Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of breast cancer screening requires estimates of the absolute risk of breast cancer, which is modified by various risk factors. Breast cancer incidence, and thus mortality, is altered by the occurrence of competing events. More accurate estimates of competing risks should improve the estimation of absolute risk of breast cancer and benefit from breast cancer screening, leading to more effective preventive, diagnostic, and treatment policies. We have previously described the effect of breast cancer risk factors on breast cancer incidence in the presence of competing risks. In this study, we investigate the association of the same risk factors with mortality as a competing event with breast cancer incidence.
We use data from the Canadian National Breast Screening Study, consisting of two randomized controlled trials, which included data on 39 risk factors for breast cancer. The participants were followed up for the incidence of breast cancer and mortality due to breast cancer and other causes. We stratified all-cause mortality into death from other types of cancer and death from non-cancer causes. We conducted separate analyses for cause-specific mortalities.
We found that "age at entry" is a significant factor for all-cause mortality, and cancer-specific and non-cancer mortality. "Menstruation length" and "number of live births" are significant factors for all-cause mortality, and cancer-specific mortality. "Ever noted lumps in right/left breasts" is a factor associated with all-cause mortality, and non-cancer mortality.
For proper estimation of absolute risk of the main event of interest common risk factors associated with competing events should be identified and considered.
Women in a clinical trial with breast cancer incidence as the endpoint may die due to causes other than breast cancer before the occurrence of the cancer. Competing events should be taken into account in evaluating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of screening interventions both at the population level and for a given individual (personalized screening regimes). A specific screening intervention may be recommended for a woman based on her age and other characteristics, such as having a family history of breast cancer. However, these characteristics can also affect the occurrence of competing events; so, it is essential to study the effect of risk factors on both breast cancer incidence and its competing events such as mortality due to other causes.
Some studies have focused on the main event of interest and considered competing risks. Fang et al.  examined the potential role of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on prostate cancer specific mortality while controlling for other competing causes of death. Yi et al.  determined the factors associated with a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy while taking into account the competing risk of the recurrence of the primary breast cancer. Mell et al.  identified predictors of non-cancer causes of death in head and neck cancer and developed a risk stratification model for these competing events. Mell et al.  used competing risk modeling to identify predictors of non-cancer mortality in women with early breast cancer, while considering disease recurrences as competing risks.
Other studies focused on all competing events and investigated the effect of some risk factors on the main event of interest and its competing risks. Several studies used cohort life tables to derive probability estimates for death due to breast cancer as well as mortality due to other causes. Hence, they were able to estimate reductions in breast cancer mortality [5, 6]. Lambert et al.  estimated and partitioned the crude probability of all-cause mortality to the probabilities due to cancer and other causes. Crude probabilities can be used to understand the impact of disease on individual patients and help assess different treatment options. Daskivich et al.  assessed the competing risks of mortality from non-prostate cancer on patients with prostate cancer. Barnes et al.  emphasized that some risk factors associated with breast cancer have been shown to affect the risk of other health outcomes, so competing risks and benefits may influence public health policy decisions. Vilaprinyo et al.  estimated the risk of death from causes other than breast cancer; used for assessing the effect of mammography screening on breast cancer mortality.
In another study , we have investigated the association of 39 risk factors with breast cancer incidence in the presence of competing risk. We used data from the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS) in which the information on risk factors were collected at enrolment or recorded by a nurse or physician at the initial physical examination of the breasts. In the CNBSS, women were enrolled alive and had to be cancer-free. They were randomly assigned to study and control groups and were followed up for breast cancer incidence and mortality. By the end of the study period, a woman might have been diagnosed with breast cancer, died from any causes including breast cancer, or remained alive and cancer-free. A schematic illustration of the three possible terminating points is shown in Figure 1.
Schematic illustration of the three terminating points in the study.
The main focus of the current study and of  is on breast cancer incidence and its risk prediction model. Therefore, in these two studies, we terminate the follow-up of a woman as soon as she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Thus, we do not study the progression of a tumor from diagnosis to death.
Breast cancer incidence and mortality due to non-breast cancer causes are competing risks and both should be analyzed. The necessity of studying both events is given in detail in Discussion section of the paper. In this paper, we investigate the effect of 39 risk factors on mortality due to causes other than breast cancer. So, the current paper and  are complimentary. We identify the factors common to both breast cancer incidence and competing mortality. In addition, we stratify all-cause mortality (excluding breast cancer), comparing it to death caused by other types of cancer and death from non-cancer causes. We conduct separate analyses for all-cause mortality and the two cause-specific mortalities. The reason for stratification is to examine whether any of the risk factors are particularly associated with both breast cancer incidence and cancer mortality. The findings in this case are more informative and help us understand better the biological mechanism through which a risk factor influences cancer and non-cancer mortality.
The Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS) has been described previously [10–12]. Its main objective is to assess the effect of mammography in reducing breast cancer mortality. The study consists of two randomized controlled trials of 89,835 women; 50,430 aged 40–49 and 39,405 aged 50–59. The women were recruited at 15 Canadian centres between 1980 and 1985. All participants signed an informed consent form developed with approval from the University of Toronto Human Experimentation Committee when they enrolled in the CNBSS which included explicit agreement for linkage to vital statistics records and analysis of the data in the future. Women in the age group 40–49 were randomly selected to receive either an annual mammogram and physical examination (intervention group) or only an initial physical examination with no mammography (control group). Women aged 50–59 were randomly selected to receive either an annual mammogram and physical examination (intervention group) or an annual physical examination only (control group). A flow diagram of the CNBSS is presented in Figure 2.
A flow diagram of the CNBSS.
Woman in the CNBSS were not pregnant at the time of enrolment, had no history of breast cancer and no mammogram in the past 12 months. At enrolment, they completed enrolment and epidemiology questionnaires which included information on demographics, life style, family history of breast cancer, and personal history of breast disease. Moreover, at enrolment a nurse or physician performed a physical examination of the breasts and recorded information on several risk factors.
The CNBSS contains information on breast cancer diagnoses reported for women in the intervention group; these women received up to five mammograms. In addition, breast cancer diagnoses were identified by record linkage with the National Cancer Registry and deaths through linkage with the Canadian Mortality Database at Statistics Canada for both the control and the intervention groups after the annual screenings had ended.
For this analysis we consider 1980–1989 as the study period and exclude breast cancers which were diagnosed less than six months after enrolment to eliminate long-term prevalent breast cancers.
A total of 89,434 women were considered in our study: of these, 944 were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, 922 died from causes other than breast cancer (Table 1 describes the causes of death for these 922 women), and 87,568 were neither diagnosed with breast cancer nor had died from other causes by the end of 1989. Of the 922 who died from causes other than breast cancer, 536 died from cancers other than breast cancer, and 386 deaths were due to non-cancer causes.
This study considers 39 risk factors (see Tables 2, 3 4, 5) collected at enrolment or recorded by a nurse or physician at the initial physical examination of the breasts. We classify these factors into four groups: socio-demographic factors, reproductive factors, lifestyle and health behaviours, and history of breast disease. For a premenopausal woman, "menstruation length" is the difference between her "age at entry" and "age at menarche", and for a postmenopausal woman, it is the difference between her "age at the last menstrual period" and "age at menarche". Less than 5 % of the values of all data were missing and have been imputed. A normal linear regression model is used to impute missing values in the continuous variables. Missing values in the categorical variables are imputed using a logistic or generalized logistic model. Each woman is given a score for families/relatives with breast cancer. Each relative, depending on her degree (first, second, third, fourth, fifth degree and above) makes a contribution of 2 ( 6 - degree number ) to the score value. For example, a woman with one first degree and one second degree relative with breast cancer is given a score of 2 ( 6 - 1 ) + 2 ( 6 - 2 ) = 48 . A woman with no relatives with breast cancer receives a score of 1 . The calculation method for score value is adapted from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations on genetic risk assessment and BRCA mutation testing for breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility .
In this study, we use multivariate cause-specific Cox regression analysis to investigate the associations of the 39 risk factors with all-cause mortality, cancer-specific mortality, and non-cancer mortality. Incidence of breast cancer is considered a competing event in the analysis of all-cause mortality. In our analysis of the cause-specific mortality from cancer and non-cancer causes, mutually exclusive events are the competing events. For example, breast cancer incidence and non-cancer mortality are considered events competing with cancer-specific mortality.
It should be noted that hazard of subdistribution proposed by Fine and Gray  is another method for regression modeling of an event in the presence of competing risks. The hazard of subdistribution can be used for directly modeling the effect of covariates on the cumulative risk of the event of interest. However, a cause-specific model must be used when the goal is to investigate the biological effect of risk factors on the event of interest . We also fitted the Fine-Gray model to our data and obtained very similar results to those obtained from the cause-specific hazard model. Results from the hazard of subdistribution model are not shown in this paper due to space limitations. We use the procedure PHREG in SAS v. 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC) to build regression models. To construct the models we first conduct univariate analysis of each individual variable, we then combine the significant factors in a multivariate model to adjust the risk for all significant factors. Moreover, we perform a backward model selection to recheck the final model. We considered a variable (risk factor) statistically significant if its probability (P) value was less than 0.05.
