> Why should anyone be honest when it goes entirely unappreciated and unrewarded?

This is a good example of the attitude that I'm describing.

Your question is close to an unthinkable culture shock to me.

In my values and ethics, honesty isn't transactional. It's not something you practice because you expect the same back. It's not something that you regulate and only provide to others that meet some moral bar that you set.

Honesty is just something you do because it's ethically right to do so.

( Nor by the way, is it motivated out of some fear of omnipotent reprisal. )

It depends on context. Imagine you're playing poker or some other game where being deceptive gives you an advantage. Do you tell the other poker players your hand because Honesty is the ethically right thing to do? You wouldn't win many games. On the other end of the spectrum are your dealings with your own friends and family. You're expected to be honest with them. I'm not going to try to place the job hunt anywhere particular on this spectrum, but surely it's somewhere in between.

When playing a game, honesty doesn't require you to announce your cards. But it would be considered dishonest to set up hidden cameras to see your opponent's cards.

>In my values and ethics, honesty isn't transactional. It's not something you practice because you expect the same back.

Nor in mine, I'd like to be honest 100% of the time. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, and practicing morality usually just opens you up to be exploited and stepped on. It doesn't mean you need to be a shitty person, but you also shouldn't be a doormat.

Bad people don't play by the rules. If the good people let them they will take over. The only solution is for everyone to break the rules.

What the parent poster saying boils down to "They have money so they deserve to be robbed." Funny to hear in an industry where most members get paid multiples of the median wage.

They sortof have a just world fallacy going on, a trap I often fall into. I wish it was.

I think you're more accurate here, fuck them. The reality is I'm fortunate to be an office drone instead of treated as utterly disposable in a gig economy. And if someday AI gets good enough to replace me, I will be replaced.

If "They" here meant me, then far from it. I certainly don't subscribe to the Just World fallacy.

If you're only honest or ethical when you think you'll get some good back from it, then you aren't being honest at all, you're just doing what is convenient, even if you believe any reward is deferred, possibly all the way to a future existence entirely.