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The Current Transcript for September 7, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

It's against the rules so it's cheating, no matter how you put it, right. The little kids watching the game. I got to now that we're all going to think they can videotape it, right, and send it to their friends or whatever.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The Boston Red Sox were caught stealing this week, deciphering signals between the New York Yankees catchers and pitchers and then using Apple Watches to relay that valuable information to their own teammates. Now sign or signal stealing is expected in baseball, especially among storied rivals, like the Yankees and the Red Sox, but using electronic devices to do it, that's the offense. All of which got us wondering about the connection between cheating and technology and the peculiar ways we find to legitimize behavior that might otherwise make us uneasy. We'll tell you more in an hour. Also today meet Amy and Ben 13 year old twins starting high school this week. Ben is going to a private school for kids with autism. His sister, often his source of support, will be in a different school separated from each other’s school day for the first time.

SOUNDCLIP

Ben has to find who I am in a lot of ways like obviously people know my name. Amy. But if I'm just meeting them they will say: “Oh your Ben’s sister”, or when Ben acts, so they'll come to me for help.

AMT: In half an hour our new season long project Adaptation learns how each of them confronts that change. But we begin with the fury over the figures specifically the Trudeau government's plan to Bill to bring in Major tax changes for small business.

SOUNDCLIP

I find it extremely ironic that politicians are giving so much lip service to improving a lot of the middle class. Small business is the middle class. There is no better representation of the middle class.

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

How proposed changes to Canada's tax system could hit small business

Guests: Mark Wales, Chris Struthers, Michelle Cohen

SOUNDCLIP

They're, opposed to us, bringing in more tax fairness that's going to help the middle class and those working hard to join it, at the cost of some of our most successful Canadians. I will make no apologies for this approach.

AMT: Well, despite plenty of opposition from the conservative party, from small business owners and more, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to be sticking to his guns and to his new tax plan. If you listen to his critics the plan has all the makings of a new class war. The liberals, for their part, describe it as a way to address what they call unfair tax advantages here. In a nutshell are the three main areas or loopholes, depending on who you ask, that the plan takes on.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: Income sprinkling.

VOICE 2: Income sprinkling allows business owners to lower their tax rate by splitting their income with family members in lower tax brackets.

VOICE 1: Capital gains.

VOICE 2: Another reform will target people who claim regular business income as capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate.

VOICE 1: Passive income.

VOICE2: Limiting so-called passive investment income. It's complicated, but this basically involves taking cash out of a business to invest in things like stocks or real estate, rather than reinvesting it in a company.

AMT: A consultation period around those changes was launched in July that is set to end on the 2nd of October. So far the Liberals have been getting an earful. We have three guests standing by to share what these proposed changes could mean for them. Mark Wales, is a vegetable farmer from Aylmer, Ontario. Chris Struthers is the owner of Struthers Tech.com, a small business in Penticton, B.C. and Michelle Cohen is a family physician from Brighton, Ontario. Hello everyone, welcome.

GUESTS: Good morning. Good morning. Morning.

AMT: Mark Wales, let's start with you. Tell us a bit about your farming business.

MARK WALES: Well, I farm south of Aylmer, Ontario. It's not a very large farm but I grow mostly hot peppers now and garlic and a bit of corn and soybeans. I do it as a sole proprietor. My partner and I we have another farm south of Ottawa and she has a much larger farm. She has three daughters who we would like to bring in to the farming operation over time and use the intergenerational rules which is where we're seeing the I guess the prime minister has described this as tax fairness. I would suggest that what they are trying to do is actually creating tax chaos.

AMT: Okay, three daughters how old?

MARK WALES: They range from 24 to 30. We would like to have them take ownership of the farm because currently there are four generations living on the farm. Ellie's mother, who is 92, still living on the farm. Eleanor herself, her daughter and son in law and two young children have come back. So, some of the children will be involved in the farm in the future, maybe all over time but we'll figure that one out and some may not. So the new rules will make that extremely difficult and extremely costly for those children who are not active in the farm but you want to pass it on to them.

AMT: How so? How will it make it more difficult?

MARK WALES: Well the children who are actively involved in the farm will have to, or not, will have to face what's called the reasonableness test for any dividends they might receive. So, the onus is going to be on them to prove that they have actually either earn any income they receive or made an investment or taken some risk in the farm. So that's going to cause a lot of cost. And one of the big challenges with farmers going forward, there's almost 50 billion dollars of farm assets that are going to change generational hands over the next 10 years. Not all of those children who will become farm owners will be actively involved in the farm. And some of those children may be in that 18 to 24 age category and they may help out on weekends they may help out after hours or at key planting and harvest period. And CRA have already said that they're going to heavily discount any contribution by those children in the farm activity.

AMT: Okay.

MARK WALES: So on one hand they're saying you've got to prove that they've earned it. On the other hand they say they're not going to believe most of what you put forward.

AMT: Let's go to Chris. When did you start your business?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: I started in 2011 so it's about six and a half years ago now.

AMT: And how's business been?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: It has been generally quite good. It was it was a bit of a struggle getting started like most small businesses owners will tell you. We've had some up years and some and some downer years but generally we're doing quite well and we know we now support about 15 different people in the business.

AMT: Does that mean you have 15 employees?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: Including myself, there's 15 people working for my business and a related one that I started off, yes.

AMT: Okay. Mark how many employees do you have?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: I have about 12 and I'm actually in the middle of evolving the farm operation to them.

AMT: Okay. Michelle Cohen, how long have you been practicing as a family doctor?

MICHELLE COHEN: I graduated in 2010. I moved into this area, which is in rural southeast Ontario, in 2012 and that's when I joined the family health team that I'm working in, currently in Brighton. And like the majority of doctors in this country I'm personally funding health care infrastructure, by my clinic, my employees, medical equipment that I pay for, all of the things that I pay for along with the other group of physicians that I work with.

AMT: And how many employees do you have?

MICHELLE COHEN: So I have two employees at this point.

AMT: Okay. How are family doctors, like yourself, small business owners?

MICHELLE COHEN: Well so we are not considered to be government employees, or employees in any way. So what we build to the government essentially is independent contractors. We then take that money and we fund our offices. And that essentially means funding health care infrastructure in this country. Whenever a patient goes to a clinic outside of a hospital, which is the majority of patients. Patients are seeing physicians. That office is being paid for out of the physician's income. That's how we're small business owners and that's how we're funding the infrastructure in this country towards health care.

AMT: Have you incorporated?

MICHELLE COHEN: No I haven't incorporated this point. I've been advised by my financial adviser that since I'm still paying off my med school debt it's not to my advantage to incorporate at this point. It was however part of my plan, for saving for my retirement, once my medical debt was paid off.