We checked the interaction of the variables with each other and with time to event (time of death or censoring time) to find those variables with a time-varying effect on the risk of mortality. No interaction terms were found to be statistically significant.
In Figure 3, we used a non-parametric method formulated by Kalbfleisch and Prentice  to estimate cause-specific hazard and obtained a discrete estimate of the cumulative incidence function (cumulative risk). For this purpose, we used function cuminc in package cmprsk in R (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/cmprsk/cmprsk.pdf).
Ten-year cumulative risks by age groups. A, invasive breast cancer and the all-cause mortality. B, invasive breast cancer, the all-cause mortality, cancer-specific and non-cancer mortalities.
From 89,434 participants in the study, 1.06% (N = 944) were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, 1.03% (N = 922) died from causes other than breast cancer, and 97.9 % (N = 87,568) were alive and not diagnosed with breast cancer by the end of 1989. 58.1% (N = 536) of the deaths were due to other types of cancer, and 41.9% (N = 386) due to causes other than cancer. The mean times from enrolment to cancer diagnosis and to death are 3.52 (SD 2.0) and 4.26 (SD 2.17) years respectively. The median from enrolment to cancer diagnosis and to death are respectively 3.18 and 4.23 years.
The mean and median follow-up time of women in the censored group (alive and cancer-free by the end of the study) are 6.72 (SD 1.32) and 6.39 years, respectively. Figure 3.A shows the observed ten-year cumulative risk of invasive breast cancer and all-cause mortality (excluding breast cancer death) stratified by two age-groups 40–49 and 50–59. The risk of breast cancer incidence is always higher than the risk of all-cause mortality for younger women (40–49) within the follow-up period. However, for older women (50–59), although breast cancer incidence is lower than the risk of death in about the first six years of follow-up; the curves for breast cancer incidence and all-cause mortality cross at this point and the probability of death is higher than breast cancer incidence subsequently.
Figure 3.B shows the ten-year cumulative risk of breast cancer incidence, cancer-specific mortality, and non-cancer mortality stratified by the two age-groups. When we compare the breast cancer and mortality curves in both age groups, we see that the women in our study always have a higher probability of breast cancer incidence than cancer-specific and non-cancer mortality. Moreover, although for women aged 40–49 the risk of death from cancer and non-cancer causes is similar in the first two and half years of follow-up, death from cancer is more likely to occur than death from non-cancer causes afterwards. For women in the age-group 50–59, death from cancer is more likely to occur than non-cancer mortality in the entire follow-up period. The probability estimates and their standard errors for breast cancer incidence, cancer mortality, and non-cancer mortality at eight years after follow-up are 0.013 (0.00047), 0.007 (0.00037), and 0.006 (0.00033) respectively, for the overall population.
Table 6 presents the factors found to be statistically significant for all-cause mortality. The reference levels of the categorical variables are also shown in the table. As an example, "1-2 children" is the reference level for "number of live births". For continuous variables, such as age or menstruation length, the hazard ratio is the change in the hazard for a one-unit increase in the value of the variable, holding all other variables constant. The results show that older women have higher risk of all-cause mortality (HR 1.12, 95% CI 1.10-1.13). For example, compared to a 40-year old woman with the same characteristics, a woman aged 50 at enrolment is almost three times ( 1.118 10 ≈ 3.00 ) more likely to die due to any causes at any given point in time. Taking estrogen or progesterone supplements for a longer time and having more years of menstruation are slightly protective factors against all-cause mortality. There is no evidence that a nulliparous woman is more likely to die due to any causes than a woman with one or two live births; however, having more than two live births decreases the probability of all-cause mortality (HR 0.84 and 0.76 for three-four and more than four live births, respectively). Breast self examination (BSE) is another protective factor for all cause mortality (HR 0.83, 95% CI 0.73-0.94). Although smoking less than 11 cigarettes per day does not statistically significantly increase all-cause mortality, smoking 11 or more cigarettes per day significantly increases the probability of death due to any causes. For example, a woman who smokes more than 50 cigarettes per day is four times more at risk of death than a non-smoker.
Women who have ever noted lumps in their breasts or have had discharge from their breasts have respectively 1.3 and 1.5 times higher risk of death than those who have not. Having the first child at age 14 to 19 is associated with a 1.4-fold higher risk of death (HR 1.41, 95% CI 1.14-1.74) than having the first child at age 20 to 25.
The predictors for mortality due to cancer (excluding breast cancer) are presented in Table 7. "Age at entry", "length of estrogen/progesterone used", "menstruation length", "breast self examination", and "having the first child birth at age 14-19" are factors having a similar or the same effect on the risk of all-cause mortality and mortality due to cancer. Women who have a bi-lateral oophorectomy are 1.3 times more at risk of death due to cancer than those who do not. As for all-cause mortality, there is no evidence that a nulliparous woman is more likely to die due to cancer than a woman with one or two live births, but having more than two live births decreases the probability of cancer death (HR 0.74 and 0.46, respectively for 3–4 and > = 5 live births). There is evidence that a woman with more than 10 pregnancies has a 3.3-fold greater risk of cancer death. Women who smoke more than 10 cigarettes per day have a higher risk of cancer mortality (HR 1.72, 2.90, and 2.78, respectively, for smoking 11–25, 26–50, and > 50 cigarettes per day).
Table 8 presents the factors found to be statistically significant for non-cancer mortality. The table shows that "age at entry" and "length of estrogen/progesterone used" have similar effects on both non-cancer mortality and all-cause mortality. In addition, women whose ethnic origin was reported as not being Canadian have a 5-fold (HR 0.22, 95% CI 0.10-0.46) lower risk of non-cancer mortality than women whose ethnic origin was reported as Canadian. Women who have had a hysterectomy are 1.3 times more likely to die from non-cancer causes than those who have not. Women who reported smoking more than 10 cigarettes per day were found to have a higher risk of non-cancer mortality (HR 1.82, 2.62, and 5.86, respectively, for smoking 11–25, 26–50, and > 50 cigarettes per day). Finally, women who have ever noted lumps in their breasts or have had discharge from their breasts have respectively 1.6 and 2.0 times more risk of non-cancer death than those who have not.
Table 9 compares the significant factors in all three mortality models and the model for breast cancer incidence  (factors for breast cancer incidence are reported in detail in ). "Age at entry", "length of estrogen/progesterone used (months)", and "cigarettes smoked per day" are common to the three morality models. If we compare the significant risk factors for mortality with those associated with breast cancer incidence, we find "age at entry" appears in all four models. "Menstruation length" and "number of live births" are statistically significant risk factors for breast cancer incidence, all-cause mortality, and cancer-specific mortality. "Ever noted lumps in breasts" is associated with breast cancer incidence, all-cause mortality, and non-cancer mortality.
In this study, we identify the predictors for all-cause mortality, cancer-specific mortality (excluding mortality from breast cancer), and non-cancer mortality. As previously reported, mortality due to causes other than breast cancer is a competing risk for breast cancer incidence in the data from the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS). It should be noted that we investigated the associations for allocation group (no-mammography vs. mammography) to both breast cancer incidence and its competing mortality. We conducted univariate and multivariate analyses, and in none of the models, did this categorical variable reach statistical significance when combined with other risk factors. This does not mean there is no some real difference in breast cancer incidence in these two groups, but the data do not show it statistically. Otherwise, the analysis would have been stratified by allocation group and separate results obtained for each group. Therefore, to make use of a larger sample size for statistical analysis we combined all the data without stratification by allocation group.
We found that using estrogen or progesterone supplements for a longer time and longer menstruation are both protective factors against all-cause mortality. These results are consistent with other studies' findings that mortality among women who use hormones is lower than among nonusers [17, 18], and the later the onset of menopause, the longer a woman is likely to live [19, 20]. A negative association of these two factors with mortality could primarily be explained by reducing the occurrence of cardiovascular disease [18, 19].
The all-cause mortality analysis revealed a decrease in mortality with number of live births. In the literature, there is no consistent pattern of mortality with the number of births . Some studies show a clear decrease in mortality for women with 2–3 children compared to nulliparous women, and a non-statistically significant increase in the risk for women with more than three children . The result of some other studies is consistent with our result and shows an overall negative association between higher parity and mortality .
Similar to our result which shows an increase in the risk of mortality when a woman has her first child at a younger age (14–19), Grundy and Kravdal  also found higher mortality for parents who had their first child at a younger age which tended to decrease with older age at first birth.
