Do most people cheat?

Yes, most people are dishonest, according to Dan Ariely. Not all the time, or in big ways. It’s the widespread minor lying and cheating that really hurt society, however, he says.

Ariely is a professor of behavior economics (a field I never heard of before), and his examples tend in involve cheating for monetary benefit. I suppose a large amount of cheating is done for that reason, and certainly it would be easier to measure if you’re trying to quantify people’s tendency to lie and cheat.

I wonder whether his results would change any, however, if he were dealing with lying that was aimed primarily at influencing others’ opinions. I assume it would be even more widespread, but would it show the same patterns in terms of what does and does not dissuade people from lying?

And what about lying that does not affect us directly, but affects someone else? Do people lie more readily to gain something for themselves, or to make someone else look bad? (And of course we don’t usually think of it as lying, just selective use of the truth.)

I also can’t help wondering whether Ariely’s results are skewed by the fact that his test subjects are usually college students. I can’t imagine that I would have cheated on his matrix test then or now, because I just don’t cheat on tests. But I know that in other areas, I was less honest at that age than I am now.

As a college student, I would keep extra change that a store clerk gave me by mistake. Now I promptly return it. As a young adult in the workplace, I would not intentionally cheat but I would not readily admit a mistake as I would now.

I don’t know whether it’s having children and feeling a need to be a role model, feeling more responsibility to society in general, or just the overall process of maturing. But I would not think that the behavior of college students can be fairly extrapolated to the population at large.

It’s not that I find it hard to believe that most people cheat in little ways from time to time. That’s just one manifestation of people’s fallen nature. If I am scrupulously honest with money now, it is in part because of a couple of instances of minor dishonesty as a college student that convinced me that the guilty conscience was not worth whatever small benefits my dishonesty had gained me.

I think his studies show some interesting insights into what measures are more effective in preventing cheating. I have read elsewhere about the effect of being reminded of moral codes, whether by directing seeing/hearing them, or simply by talk about God or the Bible. I am somewhat surprised that the prospect of getting caught doesn’t have more of an effect – I think it would for me.

JA BizTown

I’ve been a Junior Achievement classroom volunteer for several years, but today was my first experience with JA BizTown. I agreed to volunteer mostly because my son wanted me to, but now I’m glad I saw firsthand what it was all about.

When I was a junior in high school, I got my first exposure to business operations, as part of a Junior Achievement company called Vendex. We sold $1 shares in our company to raise capital, then manufactured denim tote bags, and sold them. My mother used her Vendex bag for years, and I wish I still had one now as a memento of that experience.

At the time I had no interest in the administrative side of business. I had to help sell shares, and later tote bags, but other than that I stuck to working in production. I learned about the problems it created when workers were absent, or when they sat around talking instead of working, and the station I was working at had nothing to do because one of the previous stations on the line had gotten behind.

That was a year-long program (meeting weekly), so we got a good look at what it took to have a successful business. (We did earn a profit, though I don’t remember how much of a dividend we were able to distribute at the end.) Our adult volunteers (from Stanley Tools in New Britain, CT) had already procured the product idea, design, and production machinery (sewing machines), but we did the rest – under their excellent guidance.

BizTown, on the other hand, is a one-day simulation (though some businesses do make and sell simple products), giving students less in-depth but more breadth in terms of what goes on in the “real world” their parents work in. They each have a job (for which they had to interview in the weeks of preparation back at school before the actual event), they receive two paychecks which they deposit at the BizTown bank, and during breaks from work they go out into the “city” and spend money at other businesses.

User-friendly ketchup packets

You know those packets of ketchup that make such a mess if you don’t open them just right? Heinz has developed a new “dip and squeeze” container that holds three times as much ketchup and can be opened by peeling back the lid, just like the jelly containers you get in restaurants. (It can also be squeezed through the other end, for use on burgers.)

