2. What is my price?
Integrity as supply and demand
The book started on a positive note, and that’s lucky, as we have some terrible examples to
get through. The fact that people can tell right from wrong from a young age, and also have a
preference for right, does not mean that they always do right. Wrong can sometimes be very
attractive.
Before becoming president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was a respected
lawyer in Illinois. One day a criminal came to him. ‘I would like to ask you to defend me’, said
the man. Lincoln, who had a sneaking suspicion of the kind of person he was dealing with,
replied with the question: ‘Are you guilty?’ ‘Of course I’m guilty. That’s why I want to hire
you; to get me free.’ ‘If you admit guilt to me’, Lincoln explained, ‘then I can’t defend you’.
The man reacted with amazement: ‘But you don’t understand. I’m offering you a thousand
dollars for your services!’ Although a thousand dollars was a large sum of money at the time,
Lincoln resolutely refused. The criminal replied, ‘Mr Lincoln, I’ll offer you two thousand dollars
if you defend me!’ Again Lincoln refused. In desperation, the criminal played his trump card:
‘Mr Lincoln, you’re the best lawyer in the area. I can’t have travelled all this way for nothing. I’ll
give you four thousand dollars.’ At that moment Lincoln lew from his seat, grabbed the man
by his collar, dragged him out of the ofice and threw him into the street. When the man had
stood up and pulled his clothes straight, he asked Lincoln: ‘Why did you throw me out when
I offered four thousand dollars? Why not for one or two thousand, or when I admitted guilt in
the irst place?’ Lincoln replied: ‘You were nearing my price!’
Apparently Lincoln’s integrity had a price: he was ‘for sale’. For a certain price he was prepared
to throw his principles overboard. The question is whether everyone has a price. In order to
answer this question, as in the previous chapter, we should perhaps start by exploring our
innate qualities.
Michael Lewis and colleagues researched the extent to which people have an innate ability
to resist temptation. For this purpose he took children of three and ive years of age as his
subjects. Each time a child was led into a room and asked to go and sit at the table. The
2. What is my price? Integrity as supply and demand
