Stupid stats knocked me off my train of thought, if that's not a mixed metaphor. If it's not a mixed metaphor, then I'm still on the train. Not on train therefore not mixed metaphor. I wonder if one of my premises is wrong.
Reading my comments led me, via FukiBlog, to a Julian Sanchez review of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, by David Callahan, New York: Harcourt, 304 pages, $26
I have a slightly different point to make, based on this passage:
Sometime in the late ’70s, according to Callahan’s narrative, a nefarious cabal of "laissez faire ideologues" began remaking American law and culture along Social Darwinist lines. The ever-increasing disparity between the jackpot rewards for a few winners at the top and the more modest returns to the average professional, as well as managerial pressure on employees to be more productive, increased the incentive to cut corners to get ahead, even as the steely-eyed government watchdogs who had long held cheating in check were declawed. The cheaters soon reached a critical mass, creating a sense that "everyone is doing it," that cheating is positively necessary just to keep up, and eroding the social and professional norms that had hitherto made the average person reluctant to defraud clients and colleagues. Hence the "epidemic" of cheating we see today.
There’s probably something to this argument. It certainly will be part of any correct account of why people cheat.
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