Sometimes packaging doesn’t matter a whole lot. I don’t care what kind of cup my yogurt comes in, I just want it to taste good. And some packaging innovations actually lose sales. Last year Frito-Lay had to switch back to the old Sun Chips bags because the new biodegradable bags were too noisy. But once in a while I will pay extra for the right packaging – such as cartons of orange juice with a twist-off lid, so I can shake the carton before pouring without having to worry about juice coming out the open end.

Since I don’t use ketchup on fries in the car, I’ve never had to resort to opening the packet with my teeth, as some drivers apparently do. (And it certainly never occurred to me to squirt the ketchup right into my mouth, then add fries.) I like the idea of the new container, both for its flexibility and its size (I’m not a big ketchup eater but I’d always need at least two or three packets if I used ketchup at all). But does the difficulty of opening the traditional ketchup packet really have much to do with the decline in French fry orders?

According to this article, the economy has a lot more to do with it. People buy the sandwich and beverage but skip the fries to save money. Other people skip the fries for health reasons (especially in the case of children, who are encouraged to an alternative such as apple slices instead). And people who place their orders based on what’s new and interesting don’t find much in the fries category.

This article blames the decline on quality – or rather, the lack thereof. I do remember that fries used to taste better, but I thought it was my taste that had changed. I don’t really mind that they don’t taste as good, because I know they’re not good for me, and it’s easier to forego something that doesn’t really taste all that great.

Of course, lousy fries just make ketchup all that more important. (Unless, of course, you’re one of those people – like my husband – who prefer to dip fries in mayo.)

Going paperless

Good-bye, check registers. Good-bye, printed bank statements.

At least two years ago, I signed up to “go paperless” with the bank (actually it’s a credit union, but it functions the same as a bank as far as I’m concerned) that I use for most of my payments. I was never waiting until the paper statement came anyway – I’d go online occasionally to check my account balance and add any transactions I had missed to my checkbook register. So by the time the statement came, all I did with it was add it to a stack of papers to eventually store in a box somewhere.

It worked fine as long as I made most of my payments by check. But as I made more and more payments online or using my debit card, the job of keeping my check register up-to-date became increasingly tedious. Having the bank data all online was great. Having to writing it all on a paper register, just so I could do the bank reconciliation (where the errors were always mine, or else too small to spend time tracking down when they were most likely mine anyway), was a pain.

Now and then I thought about the possibility of getting a computer program to record all my finances. That way I’d not only take care of the bank records, I’d also be able to run reports showing me what I was spending my money on. For a while I had tried to track details of my spending in a spreadsheet, but it was a pain to do all that data entry. I don’t know if I’d dislike the chore as much if I had lots of money, but looking at the numbers is always an unpleasant reminder that I wish I were in much better shape financially – but don’t see that happening anytime in the near future.

Paying money for a program to do what I could do manually didn’t appeal to me, though, even if I didn’t like doing it manually. And while there may be freeware out there for that purpose, I wasn’t keen on relying on a program without customer support. (I did decide to pay for money a program to do my taxes this year, but that was because I was pretty sure it would save me money by making sure I didn’t miss any deductions.)

I finally have a solution I’m happy with, however. In recent weeks I’ve been working on using Visual Basic for Applications, together with Microsoft Access, to simplify keeping track of software licenses for my company. I really enjoyed the project, and I started looking for other ways to use my VBA skills. What about making myself a nice little application to record income and expenses and track my bank balances, I thought. Since I would be dealing mostly with numbers rather than names, I decided this time I would work in Excel instead of Access.

Books: The Real Wealth of Nations

I read The Real Wealth of Nations, by Riane Eisler, at the suggestion of ModestyPress. I knew, based on what he said about it, that I would not agree with a lot of it, but I tried to read it with an open mind. Eisler makes some good points, but on the whole I have trouble understanding the high accolades given on the back cover. Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls it “as practical as it is hopeful,” but I had trouble finding much that is practical in it.

