Why American Flight Attendants are so Rotten

My guess? Age discrimination laws. Once upon a time, the de facto rule was 'we keep you employed as long as you're young, hot and friendly. When these change, hit the bricks'.

This meant that being a flight attendant was one of those jobs that women (and at the time, it was just women) planned to do for a while then quit, like modeling.

Now, if you start firing people over 40, you get a massive lawsuit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967. I would have thought that airlines would have implemented a 'when you're 35 you're out the door' policy, but they haven't. My guess is that unions make the rest of it hard.

But the net result is that flight attendants are less attractive. In addition, it seems that dealing with the flying public tends to grate in you over time. So you end up with a lot of older flight attendants who (in my anecdotal experience) are nasty and grumpy all the time. But since it's hard to write people up for that, it just persists.

The only major exception to this trend seems to be Singapore Airlines. The Singapore government decided that since it is in charge of the airline, messy things like discrimination and labor laws weren't going to stand in the way of providing young, hot, and impeccably trained flight attendants. Until they're 30, then they're never seen again. It's ruthless, but competitive markets that maximise consumer surplus usually are.

Predicting Behaviour During a Divorce

Apparently Hulkamania is running 70% less wild these days.

Linda Bollea, 52, who divorced Hulk Hogan in 2009, received a little more than 70 percent of the couple's liquid assets in their divorce settlement, a recent court filing shows.

In addition, Hogan, 58, the semiretired professional wrestler whose real name is Terry Bollea, agreed to give his ex-wife 40 percent ownership in his various companies and pay her an additional $3 million "property settlement," according to the 
filing.
...
The Bolleas married in 1983 and divorced in July 2009 after nearly two years of acrimonious proceedings. 

This is what happens when you get divorced in California, a community property state. The 70% is an overstatement because it only applies to the liquid assets, and Linda gets $3 million from the sale of their property. But from reading through the rough description of the settlement numbers (it's hard to figure out the exact details from the article), it seems like she's probably getting maybe 50% of the total net worth.

I'm guessing that when Hogan got married in 1983, he wasn't imagining that in the event of a divorce, he'd be going through 2+ years of nasty court proceedings and still lose half his stuff. The latest dispute, apparently, is over whether he owes his ex-wife 40% of the company's gross revenues, or 40% of net revenues. Over such minor drafting ambiguities do years of litigation depend when people loathe each other.

The question is, why are people so bad at forecasting how their partners will act if they get divorced? I think part of the problem is that they keep being influenced by the way the partner is acting today. In other words, they think of how Bob or Sally is today, and imagine them breaking up.

But this is deeply faulty. By the time you get divorced, it's fair bet to assume that they will hate you more than any other person in the world. You have the burden of years of messy and hurtful deterioration of the reltationship, and/or surprising and nasty betrayals of trust. Plus you're then forced into a very high-stakes negotiation with someone that you now despise. Which may last years. And in which they'll have a lot of opportunities to engage in costly punishment - refusing to agree, dragging out court proceedings, etc.

So the better measure is the following - how do they act towards other people they hate or have hated in the past? Are they vindictive? Do they bear grudges for long periods? Do they find ways to get back at people? And how many such people are there - do they have a long list of people they don't like? If you have data on past relationships, this is even better. Are they on speaking terms with their past boyfriends/girlfriends/ex-wives/ex-husbands? Were they cheated on, and if so, how did they react?

A second, but somewhat less useful category, is how greedy are they with money generally? Someone may go after your money either as punishment for you, or because they really want the lifestyle it gives them. What is their attitude towards receiving charity? Are they reluctant to be financially supported by other people? I think this is a weaker test, because a) there's substantial punishment motivations for going after money as well, and b) by this point, they're likely to view it as being their money, not yours. And if there's any lingering aspect on this, having it intermediated through the courts will probably weaken it further.

But my strongest predictor would be the following - what's their attitude to the courts? Have they ever seriously threatened to sue someone? Have they gone through with it? Has this happened multiple times? If any of these start coming up, you'd better believe you're going to be in for a nasty divorce if it happens.

And once you've got your estimate of the chances of the divorce being messy, double it. Then either get yourself a good pre-nup with your spouse getting independent legal counsel that gets documented (knowing that courts will probably throw it out anyway), or don't get married. Unless you're in Australia, in which case even not getting married may not to save you. In which case, bend over and take it like the government demands, or presume to spend a ton on lawyers no matter what.

The Single Worst Law in America Today

The rule that both parties in legal disputes pay their own costs, regardless of the outcome.