AMT: Why do doctors incorporate, explain it to me?

MICHELLE COHEN: So we don't have access to the kind of benefits that many other employees have. So we don't have pensions. We don't have benefits. We don't have sick leave or any kind of emergency leave. Most of us don't have access to maternity benefits. So we use incorporation as a technique for saving money for those kinds of things. We're actually advised by the government to do this sort of thing. Physicians asked for pensions and we're told they should be using their incorporation to save for their retirement. Now the government has turned around and called that plan, which they themselves promoted, called it a bunch of loopholes and basically portrayed us as tax cheats. So people are pretty upset about that kind of thing.

AMT: Chris Struthers, is your business incorporated?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: Yes it is.

AMT: And do you use income sprinkling?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: It's a family owned business. My wife and I started the business. She was not actively involved on day to day business activities, but we put up the family assets, put up the family house and she co-signed half the debts. And so yes, she does receive part of the business income, which is one of the proposals that is going to affect us.

AMT: And do you have kids who are taking advantage of sprinkling as well?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: No. My kids are all under 18 and the rules are, and have for some time been, very strict about not funneling any business income to children under the age of 18.

AMT: And that includes dividends?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: That's specifically dividends, yes.

AMT: Okay. Have you invested in or Pease in the years you've been incorporated?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: No I have not. And that's one of the things that really hurts folks in small business that have been planning their retirement using their small business, because I've being totally legally and advised for a number of reasons to take out an income in the form of dividends. We don't get RRSP contribution room. So one of the upsetting things about one of the claims being made by the government is that these changes will not be retroactive to people with savings in their business. I've now missed out on seven or possibly eight because it takes another year for contributions to catch up. I've missed out on probably eight years of contribution room to my RRSP that I will never get back. So even if I started contributing to an RRSP here in a year or two collecting T4 income, that's seven years of RRSP room that I'll never get back. And I have not heard a single come back from government as to how they're going to address this sort of concern.

AMT: And Mark, I want to go back to you. There's also a tax on passive investments. Will that affect you?

MARK WALES: Yes it will. I'm in the middle of starting to rent my farm to the crew that it worked for me for a very long time. And the problem there will be is that rental income will be treated as a passive income not farming income. So I will have to probably go to a sharecropper arrangement where I still pay part of the expenses for the crop. That'll be the only way to do that. So it's a real problem. We see it as a real problem going forward. The farmers who retire especially those with a corporation, they are going to be hammered by these new rules around passive investment.

AMT: Okay, none of you are happy with this. I'm going to play a clip that I'd like you to hear. This is David McDonald. He is a senior economist with the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. He's the author of a report into tax breaks in Canada. Listen to what he says.

SOUNDCLIP

While it is certainly true that folks in the middle class, some small proportion of them, own small businesses. The majority of the owners are quite wealthy and therefore any tax benefits that accrue to small businesses in general, are going to accrue primarily to the richest Canadians. And if you're targeting a tax benefit only to small business owners, by definition you're targeting that tax benefit only to among the wealthiest of Canadians. So, if we want to support pensions, if we want to support better mat leaves, if we want to support those types of social programs. I think those are laudable goals but they shouldn't be restricted only to small business owners that by and large are quite wealthy.

AMT: Michelle Cohen what do you think of what David McDonald says there?

MICHELLE COHEN: Well I think it's ironic to be talking about the wealthiest Canadian when the liberals campaigned on a platform of progressive tax reform that included targeting the tax loophole used by the 0.1% of super wealthy, the so-called stock options loophole. [Unintelligible] very quickly, and once in office, decided to drop that one and instead has been putting small business owners against employees to try to present a facade of progressive tax reform. So I would be interested to ask the government why in particular they feel this is part of progressive tax reform, when they're pretty much ignoring the three quarters of a billion dollars that could potentially be making if they close the stock options loophole that only the super wealthy have access to.

AMT: Mark Wales, what do you think?

MARK WALES: Well frustratingly for us, is there are over 220,000 farm families farming in Ontario, or in Canada, and those are not the wealthiest of Canadians. Yet, this is supposed to be about taxing the 1%. I wish someone would actually define who the 1% are, I think, the [unintelligible] did the report talks about a small number of businesses being middle class. I think he's blatantly wrong. Small business is the engine of this economy. What they're doing here really is an assault on the confidence of small business. Especially in agriculture, the recent federal budget and the Barton report identified agriculture as the real engine of growth for this country. And if you do things that attack people's confidence in investing and then rolling assets to their children, who are the next generation of farmers, there's going to be a real problem here.

AMT: Chris Struthers, what do you how do you respond to David McDonald's?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: There's a lot of lot of misinformation coming out about who small business owners are. A very large proportion, I don't have stats facts and figures right in front of me, but anyone could do a quick bit of fact checking and see that there are a very large number a large percentage of small businesses that make under $100,000. I think it's at least two thirds of them actually, in terms of in terms of net revenue at the end of the year. And just a good example of that, I sort of put up a protest page on Facebook where I did a few sort of facetious posts about people that will be impacted and I did one about truckers. That has been by far the most popular post with legions of angry truck drivers, furious about these proposals. And I don't think truck drivers have a hard enough go as it is. The owner operators or the small trucking fleets and they're all getting hit very hard with this as well. So that's just one example. And myself, now my business is doing fairly well and I'm surely comfortable now, but it was a struggle to build it up. And in those early years when I'm building up a business and I'm taking risks on hiring employees and dealing with very tight amounts of money, as to whether I grow or play it safe and things like that, I've most definitely was not in the wealthy contingent. And today I'm doing comfortable, but I'm certainly very squarely in the middle class bracket. These tax incentives were so important at offsetting the risk that we take and making it possible to survive in those early years and grow. And I think that's one big piece that's missing from the conversation, is that without a few incentives if a business owner or an entrepreneur is going to get taxed and paid identically to an employee, who has all kinds of other job security benefits and sick pay and vacation pay and all those other things, why would anybody take the risk to start a business where they create new jobs? These incentives are so important.

AMT: Let me play a clip of David McDonald who speaks to that again, Center and Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. He takes issue with the idea that the tax plan will quash entrepreneurial spirit. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

The idea that small businesses are somehow going to shut down because they can't income split with their spouses and children, I think seems a bit hyperbolic to me. Hopefully, small business owners are in business because they think that they have a good product and a good service and that they can make money selling that product and service, not because they think they can reduce their taxes. In fact small business becomes only about, or predominantly about, reducing people's tax bills by sharing income with their spouses and children or saving for an RRSP. I think we actually have a real problem.

AMT: Chris Struthers, how do you respond to that?

