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Comment by nyeah | Hacker News Reader

He didn't quite say "widespread." He said "rewarded."

But we don't overwhelmingly reward lying, cheating and stealing. Depending on the social status and wealth of the person doing it, we either punish it or tolerate it. Most people who lie, cheat or steal will be punished for it. To get away with it you need to plan you actions carefully - either with plausible deniability or by very carefully selecting your victims.

Or by having more money/power than the legislating body of the area you live in. I could gesticulate around broadly in a more frantic fashion, but my point should get across.

Pretty much all of the people that are in the billionaire class with a few exceptions have been rewarded while repeatedly lying, cheating and stealing. The fact that it is white collar crime rather than that there is a corpse is one part of the reason it works, the other is that their money effectively insulates them against the legal system. Every now and then someone falls from grace but overall the rules seems to be that you can get away with it if the numbers are large enough. It's depressing.

> Pretty much all of the people that are in the billionaire class with a few exceptions have been rewarded while repeatedly lying, cheating and stealing.

does that mean your heuristic boils down to: in general terms, individuals with more power/money == more lying, cheating, and stealing.

If so, do you also hold the same assessment of entire societies or countries?

With some the plunder is indisputable, like The Netherlands, whereas with others it is maybe more "subtle" and organic, but generally, the richer a society is the more "it" lies/cheats/steals relative to poorer societies?

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