Ben Stein published a pretty awful editorial defending Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF head arrested for sexual assault. Now, I don’t disagree with him about the presumption of innocence, but the rest of the article effectively argues that smart, rich people simply don’t commit crimes. In particular, he says this:
In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes?
On a whim, I just did a little research, and couldn’t believe what I found. Guess who holds an economics degree?
For those not familiar with the case, Bernardo is one of the nastiest serial killers in history. He and his wife drugged, raped, and tortured to death a number of schoolgirls in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The story is the stuff of nightmares.
I’ll leave the debate over the rest of Mr. Stein’s article to others. But as for his suggestion that studying economics precludes becoming a violent sex criminal, it seems history provides one hell of a counterexample.
Edit: James Urbaniak has a list of some other economists involved in sex crimes.
xkcd 
Two words: Bradley Manning. Where were you on that one Ben?
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Not violent sex crimes… But what about Silvio Berlusconi? 🙂
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He’s got a point. Smart, educated criminals usually become CEOs instead of street thugs.
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does anyone else need further proof that ben stein is a class warring scumbag?
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The position in this editorial is pretty awful, indeed.
However, I – as a Swiss guy – found the circumstances of the arrest of DSK pretty shocking. The guy is suspected for sexual assault, he clearly should be judged for this. But is this a reason to parade him in front of the cameras, handcuffed?
He’s a 66 years old economist, for god’s sake, what do they fear, that he use his kung-fu skills to dispose of his guards, and run away to Mexico? And what about the bail denial, is he as a public figure going to go end his life in a country denying extradition? Doing what, renting surfboards? This treatment ensures only one thing: whatever the outcome of the trial, his name now cannot be cleared. Even if the whole thing is a set-up (I’m not claiming here it is), these images will stick.
I love many aspects of the US, I’ve come there on many occasions and enjoyed it a lot, but I find the police (and the TSA, obviously) truly barbaric.
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No flight risk at all. except he has an arrangement with Air Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey, otherwise known as Air France, that he can board any flight, anywhere, at any time to anywhere, and get a first class seat.
If that was available to me, I would probably enter a life of crime, and plan them around flights out.
He is a serious flight risk.
One wonders whether he even NEEDS a passport to leave the country with an arrangement like that.
You can imagine him being whisked through, or around, security.
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Thank you so much for posting this. I’m sick of watching people saying this crap and getting away without any backlash.
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Gavrilo,
To answer your first point about parading him in front of cameras – that’s how it’s done in the US when a high profile individual is caught and suspected of committing a crime. I understand that France (and perhaps Switzerland) has very strict laws against such images so that the jury at the accused’s trial is not influenced by such scenes – but that’s how it’s done – for better or worse – in the US. It’s been very interesting watching French TV the past few days debating this point.
With respect to being put into Riker’s – that’s where violent offenders are kept until their trial (or to serve their sentences). Rape is considered a violent crime. Yes, he’s only accused at the moment – he hasn’t been convicted. I suspect that the New York DA would have felt immense public pressure if he had simply put him under house arrest with a guard as Mr. Stein suggest. There would have been cries of “preferential treatment” because he is rich and influential and claims of how the rich and powerful live under a different set of laws than the common man (mind you, they certainly can afford excellent lawyers who find ways of convincing a jury that the sky is not blue and that the sun sets in the east and rises in the west and thereby get their clients acquitted). The DA was between a rock and a hard place.
Some of what Ben Stein says is not too far off the mark but he’s way off in the aggregate. As for the police – I think you paint them with too broad a brush. I’ll reserve my comments on TSA though…
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You’re nitpicking.
It was a clumsy remark from that guy, but don’t nitpick: you’re cleverer than that.
BTW, could you explain me how conveniently this story comes after these:
http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2011/02/10/stronger-financial-architecture/
tl;dr: http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/markets/dollar/index.htm
Guilty or not, Ben@Fed might be the most relieved scammer in the world.
And I’m so intrigued by that, that I’d also suggest that maybe someone helped DSK be guilty.
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Are you surprised? the guy is a flaming CREATIONIST and best buddies with that nutjob Ray Comfort….
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Creationism doesn’t imply that one believes in the Bible’s Genesis, this could just suggest that he believes we’re a Boltzmann Brain dream.
BTW, back on topic: here are more details about DSK’s story:
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2011/05/the-death-by-media-of-dominique-strauss-kahn.html
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I think its silly to assume that higher education precludes someone from certain sociocriminal dynamics. Hell, can anyone here tell me of a cosmologist or astrophysicist who’s committed a sex crime?
I would think Economics is the same way, although with the closeness that Financial Economics and other branches of the study tend to have with the line-sniffers in high-rise office buildings on Wall St., I could not say I would be surprised to see this.