CHRIS STRUTHERS: Well. It doesn't jive with my own personal story where I had a good idea, I have had a good service that people wanted to buy. But it was very risky starting a small business and the tax incentives or tax breaks I guess - very modest I might add, again comparing to the stock options for the highest 0.1% is a very modest tax incentive for small businesses - They made a big a very big part of my decision making. I sat on the fence, like a lot of people do thinking about taking the leap from paid employment into the risky world of starting your own thing. And I sat on it for years. My wife finally gave me a shove and said: “I have booked you a meeting with an accountant. Go get your business plan reviewed. Let's see if this is something we can do.” So we took the business plan to an accountant. He explained the strategies and things that we could do. And he liked the business plan. He said I think you could do it. And here's some of the some of the incentives that you could take.

AMT: We're almost out of time. I just want to keep moving on. So you take umbrage with what he's saying. Do any of you worry that you could become political cover for very high earning professionals who are in fact sprinkling income to people who have nothing to do with the business, but happen to be related to people who are using these loopholes, that the government has stats that say that the number of professionals who have incorporated themselves to help reduce their tax burden has tripled since the 2000s.

MICHELLE COHEN: What I'd like to say a piece on income sprinkling. A lot has been said about inappropriate income sprinkling to family members. I feel that, with respect to physician workload and physicians with young families, I think there's a situation that's being pretty much ignored. Significant number of physicians with young families, who are now predominantly women, work long and irregular hours that really are not comparable to any other profession or any other area of work in Canada. And many of them have child care needs that cannot be met by traditional childcare. So, for example, being on call for a week straight, at any moment, 2:00 a.m. in the morning you may have to rush in to the hospital with little to no notice. There's no traditional childcare that's going to be able to cover that. Many physicians in this situation have spouses who have sacrificed all or part of their careers to support their physician wife or spouses which is quite common. And these spouses often are stay at home dads who are able to provide the kind of necessary child care that someone who works long and irregular hours requires. So that income sparkling in that situation, it's really just a recognition of the domestic and child care labor that these partners the spouses who are now, increasingly men, are doing.

AMT: So, isn't there not a child care tax credit to deal with that?

MICHELLE COHEN: There's no traditional childcare that's going to support someone who needs to go to work at 2 a.m., on a Wednesday night.

AMT: For any worker , for anybody, right. For anybody who's a worker.

MICHELLE COHEN: For anybody who works those kind of hours. No one else works call the same degree, or works on call, or works for the kind of irregular hours that, t not all physicians, but many physicians do. So many physicians in this situation rely on their spouses to provide that childcare. Those spouses in turn often and have to sacrifice their own careers to be able to do that kind of thing.

AMT: Okay, we are out of time. We're going to leave it on that note. We are hoping to talk to the Minister of Finance next week to hear their side of things. But thank you all for being part of this conversation. Mark Wale's vegetable farmer in Aylmer, Ontario, Chris Struthers owner of Struthers Tech.com. He's in Penticton B.C., Michelle Cohen is a family physician she's in Brighton, Ontario. We do want to know what you think of the Liberal government's tax plan. Let us know. Head to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the Contact Us button. Monday we will talk to the Finance Minister Bill Morneau about this plan, what he says to his critics. Stay with us. The news is next and then we're back with a story about Amy and Ben 13 year old twins.

Back To Top »

'Ben has defined who I am': Teen and autistic twin head to different schools for first time

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come the Boston Red Sox are alleged to have crossed a technological red line, using a smart watch to steal signs and outsmart their rival New York Yankees. But is that cheating? Not according to this diehard Sox fan.

SOUNDCLIP

No, no, no. I mean that's not cheating when you're learning how to improve your game method. Let's try to win.

AMT: What's on your wrist? What the latest scandal rocking the old ball game says about the future of cheating and new technology. But first meet Ben and Amy as they meet the challenge of adapting to some big changes.

[Music: Adaptation Theme]

AMT: There is a lot of excitement on a lot of grumbling this week as kids across the country head back to school. It can be a challenging week for any student but particularly so for siblings who are very close and might be parting ways to go to different classes, or even different schools, or that will be making new sets of friends and facing new situations. And that is the situation for Amy and Ben Goods. They are twins and they're attending high school this fall. But for the first time in 10 years they won't be going to the same school. It is a whole new set of challenges for each, especially because Ben has autism. We're bringing you their story as part of our season long project Adaptation. Here is Amy Goods with her documentary 50/50.

SOUNDCLIP

BEN: I feel nervous, about what high school I'm going to.

AMY: Okay, Library.

BEN: I don't want to be in some class with like - I don't want to be in some private school either, like, I don't want to be in some weird school. I want to be in like - I'm going to be in school of my friends.

AMY: It's the same thing with me when I go to Westdale, I won't see my friends since it's such a big school, and we'll be in completely different classes on completely different days with even sometimes different lunch hours.

BEN: Yes [unintelligible] I realize that.

AMY: So you're going to make new friends in your school just like I'm going to make new friends and my school.

BEN: Maybe I could keep some of the old friends in my class.

AMY: You're going to keep old friends. I'm going to keep old friends. You have Instagram to stay in touch with them, remember?

BEN: Yes.

AMY: And you can always call them and ask them to hang out if you ever missed them.

BEN: Okay. Okay

[Music]

AMY: That's me with my brother Ben. We are twins. We are 13. We are in the car driving past Sir William Ozler Middle School in Hamilton, Ontario, taking a trip down memory lane. Well, actually we both just graduated from middle school in June. I was in French immersion. Ben was in a regular class with an educational assistant, or EA. Growing up, I didn't really understand that there weren't speech workers for every single child. I just thought Ben had them and I didn't because why not. It was maybe chosen at random. I do know that the speech therapists help you a lot.

BEN: Yes. And they did and they made me say words like they had flashcards and they like would tell me to read like the words, and I remember of one of the first words I read out loud was và. The first word I read out loud was va.

AMY: Yes.

BEN: I remember everyone was happy and like clapping and like mom came down she was ecstatic. She was like, she was like: “Ben! You said the word!” And I was like “Whatever.”

AMY: I think you were pretty proud of yourself.

BEN: I was pretty proud of myself.

[Music]

AMY: Ben has to find who I am, in a lot of ways. I'm known as Ben’s sister. Obviously, people know me by my name, Amy, but if I'm just meeting them, or if we haven't formally met yet, they will say: “Oh, your sister” or one been acts they will come to me for help. When Ben is having a bad day at school, it's kind of embarrassing. At times I'm grateful when I get to leave class to help him but it's the only silver lining. A bad day for him at school is running through the halls, him bursting into a classroom and saying inappropriate things or grabbing random people by the arms and striking uproot conversations, or just being generally disruptive.

