Comments on: Whitey Bulger Convicted, and the Trivers Willard Hypothesis https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/08/12/whitey-bulger-convicted-and-the-trivers-willard-hypothesis/ Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:24:15 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: quercus https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/08/12/whitey-bulger-convicted-and-the-trivers-willard-hypothesis/#comment-489066 Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:24:15 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=17451#comment-489066 Not a horrible analogy, but I thought the reason all of Whitey’s relatives ‘won’ the lottery wasn’t because it was fixed, but because he was buying other people’s winning ticket as a way to launder money. If Joe Schmoe gets a $100,000 winning ticket, he can sell it under-the-table to Whitey: Schmoe gets the 100 grand in cash without having to pay income tax (and the IRS isn’t going over Joe Schmoe’s finances with a fine toothed comb, so he’ll probably get away with it). Meanwhile Whitey turns in the winning ticket and has just turned $100,000 cash from drug sales into a legitimate source of income.

Of course, Whitey certainly wasn’t above just sticking a gun in someones face and taking their winning ticket, either. But it’s possible that there were more or less unpressured win-win agreements, too.

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