A Nation of Cheaters [View All]

I just found this site and haven't explored it thoroughly yet. It doesn't seem to deal specifically with politics -- but the things it says have a lot to do with the current social norms that will endorse anything from vote rigging to torture in the name of winning-no-matter-what.


http://www.cheatingculture.com/davidcallahaninterview.htm

"When the corporate scandals exploded in 2001, I was finishing a book on a group of business leaders who graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1949. These guys shook their heads in disgust at the likes of Enron and WorldCom, and said their generation simply lived by a different set of values than many of today’s leaders. Was that true, I wondered?

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". . . there is much evidence of more cheating in a number of areas compared to thirty years ago, especially by young people, well-educated professionals, and the wealthy. This trend hasn’t gotten much attention, in part because the “values” debate in America has largely been framed by conservatives who’ve focused on things like teenage pregnancy, divorce, drugs, and homosexuality. I say let’s give the culture war a break and talk about a more troubling shift in American values: the ways that more of us seem to be willing to do anything to get ahead.

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"To start with, we live in a winner-take-all society. Winners get paid more these days, so people will do whatever it takes to be a winner. Meanwhile, everyone is under more pressure to perform well starting from a young age, in school, and extending into the workplace so that they are not left behind by the economy. That kind of stress provides a lot of incentive to cut corners. And I look at two other reasons for cheating: government watchdogs haven't been given enough resources to enforce the law, and many Americans are cynical that the rules in our society are fair, so they feel it's justified to cheat. As I see it, all of these reasons are related to the overarching trend in American society toward more free market competition. We’ve become a society divided between a Winning Class that is richer than ever and often cheats because it can get away with it. And an Anxious Class that cheats to move up in the world – or just stay afloat.

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"We need broad measures to reverse America's drift toward a nation where the rich are given special privileges and middle class Americans see the system as stacked against them. We need to create a new social contract in America that fosters a sense of social trust and economic fairness across U.S. society. Things like fairer taxes, national health insurance, and fewer inequities in the criminal justice system can all make a big difference."