My take on the Jeffrey Epstein case

I asked myself the question of how those events have induced me to revise my priors.  Here is one bit of many:

I am now, at the margin, more inclined to the view that what keeps many people on good behavior is simply inertia. They are oddly passive in their core inclinations, but will behave badly if given an easy opportunity. And since many of these people probably are not active independent malefactors on a regular basis, their sense of risk may not be entirely well developed. Thus they themselves may have been fairly naïve in their dealings with Epstein, not quite understanding that their invulnerability in everyday life might not carry over to all situations.

Here is the rest of my Bloomberg column, many distinct points contained therein.