Dishonesty, Why Does it Pay?

[ggunn]

Then there are those that try to find a way to make the road safer somehow, or try to take alternate roads. Those are the good guys.

Old adage: Good guys finish last.

All my life I have striven to maintain a position as one of the good guys, but looking around me I cannot help but see that many times my holding onto that philosophy has caused me to be left in the dust behind those who have maintained a lower standard of ethical behavior. It's very depressing.

 

[kwired]

Old adage: Good guys finish last.

All my life I have striven to maintain a position as one of the good guys, but looking around me I cannot help but consider that my holding onto that philosophy may have caused me to be left in the dust behind those who have maintained a lower standard of ethical behavior. It's very depressing.

I look at it this way both on the real road and in your analogy, those that want to take the short cuts or dangerous moves don't always reach their destination. They often do, but every now and then they don't, and usually with serious consequences. Those of us doing things the right way are sometimes a victim of their actions but that is unfortunate. Everyone has taken a shortcut sometime.

 

[ggunn]

I look at it this way both on the real road and in your analogy, those that want to take the short cuts or dangerous moves don't always reach their destination. They often do, but every now and then they don't, and usually with serious consequences. Those of us doing things the right way are sometimes a victim of their actions but that is unfortunate. Everyone has taken a shortcut sometime.

That is precisely my point. Once people start taking shortcuts en masse, shortcuts become the norm and not taking shortcuts increasingly dooms one to failure. The incentive to take shortcuts intensifies as the process evolves, hence the vicious circle.

 

[weressl]

I am not anywhere near that deep.:happyno:

I just look at humans as the same big dumb bags of meat that we have always been with very little change in behaviors even with all the progress we have made in other areas.

Yet civilization progresses. Do you care to compare the level of corruption between the US and South American, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern countries? Or for that matter the former Soviet Union and its satellites? If anything Western Democracy had decided to reject unfair favoritism and introduce laws and policies not only to prevent and punish the offenders but to assure fair and open competition. Corruption is actually detrimental to society's progress as you can see from the result. The true economic success of the US can be more attributed to free market competition than just to the capital based economic model. As an example that is why the Russians are still unable to rise economically, because of the concentration of the wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs, their collusion of excluding the participation of the populace at large and controlling the capital. I find the main difference in the Judeo-Christian ethic that - once - was the guiding principle of the US. Injecting other (non)ethical cultures into the US in the name of diversity and inclusion is putting the core of US society and market into grave jeopardy.

 

[jaylectricity]

I find the main difference in the Judeo-Christian ethic that - once - was the guiding principle of the US. Injecting other (non)ethical cultures into the US in the name of diversity and inclusion is putting the core of US society and market into grave jeopardy.

Setting aside the nonsensical sentence structure, it looks like you're saying that non-Christian immigrants are responsible for America's problems.

 

[iwire]

OK, I think we are done here.