AN INTEGRITY TEST: WOULD YOU PASS IT?

I was thinking about a scenario today on my way home from Pasadena. It was a scenario that asked a question that would demand the utmost in integrity. We are living in what some have described as ” An Age of Impunity”. A time when people in power go largely, or completely unpunished...whether it be comedians, politicians, athletes, Wall Street fat cats, bankers, etc.....we are witnessing a time that seems to be increasingly safe for those who would put selfish interests above the interests of others...in most cases, breaking the law, violating someone’s civil right’s, or any other form of corruption and impropriety, in the name of greed.

Imagine this scenario, if you will, as I did....

Imagine you have made a pact with a friend...a close friend. The two of you have pooled your monies together to buy some lottery tickets. You write up a pact, a contract, that says that if one of the lottery tickets that were purchased jointly were to be a winning ticket, that the monies would be split 50/50. You write this contract up on paper and you both sign it. You also state on the signed paper that if either one of you were to die and not be able to collect the winnings of a potential winning ticket, then the deceased person’s rightful portion would go to their spouse, or children. The contract is signed by both parties and no one else knows about the contract. There are NO witnesses to the contract and no one even knows that the lottery tickets were purchased, except for the two people who paid for the tickets and who have the agreement.

Through a strange and unfortunate twist, one of the two men who jointly purchased the lottery tickets dies in an accident....the very next day one of the tickets that the two men jointly purchased is a lottery winner. The winning ticket is worth $1,000,000. The surviving ticket purchaser collects the $1,000,000, knowing that he is the only one who knows that the ticket was purchased jointly, with a designated and signed agreement that details how potential winnings would be shared.

If the surviving lottery ticket winner takes the money and puts it into his bank account...no one will ever know that half of the money belongs to his now deceased co-purchaser. The signed contract is in his possession. The widow and her children will never know that they were entitled to half of the $1,000,000.

How many people would keep the full $1,000,000 and fail to share the winnings with the unsuspecting widow of the deceased co-owner of the winning ticket?

I thought about how I felt about this question. If my life depended on how close I was to guessing the % of people who would keep the full $1,000,000 for themselves....I think my guess would be 80% or more....only 20% (at most) would voluntarily disclose that the ticket was purchased jointly...and therefore hand over $500,000 that would otherwise have been kept by the only survivor...with the Truth forever buried for eternity.

Am I off? Am I being too cynical? I don’t think so...though I hope so....no one knows for sure how they would respond if this same scenario were played out in their life and they were the one who was faced with the decision to keep $1,000,000, and to never be uncovered as a cheater, or to give away the $500,000 as any honorable person would do.....

In this age...at this time....in the age of ”Mad Men” and Jameis Winston, and big money, and corrupt politicians----in the age of impunity, I bow to cynicism.

Food for Thought.....