Searching for Nanny

Any big newspaper contains treasure troves of obscure little items, not important enough or too common for an individual article but bundled together by section of the newspaper as “shorts” or “digest” or “about town.”  I’m glancing over the financial section “digest” of the Washington Post this morning as my wife and I babysit a grandchild for several days, which definitely slows down, in an enjoyable way, my blogging.  Some of the items too common to merit serious attention by The Post this morning include: a suit by Freddie Mac of 15 of the largest banks for rigging the LIBOR interest rate  so as to cost Freddie Mac (and the U.S. taxpayer) over three billion dollars; JP Morgan Chase agrees to repay $546 million dollars to settle claims that it had wrongfully held the money for itself from deposits for investors by another investment company when the other company went bankrupt; Barclays Bank paid nine senior executives including its CEO, $61 million in bonuses less than a year after being fined for manipulating interest rates; nine key executives commute by plane at company expense  to J.C. Penney headquarters in Texas from their homes in California, New York and Boston, although the company is struggling to stay in business; and oil companies have agreed among themselves and with environmentalists to voluntary fracking standards which are tougher than those set by government regulators.  All this in one day in an obscure little section for items not important enough to notice.  What’s going on here?

Early in my career, I had a boss who was grudgingly beloved by all of us for making statements like, “I wouldn’t authorize that expenditure, even if it was my own money.”  He was always conscious that he was making choices about “someone else’s money”, with a responsibility to spend it properly on their behalf.  That introduced us to a view of fiscal integrity and fiduciary responsibility that stuck with us, even though now it seems almost quaintly Victorian.  What those news items show in common is an at least initial attitude on the part of someone (in the case of fracking, it was regulatory authority) that the consequences of their activities for someone else was not worth considering.  That someone else’s money is fair game.

I often mention the bubbles we all live in, rich,, professional, working class, poor, elderly, young, east coast, mid west, etc., etc.  We grow daily more remote from each other, not even sharing the same diet or shopping malls or schools or churches. That uncaring attitude about the consequences of our actions on others is in part a product of that remoteness.  Those executives who spend exorbitant amounts commuting by air probably could not name, or identify with, any of those who work for them in a retail store.  Those bank executives have probably never shared a lunch with any investor in that bankrupt company whose money they were trying to hang on to.  We turn fellow human beings into statistics we can manipulate without any consideration of our shared humanity.

The dehumanization of those for whom we bear some responsibility, like it or not, is probably not going to go away.  It is a consequence of life in any large society.  But something can be done.  And it is a role for government little thought about.  An interesting science fiction story I read years ago described a society where, when a person had committed a major crime, a conspicuous robot followed him everywhere, making his criminality obvious both to him and others, until it became obvious by his actions that he had internalized the moral norm that had been violated; at which point, the robot went away.  Obviously, such activity would be silly in real life.  But the appropriate role for government is possible in the form of strict and strictly enforced regulations, the “nanny state” so derided by conservatives.  A truth known to behavioral scientists is that values follow, not precede, habits.  The role of strictly enforced regulation is to strengthen values by making responsible behavior a habit.  We need much more, not less regulation.  We will all benefit, like it or not, just as a nanny sometimes makes us mad while teaching us basic life skills.  Now that those oil companies have agreed to at least some regulation, it is time for government to make it enforceable, for there will always be some who try to evade even their own rules.