts and more. If you're going to make this obvious point, do it in a way that's convincing with data from which it is safe to extrapolate. Of course a rudimentary concept such as the rational actor being found along two hypothetical straight lines doesn't encompass human experience. It's a shame that this stubborn notion of a 'rational actor' hasn't been obliterated in even current debate among economics experts, NYT op/ed hacks, and sweat-smeared pundits, but it still doesn't help Dan Ariely's trainwreck from being an overblown straw-man argument against an obvious case. The simplest start is to take issue with the premise, which is simply that the model of a 'rational actor' as defined in classical economics is ridiculous for two reasons: one because of how irrational we are naturally, but also that the degree of our irrationality is so pervasive as to be testable and demonstrable in a way that studies that prove it are easily replicated.
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