Untruth is profitable in the short term for the individual. Truth is profitable

Untruth is profitable in the short term for the individual. Truth is profitable in the long term for the polity. Just as theft is profitable for the individual, and ordered rule of law is profitable in the long term for the polity. In general, the service of governments is to suppress local parasitism (corruption and crime), thereby reducing local transaction costs and dramatically increasing productivity. The problem for the polity is then in minimizing or eliminating those centralized rents through the distribution of the costs of policing. So far this has been almost impossible for all societies. It’s possible now, largely because of the possibility of information transparency.