BEN: You are not autistic. You cannot understand a disability unless you have it. Like you can try, but you can't fully understand somebody who has a disability unless you have that disability. I can understand someone who can't walk or who was in a wheelchair or not…

AMY: How do you think I could understand your options better? What are some tips you can give me? Like a life hack. Give me a life hack for understanding you?

BEN: I will give you a life hack. Always try and assess my behavior. Like if it's… If it's… Like if if I'm not behaving well, then there's probably a reason for it.

[Music]

AMY: Ben and I have gone to the same school since we were in junior kindergarten. But this fall that's changing. I'm going to regular high school and Ben is going to a special school for kids with autism and I'm still trying to figure out how to feel about all that.

DAN SIERTSEMA: My name is Dan Siertsema. I am an elementary school teacher of grade seven and eight students and Ben's teacher.

AMY: Mr. Siertsema was one of my favorite teachers in middle school. My brother changed and grew a lot in Mr. Siertsema’s class. I tell Mr. S about why I'm nervous about going to new school without Ben. [To Dan Siertsema] I'm not going to be there for Ben anymore. I'm not going to be able to go into his quiet room when he needs comforting, or he's not going to be able to run into my classroom whenever he's acting out and I can calm him down. It's stuff like that. Usually when Ben had a hard day at school I would be able to see it and come home and tell Mum about it, my perspective not just the EA's perspective. But now it's - I know nothing about Ben's day. I know nothing about the people at his school. So if someone says: “Oh Ben was terrible to this person today” I will be able to know if they're a person that's provocative or that likes to instigate, because I won't have met them. Yes I am worried about everything that I'm so excited.

DAN SIERTSEMA: So I think my advice for both of you is to find - Now is the time to start finding your own path. So as you move into high school it's about finding and defining yourselves separate from each other. And I do believe it will actually help you be closer at home. Spending so much time, together and in each other's worlds, is challenging. I think my personal family works best during the school year and I think in the summer we actually struggle, because we get on each other's nerves. So, I think moving into high school you guys have to look at it as like “Okay, this is my path now. It doesn't mean that I'm not concerned about my sister or my brother. It doesn't mean I don't love them but now is my time to find myself identity. “

AMY: Do you have anything to add just about then and how… Ben.

DAN SIERTSEMA: I think that the world is very complicated and complex. We strive all the time to simplify things. We call it a cult like a cognitive shortcut. Right. It is why we develop stereotypes. But I think it's better maybe if we just try to embrace the complexity of the world instead. And I think Ben, for me, kind of represents - He's symbolic of that complexity. You know where things aren't always as they seem, that you have to delve deeper. You have to look behind the action. You have to understand the motivation that what you're going to see is not always the intent. So, I think we have a lot to learn from individuals who don't fit a mold. And Ben is one of those individuals.

[Music]

AMY: Yes. I think complex is also a good way to describe my relationship with Ben. We try and get along. It doesn't always work out that way. That's the yin and yang of us, of twins, of a regular sister with a brother who has autism.

BEN: Wow! I'm really mature.

MOTHER: Could they hear that?

AMY: His [unintelligible] are going to be edited out, and come on Mom.

MOTHER: [Unintelligible] and all that.

BEN: Sometimes I think you like to advertise your autism. Like, you want it - In public you'll make it known that you've autism for no apparent reason, even if you're not acting silly or anything. You'll just yell I have autism, randomly.

BEN: I stopped doing that like forever ago.

AMY: You did it tonight.

BEN: No I didn't. I… Not a single word came out of my mouth about autism.

AMY: You'll act silly in public for attention.

BEN: Yes. I am aware of it. It's like… it's like I am overstimulated. There's too much light there's, too much sound and it's all coming in at once. It's just like flooding my brain.

AMY: I know what your sensory overload sare like. And I'm talking about the times where it isn't a sensory overload.

BEN: What are sensory overload like? Describe it to me. Just describe.

AMY: You know what your sensory overload are like. You're the one who has them.

BEN: It's just like every part of my body hurts and I get overwhelmed. It's not good. I get very irritable and.

BEN: Your life is actually pretty good. If you had to experience some of the drama in your life, that I have to experience in mine, you would hate it.

BEN: If I got involved with girl stuff I'd probably be scared for my life.

[Music]

AMY: So as you can tell, like most siblings, we don't always get along. But there are plenty of times we do.

BEN: I was playing with a wheel.

AMY: Ben, look at this one. This was at Grandpa's farm, right. You were: “Oh no. This is…” [Narrating] Like taking on the trails or writing stories or looking at old photos together. He loved to play with wheels and things.

BEN: Yes.

AMT: Do you still have to do that?

BEN: Kind of.

AMY: I think you were kind of interested in the keys on the piano.

BEN: Yes, I was. I was interested in trains, too.

AMY: I remember that you loved trains and volcanoes, too.

BEN: Yes, I loved volcanoes.

[Sound: Birds chirping]

AMY: Looking ahead to next year, what do you think you're most nervous about, or excited about, or both? Since we will not be in the same school anymore, you're going to have to be on your...

BEN: Just being independent and like maybe making new friends and. Like...

AMY: Are you excited to be on your own, or are you scared to be on your own, because I am your safety net?

BEN: 50/50. I'm just worried I'll get bullied or something. Sometimes people just like they treat me like a baby just because I have autism. Like they talk to me like a toddler a puppy, and that's not very nice. Like I remember this person I was messaging on Instagram, once they found the autism they started treating me like a kid. Remember that?

AMY: I do not. How did you feel about that?

BEN: Not very good.

AMY: The truth is I feel 50/50 as well, about going to school with open. Not just because I won't be there for him. But I'm also worried that I don't know exactly who I am without him around.

CRYSTAL ASHER: Oh I can sit up here if it is more comfortable.

AMY: I is okay.

CRYSTAL ASHER: Okay.

AMY: As the first day of school approaches, I know just the person to talk to about this. Crystal Asher is the mom of one of my best friends. She's known me for most of my life and she's been through a lot. Crystal is always there with good advice. What do you think of my relationship with Ben?

CRYSTAL ASHER: That's a big question. I wonder. I mean I've wondered since you were little about your relationship with your brother and what it is like for you, and how you know your identity to a large degree is defined by your sibling, I think. I mean, you know, so much of the world relates to Ben in terms of his disability. You know, his difference, right his, like otherness. And I wonder how you feel about your otherness, which we all experience, and how, to what extent you feel as though that's allowed?

