A better system is a mixture of the better aspects of both capitalism and socialism. Getting the mix right is a challenge, but arguing for impossibilities like "a purely free market" or "pure socialism" are extremist and unrealistic.

Except I'm not talking about a phone, I'm using an iPad tablet.

Yes, they "cheat" more because that's how they learned to cope with the state. Any state. And given the American state's ethics, or I should say, near complete lack thereof, I see no reason to hold communist state emigre's adaptation behaviors against them. The IRS on the other hand, most likely has a different view.

You were socialized by your environment to be better at lying that telling the truth. You learned to "cheat" and it's easier than not at this point. Living in the US I once knew a Russian emigre who essentially was living in the US completely under the radar. He was an excellent and successful programmer and mathematician, but the way he did business with everyone was as if he needed to work-around or subvert the system, not because he was "unethical" but simply because it was what he knew best how to do.

Well, don't look to capitalism. Even Adam Smith recognized it's largely driven by the "invisible hand" of greed. Not exactly ethical, moral or responsible. Or for that matter, respectful of the individual and not particularly intelligent (pragmatic though, I suppose).

And if you doubt my assertion, read this: http://science.slashdot.org/co...

Absolutely, in the upside-down world of communist states, it may be that lying and stealing are the appropriate ways to remain ethical. So you can't use these elements to measure ethics.

Nice to get some real insight on how things work for a change, thanks for these stories. You might consider putting some of these up on a blog. These pretty much completely invalidate the so-called social "science" discussed in the OP. The problem being, the presumption that the amount of stealing going on is any measure of ethics.

Didn't you get the memo? Capitalism is the worst system of economics there is, except for all the others. That's the mantra, anyhow.

An "open market" is open to market manipulation by the bigger players. Open markets that remain level playing fields do not and have never existed except in theoretician's minds.

On the other hand, perhaps the problem is all the corporate welfare, making systems like the American one more like socialism for the rich.

Sounds about as realistic as a "free market".

They should test corporate CEOs. They have not proven to be the most ethical bunch of late, or for that matter, ever. If that's as good as capitalist ethics gets, I'd say the difference between socialism and capitalism when it comes to ethics is negligible.

Many people on welfare already have jobs, they qualify for welfare because their resultant pay is too low compared with the cost of living. "Forcing people off welfare" isn't going to fix the problem there.

Given the apparent interest in Privacy Badger it's clear in the US most people are still using desktops. I almost never browse on a desktop anymore, and the fact that Privacy Badger insists on running as a desktop browser plug-in makes it useless to me. And before you whine about how Apple won't this or Apple won't that, I am using a less heuristic web filter on iOS that I believe operates as a proxy (Weblock. Note: NOT Web Lock, though I suppose that might work too). So it seems to me it's possible to do in iOS. Plus, a proxy version rather than a browser plug-in would be preferrable anyhow, I tend to use multiple browsers on every platform, and I could set up a Raspberry PI to host it and at least my at-home browsing with the iPad and everything else would be able to use that in any case...