Integrity is costly, but only if you view financial loss as the sole cost, and ignore the upside of being able to live with yourself.

I'd love to believe that being honest and ethical will one day provide some kind of reward, but the reality is that it doesn't - in fact in this world you are indeed punished for it - so you just have to accept that being good is its own reward.

It's something I really struggle with - the fact that the more dishonest you are, the more willing you are to lie, cheat, steal, kill, mislead, destroy, hurt, insult, and all the rest, the more successful you will be. I've seen it over and over in business - retail magnates practically eat children for breakfast. I remember "do you employ any n-ggers" lady, who runs a major UK fashion label, and "I know we said we'd pay but what the fuck are you going to do about it, my brother's the local magistrate" with particular fondness. The worst part about the former was watching others in the business not care and still want to do the deal - I had to torpedo it, as there was no way I'd be able to work with this inhumane individual.

I mean - look at the PeOTUS - he's a shining example of what this world now holds as good. Hell, I remember posting 18 months ago about how Holmes wasn't all she seemed to be and HN calling me every shitty name under the sun (I was a misogynist, jealous, rageface, you name it), and yet now that it's the majority view that she's not all she seemed to be, that opinion is fine.

Tribes who blindly support the strong angry man, rather than the honest man. We'd rather go stick heads on poles over a yam theft than admit we didn't plant the yam in the first place. Nothing has changed.

>>I'd love to believe that being honest and ethical will one day provide some kind of reward, but the reality is that it doesn't - in fact in this world you are indeed punished for it - so you just have to accept that being good is its own reward.

What you are saying is true. Trump got rewarded the presidency for his lack of integrity. The lesson seems to be that only morons allow their sense of integrity to rule them.

Also for his opponent's lack of integrity (whether real or merely perceived).

I wonder how the Sanders/Trump contest would have been decided. Certainly Sanders was perceived by folks I knew to have more integrity.

Trump would have won, for the simple reason that he can slip between incongruent realities seamlessly - he is so well practiced a liar that speaking two contradictory untruths in a sentence doesn't cause him pause, and his audience selectively hears the truth they wish to hear. Honestly - watch interviews with his voters - he is all things to all men, often contradictory things. He projects his realities outwards, and his followers reflect them back to him, amplified by their own perceptual filters, and it reinforces.

Take a straight man like Sanders. He's consistent. When you only work with one reality, as he does, you limit your ability to slip and feint between narratives as trump does, and as a result your appeal is limited to people in that or similar realities.

In short, if you're prepared to cheat, any move is legal, and an opponent playing by the rules cannot win - particularly if you are also the adjudicator.

It doesn't really matter. Trump would just have made up lots of stuff about Sanders and people would have eaten it up. I mean, most people think that Trump is more honest than Hillary. Once you've gotten to the point where people are too stupid to distinguish between the two you are fucked. You even see it here in HN with supposedly smart people(maybe). They like to suggest or imply that Hillary's flaws are at the same level as Trump's. This country is doomed.

Or maybe you mean people in Macedonia would have made up a lot of stuff and Trump would just have ran with it! The one thing with narcissists is their lack of creativity (there are a few exceptions, but Trump isn't one of them). So they rely heavily on others to do anything.

   HN calling me every shitty name

Could you link to that old post? It would be interesting to see who did the name calling.

I went digging but it's a long way back in my comment history, when breathless stories about their revolutionary technology were hitting the front page. Nobody really appreciated me picking holes in the makeup of their board, or the rather contrived mutual star vehicle setup they had her in.

I do have a tendency to be cynical, but I do so based on experience, both first hand and from history.

I agree, unfortunately there was no "honest man"/woman to pick from in the end (Bernie Sanders was eliminated early, and perhaps unfairly).

I usually look into how long people in the team have stuck around.

Its usually a positive signal that mgmt is doing things right, if the smartest people on the team have stuck around for a bit.

I avoid founders\managers\teams\startups with great resumes but lot of churn.