AMY: So to answer your question - I don't know if this is going to give you an exact answer - but I still always, I felt since Ben has autism, I do you have to force myself to be more normal. I focused a lot on my behavior. I've I watch videos on like how not to be weird. I would look it up. I didn't want to be like that. Every time I acted out or someone looked at me weirdly I would wonder: “Oh do I have autism?” Like…

CRYSTAL ASHER: Wow, really?

AMY: Yes. And maybe like, I'm assuming not everyone is like this, but I always feel that, since my brother and I are so different, I have to stick to that role of being different. Kind of like you said. I have to keep all of my friends even if I want to hang out with one person, which I usually don't. I usually enjoy hanging with huge groups of people. If someone asked to come along I'll be: “Ok well don't want to seem introverted or like hiding from people. So that's my answer. I don’t know if it helps.

CRYSTAL ASHER: Mm hmm. So sort of who been is the world really shapes. Who you kind of get to be in the world? You've got to be not that, in a way. One thing that really strikes me is, you're kind of like a translator, in a lot of ways. You are that person - Have you ever seen a translator, in action?

AMY: Yes.

CRYSTAL ASHER: Right. You know, they give the translation but then they also give context. Right. Usually. So sometimes the translation is weird. Right. You know when you hear like idioms in French and they're translated and you're just like: “What? The cows are falling from the hemisphere? What?!” You know like it doesn't make any sense, but then if the translator is a good translator, they will say: “Here is what is meant by that. And here is something that you can compare that to in your own language” and you do that with your brother. You take his behavior and you put it into context with the people around you. Right. So you make it comfortable for Ben, and you make it comfortable for the people who are sometimes like: “Oh!” about some of your brother's behaviors, from time to time. And that and that's really important because not only are you handling the [unintelligible] but what you're doing and you probably don't realize this, but your facilitating cultural shift. You're helping change the narrative in your community. Because, like I understand more about autism because things that because of things that you have explained to me, very casually and very subtly and very different ways to how your parents do. Like your parents are more like advocates for Ben. You're like this cool customer who just kind of like that finesses the situation.

AMY: What is your advice for me going into high school?

CRYSTAL ASHER: Yes. I mean this must be a huge crossroad for the two of you. I mean your 13, turning 14, in a couple of months. This is a time in your life when you need to be selfish. And I never thought I'd be telling a 14 year old that they need to be more selfish [laughs].

AMY: [Laughs]

CRYSTAL ASHER: But I think that you going to a different high school to Ben, is going to facilitate you finding out a lot more about who you really are as an individual. Do you know what I mean?

AMY: Yes, I think so. I think I do, yes.

CRYSTAL ASHER: I feel like we went pretty deep.

AMY: I know. We did.

CRYSTAL ASHER: [Laughs]

AMY: Thank you very, very…

[Music]

AMY: As we drive past our middle school, Ben reminds me what it was like when we first came here in grade 6.

BEN: Just thinking about when I used to go, when I came to this school. I was so frightened and I was happy.

AMY: Why were you scared?

BEN: Because it was a new environment. That's why.

AMY: Do all new environments scare you, or was it just a new school that frightened you?

BEN: You know, a new school, but at the end of the day, it was actually a good thing that I went here.

AMY: So you think that when we go to separate high schools that our relationship is going to change at all? Do you think it's going to be for the better? Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or for the worse, we're going to drift apart and become distance?

BEN: We're I think… I think… I think we'll be closer because we won't see as much as often. We won't see each other as often.

AMY: So we're going with the absence makes the heart grow fonder route?

BEN: Yes.

AMY: Cool.

[Indistinct conversation]

AMY: The day is finally here. It's time to go to our first day at our new school.

BEN: I hope you have a great day today.

AMY: You too. I love you. Stay safe.

BEN: I will.

AMY: [Sound: kiss] Bye.

BEN: Bye.

AMY: Ben looks a little nervous and excited too, as he gets into my mom's car.

[Sound: Car engine starting]

[Sound: Chatter]

AMY: I'm excited too. I walk through the doors of my new school and I'm suddenly a little fish in a big pond. Some of the grade 12 students look like grownups and they have beards. I go to art class and English class and geography. And then in the Latin class, I hear yelling outside the door. And for a second, I think it's Ben about to burst in. The feeling was odd. Like Mr. S said, it's complicated.

[Music]

AMT: We have been listening to the documentary 50/50. It was produced by Amy and Ben's mother Aaron Pettit, and The Current documentary editor Josh Block. Amy and Ben are the children of CBC's Jeff Goods. Of course the start of the school year holds many joys and challenges for students, such as Amy and Ben. Then there is what it means for their parents. Alexandra Samuel is a Vancouver based writer. Her 11 year old son has autism. Here are some of her reflections on the start of another school year.

SOUNDCLIP

CRYSTAL ASHER: Every year, the first week of school kicks my ass. Oh, let's be honest, it's usually the first couple of months. The year my son - I'm going to call him Peanut - started kindergarten, it was calls about him running away from class and hiding. The year he started Grade 1, at a new school, it was calls about him pushing all the furniture to the edge of the classroom, or hiding in the cloakroom. The year we tried homeschooling, I was the one making the calls to emergency mental health support, when he became reclusive, and even worse, occasionally suicidal. This week it begins again. Despite seven years of experience with the September from hell, I am once again tempted to hope that this will be ‘the year’. The year school just works. The years there are no crises. The year that peanut finally starts to feel like life does not have to be so hard. And at the same time, I'm afraid to hope. I'm afraid to hope for that kid who just bounds into class and then grins ear to ear after a successful first day. And indeed that's not the first day we got. Sure he sailed happily into school, but the moment the hallways flooded with the noisy greetings of his fellow students, well, he retreated to the quiet of the special needs resource room. An hour later, he announced he was heading home with me and his support worker in tow. He walked the five kilometers to our house. It took two hours and once he got there, he refused to go back. Day 2 was even worse. He refused to get dressed, to get in the car, to go into school. We made it to the school doors, but then he started another hike home. When I told him he wouldn't be allowed into the house on a school day, the hike ended in a public wrestling match. We had a shouting match in the lobby of the Y, a shopping trip to the local drugstore for a pacifier he said would keep him from biting me. And then we spent half an hour crying together in a parkade. And then I actually watched him join his class for the last 10 minutes of the day. We worked so hard for that 10 minutes, but when I saw him raising his hand and joining in conversation like all the other kids, it was totally worth it. And tomorrow may be easier, or maybe it'll take another week or another month for him to settle into school, maybe it'll take another year, maybe it'll never happen at all. Maybe this is just what school is going to be like for him and for me until he gets too old for us to keep trying. Meanwhile, here I am once again giving in. Giving in to the reckless dangerous temptation of hope.

