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Economics Explained: Why do 'smart and educated' people display harming behaviour?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Explain with examples this quote.

The quote mentioned is attributed to Upton Sinclair, an American writer and social reformer. It highlights the idea that people may be resistant to accepting certain truths or realities when it conflicts with their personal interests, particularly when it comes to their financial well-being.

Here are a few examples to help illustrate this concept:

Climate Change and Fossil Fuel Industry: The fossil fuel industry has a significant influence on the global economy, employing millions of people and generating substantial profits. However, the burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence linking human activities to climate change, some individuals within the industry may deny or downplay the issue. Their salary and livelihood depend on the continued production and consumption of fossil fuels, so acknowledging the environmental consequences could jeopardize their financial interests.

Tobacco Industry and Health Risks: For decades, the tobacco industry engaged in efforts to downplay the health risks associated with smoking. Studies have consistently shown that smoking causes severe health problems, including cancer, heart disease, and respiratory issues. However, the tobacco industry funded research and disseminated misinformation to create doubt and prevent public awareness. Executives within the industry, whose salaries were tied to tobacco sales, had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo despite the harmful effects on public health.

Corporate Lobbying and Regulation: Various industries engage in lobbying activities to influence government policies and regulations that could impact their business operations. In some cases, this lobbying can lead to the blocking or dilution of regulations that would protect public health, safety, or the environment. Those employed by these industries often participate in lobbying efforts to protect their company's profits and job security, even if it means disregarding the potential negative consequences for society at large.

Conflict of Interest in Research: Researchers who receive funding from certain industries or organisations may face conflicts of interest that can bias their findings or interpretations. Pharmaceutical companies, for instance, may financially support clinical trials for their own drugs. In such cases, there is a risk that researchers may have a bias toward positive outcomes or downplay any adverse effects, as their salary or future research funding could be tied to the success of those drugs.

These examples demonstrate how financial incentives can create a cognitive bias that hinders individuals from fully understanding or accepting certain realities. When people's salaries or economic interests are directly linked to a particular outcome, they may be inclined to ignore or dismiss information that challenges their existing beliefs or threatens their financial stability.

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In the context of the quote, "not understanding" does not imply a lack of intelligence or education. Rather, it refers to the act of consciously or subconsciously refusing to accept or acknowledge certain truths or realities due to personal interests or biases.

While individuals who fall into this category may indeed be highly educated and rational, their understanding may be clouded or biased by their financial dependence on a particular outcome. The quote suggests that people may be resistant to accepting information or evidence that contradicts their existing beliefs or challenges their financial interests, even if they possess the intellectual capacity to comprehend it.

In many cases, these individuals may be aware of the information or facts being presented to them, but their motivations or incentives prevent them from fully embracing or acknowledging the implications of that information. This can manifest as denial, scepticism, or selective interpretation of evidence to protect their financial interests or maintain the status quo.

It is important to note that the quote does not imply that every person in such a situation will exhibit this behaviour, nor does it suggest that all individuals with financial interests are incapable of understanding or accepting opposing viewpoints. Rather, it highlights a common tendency for some individuals to resist or downplay information that may threaten their financial well-being, regardless of their level of education or rationality.

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Brand loyalty and religious beliefs can also fall into the category described in the quote. While they may not be directly tied to salaries, they can still involve deeply ingrained personal interests and biases that affect one's ability to understand or accept certain information.

Brand Loyalty: Brand loyalty refers to the tendency of consumers to consistently choose and support a particular brand over others. When individuals develop strong brand loyalty, they may become resistant to accepting or considering information that challenges their perception of the brand's superiority. This loyalty can be driven by emotional connections, personal experiences, or even social identity. Even when presented with evidence or information about better alternatives, individuals may continue to support their preferred brand due to the sense of identity, familiarity, or other psychological factors associated with it.

Religious Beliefs: Religious beliefs often form a significant part of a person's identity and worldview. People's religious beliefs can provide them with a sense of purpose, meaning, and moral framework. When faced with information or evidence that contradicts their religious beliefs, individuals may experience cognitive dissonance or resistance to accepting alternative perspectives. This can be particularly true when the information challenges core tenets or fundamental beliefs that are integral to their religious identity. As a result, individuals may be inclined to dismiss or rationalize conflicting information in order to maintain the coherence of their religious worldview.

In both cases, brand loyalty and religious beliefs can create cognitive biases that hinder individuals from fully understanding or accepting alternative viewpoints. The emotional, psychological, and social dimensions associated with these beliefs can strongly influence how individuals process and interpret information, leading to a resistance to accepting conflicting evidence or perspectives.

