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Exposure to socialism increases the proclivity to cheat?

Trausti said:
A study:

From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall divided one nation into two distinct political regimes. We exploited this natural experiment to investigate whether the socio-political context impacts individual honesty. Using an abstract die-rolling task, we found evidence that East Germans who were exposed to socialism cheat more than West Germans who were exposed to capitalism.
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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2457000

Seems plausible. Other variables may be at play. [Emphasis added.]
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There's an understatement.
 
Emily Lake said:
But still - the risk of losing my job is the only risk I face. If my company does well, I get paid my salary; if the company does poorly, I still get paid my salary. My income is stable regardless of how well or poorly the company performs, until it reaches an extreme. That stability of income is worth a lot to me.
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It's worth a lot to a lot of people.

If I were an owner, then my income would wax and wane with the performance of the company. My income would be unstable. That's a risk that I don't want. I don't want that instability in my income. I have fixed expenses and I have fixed investments. I don't want to have to worry about not being able to pay my mortgage. That's something that causes me serious stress. And I make a pretty good living. I can't imagine that someone who earns less than I do would be at all willing to trade a stable income in return for more decision-making power. I don't think that the instability and uncertainty would be worth the power to them.
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Exactly. I have lived just about all of my adult life in an environment of unstable income. IIRC my wife has had a stable income for less than two years during our marriage and I haven't had a stable one since 2009. For budgeting purposes we consider unstable incomes to be the lowest we have seen--which is $0. (Yes, since our incomes are now both unstable that means we consider our ability to repay debt with income to be $0--we will only consider debt we are capable of repaying with assets.)

I have seen one of my wife's coworkers envy her pay system (50% of money collected due to her work) and lobby the boss for the same deal. It went south pretty fast when he found that billed != collected and the delay (from weeks to years) between the work and the paycheck.

Being risk averse doesn't equate to being lazy. I'm far from lazy, and I care very much about my life. I find it rather offensive that you assume that because I don't seek power and ownership means I'm lazy and I don't care. That's not it at all. I'm just risk averse, and I don't want the uncertainty that comes with ownership.
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The problem is that they don't see it as a risk. They have this fantasy that business owners live on easy street and are keeping the rest of us down.
 
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