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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that struck me the most as I read about the college bribery scandal is that many if not all the parents involved acted as if bribing people, falsifying records, doctoring photographs, etc. were things that "everyone else was doing to get ahead in the admissions game" and therefore they could justify and rationalize it as necessary. At a minimum, they can at least claim they did it for their children.

I don't know how anyone could ever justify and rationalize stealing money from the elderly and taxpayers. It seems so wrong; indefensible, really. Jeez...

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Con artists and criminals think everyone is corrupt.

If you know someone who thinks everyone is corrupt, or self serving, well... that’s one way people rationalize their own unethical behavior.

The meaner you are, the more assholes you meet.

When someone says “liberals are just virtue signaling” they probably are a horrible person because they don’t believe humans can behave ethically/altruistically.

>They probably are a horrible person

Or they observe a commonality in human nature, that signaling virtue is a real phenomenon in the competition of a certain species of social apes. And that espousing such views doesnt guarantee their feasibility nor does it mean that the signaler has actually arrived at an ethical understanding of the subject.

EX: Used to be vegan. Saw how monstrous the self-righteous were. Realized that promoting the development of "good", intelligent, ethical, and free people was far more helpful than being an individual in a society of millions of individuals. And maybe a society of such people would be far more conscientious, especially in regards to the treatment of animals, than what we have now.

Also that psychopathic/sociopathic actors could negate my puny individual protest and competing for social rank over them would probably be more helpful than being an "individual" in the liberal sense

Wait so you stopped being vegan to ... protest the fact that some vegans are self-righteous? Do you also drive a V8 to protest the fact that some people with Teslas are smug?

It was more of a realization that those people placed far too much importance on their individual "purity", and their distance from the "impure" masses than effecting any systematic change.

When you think of the entire chain of supply and logistics involved in running the modern world, you are inexorably meshed with the world of evil and the "impure". As I said, it does far more good for ethical entities to take rein of this thrashing beast than to posture purity. You might even have to be cunning, brutal, and cold to ward off those who simply don't give a damn. Especially the psychopathic and sociopathic agents.

This is all a ton of pontification without arriving at any sort if logical conclusion. You used to be vegan but stopped because you didn't feel like you could enact change with your diet? Weak .

Of course. It'd be dumb to think you have any direct effect when you're inmeshed in an "impure" network.

The world doesn't exist to provide a nice solution set where you can have the conveniences of modern living without the massive externalities of war (to secure and maintain logistical routes) and pollution. To be quite honest, I think the world is inherently a tragedy to those who seek to do only "good".

Helping potential moral agents, aka your "neighbors" (physical or spiritual), with better leverage in the social ape rat race has more impact. You strive to throw off the worse leaders of men and install the better leaders of men.

I was going to go on but forgive me for balking out of a lengthy explanation that isn't structured yet. It's been a while since someone has challenged my stance like that and my intuitons need more editing, so to speak.

So... You used to be vegan but you stopped because of how 'monstrous the self righteous were'? So billions of animals raped and slaughtered every year for taste but but na fk that, some vegans are uppity...?

So it seems to me you are projecting after all. There's nothing wrong with 'virtue signalling' whether we do it by nature or not. It's ALWAYS brought up in the context of trying to shame white men for being supportive towards women and minorities.

>When someone says “liberals are just virtue signaling” they probably are a horrible person because they don’t believe humans can behave ethically/altruistically.

Pot meet kettle.

> ..."everyone else was doing to get ahead in the admissions game" ...

Reminds me of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/6rbpr9/why_is_lying_...

Projection is something the good and bad do. There really is a battle of dark and light you see in mythology and centers on people's psychological need to project their actions as the norm.

Fraud is wrong. Rationalizing it away as a fashion isn’t justifiable. Both types of fraud you point to are no different for me.

Of course it's not justifiable. The question is, parents were rationalizing school bribery, was this man rationalizing medicare bribery?

Why?

One of the US attorneys wasting our federal tax dollars prosecuting the parents even pointed it out: they bribed the college the wrong way, by not buying them a building like they were supposed to. "We're not talking about donating a building...we're talking about fraud."

So the injured parties here are the universities, and their complaint is they got cut out on the bribe dollars. Which is fine and all, but I don't understand at all why that's our problem. That's the universities' problems, and they should feel free to sue their employees for not sharing bribes appropriately.

Health care fraud actually hurts people and steals from the federal government, so there's two good reasons to spend our resources prosecuting it.

I don’t think you know what the word bribe means. Payment in exchange for a product or service (e.g. admission to a college) is not a bribe. When I go to the store and buy a soda I am not bribing the store. A bribe is when you pay an agent of an organization to misappropriate the resources of or otherwise defraud their employer. Like paying a cop to not arrest you, or paying a college coach to pretend you’re a recruited athlete.

Universities get substantial federal funding, including Pell and research grants. Such investments are put at risk if the universities fill themselves with unqualified applicants.

Has any university ever lost federal funding because of admitting too many unqualified applicants? I doubt this is a major risk.

Where is the claim that a university has ever been found to have admitted “too many unqualified applicants”?

And what makes the unqualified applications requiring building purchases for admission ok, and the unqualified applicants requiring cash payments to coaches not ok under your rubric?

Should be patently obvious that there’s a cap on how many people can donate the kind of money that funds a building — nevermind that such donations are public. There is no cap for a secretive system of bribery and arbitrage.

Because donating money directly to the school benefits other students who use the dorms, the building, the research facilities. Straight up bribing the coaches just enriches the coaches.

I believe the problem was the personal donation for the fraud was structured as a tax deductible non-profit donation.

So the injured parties here are the universities

And the legitimate applicants who were rejected.

They did it "to" their children. Looks more like a robbery than a gift. What message are you sending your son when you tell him "most people get here because they earn it, but don't worry, I'll pay for you to get in."

Digression but when the system is so intentionally opaque (and IMO this isn’t a bad thing) it’s difficult to even say the people that weren’t bribed into Penn “earned it”.

The difference between a Penn reject and a Berkeley accept or vice versa isn’t likely to be terribly big if at all notable.

Hmm, hadn’t seen that (“many ...parents involved acted as if ... were things everyone else was doing...”).

In the few stories I’ve seen, the parents have not committed.

Sources?

If the chieftains do it and get away with its mkay.

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