It is important to note that not all brand loyalists or religious individuals exhibit this behavior, and there are individuals who are open-minded and receptive to alternative viewpoints. However, for some individuals, brand loyalty and religious beliefs can become factors that influence their ability to objectively assess information or consider perspectives that contradict their established loyalties or deeply held beliefs.

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A very different sort of young cricketer

Will Macpherson in Cricinfo

New South Wales batsman Ryan Carters reads Aldous Huxley, backpacks in Central Asia, and is passionate about helping less fortunate youngsters complete their education


Ryan Carters: majoring in economics and aiming for a Test cap © Getty Images



You'll read plenty about Ryan Carters over the next few years. Sure, you'll read about his cricket, which continues to tick along very nicely indeed, but many of those column inches will be about Carters himself. They will present the young Australian wicketkeeper-batsman as different. Different to modern cricketers, different to the sportsmen whose macho exploits and muddled platitudes fill the back pages, different even to other "normal" young men in their mid-twenties with their normal jobs and normal interests.

And it's true. So far, Carters has had led a cricketing life less ordinary. An on-field career started in his hometown Canberra before a move to Victoria and then, when Matthew Wade's presence provided few opportunities, a swap from Melbourne to Sydney, home to Brad Haddin and Peter Nevill, Australia's first-choice glovemen.

A curious move, but one that has paid off, not behind the stumps but in front of them as an opening batsman. In New South Wales' victorious 2013-14 Sheffield Shield season, Carters managed three centuries in his 861 runs opening the batting. The season just ended was less spectacular for state and player - a third-placed finish and 448 runs at 32 - but did contain one gem of an innings, 198 against Queensland shortly before the Shield broke up for its Big Bash holidays. The guy can clearly play and, as those moves suggest, is pretty fearless.

So, off the field. Why is he different to the rest? In the course of our 45-minute chat at the SCG, we cover ground over which my professional career had not yet taken me: Aldous Huxley's experimentation with mescaline and subsequent recollections in The Doors of Perception; the culture of Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan; and the Australian gambling culture. For the record, the first is what Carters and his book club have just finished reading, the second is where he'll spend his off season travelling and exploring, and the third is the reason he feels his charity, Batting for Change, has enjoyed success so far. It's not, to say the least, all telly and Tinder, Nando's and nightclubs.

"Dougie [Bollinger] calls me 'the philosophy major'," Carters laughs, when asked whether he is a little different to his team-mates. "Which is actually false… because I'm majoring in economics!"

Indeed, away from the field, the studies that followed his cricket from Melbourne University to Sydney after a top-of-the-class school career, the philanthropy, and love of reading place him firmly in the "bookish" category alongside - among others - his friend Eddie Cowan and Cambridge grad Mike Atherton, who famously mistook the letters "FEC" graffitied on his Lancashire locker to mean "future England captain", when in fact the second letter stood for "educated" and the first and third were as coarse as the English language can muster.



Carters on his way to 198 against Queensland in the 2014-15 Sheffield Shield © Getty Images

"You get a few jokes about being educated," says Carters, smiling effortlessly but incessantly the whole time. "It's always been Nerds versus Julios in Australian cricket and I'm definitely on the nerds' side of that equation. I have a lot of interests that maybe aren't typical of sportsmen my age but I reckon a cricket team is basically a cross section of the different young men you encounter in society. Not everyone is some kind of jock and not everyone is from the same background."

Whatever his interests and whether they are similar to those he works with, it's clear that Carters has a pretty broad view of the world that filters into his cricket.

"Cricket provides an interesting and unusual schedule and this off season I'm going to take advantage of that. Every second week we're away playing a match interstate but now we have a load of time off. Usually I've used this period to study but this is the first time in the last five years that I've decided to get away from it all. First, I'm visiting Nepal, where Batting for Change worked last year. They're holding a tribute match to Phillip Hughes there in April [Carters' side, Team Red, won by one run], then in June and July, I'm playing club cricket for Oxford in the UK.

"But between that I'll take a month completely off the grid for the road trip through central Asia, just driving and camping. It's an important thing to do, to just reset, see where you're at away from daily demands. It's not the classic travel spot for guys our age but that's one of the reasons it appeals. We [two school friends] went to Mongolia two years ago and fell in love with that part of the world, so thought we'd try something else off the beaten track. You don't really know what you're going to encounter, which is exciting."