Similar to the results from all-cause mortality, increase in the number of live-births exhibits a decreasing trend in the risk of cancer-specific mortality, although the nulliparous level does not reach statistical significance. As the number of pregnancies increases the risk of cancer-specific mortality increases as well, although only more than ten times of pregnancy reaches statistical significance. Moreover, increasing age at first child birth shows a clear decreasing trend for risk of cancer-specific mortality; however, only decrease in the risk of women who had their first child-birth at age 20–25 compared to those who had it at age 14–19 is statistically significant.
We also found that women who were practicing BSE on enrolment also had lower all-cause mortality. Arguably, women who practice BSE are more likely to have better personal health practices such as exercise, nutrition, etc.
Event though we observe no trend in the first three levels of the number of cigarettes smoked per day (i.e. up to 11–25 cigarettes per day), the next three levels clearly show an increasing trend in the risk in all three mortality models.
Ever noting lumps in the breasts or having discharge from the breasts are both associated with non-cancer mortality. Although we do not have sufficient data to investigate biological association of these two factors with each cause of mortality, one reason for increased risk of non-cancer mortality could be anxiety caused by discovery of a breast abnormality . Women who experience the discovery will be coping with fears about the future and dealing with emotional ups and downs .
By using the CNBSS, our study takes advantage of a large cohort linked to the Canadian Cancer Registry and the Mortality Database at Statistics Canada and relatively complete data collected at the time of enrolment and the initial physical examination of the breasts. This makes our investigation of the association of 39 different risk factors with breast cancer incidence  and its competing mortality reliable.
Estimating the absolute risk of an event as accurately as possible is fundamental in clinical decision-making [25–28]. In the analysis of data in a competing risks setting, both results for the event of interest and its competing risks should be presented [29, 30], and risk factors for each competing risk identified . The necessity for analysis of both events of interest and their competing mortality can be explained through the definition of absolute cause-specific risk (given in Appendix).
Moreover, describing the natural history of cancer and possible pathways that an individual may go through is an essential component of any simulation model which is developed to assess the effectiveness of different intervention policies. In a microsimulation model, the life histories of many individuals are generated, and each history substantially depends on the value of different risk factors for a given individual. For example, a woman who has a relative with breast cancer is at a higher risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer at a younger age. Other competing events, such as death due to different causes can also be influenced by the risk factors. For example, a woman aged 70 or above may die due to heart attack before she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Therefore, the effect of risk factors on all competing events should be studied and described to model realistic life paths of individuals. The simulation models could be either developed for evaluating costs and benefits of cancer interventions at the population level, or for an individual according to her risk factors, as the practice of personalized medicine .
A cost-effective breast cancer screening policy relies on knowing the absolute risk of breast cancer, and as discussed, to obtain the absolute risk, competing risks should also be studied and taken into account. The absolute risk can then be used to decide whether a woman is categorized as high risk and whether a specific intervention with higher frequency should be recommended.
Gail et al.  developed an online risk assessment tool to estimate a woman's absolute risk of developing invasive breast cancer . In this tool, the absolute risk is estimated based on a woman's risk factors including age, family history of breast cancer, number of biopsies, etc. A woman is identified at high risk if her lifetime risk of invasive breast cancer exceeds 20% . Gail's model  also investigates competing risks, namely the age-specific risk of mortality from causes other than breast cancer by using national mortality rates.
In this study, we show that some risk factors are statistically significant for both the main event of interest (incidence of invasive breast cancer) and a competing event (mortality due to non-breast cancer causes). In addition, we identify other risk factors associated with all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality. All these factors must be taken into account in estimating the probability of a competing event. With more accurate estimation of the probability of a competing event, the estimations of absolute risk of the main event of interest can be estimated more precisely. This in turn leads to more robust cost-effective analysis of preventive, diagnosis, and treatment policies which are decided based on the results of the absolute risk prediction model.
We used a cause-specific model to conduct regression analysis on our competing risks data. In addition, we fitted the Fine-Gray model and the results were very close to the results of the cause-specific hazard model. The cause-specific model is more clinically and biologically understandable since it directly describes the effect of a covariate on a specific cause and its hazard, regardless the effect of other covariates [15, 30]. In our data, the risk of both breast cancer incidence  and its competing mortality are minor, for which the Cox cause-specific hazard is more reliable to be used . Moreover, the generality of hazard of subdistribution is restricted to populations with similar characteristics and competing risk rate , the latter being relaxed in the cause-specific hazard model. On the other hand, the subdistribution hazard can be used to calculate the cumulative incidence function of the event of interest and to directly interpret the effect of covariates on this function .
I k ( t | Z ) = P ( T ≤ t , C = k ) = ∫ o t λ k ( s | Z ) S ( s | Z ) d s .
In equation (2), S ( t | Z ) = P ( T ≥ t | Z ) = e − Λ ( t | Z ) is the overall survival function and Λ ( t | Z ) = ∫ 0 t λ ( s | Z ) d s is the cumulative hazard. Therefore, the cumulative hazard is a function of all cause-specific hazards k = 1 , … , K . Equation (2) clearly shows that to obtain the cumulative risk of an event of interest (in our case, breast cancer incidence), the cause-specific hazard for all competing causes (competing mortality) should be also estimated.
This research was supported by the Collaborative Health Research Program (CHRP) funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada and the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) of Canada. We thank Dr. Elizabeth Thompson for proofreading the manuscript. We are thankful to the editor and two referees whose constructive comments have helped us to improve the presentation of the paper.
ST prepared the CNBSS data for analysis, conducted the statistical analysis, and drafted the initial manuscript. JF helped in conducting the statistical analysis and writing the literature review of the manuscript. DB and NM contributed in conducting statistical methods, constructing the models, and interpreting the results. ABM designed, coordinated and directed the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (NBSS), and helped in understanding the data and interpreting the statistical results. BJH assisted in understanding the data and interpreting the statistical results. AJ and BJH are the co-PIs of the project and performed critical revisions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.


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Non Aviation Discussion Forum
AEF Forum
Libs Wasting our Money Big Time!
By Malcolm, May 8, 2017 in Non Aviation Discussion Forum
Malcolm 1,010
Like most UN councils this one has very little benefit to Canada or indeed the world. The world in general pays little or no attention to their rulings. The only nations with any "real" say on the councils are the "P5", the rest are only along for the ride. Let us stop wasting our money in attempt to become a member.
Canada's bid for UN Security Council seat could mean costly campaign
$500,000 has already been shelled out, but how much will be spent behind the scenes?
By Melissa Kent, CBC NewsPosted: May 08, 2017 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: May 08, 2017 5:00 AM ET
Canada has begun its campaign for a seat at the UN Security Council table. It could cost millions. (Chip East/Reuters)
Canada sets stage for bid to take 2021 UN Security Council seat
Pitch for UN security seat will cost 'financial and political capital'
What should Canada's role be in the UN?
A breakdown of the UN's regional groups
(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)
Canada is on track to spend millions over the next three years in its bid to win a rotating two-year seat on the United Nations' Security Council — even as some inside and outside the UN say the election process needs an overhaul.
According to the government's own estimates, Canada has already spent almost $500,000 on its campaign, which pits Ottawa against Ireland and Norway for the two available spots, opening in 2021.
That includes everything from postage stamps to travel to hospitality. It does not include the salaries of the 10 government employees appointed to work full-time on Canada's bid.
'I think the way they have to campaign to get the votes has become unacceptable' - William Pace, World Federalist Movement
"Whatever the number is that they're admitting to, you can be certain it is [many] times more," says William Pace, the executive director of the World Federalist Movement, which advocates for more transparent elections at the UN.
The five permanent veto-wielding members on the Security Council are the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia and China, also known as the P5. The remaining 10 seats are distributed to countries on a regional basis.
"In terms of prestige … it's a tremendously important achievement for a government," Pace says of membership on the Security Council. ''But I think the way they have to campaign to get the votes has become unacceptable."
Pace estimates almost one-third of the 193 UN member states are "undemocratic", which forces some Security Council hopefuls "to buy votes from countries that they ought to be insisting stop causing wars and denying human rights and committing religious and racial discrimination."
He does not suggest that Canada is following that path.
Horse-trading for a seat at the table
Pace says giving aid money to developing countries in return for votes is a common aspect of "horse-trading" for a seat at the UN's top table.
Then there are the free trips for UN ambassadors, which have become de rigueur for any country hoping to be elected to the council.
New Zealand's UN Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen raises his hand during a vote in December 2016. He said New Zealand flew 60 UN Ambassadors to Wellington during its campaign for a seat. (The Associated Press)
New Zealand's envoy to the UN, Gerard van Bohemen, says the trips are a costly and unfortunate aspect of the election process, but "everybody does it now, including developing countries."
Van Bohemen hosted about 60 ambassadors over four, week-long trips to New Zealand during his country's campaign for a Security Council seat starting in 2015.