This leads to gold-digging lawsuits. It leads to people suing home owners because they slipped on their pavement. It leads to disgruntled employees filing lawsuits every time they get fired. It leads to doctors being sued every time an operation is not successful, regardless of whether it was their fault. It leads to robbers suing homeowners for injuries they sustain in the course of burglaries.

Why, you may ask, does it lead to all these various things?

Because it creates the most screwed up incentives imaginable. A lot of plaintiffs get their fees charged on contingency – no win, no fee, in other words.

When someone files a lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous, the only cost is their time. Monetarily speaking, every lawsuit has a positive expected value from filing. Any risk that’s there is retained by the lawyer, who spends more time on the case.

When people defend a lawsuit, even when they win, they lose. Because there’s no payoffs to successfully defending a lawsuit, defence lawyers can’t charge on contingency. Hence, apart from a few special cases like SLAPP statutes (where you can argue that the lawsuit was designed to silence free speech), the defendant has to pay up front.

The best case scenario is that you just pay your legal fees. The worst case scenario is that you pay your legal fees and the judgment against you.

But then the plaintiffs will make you the devil’s bargain – if it will cost you at least 30 grand to defend this, why not just settle the case for five grand, even though it’s bogus?

The main people who defend lawsuits are those who have a personal conviction that they’d rather spend more money on lawyers just to make sure the plaintiff doesn’t get anything. But even then, the plaintiff doesn’t get punished, they just get zero. If defendant actually wins. Which they may not.

This system has a number of problems.

Firstly, it creates an incentive for all sorts of gold-digging lawsuits. Lawmakers end up trying to play whack-a-mole to fix the related problems, such as capping medical negligence damages (where everyone still has an expected benefit, but it’s now smaller.) Or maybe make it harder to win lawsuits if you slip over, or if you were in the process of robbing a home. But whatever you do, you’ll always be playing catch-up as long as the base incentives to file lawsuits remain in place.

Secondly, it creates a morally impoverished citizenry that views every trivial wrong as a potential lottery ticket. Those who justifiably view this system as legalized extortion may choose to voluntarily refrain from filing, but this merely means that the benefits accrue disproportionately to the shameless, the self-entitled, the greedy, and the narcissistic. What a horrible incentive to erode virtue.

Thirdly, it fails to recognize that lawsuits impose a real cost on the counterparty and society. Like any externality, when people aren’t forced to internalize the cost, they over-consume the item. Same with lawsuits. Making the losing party pay the winning party’s legal fees means that people are forced to consider if they actually suffered a serious and acute legal wrong for which they need compensation, or whether they’re just trying to punish someone they’re pissed off at. It is manifestly not the role of the legal system to help ameliorate your hurt feelings.

But for some reason, the popular support for this position is very slim. Websites like Overlawyered document very well the egregious abuses of this lawsuit-obsessed society. But they don’t really talk about why this happens, or what can be done to stop it.

I would love to see the Republicans propose ending this practice. The trial lawyers would scream bloody murder, but it would be amongst the easiest and most beneficial changes that could be made to the law.

See Ya Later Free Speech, We Hardly Knew Ye

Australia continues its lamentable decline as yet another country where the delicate feelings of designated victim groups trump freedom of speech.

The estimable Andrew Bolt was held today to have breached the Racial Discimination Act. Let The Australian tell the story:

At issue was Bolt's assertion that the nine applicants had chosen to identify themselves as “Aboriginal” and consequently win grants, prizes and career advancement, despite their apparently fair skin and mixed heritage. 

[Justice Mordecai Bromberg] found that "fair-skinned Aboriginal people (or some of them) were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed in the newspaper articles" published in the Herald Sun.

I personally couldn't give a fig about whether Pat Eatock chooses to self-identify as Aboriginal or not. I care very deeply about the fact that Pat Eatock, with the help of the courts, feels that her exquisitely precious hurt feelings entitle her to sue people who say things she doesn't like. I care that Australia has decided that rather than laugh these claims out of court, it would prefer to join the camps of censorious, cowardly nations that have gutted the concept of free speech of all its meaning, limiting it effectively to citizens' right to agree with politically correct platitudes.

Yes readers, the Commonwealth of Australia, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that nothing is more important than whether your words might subject Pat Eatock to "highly personal, highly derogatory and highly offensive attacks".

Here is the relevant section of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) that Bolt was held to have breached:

SECT 18C Offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin

(1) It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:

(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and

(b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.

