Porphyrogenitus notes that while people get upset about corporate accounting scandals, they remain calm, and even apathetic toward even more massive government accounting scandals. He’s not the first to note this, of course, but I’ve never really given much thought as to why (other than the obvious reason–that most of those whining hate business, and love government).

But that doesn’t explain it totally. Social Security is, after all, a Ponzi scheme, and likely to impact everyone down the road in the same way that the Enron implosion pounded its employees, yet relatively few people seem concerned about it.

I’m thinking that it’s because when a business keeps dodgy books, the consequences are real and immediate, with little recourse. But when a government does it, they can always just increase taxes. Governments don’t go out of business, so people who are concerned about bad bookkeeping for materialistic reasons (they might get ripped off in a painful way), rather than on principle, don’t mind when the government does it.

It’s much the same attitude that people had toward Mr. Clinton’s corruption. As long as their portfolio kept going up, and he wasn’t sending thugs after them, let it ride…

This is a general problem with human nature, but our educational system doesn’t help. The concept of a code of ethical conduct, and doing things just because they’re right, seems more and more alien to more and more of the population. It’s not emphasized in public schools, and fewer and fewer are going to religious schools, or Sunday School, in which such ethics would be expected to be taught. Hence, in the voting booth, it’s every man and woman for themselves, and the results often show it.