<story><title>My high-flying life as a corporate spy who lied his way to the top</title><url>https://narratively.com/my-high-flying-life-as-a-corporate-spy-who-lied-his-way-to-the-top/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>howmayiannoyyou</author><text>White collar criminal investigations and prosecutions have declined as counter-terrorism, drug, counter-espionage and politically motivated investigations have (greatly) increased. Is it reasonable to expect the majority of people to act virtuously when doing so puts them at great disadvantage in an effectively unregulated environment? This is what Liv Boree might call a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and&amp;#x2F;or flourish.&lt;p&gt;The private sector attempts to control its own. SCIP, the Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals, has a code of ethics that wouldn&amp;#x27;t approve of this article. How many SCIP members adhere to that code is a separate question, one I&amp;#x27;d rather not know the real answer to. Similarly, hiring managers and recruiters will sometimes interview for phantom job descriptions, the real goal being eliciting competitor information.&lt;p&gt;Patriotism, religion, legalism, altruistic idealism... there&amp;#x27;s no shortage of things we can cling to when doing the right thing is difficult. But without accountability &amp;amp; enforcement, unrestrained competition makes unethical behavior almost appear to be a necessity. We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>godelski</author><text>Most people put their grocery carts back, stop at stop signs and lights at the middle of night on a lone road, and there&amp;#x27;s plenty of examples where people go out of their way to do the right thing. There&amp;#x27;s this common misconception that most people are act immorally but in reality the law is only written for the few. For a very clear example, I doubt murder rates would change were it not illegal. Most people don&amp;#x27;t want to kill and recognize it as intrinsically immoral. The problem is that we ignore normal behavior and this makes us overestimate abnormal behavior.</text></comment>
<story><title>My high-flying life as a corporate spy who lied his way to the top</title><url>https://narratively.com/my-high-flying-life-as-a-corporate-spy-who-lied-his-way-to-the-top/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>howmayiannoyyou</author><text>White collar criminal investigations and prosecutions have declined as counter-terrorism, drug, counter-espionage and politically motivated investigations have (greatly) increased. Is it reasonable to expect the majority of people to act virtuously when doing so puts them at great disadvantage in an effectively unregulated environment? This is what Liv Boree might call a Moloch trap - a game theoretic perspective on the common good eroded as competing individual actors seek to survive and&amp;#x2F;or flourish.&lt;p&gt;The private sector attempts to control its own. SCIP, the Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals, has a code of ethics that wouldn&amp;#x27;t approve of this article. How many SCIP members adhere to that code is a separate question, one I&amp;#x27;d rather not know the real answer to. Similarly, hiring managers and recruiters will sometimes interview for phantom job descriptions, the real goal being eliciting competitor information.&lt;p&gt;Patriotism, religion, legalism, altruistic idealism... there&amp;#x27;s no shortage of things we can cling to when doing the right thing is difficult. But without accountability &amp;amp; enforcement, unrestrained competition makes unethical behavior almost appear to be a necessity. We really must do better, but we are now so far removed from the collective consequences of our individual misbehavior, the road to ruin might be unavoidable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rcarr</author><text>This is one of the root problems of Western society today and I think it has its origin in the financial crisis. The perpetrators got off scott free everywhere (except Iceland) and everyone who wasn’t a banker ended up paying the price.&lt;p&gt;The other core component is economies completely dependent on house price rises rather than productive work.&lt;p&gt;The result is a break down of trust, community and decent behaviour.</text></comment>