AMT: Alexandra Samuel she's a Vancouver based writer a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. We are looking for your personal stories of adaptation to share this season as part of our project Adaptation. We are also looking, as part of that, to focus a lot of our stories on adaptation in the workplace in this fall. You can send us your stories about surprising or significant change you made at work, maybe from accommodating a difficult boss, to rapid technological change, maybe to downsizing maybe quitting in a dramatic fashion. Let us know if you've had to adapt in your place of work, and what that looks like. Send us an e-mail to thecurrent@cbc.ca with My Adaptation in the subject line.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: We are Going to be Friends]

Fall is here, hear the yell

back to school, ring the bell

brand new shoes, walking blues

climb the fence, books and pens

I can tell that we are gonna be friends

I can tell that we are gonna be friends

Walk with me, Suzy Lee

through the park and by the tree

we will rest upon the ground

and look at all the bugs we found

safely walk to school without a sound

AMT: The White Stripes with We're Going to be Friends. Coming up in our next half hour:

SOUNDCLIP

Electronics makes things easier, more accessible and more dangerous. Every team is always trying to get an advantage.

AMT: The New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi, he was reacting yesterday afternoon to this week's breaking baseball's scandal. The Yankees rival Boston Red Sox accused of using electronics to gain an unfair, on field advantage. What does that tell us about cheating and technology in sports and beyond? I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You are listening to The Current. We'll look at that next.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Technology brings 'higher danger of being dishonest,' says professor

Guests: Jenn Smith, Julia Christensen, Dan Ariely,

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti This is the current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Crowd cheering]

Most of the sell out crowd. [Unintelligible] The one to swing at a miss.

[Cheering gets louder]

And the Red Sox win 5 to 1.

AMT: It is one of the most storied rivalries in the history of sport, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. You just heard the Yankees falling to the Sox in a game from last month. Boston's been on a tear this year. The team sits atop the American League East division as the playoffs draw near. But this week we learn there may be something amiss in that late August series. The Red Sox are accused of cheating by using some cutting edge technology to bring that old time rivalry into the digital age. It's all about stealing signs, which is not illegal in itself, in fact that's part of baseball. But using high tech gadgets in the process of doing so is a whole other ball game. Baseball writer Jenn Smith is with us from Witby, Ontario to explain. Hello.

JENN SMITH: Hi how are you?

AMT: Well I'm curious to know what you are thinking. Were you surprised when you heard this news about sign stealing between teams?

JENN SMITH: I wasn't surprised to hear that the Boston Red Sox had been accused of stealing signs. As you said that's part of the game it always has been part of the game. But I was surprised to find out that they had been accused of using technology, using an actual Apple iwatch device in order to steal those signs or to at least relay the information to their players.

AMT: And so tell us a little bit more here. What, first of all, what is sign stealing?

JENN SMITH: So one of the biggest jobs that a catcher does is prepare a game plan for each series that their team plays. So the catcher studies footage of each opposing batter learns their strengths their weaknesses what they tend to swing and what pitches they tend to lay off. And then the catcher comes up with a game plan. And so when the catcher is out in his position and the pitcher is you know getting ready to throw a pitch, the catcher will use a series of hand signals indicating what pitch and what location they want the pitcher to go through. And you know all of this is sort of based on that research that the catcher did in advance. And so the signs can be quite elaborate. Some of the signs mean absolutely nothing. They have different sets of signs and all of this is to be able to relay the information to the pitcher while also confusing the opposing team.

AMT: And so what are the rules around stealing the signs, or I guess interpreting them?

JENN SMITH: Stealing signs itself is not illegal in baseball. And teams have been doing it for decades. It happens most often when there is a runner on second base and they have a clear look at the catcher. And so you know often a runner will try to sort of peer in and see if they can pick up on something that the catcher is doing that is indicating what pitch is coming, or what the location of that pitch will be. And then that runner will try to relay that information to their teammate who's at bat. So that part of the game has sort of always been around. And then there's nothing illegal about it. You know it's just it's considered to be part of the game but it's the use of the technology that is prohibited.

AMT: Well you actually think the whole law the signs it's a bit of an art form.

JENN SMITH: It is a little bit yeah. There are some players that have been very good at it over the years. Not every player is capable of sort of picking up on the different signs, or the nuances of what a catcher is doing. And for some reason, other players are very good at it and can almost you know teach it to other players you know how to what to look for, how to pick up on signals. So I do, I think it's a little bit of an art form it's something that you know just the ability to perceive what a catcher is doing. The ability to interpret it and to do it quickly, quickly enough to actually then relay that information to your own teammate, who's at the plate, is a little bit of an art form.

AMT: Well I've got a clip of the Boston Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski reacting to the allegations of sign stealing this week. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

So, do I think sign stealing is wrong? No. I don't. I guess it depends how you do it, but everybody in the game that has been [unintelligible] off the years. People are trying to win however they can. It is [unintelligible].

AMT: Okay, well, that's his view of it apparently that the guys in the front office say they knew nothing about this. What makes this different though?

JENN SMITH: It is the fact that that's a piece of technology was being used apparently byby one of the coaches in the dugout. So Major League Baseball prohibits the use of technology in the dugout. And so that's the part of this that is what makes it particularly newsworthy, and makes it so that Major League Baseball might actually have to step in and you know give out some sort of consequence to the Red Sox. So it's not the sign stealing itself. And you know a lot of people have sort of weighed in on this and said “well signed ceiling has been around you know as long as you know catchers have been using signs and it's part of the game”. And I would agree with that. But it's the fact that the Red Sox used a piece of technology in the dugout in order to relay information to players on the field. That part of it is is strictly prohibited.

AMT: So they were using an Apple Watch. So what? Did the guy on second or somebody who could see the pattern and see the signals would actually send a note through their Apple Watch?

JENN SMITH: I don't know that the player was wearing a watch. I believe that a coach in the dugout was wearing one and I'm not sure exactly. I don't think it's been made clear exactly, you know how the information was being released or by who and to whom. But yet somehow these Apple watches were involved in being able to relay that information between dugout and field.

AMT: The Boston Red Sox won two or three games in the series in question How much can sign stealing affect the outcome of a game?

JENN SMITH: It's absolutely impossible to tell. You know unless you could actually pinpoint you know a sign that was stolen and the next pitch was hit for a game winning home run, and you can say “well the hitter had the information. The hitter knew exactly what pitch was coming and they were prepared for it.” Unless you could pinpoint that exact sort of moment in a game, or several of those moments, I don't know that you can actually quantify how much the sign stealing affected the impact of the game. The Red Sox did win two out of three that series. Whether or not the signed feeling played any factor? I think is really too difficult to tell.

AMT: What kind of reaction do you expect the league to take against the Red Sox?

