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He once wrote a letter to a scientist friend—summarized in this 2002 profile of him from New York magazine—that’s ostensibly about termite society, but what it really describes, with uncanny insight, are the sticky, subrational alliances of the puerile ultra-rich.

So far as possible, punishment must inevitably follow crime in the world, in order to impress the subrational and deter them from yielding to impulses.

When the subrational know that they can do things without being severely punished for them, they will always abuse that state of affairs.

It is for the subrational that we most need to insist on punishment.

It does not make so much difference if the thoroughly rational individual occasionally escapes punishment for something done, but whenever the subrational escapes, he is encouraged to do it again.