Keep in mind this is coming from a disciple of economics, but honestly I think that when you work so close with that kind of power, it does corrupt you into thinking you’re entitled to an even bigger piece of the pie than you have. Suddenly, because money=resources so by proxy these people assume they must=resources, they start to think they can acquire any good or service just because they have the cash.
Like I said, though, academics has nothing to do with sex crimes. I have seen research saying intellectuals have greater sexual energy, but this has little to do with the question at hand. Economists are probably no more likely to rape than any other discipline like Biology, Physics, or Mathematics.
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What a dumbass thing for Ben Stein to say. Ted Bundy was a law student, and Republican political operative in the Pacific Northwest. Ted Kaczynski was a mathmatician before he went off the beam.
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“It seems like half the readers here are interpreting Stein’s argument as something like ”Strauss-Kahn could not have done this crime, so he should get bail”.”
Yes, that is exactly what he is saying. He opens by admitting that it is “perhaps” likely whathisface committed this crime, thus seeming to be raising the reasonable point of innocence until proven guilty.
But his subsequent points don’t address this, but rather aim to suggest that the very idea of a wealthy white guy doing such a thing is laughable.
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Rich, influential, educated people make the worst kind of criminals: they are smarter at covering up their actions and can afford to pay their victims off. Those who are charismatic and popular are all the more dangerous.
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Ben Stein is an ignorant buffoon who hides under the guise of his ivy league education. This guy will lie and cheat and selectively quote passages to support an illogical, distorted worldview.
I had the misfortune of being tricked to watch his movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” It is one of the most dishonest and deliberately inciting movies I’ve ever watched. As a scientist, I just wanted to punch this guy in the face for all the willful misrepresentations of the science and people’s positions.
Look here for the craps explained: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know
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In the 50’s, economists at the RAND Corporation believed we were all rational actors and that economic behaviour was predictable for that reason. They created a series of questionnaires to test the rationality of the average human, and gave them to the typing pool fill them out. The results didn’t fit the hypothesis, so they gave them to people from various strata of society to fill them out. They found only two groups behaved rationally : economists themselves, and psychopaths.
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“People who commit crimes tend to be criminals”
Yes.
“People who cook food professionally tend to be chefs”
“People who act for a living tend to be actors”
Surely committing a crime makes one a criminal? Am I misunderstanding something?
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Yes. Stein is a serial fool.
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No one’s a criminal until they commit a crime. And we don’t know who the criminals are until they get caught. Stein’s statement is a great example of sophistry but let’s be kind and say it’s just a great example of incredibly flawed logic.
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@Gavrillo
It is my understanding that bail is allowed on the condition that the accused is not a flight risk. They caught him in an airport on a flight to Paris…
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Gavrilo,
Ido answered the “perp-walk” question, but he didn’t address the bail denial issue. Bail is routinely denied to suspects who are deemed flight risks. Strauss-Kahn would rightly be considered a flight risk because he was arrested while trying to board an Air France flight to flee the country. I can understand the disapproval of the American practise of the perp walk, but arguing that he should have been permitted out on bail when he demonstrated that he’s a *clear* flight risk is demanding preferential treatment because he’s a public figure.
You claim that because he’s a French public official, he wouldn’t flee to a country that would not extradite a rape case, like, say, just for example, FRANCE. Because that would mean leaving public service (which he’s had to do anyway now), and who ever heard of a wealthy and influential man in his 60’s retiring or joining the private sector?
Yeah, no. You’re asking that a suspected rapist get preferential treatment because he’s a public official, and you’re engaging in a rather heafty denial of reality to claim he’s not a flight risk, even though he was arrested while attempted to flee the country. I’m not really sure how this is any better than what Ben Stein was trying to argue.
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Victims identities should be protected as well as the accused!
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Yeah but that doesn’t count because something something something.
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“I take my hat off to you — or I would, if I were not afraid of showering you in spiders.
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Yeah, well, no TRUE economist would commit a sex crime.
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DSK’s arrangement with Air France makes him a flight risk but so does the fact that he is French. The French government will not extradite one of its citizens to stand trial in a foreign country–this policy has resulted in the case of Roman Polanski among others. DSK may eventually be granted bail anyway but locking him up now also goes to show DSK and his supporters how serious prosecutors are about this case.
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Academic types never commit crimes… just ask Ted Kaczynski.
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Isn’t there a difference between having a degree in economics and being an economist? I know plenty of literature majors who are baristas. I’m not Stein so I can’t say for sure what he meant, but I would venture to guess he was making a distinction between members of his own profession and those that simply have an undergraduate degree in that field.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sophie_Elliott
“The relationship had lasted for around six months prior to her death; in court, witnesses described it as troubled. Weatherston had been an economics tutor at the University of Otago, and also taught Elliott, who completed an honours degree in economics. On the day she died, she was packing to relocate to Wellington the next day, and start a job at the New Zealand Treasury.”
