Why People Commit White Collar Fraud (Ozy linkpost)

post by sapphire (deluks917) · 2025-03-03T19:33:15.609Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

This is a link post for https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/book-review-why-they-do-it

Contents

No comments

I have been seriously involved in the rationalist community since 2014. Many people I know have, in my considered opinion, committed financial crimes. Some were prosecuted others were not. Almost all of them thought they weren't doing anything wrong. Or at least the discrepancies weren't a big deal. This is a good review about fraud and why people do it. 

Soltes suggests a simple plan for avoiding committing fraud:

1. Regularly explain your work life to someone—your spouse, your best friend, your mom—whom you trust, who has good judgment, and who doesn’t work at the same company as you.
2. If the person says “what the fuck? what are you doing? that’s fraud!”, believe them.

That’s what happened in the only case Soltes found of someone stopping their fraud before it all collapsed around them. You need an outside voice: someone who isn’t as delusionally optimistic as you are and who isn’t socialized into your company’s dysfunctional norms. Most fraud is—at least in broad strokes—obviously bad to someone you’re explaining it to. The complicated part is all the justifications that what you’re doing is secretly all right.

0 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.