Cheating

I had a dream last night about cheating.  The details aren't pretty vague, so I won't go into the dream.  It made me think of the possibility that cheating could be something really hard to stop.  If enough people cheated, an entire society can come crashing down.

In order for a society to work, people have to be honest.  Let's say you see somebody cheat, and get away with it.  How does that make you feel when you are honest, and struggle, while this other guy cheats, and prospers?  The honest guy feels like a fool, right?  So, he figures, if everybody is going to cheat, and nothing is going to be done about it, he may as well cheat too.

One of the main themes about economics is the concept of incentive.  If you incentivize cheating, there will be more of it.  Also, if you disincentivize cheating, there should be less of it.  The way to stop cheating is to make it hard to do, and almost impossible to get away with it.

When you see the government not enforcing the laws, you can expect more lawlessness.  If you see the government enforcing the laws unevenly, you can see more corruption.  Isn't that the kind of thing we see these days?

How do you know that the government's statistics are accurate?  Is there any monitoring of the numbers to make sure that they are accurate?   What about the stock market?  Can those prices be rigged?  You have to believe that the numbers can be rigged so that some people can make a lot of money that way.  If there's no enforcement of a honest system in the markets, who knows what the true prices of things are?  Also, elections can be rigged.  If you want an honest government when you know that there's not one in office, you just may have a problem getting rid of the crooks.

How far does the cheating go and what can be done about it?