[kerkeslager]

> Those are the folks who are still around. Even big US national banks, notorious for their immunity to law and enforcement, are starting to feel the pressure. Rumor is, Customers left Wells Fargo in droves after the last kerfuffle and new account opening went down substantially at Citi after their money laundering fine. The hidden cost of bad optics is immense.

There are two parts to a cost/benefit analysis, and you're only talking about the cost part of unethical behavior, as if the benefit doesn't exist. With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior? I haven't tracked all of these cases til their end, but at least with Wells Fargo, they did not.

More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it. Maybe they're not "still around", but they're happily retired in mansions and there are plenty of newcomers willing to do the same thing to get the same reward.

It's not 100% of the time: there are cases when bad behavior actually results in a net loss. But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm. And even if they weren't, antisocial behaviors are profitable enough of the time that some percentage of antisocial behaviors have a positive expected value when looked at probabilistically.

[KirinDave]

> With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior?

Wells: Yes, almost certainly. Citi: Good question. Every I've talked to from Citi seems to think it was a disaster that hurt the business bottom line. BofA: Not sure which BofA problem we're talking about here. Experian: They walked away. They're a great example of how the government SHOULD have come in and made it more expensive and then given that money back to people they hurt.

On Experian, I do know that their scandal with fake credit scores direct to customer hurt that business badly.

> More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it.

In some cases yes, in some no.

> But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm.

We could make it the norm :)

[kerkeslager]

Keep in mind the chain of comments you're responding to started with:

> [I]f we forced some liability on companies for what the software they sell does, that would change a lot of things fairly quickly.

In that context, it sounds like you're saying we don't need liability regulation, we need data science to help consumers make better decisions, so that the economic downsides to antisocial action are higher.

This is the repeated lie of laissez faire economics: that if we can just get consumers to become savvy they will stop giving money to bad actors and the invisible hand of the market will enforce ethics without having to resort to regulation.

This has never worked. At best, regulation finally steps in after the companies have trashed people's lives and fines the company, and the people who made the decisions are forced to retire with their millions. At worst, the companies lobby successfully and their sociopathic business practices become not only the norm but the standard. Laissez faire economics is typically only espoused by businesses when they don't have the regulators in their pocket.

Forgive my cynicism, but I don't think data science is the missing piece that makes laissez faire economics work. It's simply not realistic to believe that the average consumer will become knowledgeable enough to make ethical decisions on what they consume. Most people aren't savvy enough, don't care, or don't have the time. I like to think I understand most issues once I have the data, and I care, but I simply can't keep up with all the different companies and their misdeeds. The invisible hand of the market simply can't keep up with this problem.

[KirinDave]

> In that context, it sounds like you're saying we don't need liability regulation, we need data science to help consumers make better decisions, so that the economic downsides to antisocial action are higher.

I'm not sure why you make it sound like an decision. We're already seeing that improved computing power and statistical methods, coupled with the falling costs of these, are giving us transparency which can guide both consumers and regulators.

Its one of the reasons I'm a fan of "legible" societies once the asymmetry if power and information is overcome. We can all hold each other accountable.

If you check my comment history you'll see I'm a big fan of the CFPB and generally want the government to make bad behavior more expensive, so I appreciate the rest if your post but you're preaching to the choir. I'm furious at what the Executive has done putting a scam artist at the wheel to dismantle it.

[kerkeslager]

My apologies for a confrontational tone then. Your previous post came across to me as being yet another defense of the idea that regulation is bad and incentivized corporations will solve all society's ills. That's possibly more a reflection of my own sensitivities than your communication. :)

I will say that a ton of changes which should be made are low hanging fruit that don't need data science to prove. We don't need data science to prove that bailing out corporations when predatory lending goes wrong, or that fining corporations a fraction of the profits they made from money laundering, are ineffective enforcement.

The underlying problem is that international corporations are, to some extent, above the law, and that is a much harder problem to address.