Contrafreeloading

I came across an interesting term "contrafreeloading" in Dan Ariely's "The Upside of Irrationality."

Explanation from birdchannel.com

Contrafreeloading: (verb) The behavior in which animals offered the choice between eating food provided to them for free or working to get that food would eat the most food from the source that required effort. This term was created in 1963 by animal psychologist Glen Jensen. Jensen ran a study on 200 male albino rats where the end result was the rats ate more from the food source where the rats had to press on a bar to get the pellet rather than the dish of pellets where they didn’t have to do anything at all. Jensen then studied the behaviors of gerbils, mice, birds, fish, monkeys and chimpanzees. In fact many have studied contrafreeloading since then with similar results, except for the domestic cat – which likes to be served. This 1963 study’s results were surprising because it would be more logical, from an evolutionary point of view, to not expand energy to get food when food is freely available. 

Interestingly, I read about this on the same day our 1 year old decided she'd run around and around her high chair, instead of sitting on it, while taking one spoon of her dinner per round. We found it funny, and also satisfying since she ate more. 

I started wondering if there is a connection. How about humans? Do we exhibit contrafreeloading too? I doubt adults do, at least when it comes to food. But perhaps kids do? Should try some experiments at home!

The Fine Print

The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind by David Cay Johnston

Suppose I buy a mannequin and house him in an apartment in say the Cayman Islands. Then I declare that he owns me - at least my intellect and by limbs, so that whatever I may do to earn an income, I'll be using his property. So I need to pay him royalty. He's one cruel master - he wants all my income (except may be my expenses for food and shelter.) So come tax time, I write off all my royalty expenses, leaving me with a very small income on which to pay tax. Hopefully, I'll be below the lowest bracket and not have to pay any taxes. Perhaps I may even qualify for some government benefits like social security. Meanwhile, my master the Mannequin takes all my income and has no taxes to pay, since he lives in a tax shelter. May be one day I'd want to buy a car or a house, in which case I can borrow money from my master. Of course, he'll demand a steep interest rate, which I'll get to write off on my taxes as well. 

Sounds nuts? If you were a US corporation, you can do all this and much much more. Replace the mannequin with a "holding company", the "intellect and limbs" with patents/intellectual-property and brand/trademarks, social security with tax credits. And probably you don't even need to go all the way to the Caymans - something like Delaware would do.

This and so many high blood pressure causing financial shenanigans by big corporations and the rich are revealed and explained in this book. The key take-aways are, what's practiced in the USA is not the free markets that Adam Smith talked about, but it is all about corporate socialism. It's a story of how monopolies and oligopolies rob the many to enrich the very few at the top, with a active and slavish support of the government.

The book itself is well written and full of clear explanations of complex subject matter. It may be a it tilted to the left, but the passion is to be expected if the author really cares about the subject, which is does.