He says the trips were not meant to buy votes, but he thinks they garnered some "affection and loyalty," as well as built a greater understanding of his country and its challenges, such as climate change.
On the day of the vote, delegates will find small gifts piled on their desks in the General Assembly, left by those running for a seat on the council.
In addition to the gifts and financial incentives, Pace says "vote-swapping" among member states for posts on various bodies and organizations is common. "You vote for us on this and then we'll vote for you on that."
Rising cost of competition
Canada is running against Ireland and Norway for two available seats in the Western European and Others Group (WEOG). UN member-states are divided into five geographic groups to ensure regional representation. Two seats open in the WEOG group — which includes New Zealand, Israel and Turkey — every two years.
Some regional groups prefer an internal rotation or pre-selection process, eliminating competitive elections on the day of the vote.
In less than one month's time, five new countries will be elected to the council for a two-year term, beginning on Jan. 1, 2018. Peru, Poland, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea and Kuwait are all currently running unopposed in their respective regional groups.
"The Western group … thought it was a good example that they would have contested elections," says Pace. "But I believe the world would benefit from the literally hundreds of millions which would be saved from these elections every few years if they would find a different [voting] mechanism."
Canada back in the race
Canada announced its intent to run again in 2016.
Despite winning a seat on the UN Security Council every decade since its inception, in 2010, the Conservative government withdrew its candidacy when it became clear it would not receive the votes required to secure a seat.
The projected operational costs for Canada's Security Council bid for fiscal year 2016-2017 were provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs and made public following a request by Conservative MP Guy Lauzon. Of the 10 employees assigned to work full-time on Canada's campaign, almost all were reassigned from within, according to a government spokesperson. Two additional staff based at the Canadian Mission in New York City were hired locally.
Canada's pitch for UN security seat will cost 'financial and political capital'
Trudeau unveils Canada's plan to seek 2021 UN Security Council seat
According to calculations by CBC News, the total remuneration for the 10 employees assigned to work on Canada's bid is between $868,000 and $1.05 million per year.
"In terms of democracy, of course competition is good," says ambassador Carl Skau, Security Council co-ordinator for Sweden at the UN. It allows the membership to choose the country they feel is the best fit for the job, but he concedes the system has flaws.
"Looking at some campaigns, I think that they have probably crossed the line in terms of what are reasonable costs," says Skau, without naming names.Carl Skau, Security Council co-ordinator for Sweden at the UN, says competition is part of a democracy but admits some campaigns 'have probably crossed the line' in terms of cost. (Richard Drew/Associated Press)
Sweden spent $4 million on salaries, envoys and receptions in the last two years of its campaign, according to the government's cost breakdown.
Media reports suggest Turkey spent $85 million on its campaign when it won a seat on the council in 2008. Australia reportedly spent just under $25 million when it won a rotating seat in 2012.
"We have taken initiatives in the past to try to find some kind of rotation scheme for the WEOG group," Skau says. "To find that formula has proven to be very, very difficult."
He adds that contested slates can also make it "awkward" for countries to choose "between friends."
Worth the cost?
Canadians will probably never know exactly how much is spent ''because there are so many intangibles," Pace says.
Canada's new ambassadors to U.S., UN
Despite the cost, New Zealand's van Bohemen maintains a seat at the council is worth fighting for — and that it can be won without compromising principles.
"We don't think it's appropriate to leave it entirely to the big guys to call the shots," he says. "Countries like Canada and New Zealand have to be prepared to step up."
Voting takes place by secret ballot, so it's never clear until the day of the election whether the money and the effort have paid off — something that Australia's ambassador famously and undiplomatically referred to as the "rotten lying bastards" factor after Canberra lost its bid for a seat on the council in 1996.
With files from Radio-Canada's Louis Blouin

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Outstanding fitClosed air dynamic type (closed type) headphones require adhesion and sound insulation. In order to fulfill this requirement, we generally tend to strengthen the side pressure and holding force to the head, but we think that it is one of the reasons that it makes it easier to feel tired when used for a long time I will. Therefore, we adopted ergonomic ergonomic design ear pad (molded with three-dimensionally-cut high-elastic pad and synthetic leather by hand sewing) and created a gentle fit that wraps around for long-time use .
High durability / robustnessCase shell of nylon material with little "cracking" and "deterioration", polyurethane pads which are difficult to deteriorate oily property, etc. are all examined for high durability and robustness of every single material. This is one of the know-how cultivated with headphones for business. Our company carefully assembles, inspects, and packages in our own factory in Japan carefully.
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For over 40 years, we have been developing and producing headphones/headsets for monitoring and profesional use.
which are required at professional site, SOUND WARRIOR brand's first consumer monitoring headphones is "SW-HP 10".
Based on this model which has been popular as a real moniker headphone, thank you, we have newly created headphones specialized in music appreciation.
"SW-HP 20" selects a new driver unit with conscious consideration for the reproduction of high-res sound sources and the like that require a broader range of expression, while retaining the features of SW-HP 10 such as high durability, robustness and comfortable wearing comfort and, it is a listening youth · headphone which made cable detachable so that you can change it according to your preference.
Please enjoy music appreciation to your heart's content with SW – HP 20 handmade carefully in Japan.
Because it is an era where high-quality sound sources such as high-resolution sound sources can be easily obtained, the role of headphones that deliver them directly to your ears is becoming important. In this unit, we also selected the driver unit, aware of the reproduction of the high resolution sound source that is required to express over a wider band. Enjoy music appreciation More tuned with this machine, please fully enjoy the spread of space and breathing of singers.
In this machine, we adopted a Φ 2.5 mm monaural mini jack (L / R) that allows cable detachment. Φ3.5 stereo mini plug connection cord. Attached is done. In addition, as a cable for this machine, a balanced type (XLR connection code) is also available as an option, so you can purchase it separately. By combining with the "SW Desktop-Audio Series" headphone amplifier "SWD-HA 10", you can enjoy the difference depending on the characteristics of each balance type (XLR) / unbalanced type.
* We changed accessories from July 2017. In addition, the single item sales of the balance type XLR connection cord and the Φ 3.5 mm stereo mini plug connection cord will be started sequentially from the beginning of August 2017.
Closed air dynamic type (closed type) headphones require adhesion and sound insulation. In order to fulfill this requirement, we generally tend to strengthen the side pressure and holding force to the head, but we think that it is one of the reasons that it makes it easier to feel tired when used for a long time I will. Therefore, we adopted ergonomic ergonomic design ear pad (molded with three-dimensionally-cut high-elastic pad and synthetic leather by hand sewing) and created a gentle fit that wraps around for long-time use .
Case shell of nylon material with little "cracking" and "deterioration", polyurethane pads which are difficult to deteriorate oily property, etc. are all examined for high durability and robustness of every single material. This is one of the know-how cultivated with headphones for business. Our company carefully assembles, inspects, and packages in our own factory in Japan carefully.


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Dad ToDo Today – Creating an 'E-free' Zone in Your Home.
Over the past few days, following the recent win by the Indianapolis Colts over the Green Bay Packers, I have heard a number of people making comments about the #chuckstrong movement, and wondering why there seems to be so much attention given to the coach of an NFL football team who has been diagnosed with leukemia and has begun his battle against the disease. Some have made reference to the fact that all the attention trivializes other people without the high profile who have fought leukemia or other forms of cancer.
I could not disagree more, respectfully.
My opinion, for what its worth, is that anything that brings any awareness to this disease is a good thing. The more people can rally around the cause of cancer (leukemia), whether it be through money raised for research or prayers and support for people battling the hateful disease, the better.
Chuck Pagano is no different than any other person who is fighting a battle against cancer (or has fought). He is no different than my mother-in-law who lost her battle with leukemia ten years ago. He is no different than my mother who has battled cancer and is a survivor. What is different is that he has chosen to fight his battle in public and because he has a platform through his job as a head coach of a National Football League team, he can do it publicly. He could have easily resigned his position "due to health reasons" and gone away privately to begin his treatment, but that was not what he chose to do. He not only shared what he was going through (which is no one's business but his own), but he also said that he was going to beat it, and that he would be back doing the thing that he loves the most. And God willing, and with the help of great doctors, and the support of his family, friends, football team, and community he may just do that.
#chuckstrong is a battle cry to never give up. It is a battle cry that his team took on this past Sunday. Against all odds, and after falling behind 21-3 to the Packers, the Indianapolis Colts who won only one game last year, did not give up – they fought back, all the way back and won the game in the last seconds. Football is just a game, and in the scheme of things doesn't matter a bit, but the narrative of the comeback cannot be lost on anyone and may just become a metaphor for their coach's comeback. The box score isn't finished on Coach Pagano's struggle with leukemia, and he may be behind on the scoreboard, but there's still plenty of time on the clock for a comeback.
