Are you a chump if you play by the rules?
— Bernard Madoff, a supposed pillar of Wall Street, is accused of bilking investors out of billions of dollars in a huge Ponzi scheme.
— A worldwide recession sets in when it turns out that a vast subprime mortgage system was built on a foundation of fraud.
— Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is accused of scheming to auction a Senate appointment to the highest bidder.
— Cheating is rampant in high schools and colleges.
— And in sports? The same deal. Doping scandals wreck the Tour de France and cloud the Olympics. Cheating, chemical and otherwise, pervades football and baseball.
If so many people are cheating, how can honest people play by the rules and not be at a disadvantage — in school, at work, in sports, in business?
Do we need an ethical bailout to go along with the financial one?
Join the discussion.
Honestly...
This is a topic difficult to start up a dicussion as it can go in so many directions at once without a central binding theme except perhaps honesty itself in general.
In my opinion, as for crooks during declining economic times it appears they get desperate as well and this brings things to a head where they can get caught more easily. After the big economic shake-up is through perhaps all we will be left with are honest folks trying to make an honest living? We can only hope.