CARPE DIEM Who’d a-thunk it? Socialism is demoralizing, socially corrosive, and promotes individual dishonesty and cheating? Posted: 19 Jul 2014 06:23 AM PDT Here’s the abstract of the research paper “The (True) Legacy of Two Really Existing Economic Systems“: By running an experiment among Germans collecting their passports or ID cards in the citizen centers of Berlin, we find that individuals with an East German family background cheat significantly more on an abstract task than those with a West German family background. The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat on our task. While it was recently argued that markets decay morals (Falk and Szech, 2013), we provide evidence that other political and economic regimes such as socialism might have an even more detrimental effect on individuals’ behavior. And here’s part of the conclusion: If socialism indeed promotes individual dishonesty, the specific features of this socio-political system that lead to this outcome remain to be determined. The East German socialist regime differed from the West German capitalist regime in several important ways. First, the system did not reward work based to merit, and made it difficult to accumulate wealth or pass anything on to one’s family. This may have resulted in a lack of meaning leading to demoralization (Ariely et al., 2008), and perhaps less concern for upholding standards of honesty. Furthermore, while the government claimed to exist in service of the people, it failed to provide functional public systems or economic security. Observing this moral hypocrisy in government may have eroded the value citizens placed on honesty. Finally, and perhaps most straightforwardly, the political and economic system pressured people to work around official laws and cheat to game the system. Over time, individuals may come to normalize these types of behaviors. Given these distinct possible influences, further research will be needed to understand which aspects of socialism have the strongest or most lasting impacts on morality. Here’s a link to an article in The Economist about the paper “Lying Commies: The more people are exposed to socialism, the worse they behave.” Related: My 1995 article “Why Socialism Failed.”
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 11:37:39 +0000
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