By Lawrence Davidson

February 12, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Cheating, and the lying that always accompanies it, is probably as old as the human species. At the same time, that is probably how long we have known that they are harmful traits. The Eighth Commandment (out of the famous ten) tells us not to bear false witness, which means, don’t lie. Most older societies had someone assigned to monitor the marketplace for reliable weights and measures—because left to themselves, most capitalists, of all times and places, cheat. This reality was and still is confirmed by the Roman warning “caveat emptor,” let the buyer beware.

This perennial problem is still with us and can only be held at bay by education, regulation, and standards set by role models and other worthy authority figures. Alas, these standards are slipping in the case of the United States and thus, our tendency to cheat is witnessing a growth phase. Here are some recent examples:

(1) The Astros baseball team cheated to win the World Series in the 2017 season. Baseball is the “national sport” of the United States and as such it is supposed to hold an honorable place in our culture. But did that stop what must have been nearly the entire Astros team (every batter must have been in on the scheme) from involving themselves in the “game plan” to steal their opponents’ pitching signs? Not at all. 

(2) Then we were shown how willing numerous well-to-do Americans were to suborn the college entrance process by buying their children into elite schools. The educational system in the United States is supposedly a mark of national pride, but so is the status of wealth. So why shouldn’t the latter assure entrance into the former? To make it so, all one has to do is cheat (in these cases bribery was the vehicle).

(3) And, by the way, students in colleges and universities, high-end schools or otherwise, can engage in the cheating process by plagiarizing. Term papers and other pre-prepared, and illicit, assignments are for sale online.