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Doesn’t look to me like you think integrity is valuable, most of your examples provide trivial advantages, like driving aggressively (and that increases the chance of an incident, too). Even the test, the real dilemma is not terrible grade vs cheating, it’s a few hours to learn the material vs cheating. So we’re talking 200 dollars here. Or the classic wallet test, how often does that happen.
So by my calculations total lifetime earnings from having no small-i integrity has a present value of about 1000 dollars. Of course if you go work for the mob, we're talking about something else.
And for that measly sum, you break the covenant and lose the friendship of the good. You can never again say ‘when no one’s looking, I do the right thing’. Which is not only nice, but saves time you would have spent asking yourself what the correct course is, in trivial matters.
I think you have it backward. The small inconveniences point to a larger rot. The rot works its way down the incentive/reward ratio chain. The lie is that "if you cheat the small things, you will cheat the big ones", it's like no wheres the incentive to cheat in the small things? There big cheating is already happening you just don't see it.
I've already explained in detail why "doing the right thing" is not so appealing to me right now. So I'll hold out until I get more criticism before amending this comment further.
I just find it interesting that the small invisible defections people get into in daily life generally do not pay off at all. When I was 12 I stole a trading card from a friend and commited various other pecadillos without getting caught, I can’t say they’ve improved my life more than an infinitesimal amount, even at the time. Net negative outcome on those decisions. Maybe I just suck at crime.
Bottom line, I don’t think there’s two kinds of people in the world; the assholes with great lives and bmws, and the schmucks who believe in integrity. Reality points more the other way, as in germans (hallo, bmws!) vs greeks, or the correlation between criminality and poverty.
For sure, it’s more complicated than that, like when you declare that others defected, and therefore you can. Which in theory is valid, one must punish defectors, so cooperating alone, or past a certain point of general defection, is not just poor strategy, but immoral. I dispute that we are past that point of general defection. And people will take the opportunity to be evil-dumb far too early, as the low-stakes examples show.
I don't think I need to be convinced of any of this. Yes living in Germany is better than living in Greece. Obviously, grand-scale cooperation is better when you integrate the plot over time, and it is self-reinforcing just like how mass defection can create a negative feedback loop. Of course, it would be better if everyone acted like German than the Greeks or worse the Arabs.
But what if you literally live among Arabs like me? What if you find yourself in a job market where openings have 2000 applications in a day or two (I wish I was exaggerating, oh btw there are an order of magnitude less job openings per capita than NA and EU), what if you lived in a country with open borders such that wages for skilled entry-level technical work are depressed to less than 10k USD a year, once again this is true! What if you could drastically improve the station of you life with just a little bit of funny business? You are telling me you would rather take a job for 10k after 6 months of looking instead of lie a little and double or triple your salary to a grand 30k USD?
(Personally, I have gotten out my recent slump and have a good job lined up because I actually know what I am doing, this will take me well into the upper middle class, so there is some irony in what I am saying, but the experience of eating shit until I got this opportunity is still fresh in my mind (and always will be, not going to forget where I came from), I hate to be dramatic but it was positively traumatizing )
To Americans, cherish your fucking Economy where you can afford to have integrity.
I'm german, a good "hajnalbrain cooperatebot". I assumed you were talking about defecting, cheating, in the west. I have never lived in the arab world, if you exclude Köln. So I don't know. Maybe try to cooperate in some circles, on the margin?
I will copperate with those who cooperate with me and defect with those who defect against me. Simple as. Cooperarion is default.
In no normal world can I get a job offer where Id be in the upper middle class and the lower class in the same week, but thats what open borders and millions of poverty stricken third worlders at the door does. Employers will pretend some random Indian who is the same on paper can substitute you and expdct you to take the bait. I consider offering me a poverty job defecting against me, go hire some Indian from a village with a "cs degree", dont offer me this bullshit, I would spit on their faces if I could without landing a felony, it would be less disrespectful.
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Cooperating «in some circles» to survive the free-for-all defection equilibrium is exactly how they (and we Eastern Slavs, and frankly most everyone else) have got into that mess. Clannishness and familism are the other side of corruption.
I was thinking more of creating your own clan of sorts based on moral criteria. And generally cooperating when the proportion of defectors is less clear/more favourable than usual.
Oh, that's how they can start too... First protecting the garden of idealism, then naked clannish power struggle. The assabiyah route is inherently treacherous.
But ofc this is a natural idea. This, or more realistically moving to the West.
Yeah I didn't say I've thought this through, could be islam started as such a clan, and I hate it. I don't see why the clan would have to keep defecting outside when outside is cooperating, though. Other religions manage it, my own flavour of goldenrule-utilitarian-cooperate-thing manages it.
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