He admits that the breadth and depth of his extra-curricular interests mean he hasn't much time for cricket when he's not playing, which seems healthy. For all the book-worming, he doesn't read about cricket (although Cowan has recommended CLR James' Beyond a Boundary) and doesn't watch much cricket.

"I love the game, of course, but so much of my life is taken up playing and being involved in cricket that I spend more of my time outside of that doing other things rather than in the cricketing world. Watching cricket is not a chore, but is just not something I do every day. Off the field, I try to avoid thinking about the game, and I think that's a blessing.

"I'd be surprised if anyone could honestly say, 'I haven't made runs for four games but it's not affecting me psychologically', but the best I can do is get away from it for a while, re-engage with other aspects of life, come back feeling fresh and looking forward to playing cricket, as opposed to becoming consumed with it and getting stuck in that cycle of negative thinking. That's the theory behind this break, to be hungry again by September, when the Sydney Sixers have the Champions League. I reckon a break from the game will be conducive to getting the best out of myself."

As talk turns to Carters getting the best out of himself, it's impossible not to avoid Batting for Change, which this BBL season raised $102,431 for the education of young women in Mumbai, after the Sixers hit 47 sixes, with $2,179 pledged by donors for each one. A year earlier, Carters' old team, Sydney Thunder, had raised more than £30,000, used to build the three classrooms at Heartland School, Kathmandu, which Carters visited this month. These are impressive numbers but he's already looking at ways in which to expand his fundraising.



Carters (standing, third from left) with his Team Red at the Phillip Hughes' Tribute match in Kathmandu © AFP


"Last time I got away from the game, on my trip to Mongolia, I wanted to start a charity initiative to partner my cricket to promote a cause that I care deeply about and use the stage that I'm at in my career, the people that we know, to find an opportunity to reach a big section of the public. The common theme of our projects - which change annually and are linked to the LBW Trust - [Learning for a Better World] - is educating young men and women - usually at a tertiary level - who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity, as I believe education is the way to help people out of poverty.

"I learned a lesson that if you have an idea that you're passionate about, people will jump behind it - my team-mates but also donors from around the country who have been very generous in their donations and kind in their messages of support. It's certainly making every six the Sixers hit feel that bit more special!"

Carters, evidently, is ambitious in every sense of the word; in his charity work, in his embryonic plans for life after cricket, which one senses is likely to follow philanthropic, not political (as some have suggested) lines. He's clearly a cricketer apart, but speaking of his hopes, dreams and ambitions, both as boy and man, is a reminder that he's not that different at all.

"Growing up my dreams were all cricket-based," he says, grinning again. "I played loads with my brother and Dad in the backyard and loved watching cricket and always dreamed of being a Test cricketer, like so many others in Australia. Sure, I got more interested in the world, how things work, especially as I got older; politics, economics, philosophy, reading, but cricket was the one.

"I've achieved being a pro cricketer, which is awesome, and I'd be amazed by that if you'd told me that as a 12-year-old. But the Test cricket box isn't ticked, and that - along with remembering how lucky I am and to enjoy the game - is what's driving me."

Deep down, he's just like the rest of them.

The barefoot government

Bunker Roy in The Indian Express

Since 1947, Indians have not spoken out so strongly and clearly for a completely new brand of people running government. Mercifully, there are no ministers educated abroad. Thankfully, none of them has been brainwashed at Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, the World Bank or the IMF, subtly forcing expensive Western solutions on typically Indian problems at the cost of the poor. Look what the high-powered, foreign-returned degree-wallahs have reduced this country to. They wasted opportunities to show the inner strength of what is essentially Indian because they never really knew their own people living in Bharat. In the eyes of the world, we have lost our self-respect, dignity and identity.

All the ministers now have gone through average government schools. Some have never been to college. Many have experienced poverty, exploitation, injustice and discrimination at some point of time in their lives. It is truly the first barefoot government ever to be voted into power in independent India. Where else in the world would you have a one-time tea-seller on a railway station becoming prime minister, shaping the destiny of more than one billion people?

The first example the Modi government must set is by drastically reducing the perks and privileges of MPs. Free power, food, housing, travel to those whose personal assets run into crores and a Rs 2 crore annual fund for development (read patronage) for over 500 MPs is costing the exchequer nearly Rs 2,000 crore. Only the prime minister will be able to make it happen and, at the same time, stifle any dissent from BJP MPs. The time is now.