Following my own advice, you should read the original judgment here. I waded through it, and didn't find myself any less outraged.

Starting at paragraph 67, you can find nearly one hundred paragraphs as to just how terribly hurt and offended the plaintiffs were by the mean, nasty Andrew Bolt, wrapped in all the hackneyed, threadbare language of the professional grievance industry - "offended", "humiliated", "insulted", "disgusted", "angry", "upset".

My advice to the plaintiffs - grow a fucking spine.

You can also find wonderful nuggets testifying to the decayed state of free speech in Australia. At paragraph 350:

The right to freedom of expression is limited to its reasonable and good faith exercise having regard to the right of others to be free of offence. The requirement of proportionality does not involve the subjugation of one right over the other and is consistent with achieving a balanced compromise between the two.

How wonderful and balanced our free speech is to be, compared with this crucial and equally important right to be 'free from offence'.

Generally speaking, there are defences available for fair comment and public interest. But too bad, because according to Mordecai Bromberg they didn't apply! You can read all about it.

Perhaps the best thing about this is that the original articles are included at the bottom of the judgment. Read them for yourself and decide just how hurtful they are, and whether a free and just society ought to outlaw their publication.

So how does Pat Eatock justify this farce to herself?

After the decision, which was greeted by applause and cheers in the Federal Court, Pat Eatock said ``It's never been an issue of freedom of speech, it's been an issue of professionalism.''

Pat Eatock apparently is either too brainless or too disingenuous to countenance the possibility that the case might be both an issue of professionalism and freedom of speech, in the same way that September 11 was both an issue of architecture and terrorism, and the play Othello was both an issue of Venetian military structure and murder. I'm also look forward to Pat Eatock's fascinating exposition on what rational theory of government would require a role for the Australian Government as the regulator of media 'professionalism' in the first place.

I have long held proudly to the Australian cultural tradition of plain-spoken humour, robust public debate and a generally relaxed attitude to matters of race, gender and sexuality.

What a fucking joke. It's time to accept the fact that the Australia now has a plurality of nitwits who think that the appropriate response to nasty newspaper articles is to draft and pass laws making them illegal, and to drag the publishers of such articles into lawsuits costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What an embarrassing travesty for the country I love. What a humiliating debasement of freedom from a once free and proud people.

In the current context, it brings me no joy at all to type these words:

I'm glad I live in America.

What's Italian for 'Incentives'?

From Boston.com, comes this absurd story from Italy:

Seven scientists and other experts went on trial on manslaughter charges Tuesday for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn residents before a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.

Hindsight bias! Get yer hindsight bias, piping hot and fresh from Italia! Cheaper when purchased by the gallon!

Let's put aside for a minute any question of actual moral culpability, and whether it's fair to hold people criminally liable for scientific predictions. Instead, let's assume that we're just interested in saving as many lives as possible and increasing the accuracy of earthquake forecasts (although astute readers will note that even this phrasing involves tradeoffs between the two goals). Does arresting seismologists who fail to predict earthquakes sound like good policy?

The trouble with incentives is that you need to think very carefully about whether you're actually creating the incentives you think you're creating.

I imagine the Italian authorities have the following mental model:

1. Massively increase the penalties for wrong predictions
2. Lazy and corrupt seismologists put more effort into getting the right predictions
3. Save lives!

But this is assuming the continued existence of seismologists making predictions in the first place. If you don't do this, then you have the following:

1. Massively increase the penalties for wrong predictions, while not increasing the payoff from correct predictions
2. Result is massively reduced payoffs from making any seismological predictions at all.
3. Seismologists quit en masse, or refuse to provide any guidance.
4. No more predictions.
5. Earthquake deaths.

Not quite the same thing, is it?

Okay, let's put Mussolini in charge! He'll chain those lazy seismologists to their desks and force them to keep making forecasts! Surely we'll be okay then, right?

Or maybe you've then set up the following incentives:

1. Massively increase the penalties for type II errors (i.e. false negatives: saying there won't be an earthquake when there will be one), but not increasing the penalties for type I errors (i.e. false positives: saying there will be an earthquake when there won't be one).
2. Seismologists predict an earthquake every single day of the year
3. People quickly learn to ignore all the warnings
4. Signal to noise ratio in earthquake predictions goes to zero, meaning that there are effectively no more meaningful earthquake predictions
5. Earthquake deaths.

Bureaucrats seem to think that ramping up penalties will create scientific knowledge where there was none. But it won't. All it will do is shift around the incentives and behaviour of agents in ways that are completely predictable, even if they are almost certainly not predicted by the bureaucrats.

