Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

The declining morals of the young

Are they really declining? Salon makes a good case:

Another educator talks about "the child who has a fit when she doesn't get an A, and the parents go to school and raise hell about the teacher's unfairness and the grade gets changed."

"Unfairness" is the operative word. One of the students Callahan quotes says, "The world isn't fair and sometimes to get where you want you have to sacrifice some integrity." But if the definition of "unfair" is not getting where or what you want (as opposed to what you deserve), it's no wonder integrity seems like an endangered species. If you're raised with an exaggerated notion of your own capabilities, of course you're going to think that the system is rigged when you don't qualify for the upper echelons. People of mediocre talents trying for the highest honors are always going to find the competition unbearably ferocious.

It's one of the frustrating realities of human nature that we usually want explanations from people who behave badly and they can rarely come up with ones that satisfy us. In his first interview (also for the Observer) after his dismissal from the Times, Jayson Blair offered a bizarre farrago of reasons for his actions. Although there was every sign that he got preferential treatment as a protégé of executive editor Howell Raines, Blair claimed to have been the victim of racism. Colleagues who (rightly) questioned the accuracy of his work were, he insisted, out to get him. The possibility that he just didn't have what it took never really comes up. "Was I too young?" he asked. "For a newspaper reporter's job at a great newspaper, maybe not. Was I too young for a snake pit like that? Maybe."

People who deliberately do wrong always have these sorts of excuses: They had to cheat because they never got a fair chance, their behavior was no worse than anyone else's, the need to "survive" trumps the nicer considerations of professional ethics, and so on. But such excuses don't mean those pressures don't exist at all. It's easy to ding a corporate lawyer for doing anything to make partner; it's a lot harder to condemn a Sears auto mechanic for overbilling to meet new quotas so he can keep the job that's supported his family for decades.

One tidbit I found very interesting: the article implies that moral corner-cutting has gotten worse as society has gotten more meritocratic; professionals could afford to have values when race, gender and class formed an artificial barrier to competition.

Oh, and it says journalists are scum. But tell us something we don't already know.

Posted by Jane Galt at February 24, 2004 7:38 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links