Their message is one of encouragement, of strength, of togetherness that has touched countless people who have been diagnosed with cancer and battle it every day. Their message and their profile does not diminish any one else's battle but rather enhances it, and gives it a public face and a public voice.
For more information on the the LiveStrong Foundation founded by cancer survivor Lance Armstrong visit http://livestrong.org.
The Blame Game – who are you going to blame now?
I have heard people call this week's game between the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints, "The Blame Game." I've never heard a more perfect name for what this week's happenings in the NFL say about our society.
The New Orleans Saints and many of their fans are blaming everyone else but themselves for their 0-3 start this season. The truth is, they were the ones who took the field and played each of the games. Perhaps the loss of their head coach with his suspension for his involvement (or lack of involvement) in the bounty scandal contributed to the loss, but several of the players who were suspended don't even play for the Saints this year. Drew Brees is a multiple time Pro Bowl quarterback who has won the Superbowl – there are tons of veteran players on the team who have been in the league long enough that this issue should not have affected them to the degree that it appears to have. Own your play on the field, dedicate the time to practice and mental toughness and get it done – don't use a ready made excuse for why you can't win a game against teams you have no business losing to.
The Green Bay Packers were robbed of a victory at the hands of sub-standard referees who made a bad call. Cry me a river. I guess the referees were responsible for the Seahawks sacking Aaron Rodgers 8 times during the game. And it was the referee's fault that Aaron Rodgers couldn't get the ball in the end zone while his rookie counterpart got in the end zone twice. Was the call at the end of the game the wrong call, probably, but that is not the reason the Packers lost the game. Their inability to perform offensively against the Seahawks defense was the reason they lost the game. I will credit Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy for how they handled themselves publicly after the game, rather than pulling a Belichek or Kyle Shanahan and going after the referees instead of getting after their teams for their role in their team's losses. But the narrative this week has been all about how the referees cost the Packers a win that may come back to cost them a playoff spot later in the year. Again, blaming everyone else but themselves.
But my question is, now that the "real" referees are back, who are you gonna blame this week, when your team loses?
It is very sad to me that this whole experience with the replacement referees in the NFL has shown a big spot light on the growing blemish on our society of our propensity to play the blame game in all aspects of our life. We have allowed ourselves to become victims in life, always looking to blame someone else for our lot in life. People don't take responsibility for themselves anymore.
You can see it all over the political arena during this election season. Both candidates spend more time pointing fingers at the other and blaming them for what is wrong with our country instead of owning the problems and coming up with real solutions. President Obama has been made a cartoon of himself continuing to talk about the mess that he inherited from the former President Bush (W). That four year blame game has expired.
What example do we give our children when we cannot own up to our own situations and seek to blame others for what is going on in our lives. The truth of the matter is that sometimes people have bad things happen to them. A call may not go their way, but it is up to them to decide whether to remain the victim and accept the outcome, or to step beyond it and rise above it. But more times than not, we are responsible for our own outcomes and we must own our choices, and accept the consequences.
That is the lesson we should pass on to our children and that is the example we should be to others who are watching us – and yes the NFL is just a game, but the way that game has taken over our public consciousness has given it more importance than it probably deserves, and so I must take my own advice and not blame the NFL for their bad example, but instead use their example of what not to do.


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How Did You Do That?
'How Did You Do That?': A Podcast About Wisconsin Entrepreneurs
Ways To Subscribe
Today Lake Effect debuts a new monthly series: How Did You Do That?
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and executive director of the Milwaukee Institute Kathleen Gallagher and Tim Keane, director of Golden Angels Investors and an entrepreneur who led his own startup to a profitable acquisition, talk with successful entrepreneurs about how – and why – they succeeded.
For the first episode, co-host Kathleen Gallagher turns the table on Tim Keane to learn more about his story:
When Retail Target Marketing Systems Inc. failed to mail catalogs to some of Boston Store's key customers a week before a big sale, Tim Keane mortgaged his house and chartered a vintage DC3 airplane to get them there. The year was 1990, but the attitude was timeless.
As a startup founder, Keane was willing to go the extra mile to keep his customer happy – and to keep his company afloat. He discusses how he got his company to the point where it sold for more than $20 million in 2000:
Keane's vision all along: Bring more customers to retailers by using better data analysis and direct-to-consumer strategies.
Here's some advice he has for fellow entrepreneurs:
Work hard and focus on making your customers successful
Every person in your venture is a resource and a responsibility - making them successful is key to the success of your customers
Sales means fulfilling customer needs - and asking for the opportunity
How Did You Do That? is produced by WUWM, in association with the Milwaukee Institute and Golden Angels Investors.
How Did You Do That?How Did You Do That?Lake Effect


text:
Civic honesty around the globe
I am a bit late to this party, having been traveling, but I will serve this one up anyway:
Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development, but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities spanning 40 countries around the globe. We turned in over 17,000 lost wallets with varying amounts of money at public and private institutions, and measured whether recipients contacted the owner to return the wallets. In virtually all countries citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. Both non-experts and professional economists were unable to predict this result. Additional data suggest our main findings can be explained by a combination of altruistic concerns and an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, which increase with the material benefits of dishonesty.
That is the abstract of a new paper by Alain Cohn, Michel André Maréchal, David Tannenbaum, and Christian Lukas Zünd. It is easy to say this ex post, but I find this intuitive. Here is the famed country-by-country picture which is circulating:
Here is a picture of the actual vs. the predicted reporting rate. Experts predicted more overall cooperation than turned out to be the case, most of all for the wallets with no money in them, but basically got it right for wallets with lots of money. Non-experts got it backwards altogether.
For the pointer to this one I thank many different MR readers.
Interesting graph, but I think it should have been sorted on "money" rather than "no money."
Yay Czech Republic, just a few years out of communism, champions of personal property.
Poor America, below Russia and barely beating Brazil.
The Brain of Trump
In other words , the countries with the most cucks per capita. Only cucks like the Swiss or Swedes would waste their time virtue signaling. I hate Marxism but this is why China is the world's rising power. They eat cucks for breakfast.
Glad to see the comments are still a garbage fire, as always.
I wonder if the poor rating of the U.S. is because of the drug problem/users?
I wonder if millions of Central American and Asian immigrants are dragging the US average down. The bottom end of the US used to be bounded by Italian immigrants.
Canada ranks higher and there are proportionally more immigrants.
From Central America?
know why? If you lose your wallet while curling in the rec center in Flin Flon someone's bound to find it because no one goes outdoors between August and May.
Ragnar Danneskjold
China won't be happy to receive yet another humiliation regarding its "internal matters" and the "dignity" of the nation.
I do wonder if the results would have been different had the study used lost phones, which now seems more crucial than a wallet for most.
Ronerd
In China, those who lose their valuables are considered careless, thoughtless idiots. It's an old fashioned way of thinking but the generation that went through the Cultural Revolution is still in charge. The one that surprises me the most is the UAE, a country that is rich with low levels of crime, so I have to believe it may be related to their immigrant workers who are more profited minded and with no path to citizenship only see their stay as temporary.
The only identifying information in the "wallets" was an e-mail address (no phone number). China basically doesn't use e-mail. The only items of any value in the "wallets" were a key and (optionally) the equivalent of lunch money in cash. China basically doesn't use cash anymore, either.
I lost my phone right in front of the airport security desk in China. Without missing a beat the security woman said "iPhone" and I said no, it was an LG. I signed for it and it was mine.
I wouldn't try this as a way to finagle a phone. The airport security people seem young but deadly serious.
I can attest to Mexico. They charged all my cards as well as keeping the money.
Their moral bankruptcy caused mine monetarily.
Jesus Mows My Lawn
Mexico is the only country to have the "orange then red" bar reversed! That means their rich are bigger thieves than their less monied citizens.
It's all good.
Within five years, the rest of them will be here enjoying free food, free health care, free housing, and whatever of your money they can steal.
If you're lucky you won't be righteously sliced and diced by an assault machete.
Net migration from México is negative. And has been for years.
Fifteen years ago a flip phone popped off of my belt at a supermarket. I knew it happened but delayed picking it up as I reached deep into a shelf. Then I forgot. It was late at night and some Latino guys were riding around on those floor buffers. I forgot about the phone until the next morning. I called my phone and someone picked up, heard MY voice, and then hung up. I called the phone company and found out someone placed calls all night to several different numbers in Mexico. I cancelled the phone.
They are honest people - they only come here to work.
I had almost forgotten about those old pre-smart phone belt holster things.
'For the pointer to this one I thank many different MR readers.'
TiananmenSquare, Louis XVI, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abbie Hoffman, and Bashar al-Assad among them, one presumes.
Slappy McFee
See now the jealous Ex isnt a very good character. Be better.
"Each wallet also contained three identical business cards, a grocery list, and a key."
