EconTalk on regulatory capture and economists: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/10/luigi_zingales.html

Incentives are important to think about, because getting incentives wrong can mean pitting another human against you, and by symmetry there is no telling who would win when that happens.

Immediate material gains are a part of incentives which are relatively easy to understand. What's discussed in this podcast under the label of capture is the fact that there are systematic influences that go beyond immediate individual gain. Regulators tend to come to sympathize with the regulated, because in their shared knowledge and social circles they are closer to each other than they are to the rest of us.

This is a very tasty idea when you think about how any ideology can interpreted as capture. To be ideological is to have an opinion based on a framework, more so than on objective data. Often this is the right thing to do, because data is too noisy in individual cases to be leaned on too heavily (http://xkcd.com/1132/).

I think the solution is not to try and be neutral - that is impossible. Rather, we should declare our roles in order to detach our egos from them. We do so by speaking in such manner, for example about Uber:

• speaking as a libertarian, I think people should have the right to use whatever tools they want as long as it's a transaction between willing parties
• speaking as a consumer, I like that I can call cars that are cheaper than cabs
• believing in the rule of law, I think that Uber is violating the spirit of taxi medallions, and the state should step in to either compensate the cabs for a lost property right, or enforce those rights
• speaking as an anti-monopolist, I think that Uber is getting too powerful

It would be nice to have a list of these tropes, similar to tvtropes.org

As many of you know, I left Katong Capital as of May this year, where I worked with Yishen Kuik and Jeff Ma for the last 3 years. The statistics was fun, the infrastructure building was fun, and I have had the fortune to continue to do those things at my current job with Minus Inc.

I still greatly enjoy finance ideas, the same way I will continue to enjoy electronic structure. I also have a lot more to say about working in small partnerships now, hah. Ideology, can't live without it, can't live with it - it can be difficult to diagnose insanity from the inside!

Idealism is necessary for someone to behave with honor. I am wary of people who are very up front about their own cynicism - I think it's expectation-setting behavior. It may be presented as a form of humility, as in "I'm very self-aware about the limitations of my own understanding", but what I've seen it come out to mean is "Don't expect me to hold to any of my commitments, as I will plead ignorance for any acts of self-interested malice I willingly commit."

Necessary doesn't mean sufficient, of course. There are plenty of idealistic assholes out there - it's just that the self-labeling cynic is declaring their intent to be an asshole upfront, and one does well to take the free warnings as they come.

Inspired by the bit about expectations, employment and marriage in the most recent EconTalk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/08/reid_hoffman_an.html