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by emodendroket 3433 days ago
If your argument is "anecdotal evidence is much better than reported, sourced news" then I have to disagree, regardless of what the TED talk says. The examples are some of the biggest and most prestigious companies in the country and I'm gonna guess most of the low-level schmucks like me and my friends and family aren't in on the huge, illegal operations.
2 comments

My argument is, you should distinguish two majorities, the majority of media-reported incidents, and the majority of some real-life things.

Those two are very different. If you don’t distinguish between them, you’ll come to absurd conclusions like “the majority of US drivers are drunk”, “vast majority of US citizens voted for Hillary”, or “the majority of US companies are breaking the law”.

> of the biggest and most prestigious companies in the country

Prestigious means nothing ‘coz it’s hard to measure that. But for biggest ones, here’s the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r... Good luck finding Enron or Wells Fargo there.

Here’s some report on financial crimes in 2010-11: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/financial-cr...

The total number of financial crime cases in 2011 was around 10000. Even if we assume each case was against different company (that gives us upper estimate), that’s merely 0.17% of the US companies who were charged with financial crimes in 2011.

As you see, real data is pretty close to my anecdotal evidence.

And it very far from your reported, sourced news.