In the mean time, you can expect displays of righteous indignation by prosecutors, giddy with hindsight bias, exactly sure that they knew there was going to be an earthquake, so why didn't those lazy seismologists? What you won't be able to get from them is any useful guidance on when the next earthquake is actually going to happen, notwithstanding their amazing hindsight powers.

Stop Whinging If You Haven't Read The Damn Decision

Murray Gleeson, former Chief Justice of the Australian High Court, was once reported as saying something that I thought was such a good summary of the proper role of courts that I want to repeat it here. (I can't seem to find the quote online, so I'm paraphrasing from memory - if it turns out he didn't say this, it's so good I don't want you to spoil my image)

He said that he was happy for anyone to offer any criticism they wanted of the High Court or any particular decisions. He only made the request that before they did so, they took the time to actually read the court's judgement.

Now, this isn't something that I think holds everywhere. I don't, for instance, think that one has to read Das Kapital to have an informed view that Communism is both wicked and stupid, nor do you have to pay Michael Moore to see Bowling for Columbine before one is allowed to venture the opinion the having a Lockheed Martin factory in Columbine was not the underlying reason for the massacre.

But the reason I think it's particularly valuable in the case of court opinions is that even a layman's reading through will quickly open your eyes to something very basic about the law: namely, that there is a difference between a good legal decision, and a desirable policy outcome.

This is almost never reflected in the popular reporting. It drives me batty that just about every report about court decisions on, say, gay marriage, focus entirely on whether it is desirable from a policy point of view, and whether this case has furthered it or not.

Just once, would it kill them to talk about how this decision fits into existing 14th Amendment jurisprudence? Would it kill them to briefly cite the arguments of the majority and minority?

There is a legal body that exists to decide what is the most desirable outcome to reflect social desires, and that body is the legislature. Now, even if you think that courts should have some role in this (and I don't), surely it's worth appreciating that they also have the role of accurately interpreting the law so that people live in a stable, predictable legal environment and can arrange their affairs accordingly? Surely the aim isn't just to arbitrarily do whatever the judge feels is just on that particular day?

And when you read the actual opinions, this perspective becomes apparent very quickly, even if you don't have a legal background. Because poorly-reasoned opinions make you cringe, even if you like the outcome. They make you realise that there's more to a court's job than just 'Do I want X to happen?'

Take the case of Atkins v. Virginia, in which the US Supreme Court held that allowing the death penalty for mentally retarded defendants was cruel and unusual punishment, and thus unconstitutional. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Thomas and Scalia all dissented.

Now, in the mindset of the average person, what's the conclusion they draw?

OMG, SCALIA WANTS TO EXECUTE DISABLED PEOPLE!!!!11!!!!! WHAT A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING!!!!

Reader, I challenge you to read through his opinion (it's not very long) and tell me that this is a fair reflection of what this case is about.

Instead of repeating that, as lots of clowns do, how about you read the damn opinion and find out what he says the reasons are for his decision? Here's a hot tip - it's not based on a personal love of his of executing retards.

Instead, you will find lots of very reasonable arguments about
-ambiguity in the definition of what constitutes being retarded
-the fact that legislatures have the option of repealing the law but haven't done so
-that juries represent the proper avenue for deciding these matters
-And lots and lots of stuff about the far more important question of how this fits into the existing precedents on the matter, which are the proper business of courts.

You may disagree with his opinion, and lots of reasonable people do. But I bet you this - out of all the turkeys that are sure that Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to the Supreme Court, less than 1 in 20 has read a single opinion of his. The embarrassment lies entirely with the people who go around repeating this without ever reading a word the man has written. These people embarrass the ideals of a democratic society. If you read some of his work and still think he's an embarrassment, I will disagree with you, but won't begrudge you that viewpoint.

Do what I do - even if you're not a lawyer, if a newspaper reports a decision that gets you fired up, stop scrolling the New York Times website immediately, type the name of the case into Google, and read the damn opinions.

Murray Gleeson will give you a big thumbs up for doing so, and Murray Gleeson is a cool dude.

Future Mensa Chapter Presidents Try Their Hands At Blackmail

Via Hector Lopez comes a story that is full of so much fail it's hard to know where to start.

Two teenagers in Sydney somehow manage to get a nude photograph of the wife of lawyer. Rather than just get their jollies looking at it or send it to their friends, they hit upon the idea of trying to blackmail the wife into paying $15,000 for it.

No, really.

