[ucaetano]

> People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger.

This isn't strictly true, and I'd love to see you provide extensive data on such a exceptional claim.

There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

[Zelphyr]

I don't think he was referring to harsh sentences or punitive measures when someone breaks the law. I think its more that when its life and not the Government that is going to punish you for failing, you're going to work harder at not failing. In addition to the punishment provided by the Government there is also fall back mechanisms (bankruptcy protection, social security, medicare/medicaid, etc...) that they provide.

I would counter that without those punishments and protections, its possible that fewer people would do things like start businesses, for example. I don't really know. I'd love to see some data on this.

Seems to me that instead of rushing to one extreme or the other (no Government vs big Government), finding a good balance between the two is going to be the most productive for us all.

[dbingham]

> I think its more that when its life and not the Government that is going to punish you for failing, you're going to work harder at not failing.

> I would counter that without those punishments and protections, its possible that fewer people would do things like start businesses

Again, the evidence rather strongly suggests the opposite.

As people's brains are more stressed out by the fear of failing, their decision making gets worse not better. There's tons of evidence that shows that being poor severely screws with your ability to make rational, intelligent decisions about long term planning. (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br... ; https://theconversation.com/study-links-poverty-and-poor-dec...)

Likewise, there's data that shows one of the things that's special about entrepreneurs is the fact that they have strong familial safety nets. Part of their risk taking is literally that the risks are less risky for them, because their families will catch them. Which suggests that, if you want to increase the number of new businesses - implement a stronger social safety net (like a basic income). (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare... ; http://www.nber.org/papers/w19276.pdf?new_window=1) . The paper I linked there focused on the "smart" and "illicit" avenues and completely brushed past the "come from wealthier families" part, but I've seen other papers (that google isn't coughing up readily in the 5 minutes I have right now) that focused more on that latter part.

Conversely, you just have to look at the countries that do a good job of taking care of their citizens - Scandinavia, Canada, etc - to see pretty strong evidence for the idea that a well cared for populace is able to make better decisions.

[Symmetry]

I think the general consensus is that the ineffectiveness of long sentences is mostly about hyperbolic discounting. Hawaii has recently had a lot of success with a program providing small, immediate penalties to people who break their parole conditions. This seems to work far better than large penalties that will only be applied after a large number of offences.

[CuriouslyC]

If your choice is between death and jail, or if your life is not significantly better than jail, the duration of incarceration isn't going to matter to you at all.

I'd be willing to bet that harsher punitive measures (and more aggressive enforcement) would have a big impact on white collar crime rates.

[rebuilder]

I would guess that a higher chance of being caught would be a greater deterrent to first-time white collar offenders than harsher punishment.

I spent 6 months in prison as a conscientous objector. One thing I learned was, in the relatively humane nordic penal system, the reality of imprisonment was nowhere near as scary as I'd imagined. If I were to commit a serious crime now, I think the social stigma would be much more serious to me than incarceration, were I to be caught. I think that's probably true for most white-collar types as well. Losing time is one thing, losing standing among your peers is much worse, if you have standing to lose. Shame is a terrible thing. It wasn't an issue for me, fortunately.

Of course, most people in prison don't have the luxury of such problems. The majority of people I met inside were there as a result of psychological and substance abuse issues. One man there reassured me that I was going to be OK because unlike everyone else there, my problems were not with my self. That's got to be about the saddest thing I've ever heard.

[opo]

I found your comment insightful, but I have to ask about this:

>...I spent 6 months in prison as a conscientous objector.

Could you elaborate? Under what conditions does a conscientious objector face a lengthy prison term?

[rebuilder]

In Finland, as a male, refusal to perform military or civil service is a crime punishable by approximately 6 months of imprisonment. I understand that very recently that has been put on hold as a result of a legal challenge on the grounds that a certain religious minority is exempted from such service, the claim being that this constitutes inequal treatment.

[opo]

I guess that is how being a conscientous objector worked in the US during the Viet Nam war - anyone declaring themselves a conscientous objector had to due some kind of public service or face jail time (probably more than 6 months).

In the US the draft just allowed the US government to continue the Viet Nam war far longer than it otherwise would have gone, I am glad we don't have an active draft here.

[cageface]

If anything the draft brought the war to a close sooner. Once kids of upper and middle class parents started getting drafted and killed they started putting pressure on the government to end the war.

Now that American wars are mostly being fought by volunteers from classes without political power they can drag on for decades and most Americans barely even think about them anymore.

[wizzairflyer]

>a legal challenge on the grounds that a certain religious minority is exempted from such service, the claim being that this constitutes inequal treatment.

Kind of amazing that this is ground for a legal challenge but the fact that female aren't drafted isn't. That's one of the part of Western societies around which I can't wrap my mind.

[varjag]

There's increasing pressure to fix that too. Norway has introduced gender neutral draft two years ago.

[joncrane]

I thought that in Finland you could do other public works (something along the lines of Americorps in the USA) instead of serve in the army if you were a conscientious objector.

[rebuilder]

Yes, that's the civil service. I was using "conscientous objector" to describe what are called "total objectors" here, men who refuse to serve in any capacity for a variety of reasons.

[todd8]

Are women not subject to these same requirements?

[rebuilder]

No. Women may choose to serve in the military, but there is no requirement for them to do so. There's been talk of instituting a "citizen's service" for all citizens, where presumably women mostly would be expected to perform civil service similar to what men can now choose.

The exempted religious group are the Jehova's witnesses. It's my understanding they were granted an exemption because men in the group would by and large all refuse to serve, and putting them all in prison wasn't doing much good. However, recently a conscientous objector was released by a court on the grounds that this exemption constitutes inequal treatment, and the state now has to address the issue. I suppose the options they have are to either extend the exemption to others based on some grounds to be determined, or remove the exemption of Jehova's witnesses.

The ministry of defense has proposed to solve the problem by removing the witnesses' exemption. In general, the state appears to be consistently treating this as a practical matter of maintaining the current policy of general conscription, and not as a rights issue at all.

[aeorgnoieang]

> There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

Harsher punitive measures are often meted out to those with the weakest reason.

[throwaway37585]

I don’t think the claim is exceptional, but I’d love to see more studies on this. Check out the Centipede Game (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game):

“Parco, Rapoport and Stein (2002) illustrated that the level of financial incentives can have a profound effect on the outcome in a three-player game: the larger the incentives are for deviation, the greater propensity for learning behavior in a repeated single-play experimental design to move toward the Nash equilibrium.”

I recall reading somewhere that people also behave more rationally in other games like the Dictator Game (and exhibit fewer cognitive biases) when the stakes are higher, but can’t remember where.

[afpx]

What would the game’s results be if the financial incentives were unknown and/or highly variable? That’s more like real life.

[dEnigma]

The Nash equilibrium in this case being immediately taking the larger stash, instead of waiting (or even cooperating) with the other player for much higher payouts.