Freakonomics Page #5

I wouldn't necessarily call that one of purity

The way we would talk about Sumo Wrestling,

or the way we might talk about the Catholic Cleregy

The S.C.C. had an image of this guy -

that was almost sacred saint in that he's running the exchange,

he'd been a market maker.

His reputation was so large that it discourages them

from coming in with a bias toward corruption,

and instead, they brought a bias against it.

Mr. Madoff, what do you have to say for yourelf?

What do you have to say to the public, your investors?

The realm of high finance and the world of sumo

both demonstrate the illusion of purity

cannot only hide corruption, it can help to make it possible.

In Sumo, when whistle blower step forward to expose corruption

they were not treated kindly.

In 1996, two summo vetrans, including a recently retired stable master,

collaborated in a tell-all expos that was serialized in the Shukan Post

The Sumo Association dismissed the allegation as lies,

told by a revengeful stable master

seeking to cash in on publicity.

To defend their claims, the whistle blowers decided to hold a press conference.

But two weeks before the press conference, both men died.

In the same hospital, on the same day

From the same ... myterious respitory illness.

Yet no one questioned the way they died, there were no autopsies

The police did not investigate the sudden and simultaneous deaths.

"It's a very good hospital", a police spokesman told reporters.

So, there were no grounds for suspecison.

Concerns about the sport resurfaced when another mysterious death haunted Sumo

This time it was a young "Rikichi" in training named Takashi Saito

Whose corpse showed visible signs of assault and multilation.

Hiromasa Saikawa took note of the death of the young wrestler

Sakawa is one of the nation's most vocal critics

of how murders are investigated in Japan.

He quit his post on the Tokyo Police Force

When the gap between the "Honne" (the hidden truth)

and the "Tatemae" (the facet propriety) had grown too wide

The job of any police force is to help keep crime at low enough levels

so that society can properly function.

The "Tatemae" of the police force is to be seen doing that

If the police can tell society, we solved 96% of crimes,

they have certainly fulfilled their "Tatemae" function.

In comforting society, making society feel safe.

But to achieve that level of "Tatemae"

The police might select only cases for investigation

that they think they have an extremely high chance of solving

Despite clear evidence of brutality,

the police declared that the young man died of natural causes.

And the stable master quickly asked for the young boy's body,

so it can be creamated.

But the angry father of the young man insisted autopsy,

which revealed that he has been burned with cigarettes;

and beaten to death with beer bottles and baseball bats.

The young boy has died at the hands of fellow wrestlers

who're ordered by the stable master to punished the boy

for trying to run away from the world of Sumo

Sumo counter-criticism with lawsuit against Takeda and his magazine

Juries ruled against Takeda in cases where he accused individuals of match rigging

But Sumo had no defence against the revelation of violence.

To defend its reputation, the Sumo Association shores up its image

By building on notions of purity from Shinto

that are essential to be what it means to be Japanese

Publicly, it insists that Yaocho is a myth.

I hope ... there was none of that going on

in the bottom ranks. But

where I was ... No.

A retired Rikshi who wrote to Komosubi - the 4th highest ranked in Sumo.

Keisuke Itai came forward, and publicly admitted to fixing many matches.

And named names of others, who did the same.

In Japanese media, there's a certain form of self-censorship

giving interviews in japanese,

the media will not quote me if I use the word "Daraku"

which is corruption in japanese

and they'll change it instead to something like "Konran" - confusion.

We certainly have the very same thing in America today.

The New York Times, for example, will not use the word TORTURE

to describe anything that's been carried out by Americans ...

... operating in our prison system and the war on terror.

However, if it's the Chinese who've done these things to an American airman,

the NY Times has no compunctions about calling those things TORTURE

The only way to combat corruption, to Steven Levitt,

is to change rules to undo corruption incentives

Unleash more investigative reporters

and develop strong protections for whistle blowers.

But that's easier said than done when cultural slogans

in American and Japan that we are honest, straight-forward

and fundamentally good.

Those who expose corruption

are challenging the very nature of who we imagine we're supposed to be

The irony of our Sumo Wrestling

was when it became public, the Sumo Wrestlers stopped cheating.

and they're not for good, they actually stopped cheating for a year or two

and once people stopped thinking about it, they went back to it.

but that I think is the answer how you stopped cheating. Louis Brandeis

said that sunlight was the best disinfantant.

What keeps us from seeing corruptions are our illusions

that our economy is a rational system.

A free market, opened to all

The fact is that rigging markets and matches is good business

If the rigging is hidden from all but a few

In Shinto, the mirror is an important symbol

reflecting a sense of who we are

In that mirror, the bad heart is a hidden heart

The pure heart is the one that hides nothing

Looking at the numbers and accept what they tell us

is a way of wiping dust away from the mirror

Hi there boys and girls

this is Captain Kangaroo

Say, I like you to meet a friend of mine

say, you know it's a lot and lot of fun to have a pet

that you can run, jump and play with, isn't it?

But did you know there're kids that cannot run, jump and play?

It's all because a thing called Polio

When I think of bad historical assumptions about

correlations and causeality, I think of Polio 100 years ago.

When it was this horrible mystery that claiming a lot of lives

And it was really scary cuz it mostly struck children.

And there was a strong line of resarch that suggested ice-cream

cause polio, that ice-cream consumption cause Polio.

Here comes Mr. Softy, the soft ice-cream man.

The reason that correlation was thought to be causal

was that Polio spiked in the summer time

For reasons, that weren't really understood, but it did.

And ice-cream sales spiked in the summer time.

So, these researchers're seeing that whenever a lot of ice-cream are being sold,

and consumed, there was a lot more Polio.

And that was literally the beginning of ice-cream prosecution

to try to stomp out Polio. And it sounds rediculous,

but you see it all the time now -

people try to fight against or build up something that they're sure

that's connected to something else, but turns out it just isn't.

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