Obama comments on Citigroup $50M jet purchase after receiving $45B bailout funds

Forthcoming (August 2011) Future Science edited by Max Brockman, Vintage Press, New York. Is Shame Necessary? Jennifer Jacquet Jennifer Jacquet graduated with a master’s degree in environmental economics from Cornell University in 2004 and earned a PhD in 2009 from the University of British Columbia, where she now holds a postdoctoral fellowship. As part of the Sea Around Us Project, a joint collaboration between the university and the Pew Charitable Trusts, she researches market- based conservation initiatives related to seafood and other natural resources. With colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and UBC’s Mathematics Department, She is currently conducting a series of games and experiments to study the effects of honor and shame on cooperation. Financial executives received almost $20 billion in bonuses in 2008 amid a serious financial crisis and a $245 billion government bailout. In 2008, more than 3 million American homes went into foreclosure because of mortgage blunders those same executives helped facilitate. Citigroup proposed to buy a $50-million corporate jet in early 2009, shortly after receiving $45-billion in taxpayer funds. Days later, President Obama took note in an Oval Office interview. About the jet, he said, “They should know better.” And the bonuses, he said, were “shameful.” What is shame’s purpose? Is shame still necessary? These are questions I’m asking myself. After all, it is not just bankers we have to worry about. Most social dilemmas exhibit a similar tension between individual and group interest. Energy, food, and water shortages, climate disruption, declining fisheries, increasing antibiotic resistance, the threat of nuclear warfare—all can be characterized as tragedies of the commons, in which the choices of individuals conflict with the greater good. Balancing group- and self-interest has never been easy, yet human societies display a high level of cooperation. To attain that level, specialized traits had to evolve, including such emotions as shame.’ Shame is what is supposed to occur after an individual fails to cooperate "R. Boyd & P. J. Richerson, “Culture and the evolution of human cooperation,” Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 364: 3281- 88 (2009). HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023720