JENN SMITH: I think it will probably be fines, maybe the suspension of whatever coach was involved. I don't think it will go beyond that. I think Major League Baseball will want to send a message that using technology to relay information between dugout and field. I think they want to send the message that that is prohibited. But I can't imagine that that the consequences will go much further than that.

AMT: In the meantime I guess we watch to see who's wearing the Apple watches.

JENN SMITH: Absolutely.

AMT: Jenn Smith, thanks.

JENN SMITH: Thank you very much.

AMT: Jenn Smith baseball writer for Baseball Prospectus and Sporting News MLB. She joined us from what be Ontario. Well whether you think the Red Sox cheated or strategized, fact is technology makes it easier to get around the rules. That is just as true in sports as it is in academics. Julia Christensen Hughes is the dean of the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. She's made it her business to study cheating in academia and she joins me from Guelph Ontario. Hi.

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What you think about the Boston Red Sox in with their Apple Watches?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Honestly, I find it fascinating and I enjoy listening to your previous guest. Baseball is a unique sport. I believe in that to excel the players the coaching staff have to be better than the others and a number of ways; mental stamina, physical ability, as well as cognitive skills. And there's the you know it's a game of statistics and a lot of analysis going on. I understand that a lot of that is being technology enabled to today with a lot more big data, if you will, in forming the strategy of the team. I also understand that I-pads are now common appearance in dugouts across the league. This particular ruling about using it to communicate with players on the field is one that the league has declared and therefore I think needs to be followed. And in terms of having a level playing field, we know when whether it's a sports team or a business or an academic institution people want fair play, a level playing field.

AMT: Well let me ask you that, because it's not solely in baseball where small wearable technology can have an impact. How does that translate to universities and maybe cheating at universities?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Well I think through technology information today is ubiquitous. And it's redefining what a university education is all about. Traditionally, decades ago, the university lecture was the means of relaying information. It was the student's job to try to commit that information to memory, to be an informed individual, to have a degree to conduct research and to contribute to society. Today in a post truth world, information is ubiquitous. And now this skill, more than accessing information, is to know how to decipher it how to judge its authenticity and moreover how to apply it. How to apply it for positive impact.

AMT: Right. Okay. You are talking about how we use technology and how teachers might teach, but you have actually studied cheating amongst university students. You did a study about a decade ago, am I right?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Correct.

AAMT: So I'm wondering how that same stuff translates to cheating. First of all, what did you find then? What did you find about a decade ago?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Well when we lifted a decade ago we presented students with a list of 25 questionable behaviors and we asked them to what extent they'd engaged in those. What we've found is that there was a lot more cheating happening in the high school system, with the majority of students reporting cheating on tests and written work. It reduced substantially into our undergraduate population and then further reductions with our graduate students. But still at the undergraduate level roughly 10 % of students admitted to really serious cheating, you know, submitting work in its entirety that was not their own. So obviously, that's a concern when we look at approximately 1 % of students you know across the country being charged with academic misconduct, each year. I think it's absolutely essential, as with the baseball league, that rules are in place that make it absolutely clear what behaviors are not allowed and what is allowed. Unfortunately, there is there can be a large gray area.

AMT: Okay. Well let me ask specifically. How do you deal with some writing exams, now that there is wearable technology? Given what you know about cheating, can you adjust to that as a university?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Yes, adjustments absolutely are needed. So, do you ban Apple watches from exams, for example, or what about ear buds. You know information can be relayed to people writing exams in all kinds of ways. You know do you disallow programmable calculators. There's all kinds of ways that students can bring information into exams. The most important thing is to have clear rules that will be enforced and clear penalties. People make the risk analysis. But at the same time technology is providing us with ways to enhance the learning experience considerably. I mean there was a time that calculators wouldn't have been allowed in exams and then that becomes an accepted technology and the expectation of the learning shift. So for you know it is a minority of students engaging in serious cheating behaviors. But for them again we need the rules and the penalties.

AMT: And you also need to. Are you looking at even how you test? Given that technology is not where it's going and, if so, can you give me an example?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Yes. So when we look at the role of testing it has been to determine whether students have learned what they need to learn in order to earn that degree. It's essential that we have integrity in that process so that there's a high degree of trust in the degrees that the universities get. In a lot of cases were actually moving beyond the exam. There's time and place for exams to do a written assessment. But I think more importantly is just test students’ ability to apply knowledge. So for example will have students in engaging with projects in the community, solving real problems, helping an organization, address an issue. And so when you have a more authentic learning experience and you can test a variety of skills, including knowledge, but the ability to apply knowledge, in those kinds of situations not only do we have a more accurate sense of the student's ability but students are more motivated because they see it as a fair assessment of their work.

AMT: And so how comprehensive is that change right now in universities? Do you see that shift happening because of technology and the issues around cheating?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Oh yes I think that there has been a real shift, since my research came out 10 years ago universities across the country have reconsidered their policies. But, if I may Anna Maria, I think the key message from my research was that this isn't just about you know catching students and punishing them. It's about creating a culture of integrity, that big gray zone. What I found is that students would engage in cheating behavior or not depending on the context we created. And so I found that students tended to cheat if they felt cheated and they might feel cheated by a faculty member who didn't provide an engaging learning environment right now. [Unintelligible] the assessment was unfair, where some students for example had advance knowledge of the questions and others did not.

AMT: Julia we're going to have to leave it there. We're out of time I've got someone else waiting in the wings but I'm going to pick up on that culture of integrity with them, okay?

JULIA CHRISTENSEN: Thanks very much.

AMT: Julia Christensen Hughes, dean of the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. Okay, so as technology proliferates the opportunities for cheating increase. But what isn't always so clear is why we cheat and lie, in the first place. Our last guest is talking about a culture of integrity. Dan Ariely has studied all of these questions about cheating and lying and why. He is the James Duke professor of behavioral economics at Duke University. He joins us from Durham, North Carolina. Hello.

DAN ARIELY: Hello. Hello.

AMT: How does technology change our cheating habits?

DAN ARIELY: Yes. So first of all I think we need to understand why we cheat and what are the underlying reason that technology can change it. It's kind of a little bit difficult to say technology in general because we have to understand what are the underlying mechanisms here. And here's the thing. We've done hundreds of studies over 40000 people. And in general what we have learned is that the reason people cheat is not because of the cost benefit analysis. It's not as if people say: “What kind of punishment will I get? What's the probability of being caught? What's the expected value of this crime? And then therefore let's decide what to do.” Instead, what we ask yourself is What do we feel comfortable with. And think about like our conscious is kind of asleep at the wheel. Most of the time, we can be on the road to 60 kilometers per hour and we drive 65 and we'd say okay. We're 40 years old and on the dating website site we said we're in the 35 category. We can cheat a little bit and still feel good about ourselves and it's all about rationalization. It's about our ability to tell a lie a little bit still benefit from it but maintain our understanding of ourselves as honest people. So the basic structure is rationalization. Now what happens with technology is that technology creates distance between us and the consequences of our actions. And I'll give you a very non-technological experiment with it.