No other government in the world has a Class 12-pass woman minister speaking as an equal to almost 120 heavily qualified, on paper, vice chancellors (90 per cent male). Today, as we judge them, the VCs are all too intellectually and morally fatigued. There is something dreadfully wrong with an education system that produces graduates from even private, expensive, snobbish schools and colleges who are still prejudiced about caste, class, religion, sex and colour. These “graduates”, who roam the streets of small towns and cities by the thousands, call themselves “educated”, practice the worst forms of cruelty, slavery and crimes against humanity, against society and in their own families. Indeed, some of them rose to the level of their incompetence by becoming ministers in previous governments, reinforcing the status quo, wasting vast public resources by implementing silly Western ideas, listening to foreign-returned “experts” and making a hopeless mess of this country. The tragedy is that they cannot see the colossal damage they have done to the very fabric of this country.

Now they will call me a “namak haram” because I went to Doon School and St Stephen’s College and I am trashing my own kind. They deserve it. Their snobbish elitist education has made them arrogant, inaccessible, insensitive and devoid of any humanity or humility. Just because they received a Western education, they think they know their country. Superficially, they may know urban India but they are clueless about rural Bharat.

Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock, said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be someone who cannot read or write. It will be someone who is not prepared to learn, unlearn and relearn.” In the 40 years that I have lived and worked with the rural poor in Rajasthan, what have I learnt that I did not manage to make my own kind “unlearn and relearn”?

It was not for want of trying. What did the prime minister, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and finance minister of the decimated UPA government have in common? They were all “educated” abroad. They were all for subsidising the rich and cutting subsidies for the poor. They had no idea about real poverty and hunger and how the rural poor survived, expecting the whole country to be gullible enough to believe that the rural poor today could survive on Rs 27 per day.

Out of sheer ignorance of rural realities and showing extremely poor political judgement, the three of them almost managed to strangle the MGNREGA. The MGNREGA prevented migration by the millions into cities. The bungling and corruption by village officials notwithstanding, the rural poor now have more money to spend on food, clothing, housing and essentials. So, of course, prices will go up.

The prime minister is evidently serious about improving the quality of life of the rural poor, as he eloquently stated in his speech on Independence Day. So what are the out of the box solutions that need to be considered urgently?

The MGNREGA should stay with “Modi-fications”. Pay minimum wages, which the Congress’s three armchair foreign-returned economists so stubbornly and unethically refused to do, in spite of a high court order. Make it more transparent and accountable, take action against corrupt officials exposed in social audits to set an example. Pass the public grievance bill in Parliament as soon as possible. Call a meeting of respected grassroot practitioners across political ideologies who know the MGNREGA from the village level and follow up on their recommendations.

The focus has to be on innovative job creation in the rural areas. Provide 100 days of employment at minimum wages to construct low-cost toilets for girls and rooftop rainwater harvesting tanks for drinking water, tree plantations and flush toilets in rural schools by the thousands. Construct rural godowns to store food grains instead of letting nearly 5 million tonnes of grain just rot in the open. Start community colleges on Gandhian lines instead of sending delegations of “experts” on education to study the American model. There are enough indigenous examples to replicate and scale up.

Civil society is riddled with defeated politicians and retired bureaucrats who, having lost their power, influence and privileges, have started NGOs. While they were in power, they did not lift a finger to help them. When these has-beens have nothing better to do, they start NGOs. They give genuine small civil society organisations a bad name. Maybe it is time to revive the debate of the 1980s on the need for a code of conduct for NGOs. The code would expect them to have a simple lifestyle, take a living wage instead of a market wage and observe the laws of the country.

If we are fighting against crony capitalism, we should also fight against cronyism in NGOs. When the Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) was closed down and replaced by a Bharat Rural Livelihood Foundation (BRLF) in September 2013, it was done in complete secrecy. The BRLF was never widely publicised and civil society was never invited to contribute to its formation. It is designed to benefit a handful of select organisations — cronyism of the worst kind. It was so much in contrast to the open debate that galvanised the voluntary sector over the code of conduct and which preceded the merger of the People’s Action for Development India (PADI) and the Council for Advancement of Rural Technology (CART) to form CAPART in 1986.

What needs to be done? Replace the national advisory council (NAC) with a voluntary action commission (VAC). The mandate of the VAC should be to identify the thousands of genuine grassroots groups who have an FCRA registration and submit their report to the home ministry. It is not the job of the home ministry to judge the incredible work of community-based organisations. A lot of effort has gone into the formulation of the BRLF. Let it remain. But demand of the existing management if they have the self-respect to resign en masse and let the new government bring in new members.