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Dan Ariely made the point in The Honest Truth About Dishonesty that there are truly few impediments to ghastly behavior in human societies. In general, however, obedient children are trained by obedient parents how to get along in an obedient community. The little social habits we enforce and cultivate tend to enforce and cultivate big social habits and the world keeps spinning 'round. As OB points out, though, if you're good at toeing the line only when it's convenient and getting away with it you end up in a pretty good space. This is one reason why the top-down narrative in most societies is "if you're rich you deserve to be" because it's far more common for you to not deserve to be but since the rich write the history books...