AMT: Okay.

DAN ARIELY: So I own the vending machine, not as a second business but for experiments. And in one experiment we set it up and we said 75 cents per candy. But on the inside of the machine we set it to zero. And that meant that every time you would put money in you would think it would be 75 cents but the machine will give you all the money back. Okay so that's the set up. And there's a big sign that says if something is wrong with the machine please call this number and it's my cell phone number. So here is a question number one for you. What percentage of people do you think call?

AMT: Oh gosh. 10%?

DAN ARIELY: Well zero. But you know, close, right? And the second question, the more important question, is how many candies did people take?

AMT: More than they were supposed to.

DAN ARIELY: Of course. But do they take all of them? It turns out that the majority of people took three or four. Nobody took five.

AMT: Okay.

DAN ARIELY: Why? Why stop at three and four? And the reason is that's about the range of our ability to rationalize. You can say to yourself something like “I remember another vending machine that took my money and didn't give me a candy, or gave me an old candy and that other vending machine must be a close relative of this one. They must be connected in some way and I'm just restoring justice.” If you just went there and just emptied the machine you would think that you're a thief. You couldn't feel that you're not being honest. But if you take just three or four, people can feel okay about this. And that's actually what technology does. I mean you know, if you went to where somebody was selling a Snickers bar and you could have a chance to steal from them you would never steal from them. But the machine creates a distance between the consequences of our actions, who is actually going to lose money. We just don't think about it. We kind of wishful blindness.

AMT: Okay. And that's a lot of time what technology is doing to us. It is just not letting us think about the consequences of what we're doing. We are basically just looking at our phones looking at our watches and so on.

AMT: Right. And so our last guest talked about creating a culture of integrity but you're suggesting that that culture of integrity. It depends on what we're comfortable with. What makes us feel we have integrity may not actually be for integrity.

DAN ARIELY: That's right. So if you look at the financial crisis of 2007 the culture was certainly a culture of not integrity. Right, there were lots of things that were acceptable. And by the way, we still have it now. I mean when I ask my students how many of them have illegally downloaded material on their computers, you know movies, music and so on. They basically all have it and they don't feel bad about it. Now it doesn't mean that they are you know ex-murderers but they've taken an activity, called illegal download, that they know is illegal and they say we don't have moral judgment in this. And that's basically what we find. We find that when people start behaving immorally or illegally it's not something that goes across the board, even in corrupt countries like Kenya. It's not as if the moment people start misbehaving in one area automatically transfers to another area. But there is a culture of corruption and if you think about what corruption is, corruption and is exactly the way that this person described what happened in the Red Sox; is that you know it's illegal but you don't feel bad about it. You say that's the game. For example if the Red Sox would just get fined for what they did, they would basically say you know what? This is a game. You cheat in this way, there's a cost to it, and you have to do the cost benefit analysis of whether this is right for you or not. If you don't get it in to be kind of a cultural element of what you feel uncomfortable with, it would move into this notion of when are we detected and what is the cost and so on. And we lose this element inside of us that basically says we just feel wrong about it. Think about driving late at night and there's the red lights, 04:00 a.m., no traffic whatsoever. If you ask yourself if you feel not comfortable if you basically say “I shouldn't do it”, there's no real risk and there's no cost and you can see that you're not causing any damage. But if you basically stop there you say to yourself “I would feel I have a kind of a judge a policeman inside of me that would make me feel bad if I do it it's not about being caught”. And there's a risk. That's what we're shifting lots of areas of society from an internal judgment of you know guilt and conscious, to something that you're only behaving well if you're being observed and detected. And it's about the probability of being caught and something bad happening to you.

AMT: So how do we stop people from using technology to cheat? And if it does create that distance, how do you get that distance back?

DAN ARIELY: The first thing we need to recognize is that every technology is involved. We have many more dangers of tricking ourselves that we're actually doing the right thing. And it's not just technology. Every time there's a distance. There's a little joke that Johnny comes home from school with a note from the teacher that said that little Johnny stole the pencil from the kid who's sitting next to him and Johnny's father is furious. He said Johnny I'm so embarrassed and humiliated. You never never never steal a pencil from the kid who's sitting next to you. And beside Johnny you know very well that if you need a pencil, all you need to do is to mention it, to say something, to ask for something and I can bring you dozens of pencils from the office. And if you think about this, very few people would take 10 cents from a petty cash box in the office. But taking office supplies, which is one step removed, make us feel much better about this. So the first thing we need to recognize is that every time the technology increase distance is involved, we are in higher danger of being a being dishonest. That's the first thing. The second thing we need to understand is that simply relying on probability of being caught in punishment is not going to have an effect. And it's actually incredibly sad. You know in Canada you don't have the death penalty in the U.S. some states have the death penalty in some states that don't. And you can ask the question, you know death penalty that's a serious penalty. I mean you can't imagine anything better than that. You could say if there is a death penalty people would certainly stop committing the kinds of crimes that would get them the death penalty. But it turns out that if you compared the states that have the death penalty with the ones that don't. There's no difference in this crime rate. It is because we don't think about the consequences.

AMT: It's given us so much to think about, Dan Ariely. We have to leave it there. Thank you for speaking with me today.

DAN ARIELY: My pleasure.

AMT: Dan Ariely the James B Duke professor of behavioral economics at Duke University. He has studied why people cheat and lie. He joins us from Durham, North Carolina. Got a little bit of time to thank the crew that put the show together this week.

[Music]

MANUSHA JANAKIRAM: Hi I'm Manusha Janakiram, one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show was produced by: Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Inas Calabrese, Lara O'Brien, Kristin Nelson, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Samira Moy-yeh-din, Julian Uzielli and Willow Smith. Special thanks to our network producers Mary-Catherine Mcintosh in Halifax and Anne Penman in Vancouver. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Ruby Buiza is our interactive producer.Transcriptions are provided by Eunice Kim and Rasha Shehata. Our technical producers are Gary Francis and Jennifer Rowley. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch.Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

[Music]

AMT: That is our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for Q Tom Power is up next. He's joined by Lewis Black, a comedian famous for his rage filled rants on the absurdities of politicians and current events. Lewis Black has lots of new things to talk about, now that Donald Trump is in office. Remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app, as well as the Radio Player Canada app. They're both free from the App Store and Google Play. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Piya Chattopadhyay will be here tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the current.

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September 7, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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