I wish they would have included identification such as driving license which is more valuable to the owner but has no value to the finder. Most people have backup keys so a key, business card, grocery list (?) and wallet don't seem like they would be valuable enough to the owner to warrant the finders effort to return them. This would help control for whether or not not returning the wallet was an effort vs altruistic reward thing or an honesty thing.
Getting 17,000 fake driver's licenses in 40 countries might have been a bit tricky
Happens every year at big state schools!
I see that they anticipated this concern and compared key with no key wallets. They found a key increased returns of cashless wallets by 9%.
I agree. The "wallet" did contain anything too valuable to be worth the effort in returning it. Many people would not worry that the person is suffering enough for the loss to make the effort to return the wallet. I would say that this study reflects being lazy more than being dishonest.
But the "finder" was actually a research assistant from the study itself. They turned in the "found" wallet to "(i) banks, (ii) theaters, museums, or other cultural establishments, (iii) post offices, (iv) hotels, and (v) police stations, courts of law, or other public offices".
So this study wasn't even measuring the honesty of ordinary citizens. It was measuring the willingness of staff members of various institutions to trouble themselves to return mostly useless items... the only item that mattered was the key.
The only identifying information provided was an e-mail address, not even a phone number. The importance of e-mail varies in different countries and among different age groups. In particular, China doesn't really use e-mail at all, they do everything in apps like WeChat.
If you have business cards, you're probably not a student or a pensioner or someone who would actually miss a small amount of cash ($13.45 in US dollars, in local currency and adjusted for purchasing power parity). And what kind of weirdo in China has business cards that don't provide "proper" contact information, and still uses cash? In China everyone does mobile payments through those same chat apps, so much so that it's hard to get businesses to accept cash payment.
The importance of the key will probably vary in different countries: it matters more where people are more likely to live alone. Some places might have a stronger tradition of leaving spare keys with trusted neighbors, or a mandatory spare key with a landlord, or even disuse of physical keys in favor of electronic security.
So the methodology is flawed and measures other incidental factors far more than the honesty of the citizenry. And the wallets weren't even "real" wallets, where the most valuable things are are credit cards and hard-to-replace IDs.
Andao
This is silly. Chinese people certainly have and use email and SMS. It's not like there is magical tech only available in China that makes wallets culturally irrelevant. Many transactions are still handled in cash.
YSean
This is silly. Chinese people certainly mostly do not use email in their daily life and most people do not have an email address. Have you ever lived in China? SMS? Do you see a phone number on the business card?
H. Yang
July 3, 2019 at 8:58 am Hide Replies 27
This is silly. I am a Chinese. I can reliably tell you that most Chinese people do not use e-mail even if they have e-mail. Chinese people who have e-mail are normally senior public servant work for the central government or CCP, staffs of the corporations, students or teachers of the universities and academic institutions. And actually, those people who have e-mail rarely use e-mail to contact others. SMS is not very popular because SMS charges extra fees, we use WeChat instead in China.
What's more, China has stepped into 'cashless society', almost every Chinese people, do not need to take wallets and use cash or credit cards in daily lives. We use Ali Pay or WeChat Pay instead in China.
You should pay a visit to China.
Before describing this as individually driven, note:
Study:Wallets were returned to one of five societal institutions: (i) banks, (ii) theaters, museums, or other cultural establishments, (iii) post offices, (iv) hotels, and (v) police stations, courts of law, or other public offices.
This is really measuring how much effort businesses and public institutions will go to return empty wallets with no money in.
No surprise it's lower in the US (with rather stretched public institutions and an "easy come, easy go" attitude to material stuff) than in the goody two shoes Nordics, or the conformist, bureaucratic Eastern European ex-Communists.
The Chinese, bottoming out the rankings, would tend to reflect their rather dispassionate cultural attitude to the parting of a fool and his property - theft is strict a no no but looking after careless people isn't exactly important to the institutions either.
It's also measuring the prevalence of e-mail usage (vs. texting), since that was the only contact information provided. In some countries, China in particular, e-mail simply never caught on.
It's also measuring the importance of a physical key (the only item of any real value). That matters a lot more if you live alone and have no one to let you in. For example, two thirds of young Italians live with their parents, while in northern Europe the vast majority of them live independently. That could partly explain the discrepancy between Scandinavia and Italy in the chart.
Both good points, technological communication factors and the social value placed on the lost items will have an influence beyond the other factors I've mentioned.
It doesn't seem like a totally useless measure - I'd expect some correlation with "Good governance" indices first and then a lesser one with Tightness-Looseness Measures (to take account of the "Ze wallet must be returned even if worthless because zis is gut ordnung!" effects).
But clearly there will still be some robust residuals that are fairly inexplicable and are down to a range of smaller factors which are different between country.
So there is some limited utility even taking this as evidence for "civic institutions", let alone try to get from there to "national character" or "civic honesty" of the general population of each state.
That makes a big difference. The explanation for the within-country differences between Money and NoMoney probably remains the same: wallets with NoMoney may not seem "worth the effort" to return. Big difference, though, in understanding the cross-country results. It's not about "honesty"; it's about how much effort people working for various institutions are willing to exert for something that's "not (necessarily) their job", like returning lost wallets. Maybe, the fact that the US and UK are near the bottom for developed countries explains why socialism and Big Government can't work in those places: bureaucrats in these countries can't be expected to do anything more than the bare minimum to keep collecting paychecks. That might also explain why union protections in these countries seem to have such detrimental impacts.
Maybe, though with that said, the same condition is the case in their private sector drops, so whatever "would not go above and beyond" factor is endemic to institutions and not limited to public sector bureaucracies alone.
I don't think Kiwi and British police etc are that culturally different in attitudes though. I suspect if anything along those lines it's it's more that British and American employees, police etc in their largest cities are busy and don't have a lot of spare "slack" in the system for minor league "village policing" type activities like hunting down people to return lost property with lunch money and small change in it, and the incentives and protocols don't allow it from them. And ultimately that's probably more to do with the public, via its representatives, not being willing to fund that sort of thing.
That is: Relatively recent (last 50 years emerging preferences for smaller government and police? Cheaper and more efficient no-frills service industries with less "overstaffing" and not a lot of slack manpower?
"the same condition is the case in their private sector"
The difference being that markets work *assuming* that participants follow their incentives. Public sector institutions, in constrast, depend on an assumption that government acts benevolently in pursuit of some public interest, whatever that means. Assuming that public sector actors act in their own interest, as in public choice theory, does not lead to very strong cases for empowering public sector bureaucracies.
I think even public sector institutions depend on the assumption that the public is monitoring the bureaucracy and can punish/reward behaviours in its interest, and that public sector employees are ultimately much motivated by their self interest and the job of the public is to make sure those align. That's democratic politics, and the like of the Nordics are at least as keen on monitoring their bureaucrats as anywhere else!
Similarly I don't think many people are quite that seriously confident that private sector solutions would still work out even if their employees were totally amoral and self interested...
Donald Pretari
I'm pretty sure it has to do with the prevalence of a "Finders Keepers" ethos culturally embedded in the belief system of a country, society, or even a club or family. As explanations go, I give this one a very persuasive feeling allowing me to advance the probability of its being true as highly likely to be true.
To the degree its cultural and not reflecting institutional and business differences (which it largely is) this seems correct.
Note this is divergent from 'fair play' honesty in gambling conditions and not cheating (see - https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uoea-sfh111315.php)
Also note that they handed these in to companies and institutions in each of the countries' largest cities; returning a lost wallet in a huge country like China probably involves a lot more effort than in a tiny one like Denmark or New Zealand. Urban-rural ethos also differs more in some nations which his global megacities (the 5 largest cities in the US may be rather distinct for'ex).
Although thinking again, a lot of this won't be due to "Finders Keepers" - if a wallet is handed in at a hotel, would you A) proactively try to find the owner, including by contacting random business cards left in the wallet, or B) log it down in your records, drop in lost property until someone contacts you to claim it? B) doesn't mean you're thinking "finders keepers".
Now if you do B), and even if B) is your hotel policy (so you're being conformist and 'prosocial'), and even if everyone in your country regards this as the norm, this study implies you lack "civic honesty"!
Shocking finding:
"Using nationally representative surveys conducted in the US, UK, and Poland, we asked respondents to imagine receiving a wallet with the contents in our four conditions (NoMoney, Money, BigMoney, and Money-NoKey) and rated the extent to which failing to return the wallet would feel like stealing on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much). Respondents reported that failing to return a wallet would feel more like stealing when the wallet contained a modest amount of money than when it contained no money, and that such behavior would feel even more like stealing when the wallet contained a substantial amount of money"
It's worth noting that in the supplementary material they show what the wallets look like. They're basically transparent plastic mini folders with the money, key and card in them. Do such wallets actually exist?
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/06/19/science.aau8712.DC1/aau8712_Cohn_SM.pdf
Yes that was my concern as well. Without money it it, I might have considered it basically trash and not worth spending any effort on.
