I worry there is a bit of wishful thinking involved in the high number of upvotes. I struggle to usefully pinpoint where my vibes disagree, but my impression is that the world is rife with examples of the powerful behaving badly and totally getting away with it.
If I look at corporate scandals, the case for fraud and nefariousness seems pretty strong. Just off the top of my head: Dieselgate where Volkswagen deliberately deceived official testers about the level of pollution their cards produce, Bayer knowingly selling AIDS laced blood for transfusions, Goldman Sachs selling off the assets they knew to be worthless just prior to the crash 2008. Sure, often fines are involved if caught, but the reputation of the companies remains surprisingly intact and overall if you take into account all the cases where they were not caught I’d doubt the crimes were not worth it financially.
On an individual level it’s a bit murkier whether it’s worth it. I guess for most people the stress of violating norms and being caught will cause a net wellbeing loss. That notwithstanding, given how much our society defaults to trust, there are lots of low hanging fruit for slightly motivated and competent ruthless people. One example only: outright fabricating large parts of your CV seems relatively rare despite the low likelihood and consequences of being caught.
I worry there is a bit of wishful thinking involved in the high number of upvotes. I struggle to usefully pinpoint where my vibes disagree, but my impression is that the world is rife with examples of the powerful behaving badly and totally getting away with it.
If I look at corporate scandals, the case for fraud and nefariousness seems pretty strong. Just off the top of my head: Dieselgate where Volkswagen deliberately deceived official testers about the level of pollution their cards produce, Bayer knowingly selling AIDS laced blood for transfusions, Goldman Sachs selling off the assets they knew to be worthless just prior to the crash 2008. Sure, often fines are involved if caught, but the reputation of the companies remains surprisingly intact and overall if you take into account all the cases where they were not caught I’d doubt the crimes were not worth it financially.
On an individual level it’s a bit murkier whether it’s worth it. I guess for most people the stress of violating norms and being caught will cause a net wellbeing loss. That notwithstanding, given how much our society defaults to trust, there are lots of low hanging fruit for slightly motivated and competent ruthless people. One example only: outright fabricating large parts of your CV seems relatively rare despite the low likelihood and consequences of being caught.