The major thrust of Eisler’s book is that traditional economic thinking is based on a hierarchical view of society, in which those on top dominate and those on the bottom submit out of fear and powerlessness. In particular, those who dominate are men, and the half of humanity that does the most important work – caring for others, especially children – is not valued as it should be.

Eisler’s vision is of a world where economic and social structures are based on partnership rather than domination, and the work of caring – for other people and for the natural environment – is valued highly, not just in words but in how economic decisions are made. Children are raised without fear of violence or abuse and receive a good education, people feel more satisfied with life and thus do not feel the need to fill their lives with material things, and crime sharply declines because people have what they need both physically and emotionally.

Books: Radical

 I finally finished David Platt’s book Radical yesterday. When I started it, back on Super Bowl Sunday, I couldn’t put it down. (Admittedly, it doesn’t take much to distract me from watching a football game.) Once I was offered the chance to take it home, and finish it at my leisure, I couldn’t seem to get interested in picking it up again.

That’s perhaps not too unusual a reaction. As one of the editorial reviews at amazon.com points out,

“Sometimes people will commend a book by saying, ‘You won’t want to put it down.’ I can’t say that about this book. You’ll want to put it down, many times. If you’re like me, as you read David Platt’s Radical, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably targeted by the Holy Spirit. You’ll see just how acclimated you are to the American dream.” (Russell D. Moore, dean, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Most days I read for relaxation and intellectual stimulation. I like to sit in a comfy armchair, often with a snack or at least a beverage handy. Picking up a book that makes me feel guilty for time or money I spend on my own comfort doesn’t quite fit the picture.

When I did finally pick it up again yesterday, I had another surprise. Most of what I remembered about the book was the emphasis on American Christians needing to be willing to give up at least some of their material comforts and give to people elsewhere in the world who have so much less. Apparently I had pretty much finished that part of the book, because when I started reading again, it was all about needing to take the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ to people who have never heard, so that they will not all go to Hell.

Books: Moby-Duck

Moby-Duck is my favorite sort of book to read – hard to describe because it does not fit easily into established categories, both educational and enjoyable, challenging me to think about things in new ways but not heavy-handed about it. It covers topics as diverse as the history of plastic, changing views of childhood, the history of Arctic exploration, oceanography, toy factories in China, environmentalism, and the business of maritime shipping.

Throughout, author Donovan Hohn skillfully weaves his various themes with the story of his own travels in search of the thousands of bath toys lost at sea nearly twenty years ago. He brings each scene to life, full of fascinating detail and interesting people, so that even the deployment of scientific equipment from a research vessel reads like an adventure. I doubt I’ll ever go to sea as Hohn did, either for pleasure or education (and certainly not as a job), but I have a much better idea what it is like now – which is one reason I am not likely to go there.

One thing you can’t miss as you read this book is Hohn’s concern about how human behavior is harming the environment. He touches briefly on issues such as global warming and nuclear waste, but primarily it is about plastic in the ocean. One thing I like about his approach is that he doesn’t lecture the reader. He tells what he has learned from his research and what he has seen for himself, and lets the reader draw his own conclusions.

Ubiquitous plastic

 When most people think of the dangers of plastic, they generally have in mind common disposable items such as plastic grocery bags and water bottles. (Of course, there’s also the danger of “using plastic” as in credit cards, which is a whole different problem – though one that no doubt has contributed much to the production and sale of so many consumer items made largely of plastic.) Certainly those items can be a problem, and are often one of the most visible signs of pollution by consumers.

But the book I’ve been reading, Moby Duck, has made me more aware of just how much plastic I use every day. (It’s a fascinating book, part travelogue, part quest, part history, part science, and I’ll review it once I’ve finished reading it.) I’ve known for a long time that we use more plastic today than people did when I was growing up, and that we used more plastic then than when my parents were growing up. But the increase has been gradual enough that I haven’t really paid much attention.

Whether and how to change the flag

Even since I first heard of Puerto Rico when I was a child, I’ve heard arguments about whether or not it should become our 51st state. As with other complex and controversial topics, the arguments I hear or read often sound convincing – until someone else presents a contrary view.