But the hilarity is only getting started.

By all accounts, the kids had given virtually no thought to the possibility that the woman might contact the police. Which, of course, she did.

The boy and girl allegedly demanded the woman leave $15,000 in a toilet cistern at a Hunters Hill hotel or they would make the photo public.

They arranged a meeting place in a hotel bathroom. You know, because if there's one thing about a money pickup location that you really really want, it's having only a single possible entrance and exit that's easily monitored from lots of locations, where lots of people are guaranteed to be milling around so you'll have no idea if you're being watched.

They were arrested after the woman's husband reported the demand to police and a covert operation was set up to catch the youths. The girl was arrested by plainclothes officers on May 30 after she walked out of the unisex bathroom of the hotel's gaming room empty handed.

Having set up this wicked location, they then decided to pick it up themselves immediately. Genius! What could possibly go wrong?

Okay, so maybe they didn't think about it ahead of time, but what about when they already realized the police were involved? Surely they tried to cover their tracks then?

About an hour after the girl was arrested the woman's husband received a call from the offenders, the court was told.

The caller said: "You used undercover cops, f ... you, f ... you. You tell (name of woman) she is dead".

Hmmm, strangely they decided to double down on their jail time by making telephone death threats to a number that SURELY was going to be monitored by the cops. An intriguing gambit!

Alright give them some credit, it's hard to think clearly when you're panicking. And frankly it's not clear how to pick a location to get the cash that would be able to foil all police efforts. Maybe that's a reason not to do it in the first place, but let's give them some leeway.

What about the basics? Surely they covered their tracks even a little?

A copy of the extortion letter received by the victim on May 29 was allegedly found by police on an Apple laptop used by the siblings. ...

The letter was allegedly saved in a file titled "threat letter MILF" less than five hours before a copy was allegedly slid under the front door of the victim's mansion in an envelope addressed to the victim and labelled "private".

Okay, this raises at least two questions.

1. Why would you save the letter? Why not just press delete? Are you trying to create a paper trail for the cops?

2. WHY, IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY WOULD YOU CALL THE FILE 'threat letter MILF'? HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST YOUR MINDS???

But I haven't even gotten to the finishing touch of the story:

The teens' mother told police the laptop was used by both her children.

Thanks Mum!!!

So your children are being investigated for crimes that would put them in prison for a long time, and you're PROVIDING MATERIAL EVIDENCE TO THE POLICE TO HELP ENSURE THEIR CONVICTION! When they come asking questions, tell them to get the hell out of your house if they don't have a warrant! I guess stupid runs in the family.

I hereby sentence you both to 20 years to life for being gigantic dumbasses who are too stupid to be left to roam free in society.

Big Mistakes to Avoid

Ace of Spades links to this excellent Guardian piece about a guy in a mental institution who is thought to be a psychopath, and the difficulty he has in convincing them that he's not.

While it makes a very good point about the shades of grey in what constitutes psychopathy, I thought the most telling point was actually at the start:

"I'd committed GBH [Grievous Bodily Harm]," he said. "After they arrested me, I sat in my cell and I thought, 'I'm looking at five to seven years.' So I asked the other prisoners what to do. They said, 'Easy! Tell them you're mad! They'll put you in a county hospital. You'll have Sky TV and a PlayStation. Nurses will bring you pizzas.'"

"How long ago was this?" I asked.

"Twelve years ago," Tony said.

This is old, old news to lawyers, but for some reason always comes as a surprise to the average person - unless you're facing the death penalty and are very clearly guilty, it's probably not a good idea to plead insanity.

Because even if you win, you lose.

The biggest problem is that you can easily be held in the loony bin for substantially longer than your original prison sentence would have been. Not only that, but they're not under any obligation to let you out, ever. You have to convince various psychiatrists and tribunals. And guess what? It's going to be their ass on the line if you go out and murder someone after being certified as sane. So whaddaya know, they tend to be somewhat conservative in recommending release!

It also shows a real failure of imagination. Because what's your plan once you get into the mental institution? "Easy. I'll just tell them that I faked my mental illness to escape prison, they'll realise what a miscarriage of justice it is to keep a lying violent perjurer in an institution for a second longer, and I'll walk free."

Yeah, not so much.

"Okay, fine, I won't tell them I was faking it, I'll just fake a recovery from whatever disease they think I have, even though I won't know exactly what they're looking for as signs of improvement, other than just acting nice and sane."

Are you starting to see why good lawyers don't often recommend that you plead insanity if you're not, in fact, insane?