Todd K
Japan wasn't included but would be #1 for getting a wallet back with all the money.
I have a friend who taught an English night course in Japan and one time the person responsible for collecting the student's money told him she forgot the $400 worth of yen in an envelope that she had on a table at a Starbucks. He said she wasn't worried one bit and went to get her envelope of cash two hours later.
Weird it's not on here. What the hell kind of international study includes *Kazakhstan* but not Japan?
Salman the Sheikh
Disappointed to not see Saudi Arabia. I hear they chop off the hands of thieves.
99.9% conviction rates and trials by judge alone are seriously business....! There is a pure cultural component outside the institutions of course, but.....
this study methodology wouldn't work at all in Japan. If you hand a lost wallet to a random Japanese employee they'll dutifully drop it off at the nearest Koban and wonder why the hell you didn't do so yourself.
So why wasn't Japan included? It's the third largest economy with 127 million people. Good that they included Croatia, though.
Pirate Sensai
Almost everything gets handed in there, so they may have decided not to bother. But there the person who hands in a lost wallet is entitled to 25% or more of the money in it. Honesty isn't free, ya know.
In Japan, if it isn't yours, then it must be someone else's so you do the right thing and turn it in. In certain other places, such as the country where I grew up, if no one is guarding it with their gun, then it obviously is your right to take it. And why shouldn't you? You deserve to have want you want.
Although the one time I lost my wallet on a Japanese street, someone turned it in but they kept the 2,000 yen that was in it. So obviously, there are exceptions to every rule.
So, there are moral sh*thole countries and well as economic ones?
Joking aside, look at say Spain and India. Are the majority of Indians just THAT much more dishonest than Spaniards, or are the dishonest Indian just really, really bad (criminal)?
Ryaz
A Swiss funded research shows Switzerland is the most honest country
The study used business card holders, not wallets, and handed them in to businesses and public offices like hotels and post offices. Then they checked to see if an email was sent to the email address on the business card in the business card holder.
Regarding China, they don't use email there. They use WeChat or something else.
I'm not sure why they didn't just use real wallets with IDs in them instead of business card holders with business cards, which people hardly use these days. Also I'm not sure why they insist on calling them wallets, which is just confusing.
Potts
Socialism is once again #1! All those moral puritans on the left really are more honest. The kings of capitalism USA and UK are unfortunately in the 3rd quartile with the same level of dishonesty as the Mediterranean. Sad.
I used to look at graphs like this and say...wow diversity destroys social capital.
But homogenous black and hispanic countries are dysfunctional. I guess you just want as many northern/western europeans as possible
Eustaquius
It may be also informative to adjust these response by GDP per capita. Basically, if I am a Swiss or a Norwegian, I don't really need any more money, so, yeah, let me try to find the owner. But in lower income per capita countries, the tendency would be to see if I can keep the money (if there is any) or benefit somehow from the IDs or cards in the wallet...
Might be instructive to read this study of honesty against the measure of MR's history of treating "corruption" as a topic.
When I typed "corruption" into the MR search engine, I got numerous returns on corruption in China (many if not most entries date back to the Obama years) and hardly any that treated corruption outside of China and comparatively few that treated corruption within the US.
Corruption in the US bears widespread, deep, and substantive investigation, by economists if not by intrepid journalists whose own profession is among the most corrupt in the US today.
By the by: just how corrupt might our cognitive elites themselves have become over recent decades? (Numerous members of this class have learned to consent to the theatrical conventions of media presentation and influence.)
To hear the tale told, we would be obliged to rely on cognitive elites to compose the methodologies and measuring protocols, then trust their judicious applications of these measuring approaches, THEN trust their informed interpretations of whatever data are collected.
How trustworthy can our Cognitive Elites themselves be deemed today? How well do they translate their own hieroglyphics for trusted public consumption? (When even "educated" ["trained"] Americans without technical expertise cannot understand or trust what our Cognitive Elites claim, our Cognitive Elites need to focus mightily on their translation skills.)
It may also be worth considering that turning property to police may risk it being held as evidence of a crime. I also wonder how I'd establish ownership with just a key and a business card - why would I assume that the card was the owners? Especially one with only a email address. I get things like that (including keys!) as junk mail (snail mail, usps) from time to time. I doubt that this "study" tells us anything. Were lost and found policies in place at the institution/business? Where did the finder claim to have found it (relative to the property (owned? rented?) of the institution? What would the cost be to 1) contact the (possible) owner? 2) securely store the "wallet"? 3) verify and record identity of claimant? It is worth thinking about literacy as well. Not to mention the number of hands the "wallet" must pass through. And each of their wages and working conditions...Nah, I'll file this under B.S. (Behavioral and Social) "Science" and move on.
One of the big flaw in the study is that the authors did not go back and check what really happened to the wallets. If the front desk staff put the wallets in some lost & found boxes and did not send emails to the addresses on the name cards, that would be considered dishonest. In fact, Japan was excluded from the study because the authors found that Japanese would normally turn in these wallets to "police booths".
And the authors are 100% sure that other countries do not have the same mechanism. That's strange.
I found a wallet with no money or cards but a driver lic. I mailed it to the young guy with a note. Did not get a thank you. Would not bother next time.
You are a good person. I will suggest you do the same if you have another chance. Imagine those conditions: Maybe he has moved and did not received his driver license; or someone stole his cash and left the wallet to you...
Butler T. Reynolds
Comparing the United States with a population of 325M people with Switzerland's 8M or Norway's 5M doesn't tell you much about the US.
Break this out by US state and the pattern might be more obvious.
The authors are Swiss. No wonder they lost more wallets in Switzerland.
In China people may be afraid of being accused of stealing the wallet in the first place if they return it, or being accused of lifting some money out of it particularly if it is returned empty.
If they put a QR code on the card instead of an email address, China would go to the top.
That is right! I am chinese. We hardly use email, now is 2019, nobody use email to chat, Especially old man and children. This experiment is very not fair and loosely. And they drop the wallet, this type of wallet, is very very unusual, nobody think that is wallet in china!
A useful and interesting variant on this would be to breakout figures for different neighborhoods and or ethnic areas or other social differentiators to see what that reveals. Wouldn't want to speculate but there are vast differences in trust and social cohesiveness among various groups in a multi ethnic society and breaking out the variance among groups might shed valuable light on the traits associated with honesty or group concern..
Science magazine supposed to be a realiable source of scientific research, why bothering become a government backed propaganda tool. In spite of the intensive relationship between china and USA, the timing of this article is beyond suspicious. Morality is such a subjective concept and it is ridiculous and even laughable to quantity this, desipite the fact of cutural diference. It is super strange if you carry a wallet in the street or use paper money, since people in China use their cell phone to pay for everything, if chinese people find a strange plastic wallet with couple bucks of cash in it, people will not even pick it up because it is so strange. Anyway, this research reminds me of some research used conducted by british, which shows some random experiment results and data, trying to prove generally black people's IQ is lower than white people. I bet science magazine really have no boundaries by helping government to win this war. I have a recommendation for science magazine for their next article, by conducting research of how many weeds consume monthly and how many people own guns in a country, and make a ranking called global violence score. Oh, wait Science also can make a scientific assumption by saying how would chinese lifespan of citizen increase one day going to reduce the lifespan of US citizen.(this topic will be much effective to back up your government's agenda.)
Lv.Celeste
shame on your dumb civic survey


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OH, BROTHER: As the baby of the family, Dylan Nealis soaked up so much battling his older siblings in the backyard
Jan 2, 2020 | College |
Dylan Nealis on competing against his brothers: "There's always like that edge in me that I want to outdo them, one up them." (Photo courtesy of the Georgetown University SID)
There's something to be said about getting beaten up, so to speak, by your older brothers while playing soccer in your backyard while growing up.
It certainly has paid off for Dylan Nealis, the youngest of four soccer-playing brothers who is on the cusp of a professional soccer career after helping Georgetown University to the NCAA Division I men's championship.
He also is one of three finalists for the Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy as the best men's college player in the land, which will be revealed in St. Louis on Friday night.
"His family is a soccer family; very athletic, all of them.," Georgetown head coach Brian Wiese said in a recent phone interview. "Different kinds of athletes, but very athletic as a family. Dylan arguably the most raw talent. Maybe that's because he's the youngest. He grew up in a competitive backyard. You always give the benefit of doubt to the younger siblings. They're the ones that have to go through the battles when they were not ready to go through the battles that serves them well.
It certainly served the baby of the Nealis family well. Dylan got his lessons and took his lumps and became a better athlete and soccer player because of it.
The Nealis brothers, from the oldest to the youngest:
* Former Georgetown defender Jimmy, 28, who played for the Cosmos in 2013-14 and plays for the N.Y. Pancyprian Freedoms in the Cosmopolitan Soccer League.
