I think you missed the point, he even says that ANY moral ideals make it less likely for us to rationalize a cheat.
I completely understood the point, and totally disagree. Notwithstanding that 'moral ideals' are not universally definable, I believe there are situations where sound 'moral ideals' would make it JUSTIFIABLE to rationalize cheating.
Case in point: Our old Verizon internet service in the US had an average of 30 hours of downtime per month. Verizon's excuse for this was "Server overload during peak use hours." In addition to that, our contract stipulated "1.5 to 3 mbps" but in reality it never peaked at more than 980 kbps. Verizon's tech center's only excuse was that we were located in the middle of a "highly saturated service zone". Their service tech that troubleshot our problem blamed it on an antiquated, overburdened junction box 800 meters downwind that was well-known (by the field techs) to be causing bottlenecks.
Of course, we were still expected to fulfill the terms of our contract by paying our bill every month in full. Other than being very apologetic, Verizon was unwilling to either prorate us for the downtime or replace whatever equipment required replacement on their end.
So at the end of our year-long contract, we canceled Verizon, got together with our neighbor, bought an 8 port switch and 100 feet of ethernet cable, and kicked them down $20 a month to jack into their 3mbps TimeWarner conex.
What we did is a step beyond cheating. TimeWarner's service contract expressly forbids its customers from re-distributing its service, dog-forbid re-selling it.
But this situation didn't BEGIN with us saying, "Why should we pay Verizon $54.95 for internet service when we can give our neighbor 20 bucks a month for the same thing, thus benefiting both ourselves and our neighbor at the expense of Verizon and TimeWarner? Yeah, let's do it...Fuck the system!"
No, it began with Verizon assuming itself morally and legally un-obligated to inform us of service deficiencies in our area that were well-known by its personnel before signing us up. The culmination of this was that we felt morally (not to mention financially) OBLIGATED to take action to eliminate, not the monthly bill, but the stress, anger, and feelings of being cheated out of something that was promised us and never received in full.
Do you see my point yet? Sure, cheating sometimes begins with a guy simply pilfering pencils from his employer, but sometimes that guy's motivation runs far deeper than petty personal gain. Your video was very slickly produced, what with the witty illustrations and all, but it failed miserably to account for the underlying concrete realities of cheating.
Entities like Verizon, which legally insulate themselves from 'moral ideals' regarding cheating, then dump all the moral obligation on their clients, are themselves providing enormous encouragement for society at large to view cheating as a sound moral ideal in and of itself. All that "Bankers should have the opportunity to confess, blah blah..." was just asinine! I couldn't care less if Verizon were to publicly apologize for lying to me and robbing me of hundreds of dollars. Not that it will ever happen, until Verizon finds itself facing bankruptcy and is forced to apologize as part of its government bailout, like General Motors had to (We're sorry we pushed gas-guzzling SUVs on the American Public, now give us our 20 billion dollar bailout...uh, please.
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You sound bitter, not objective.
Is The Great Light of Objectivity at the end of my tunnel of bitterness paved in concrete? If it is, feel free to pursue your moral obligation to guide me there.
