Rational Philosophy

On industrious criminals and the lure of lucra.

As law enforcement officials round up members of the Gambino, Bonanno and Genovese crime families, I find myself pausing at a phrase in the NY Times piece on the arrests — “the scope of the schemes carried out by [La Cosa Nostra's] members are limited only by their imagination and industriousness.” Imagination and industriousness. These are not dull-witted layabouts. Surely with such imagination and industry members of these families could make money legally, but they have found a niche and a sure-fire way of maximizing profit — exploit what’s illegal. For the mob, illegality becomes leverage. Looked at purely as a business philosophy it makes a lot of sense. If cable companies can make money selling cable access legally, for instance, the mob knows it can make more money pirating cable channels and selling them illegally. It’s all about knowing your business and seeing the angle.

I’m not trying to justify or glamorize illegal activity, just unearth a philosophical truth.

Jerome Kerviel saw the angles, too. Driven by a desire to demonstrate his trading genius, he ended up demonstrating instead that he was a lousy trader but an excellent fraud. He figured out how to work around the Societe Generale’s controls and systems to make trades that he shouldn’t have been making, then cover these up with more trades that he shouldn’t have been making, until the bank was in the hole for $7.2 billion.

Research suggests that Monsieur Kerviel’s urge to trade, even in the face of losses, may not be so unusual. Making money can stimulate the same kind of gratifying response as having sex, apparently. “If you make money and make money again,” says Jason Zweig who wrote a book on the subject, “it is very similar to a chemical addiction and it becomes very hard to let go.” Brain imaging of drug addicts and traders supports the theory.

Two philosophical questions present themselves: What is the connection between material success and a rational theory of life? And why would imaginative and industrious people stick with a business model founded on illegality?

Unlike taking drugs or having sex, making money, while it can have physiological effects, stimulates our sense of gratification entirely mentally. The only impulse is one’s consciousness of making money.

So, the concept of making money must be closely connected to something directly felt. Money represents bartering power and prestige. If you have a billion under your belt, having another billion isn’t going to buy you anything that the first billion can’t buy you. So the directly felt thing must be not increased bartering power but prestige. (This is just what Kerviel described when he explained his feelings about trading, even though he kept his trades secret — he wanted to be seen as brilliant.)

People experience these kinds of feelings whether they’re risking any real bartering power or not. If we play gin rummy for points with no money on the game, for instance, the same powerful feelings of gratification can arise when we win. This confirms that a sense of increased prestige, a sense of being a winner, is sufficient to cause the rush. If I end a game of gin rummy with 100 points, what does that matter to me if my opponent has 101?

The answer to the second question follows from the answer to the first. I imagine that members of La Cosa Nostra would tip my second question on its head and ask “why make money legally if you can make it illegally?” If we’re talking about the rush of success, making money illegally must up the ante by adding considerable risk to the transaction. The possibility of getting caught must speed the flow of juices in the same way that for Kerviel the fluctuations of the market made his trades unpredictable. The greater the risk, the greater the feeling of gratification when one succeeds.

Just as the market eventually caught up to Kerviel, so too the law has caught up to the Gambinos, Bonannos and Genoveses. While crime and fraud can inspire imagination and industry, they’re not the most rational of pursuits.

Putting into perspective a report that illegal drug use in the UK army is on the rise, the UK’s Ministry of Defense points out that ”Positive rates in the army over the past four years average around 0.77 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in civilian workplace drug testing programs in Britain.”

Barak Obama has admitted drug use as a young man, risking voter backlash, but doubtless winning support for his honesty — a rare thing in politics.

Then we have the baseball steroid report, and Marion Jones stripped of her Olympic medals. (As a side note, if she weren’t broke Marion Jones would be paying back her winnings — I haven’t seen anything about baseball players returning earnings…)

In making this connection between recreational drug use and the use of drugs in recreational activity, I’m not immediately sure whether a connection exists.

Still another way, of course, that we use drugs, is to help us get better or feel better when we’re sick. (Like the antibiotics I’ve been taking for my pneumonia.)

If a philosophical connection exists it must derive from the idea that an external substance taken into the body to cause some response can be deemed unnatural and therefore suspect.

To the list of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, amphetamines, LSD, ecstasy, opium, steroids, stimulants, antibiotics, antihistamine, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, etc. we would then have to add tobacco, coffee, tea, and alcohol.

Society makes a further distinction by labeling some drugs illegal, whether they be recreational drugs, or performance enhancing drugs. But if we take legality out of the equation for a moment, and think about the spectrum of drugs from first principles, how would we begin to determine whether some drugs were OK and others not OK?

Surely alcohol is to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from marijuana, heroin, amphetamines and cocaine if we consider the risks and affects of its consumption? And tobacco has a less profound effect on one’s state of mind, but really does a number on your long term health.

I’m not necessarily arguing that illegal drugs should be legalized, but instead that there’s a good deal of emotion involved in our perspective on drugs rather than sound, rational thought.

The vilification of drug-takers in sport centers on the unfair advantage that the drug-taker has over the none drug-taker. This is indeed a rational perspective. The none drug-taker presumably has chosen to avoid drugs (one imagines he can get them if he wants them). His choice is rational — the drugs he’s avoiding aren’t condoned and are perhaps illegal, and may even be detrimental to his health. His rivals achieve higher levels of performance just because they take the drugs, without declaring their advantage. He’s not a sucker; his rivals are cheats.

Nevertheless, the way society regards performance enhancing drugs depends on the rules and principles that society adopts.

But there are two things, as far as I can see, that can be intrinsically wrong with recreational drugs:

1. That they can be detrimental to a person’s health. For this reason, society should strive to educate people about the dangers of drugs and provide adequate treatment for drug users.

2. That they can cause people to harm or endanger others. The drunk driver, the cocaine-hyped killer, etc. It’s reasonable for society to protect itself from those who abuse and endanger. But the degree of protection must be weighed against the risk and against the loss of liberty for those who can behave responsibly.

(In case you can’t read the cartoon text, it says: “Jerry doesn’t do drugs anymore. He says he gets the same effect just standing up really fast these days.”)