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Watching the watchers

The world we live in has rules.  And the citizens are expected to obey those rules.  Without order we get chaos.  Fighting entropy is hard.  Very hard.

There was an entire TV series based on this notion called Law & Order.  Recently though there have been a spate of incidents where the watchers failed us.  From the near collapse of the capitalist economic system back in 2008 where the rating agencies failed at doing their job to the recent Boeing disasters where the FAA did not do theirs and 400 people paid with their lives, we are facing a scenario where the watchers need watching.  'Collusion' is a word making headlines these days.

Coincidentally (I have started listening to podcasts on the way to work) a new podcast by one of my favorite authors, Michael Lewis has a show about umpires.  Or referees.  It is titled 'Against the Rules'.  It covers the topic of 'referees losing their authority'.

Fairness and how humans enforce it. 

One episode narrates the story of wise king Solomon of the Israelites with a reference to Yul Brenner in the role of the king in the movie Solomon and Sheba.  The idea that this king decrees a baby to be cut in half to each mother claiming it was hers is the bet he makes.  Whereupon the (supposedly) true mother recoiling with horror urges the king to let the other woman have it instead results in a resolution is dramatically illustrated in a Seinfeld episode involving the incomparable Newman character who decides to cut Elaine's bike in half.  The judge, jury and executioner has to be an impartial entity with no emotion is the common theme in both stories.

I enjoy the way he narrates various scenarios from refereeing a game of basketball and the umpires getting booed; to wall street and its desire to make money no matter what the cost to the very people it calls its customers.

By the sound of it greed and more of it will be the end of humanity.
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