“Elliott died from blood loss. Two wounds pierced her heart and one lung, with other wounds to her neck and throat severing the main artery and the major vein. In total she received 216 separate injuries, mostly stab wounds from a knife blade, with some inflicted by scissors. Additionally there were seven blunt force injuries. The pathologist found some defensive wounds, and that the attack targeted aspects of beauty and was intended to disfigure.”
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He’s not a sex criminal (that we know of), but I’m surprised Osama bin Laden’s name hasn’t come up yet: http://www.google.com/search?q=economics+bin+laden&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1
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Well we got someone from the Nixon White House defending a French Socialist, always fun…
And, while Ben is writing for his audience and frankly I never liked his audience (Stick to Ferris…)
I think everything about this is suspicious and on its face the whole incident stinks… I don’t know if I’ve met one person yet who thinks that this somehow adds up… especially the timing.
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Why do people love to argue back and forth by trading anecdotes? The whole point of any decent criminal justice system is to convict or acquit based on hard evidence. Not reputation. Not statistical correlations. Not stereotypes.
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Related question for Ben Stein: How many air force base commanders have been convicted of violent sex crimes?
Link: Paul Bernardo and former CFB Trenton Base Commander Russell Williams may have been acquaintances in college – http://thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=2446234
For the record Williams and Bernardo may have taken some of the same classes in… economics!
figleaf
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Rafael Robb of UPenn killed his wife a couple years back. He was charged with murder but convicted of voluntary manslaughter, presumably after a plea bargain.
See http://chronicle.com/article/Penn-Professor-Pleads-Guilty/40004
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There is a certain argument that can be made for the exclusive nature of violence and rational thought. It certainly doesn’t establish anything near ‘the educated cannot commit crimes’. And even if the educated are less likely to commit crimes, you still have to investigate them just as thoroughly.
We have 2 choices with how we can deal with the world. One is physical force, violence. The other is rational thought. Civilization is the social act of making the second choice. Individuals (and groups) are certainly capable of violating this, but they are likely to end up being punished for it. It is antithetical to the nature of human beings as weak, social, intelligent creatures. To rely on violence above rationality would quickly lead to our extinction as a species.
Also, I can’t believe that Stein actually said “People who commit crime tend to be criminals”. What’s next, people who commit murder tending to be murderers?
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Paul Bernardo was framed!
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Well, what about song writers? When one is imprisoned, one fills out a form with a blank for “Occupation”. Apparently “Song Writer” is extremely common.
As for Ben Stein… I love a comic-book world with “good guys” and “bad guys”. Has a lovely adolescent simplicity. Perhaps we could use phrenology to distinguish them!
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I don’t know how much truth there is to this, but like any fan of Thom Hartmann’s radio show, I’ve heard of a study in which they put the principles of game theory to the empirical test. While game theory didn’t always predict human behavior in general, it did accurately predict the competitive strategies of two particular types of humans, namely criminals and economists.
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As an AFUer emeritus e pluribus unum res ipsa loquitur, I was a little suspicious of the RAND Corporation story … and having seen it twice, I’m even more suspicious.
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Yeah, the Brain Eater got Ben Stein a few years back.
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Interesting trivia: Canadian rapist and murderer Col. Russell Williams also had an economics degree. Along with Bernardo, Williams is one of the most famous Canadian rapists; his is a name that most Canadians will immediately recognize.
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If memory serves, one of the girls Paul Bernardo raped & murdered (with his wife’s help) was HER SISTER. Seriously sick f***s.
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I’d just like to point out that Paul Bernardo and his wife drugged, raped, and killed 3 young girls in the early 90s. In comparison to John Wayne Gacy, who raped and killed 33 young boys, or Elizabeth Bathory, who tortured and killed around 600 young girls for her own pleasure… yeah, I would hardly call him one of the nastiest in history.
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“I can understand the disapproval of the American practise of the perp walk, but arguing that he should have been permitted out on bail when he demonstrated that he’s a *clear* flight risk is demanding preferential treatment because he’s a public figure.”
How has he demonstrated he’s at flight risk ? His arrest at the airport is the result of a pre-booked flight, he was just following his schedule.
As to your Ben Stein, I don’t know him but I think that in the context he used the term economist to mean world-class economist, not Joe Schmuck who has an economics degree… I can understand you not agreeing with the guy on principle (and I actually share your disagreement) but your counter-example sucks balls.
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thing with the flight risk is not the risk in itself, which is low, but the consequences in case he made it to France : the story is public, and since France does not extradate its people, it would have been a big diplomatic incident.
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“He’s got a point. Smart, educated criminals usually become CEOs instead of street thugs.” Where their crimes are made legal by the government.
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Evil is not prejudice. You will find it everywhere; in every nation, sex, religion, orientation, or career. Even priests can be evil.
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