On the whole, I tend to lean toward agreeing with the proponents of statehood, both for reasons of principle and pragmatism. As to principle, why should citizens of this country not have the same kind of voting rights and elected representatives at the federal level? The practical reasons have to do with the economic boost that statehood proponents believe would occur, as it has with other states that entered the Union.

Trying to predict economic outcomes, of course, is difficult at best. But I do think that statehood proponents have a point when they point out the flaws in the economic arguments of opponents to statehood. The latter group claim that since rates of poverty are so high in Puerto Rico, having Puerto Ricans pay federal income tax would generate little revenue, while more tax dollars from the existing fifty states would flow into Puerto Rico.

The question is whether the current state of the economy in Puerto Rico would persist. The opponents of statehood seem to assume that it would. The proponent of statehood point to studies that purport to show that the island’s economy would experience a significant boost. People who know far more about economics than I do can’t agree on the matter, so I’m not going to try to render an opinion. But I do know that the economy is so complex, influenced by so many interdependent factors, that you can’t change a few factors and expect the others not to change also.

The purpose of this post isn’t to argue for or against statehood, however. If the subject interests you, there are a variety of website that discuss the matter. The U.S. Council for Puerto Rico Statehood is – as the name says - for statehood. No Statehood for Puerto Rico and ProEnglish oppose it. This one gives a fairly balanced view, I think, of the issues from both perspectives.

What I found interesting this evening was a far easier question: How could we rearrange the stars on our flag to add in one more? Fifty-one is three times seventeen, but it would hardly work to have three rows of seventeen stars. You could split seventeen into eight and nine, and have six rows of eight and six row of nine, but then you wouldn’t have the nice symmetry of today’s flag, with longer rows of stars at both top and bottom.

Of course, if Puerto Rico became a state, might there be other territories desiring the same status? How would you make a flag with fifty-two stars, or fifty-three? Fortunately, a mathematician and a computer can offer practical solutions to these questions far more easily than economists and politicians can answer the thornier questions regarding statehood.

Check here for an interactive flag calculator that lets you see possible configurations for anywhere from one to one hundred stars – with three exceptions for which there are no valid patterns (at least not using the six most common star configurations). Many numbers offer two or more possible patterns (try clicking on the long, short, alternate, equal, wyoming, and oregon buttons when they are not grayed out).

Books: The Road to Serfdom (cont.)

As I read this book, I bookmarked pages that I knew I would want to go back and refer to when I came to write about it here. I am somewhat dismayed that, looking back at the first page so marked, I cannot figure out what I thought was notable on that page. It is in the introduction, where Hayek is explaining how important it is to understand how National Socialism developed. He emphasizes that the atrocities committed by the Nazis were not because the Germans are worse people than others, but that it was the result of ideas that had taken root in their society decades earlier.

I have to admit that one of my biggest disappointments with the book is that I don’t think Hayek really did show much about how National Socialism developed. Here and there he make mention of certain names, though only sometimes does he actually quote them. But where I had expected to see a clear trail of dates, names, and writings or influential activities, I found mostly brief allusions, and those in no kind of order, or even grouped into a single chapter.

I suppose for those who read the book when it was first written, more of this would have been common knowledge. As I had never heard of most of those he mentions, however, I have no idea what kind of reputation any of them had. Hayek was trained as an economist, not a historian, so I can’t blame him for not writing as a historian might. But I felt that I knew little more about how National Socialism developed when I had finished the book than when I started.

I did find it enlightening, later in the book, to learn how highly the Germans valued a well-organized society. This, it seems to me from Hayek’s writing, was the initial idea of socialism. Not so much an economic system per se, it was a view of how the entire society ought to be structured. In contrast to the individualism of the English (and even more so the Americans), the Germans prided themselves on having organized their society so that everyone had a role, and a duty to fulfill that role for the greater good of Germany.