* Ex-Binghamton University midfielder-defender Connor, 25.
* One-time Hofstra University defender Sean, 22, who plays for the Red Bulls.
* And of course, Dylan, 21.
"I think it just created the competitive nature in me," Dylan said. "Obviously with three older brothers, they were super good athletes in high school, making the varsity teams as freshmen and sophomores. People ask you like 'Hey are you as good as them and stuff like that?' There's always like that edge in me that I want to outdo them, one up them."
Dylan turned into a human sponge, learning the intricacies at whatever sport in which he competed against his brothers. It usually was soccer or basketball.
"It puts the emphasis on the little details because obviously they might be more athletic, bigger, faster, so I won't be able to get away with those things going against them," he said. "So just focusing on the things that I can do better was probably my biggest emphasis growing up. That's what stuck with me — the importance of details and not always rely on certain assets."
Dylan honed his skills performing for the Massapequa Soccer Club and Massapequa High School. One of his most memorable moments was playing with Sean on the squad's state championship team in 2015. The Nealis' family reputation and Dylan's success certainly attracted many a college, including Georgetown.
"He came in as a very talented, but an athletic player, but one who needed to learn a lot and one who needed to grow up," Wiese said. "Over the four seasons with us, he's evolved into a much more nuanced tactical player. He's evolved into a captain and a leader of the team of the program. He's evolved into a player who is much more emotionally ready to handle the ups and downs not only of a game, but of a season. That takes time. That takes experience. It takes maturing. He's really worked hard to develop into the player he's become and he's worked hard to grow our program that was able to one that was able to win the national a championship. And he's worked hard to get an opportunity to play as a pro, which he most certainly will."
Earlier this week, Nealis signed a Generation adidas contract with Major League Soccer. There is little doubt he will be selected by a team somewhere in the first round. The only question is how early.
The interview with Dylan took place just before he left Washington, D.C. for the winter break last week. So, then he was looking forward seeing and playing against his brothers.
"I guess from day one, all love competing," he said. "We still play basketball. I'm sure we will. When i head home for winter break, we'll play basketball in the front yard. Just 2 v 2. Having four of us works out because it's good numbers-wise."
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Mozartiade: Musical Offering plan a delicious birthday celebration
Classical Music Features Sheila Regan ·	ST. PAUL, Minn. ·	 Feb 2, 2015
Wine Jennifer Simonson/MPR
Would you like some mustard with your Mozart? You're in luck, because Mozartiade is coming to the Sundin Music Hall at Hamline University. It will be an evening of food, drink and socializing, all suffused with the music of Mozart.
Hosted by the Musical Offering, a Twin Cities chamber ensemble, the event is aimed at creating a lively and social atmosphere and comes this Sunday, just days after Mozart's 259th birthday.
This year's Mozartiade follows up on last year's successful Schubertiade, named after the practice during Schubert's lifetime of inviting the composer to salon-type gatherings in people's homes. According to Alex Legeros, executive director of the Musical Offering, the parties would include food and wine breaks, plus time for social conversations. The Schubertiades were "a unique tradition with chamber music," Legeros said.
Last year, the Musical Offering's Schubertiade was so successful and received such a strong response, they decided to repeat the event this year with Mozart. "We're trying to incorporate enjoying food and talking about ways chamber music is supposed to be enjoyed with atmosphere, so the music can be digested," Legeros said.
One of the most successful aspects of last year's event was the number of new audience members the event brought to the Musical Offering's work. "The interesting thing for us was that it reached a different kind of concert-goer," said Legeros. "They were attracted to the idea of killing two birds with one stone." About half of the people that came returned to see regular concerts.
Last year, the Schubertiade included a number of different samples of Viennese cuisine, including cheeses, sausages, and spreads — plus stuffed mushrooms, various choices for wine, and desserts like chocolates and finger tortes and berry jam sandwiches.
The comestibles create a more relaxed atmosphere, Legeros said. The musicians themselves enjoy it too, allowing for socializing with the audience.
Norbert Nielubowski, who acts as co-artistic-director of the Musical Offering with Susan Billmeyer, said the program is part of the organization's three-year series that looks at the music of Vienna from 1780-1930.
The concert includes a range of works by Mozart, including a flute sonata Mozart wrote when he was eight years old as well as later works such as a trio for clarinet, viola, and piano called the Kegelstatt Trio, which the composer wrote while doing the Viennese equivalent of bowling. The evening also will feature a quintet with two violas and a serenade for winds.
The diversity of the pieces in the evening show how much Mozart evolved over his life, Nielubowski says. "It's more interesting for people not that familiar with chamber music," he says. "They don't need to be as afraid."
Generally, the Musical Offering gives a bit of an introduction before each of the pieces, to give some historical perspective and personal perspectives about the music from the musicians. "We try to break down the barrier between performers and audiences," Nielubowski says.
The connection between music and food has been so successful, Niebulowski says they are considering making it the organization's niche, so that "people associate us with music and food," he says.
Mozartiade takes place Feb. 8 at 3 p.m., Sudin Music Hall, Hamline University. Tickets are $50, available online at MusicalOffering.org or over the phone at 651-523-2459.
Sheila Regan is a Minneapolis-based writer. She writes frequently for the Twin Cities Daily Planet and City Pages, among other publications.
Interested in writing about classical music for Classical MPR? Have a story about classical music to share? We want to hear from you!


Aimed at those working to enter this rapidly developing field, this volume on biological physics is written in a pe- dagogical style by leading scientists giving explanations that take their starting point where any physicist can fol- low and end at the frontier of research in biological phy- sics. These lectures describe the state-of-the-art physics of biomolecules and cells. In biological systems ranging from single biomolecules to entire cells and larger biological systems, it focuses on aspects that require concepts and methods from physics for their analysis and understanding, such as the mechanics of motor proteins; how the genetic code is physically read and managed; the machinery of protein--DNA interactions; force spectroscopy of biomolecules'velopes, cytoskeletons, and cytoplasms; polymerization forces; literia propulsion; cell motility; lab-on-a-chip nanotechnology for single-molecule analysis of biomolecules; bioinforma- tics; and coding and computational strategies of the brain.


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The Tompkins Square Park Riots of 1988
Police brutality, class warfare, gentrification — today these are hot button topics, both nationally and in New York City. But on August 6, 1988, frustrations over these issues converged in the form of protest and riots in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village.
These protests reflected somewhat the shifting nature of the park and the neighborhood at the time. The park had become a gathering place for the homeless and with a growing tent city. At that time, the East Village and Alphabet City were also attracting higher income residents. Some new and old residents, as well as some business-oriented community groups like the Avenue A Block Association, urged Manhattan Community Board 3 to install a curfew on the park. However, groups such as Friends of Tompkins Square Park and some political organizers and community activists elsewhere in the neighborhood were against a curfew.
Protesters holding signs. Photo courtesy of complex.com.
According to the New York Times, on June 28th, 1988 the community board took a middle ground and called for a 1 am curfew; over the next two weeks the police enforced this curfew, evicting many from the park and confining the homeless to the southeast quadrant. Some saw this police action as an attempt to take the park away from the public, and staged protests and a rally on July 31st. This first protest was responded to with police intervention and several protesters and officers were injured by the end of the night. Yet, organizers planned another rally on August 6th.
Police using nightsticks. Photo courtesy of complex.com.
Late in the evening of August 6th, about 200 protestors (though police reports claimed 700) marched through St. Mark's Place holding banners proclaiming "Gentrification is Class War." Captain Gerald McNamara of the 9th Precinct had 86 officers and 11 on horseback stationed in the park. As the night dragged on into the early morning of August 7th, a boisterous crowd began to hurl empty bottles at police officers, prompting an escalation in the police's response. The rioting went on through the night and into the next day; both sides reported injuries, with protesters and observers claiming that not only did officers cover and remove their badges and nameplates, but also officers used excessive force on bystanders. All of this was captured on film by East Village resident Clayton Patterson and by the end of the rioting there were a total of 38 people who suffered injury, including police officers and reporters on the scene. Nine people were arrested on riot, assault, and other charges, and six accounts of police brutality were logged with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB).
Police on horseback. Photo courtesy of complex.com.
In the aftermath of the riots, with brutality complaints eventually reaching over 100 and video and images of police officers striking protesters and kicking defenseless people while they were on the ground, then-NYC Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward laid the blame for the riot on the local police precinct. Mayor Ed Koch, who was critical of the management of the park and who approved the 1 am curfew, became critical of the police intervention after being confronted with the evidence and testimonials as well. To the neighborhood, the riots serve both as a testament and travesty, with some viewing the protesters as defenders against the encroachment of gentrification, while others saw them as nothing more than hooligans. However, in the direct aftermath of the riots the neighborhood residents became galvanized against the police brutality which they had experienced in those evening and early morning hours.
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