A War on Lies

Contributed by Jason D. Morganbesser

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

America’s social institutions are marching toward collapse. The percentage of Americans who are members of community organizations has fallen from 70% to 57% since 1994, with only 54% of youth having membership in community groups.¹ The percentage of Americans attending church has also declined from 70% to 47% since 2000, with only 36% of young Americans regularly attending church services.² Finally, the percentage of Americans without any close friends has increased from 3% to 12% since 2000, with 27% of young Americans reporting no close friendships.³

The reasons for the decline of institutions are varied. This article will not argue that any of the answers that others have given, from consumerism to social media, are wrong. Reducing the decline to contingent factors, however, risks missing a more fundamental fact: people are deliberately moving away from social institutions. The 4 No’s movement in Korea opposing romantic relationships or the growth of irreligion exemplifies not just avoidance of traditional institutions but outright rejection.⁴ Conservatives should not simply take the decline in social institutions more seriously but also more literally—when people say they do not trust old institutions, they mean it.

Trust, of course, is necessary for social organization. Social institutions, whether they be marriages, churches, or rotary clubs, are forms of cooperation. People in such institutions work together to make their lives easier and promote emotional well-being.⁵ By placing trust in an institution, however, one also gives them the ability to worsen one’s life. When others lie, institutional trustworthiness is put at risk.⁶ As a result, people tend to join institutions they trust and avoid institutions they do not. For instance, following large-scale coverups of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, over a third of American Catholics said they considered leaving the Church.⁷ Similarly, following the Watergate Scandal, the Republican Party had the fewest members in its recent history, with just 21% of Americans identifying as Republicans in 1975.⁸

Both the Catholic sexual abuse scandal and Watergate were highly localized events which probably had little to do with individuals’ local priests or congressmen. Why would such behaviors reflect poorly on not just those who engaged in them but on the entire institution—perhaps even all institutions? We can understand the answer by applying George Akerlof’s “Market for Lemons” model to institutions. Akerlof’s model shows that when we do not have enough information to appraise the quality of a product we are attempting to buy, a cost will be added to the price of the good. Because the best quality goods cannot be sustainably sold at these prices, quality will eventually deteriorate, leaving the market even worse off. This process iterates until the only goods on the market become those of the worst quality.⁹

Alexander Schaefer and Jin-Yeong Sohn show how this model might be applicable to social cooperation. Looking at Hobbes’ state of nature problem, they find that, assuming that some people are “defectors” (people who pretend to cooperate but, in fact, only seek their own gain), all people will choose not to cooperate.¹⁰ The extreme result is slightly absurd (based on the assumption that people are “normally distributed” in how prone they are to lie), but the deeper point here is important. If there are some people who will lie about themselves to gain an advantage, the most cooperative will lose out the most. And if those people choose not to join a social organization while the worst are only emboldened, such groups could find themselves with worse and worse members.

The mass rejection of social organizations among the young can be explained here as having resulted from persistent and self-perpetuating dishonesty from those in institutions. The aforementioned 4 No’s Movement in Korea did not appear in a vacuum—after all, in Korea, purportedly over 50% of men cheat on their spouses.¹¹ Irreligion in America, meanwhile, has risen amidst consistent deception from religious organizations—whether that be fraudsters like Jim Bakker with their fake COVID-19 cures or harbingers of fake apocalypses such as Harold Camping.¹² While, of course, these individual scandals are not representative, they set a certain price on joining social institutions—if one enters a social institution, it seems to imply that deceit and exploitation are distinct possibilities. Indeed, trust in others has been consistently declining over the past 30 years, with the percentage of Americans who trust “most people” dropping from 40% in 1998 to only 33% in 2018.¹³

To restore social organization, we cannot ignore the possible disadvantages of joining social organizations. Instead, America should look back to Akerlof for solutions. Akerlof finds that the only way to avoid the “market for lemons” is to remove the asymmetry of information: to enable consumers to know with whom they are dealing. He discusses the possibilities of guarantees and licenses to verify the quality of sold goods.¹⁴ More aggressively, “Lemon Law” policies have been enacted in every single state, restricting the sale of defective goods and offering compensation to affected buyers.¹⁵ While sociological problems have rarely captured the attention of economic matters in politics, with society seeming to break apart at its seams, perhaps that can change. Perhaps conservatives can take the same aggressive approach to sociological matters that they have taken to economics.

The first necessary step in taking action against dishonesty is overturning absurd constitutional protections for liars. In 2012, the Supreme Court’s liberal majority ruled in United States v Alvarez that local elected official and George Santos-esque liar Xavier Alvarez could not be tried for repeatedly lying to the public about his past military service. The decision was absurd, relying on essentially no precedent, basing arguments instead on novels, and strangely referring to restrictions on lies as “content-based.”¹⁶ Of course, as legal scholar Seana Shiffrin has pointed out, the content of the speech is not at issue but merely the identity of who can say it.¹⁷ As the then-conservative minority (now-conservative majority) pointed out, there is a long precedent of restrictions against lies that harm the public interest going back to the founding.¹⁸ The idea that liars should be given a free hand all of a sudden based on “privacy” constraints is absurd.

Restrictions on lies need not extend as far as an absurd and unenforceable general prohibition. Rather, more targeted measures could restrict lying where it matters: social organization. For instance, there are currently legal restrictions on politicians misleading Congress, yet nothing protecting the public. Of course, restricting politicians’ speech on falsehoods comes dangerously close to actual content restriction, which would be hard to enforce considering the wide range of Americans’ views on politics and other sensitive subjects. Yet, if a prohibition avoided touchy, non-personal subjects like historical facts in favor of purely restricting lies about personal matters, it would avoid this concern. This would permit politicians to be restricted from falsely claiming to have had a life they never had, as was seen with Alvarez as well as, more recently, ex-Congressman George Santos. Extending these restrictions on lies to other major institutions like churches or rotaries would introduce a form of “lemon law” for social institutions.

A second, less heavy-handed approach would see to the creation of policies that may not ban lying but mitigate its damaging value. For instance, American divorce law does not currently recognize how lies may render a relationship unworkable. Annulments can only apply with respect to a small subsector of lies that cause extreme distress.¹⁹ Fault-based divorces, meanwhile, have incredibly stringent requirements that make it impossible to claim fault based on a partner’s persistent lying.²⁰ As a result, fraudulent lies told before a marriage can lead to annulment, whereas fraudulent lies told after a marriage cannot lead to any legal recourse whatsoever for the victim, such as the improvement in alimony payments that accompanies fault divorce.

Similarly, tactful methods may help reduce the prevalence of adultery. Currently, while many states such as New York and Michigan have laws prohibiting adultery, they are rarely enforced.²¹ It is undeniable that a law enforcement officer’s time is much better spent apprehending a violent felon than getting involved in private marital problems. More effective are civil torts, but they are less common (only viable in 5 states) and politically fraught.²² Converting adultery law from a criminal offense to a civil offense would both make laws more effective and present a clear way of offering recourse to those affected by breaches of trust. These relationship-focused strategies can make social institutions more attractive without heavy-handed laws or prohibitions.

Finally, social institutions themselves should be more trustworthy. Take, for instance, religious institutions. Even after televangelist Jim Bakker was prosecuted for fraud, major religious television networks, such as the Christian Television Network and Daystar, picked up his show.²³ Or take the university. Extensive bureaucracies at institutions such as Harvard have created an industry of people whose jobs as administrators are to represent others’ views. As a result, the university has consistently lied about where it stands on its policies: for example, Harvard’s response to the October 7^th Attacks in Israel. The university offered not one but three different messages outlining three different positions on the conflict.²⁴ Clearly, the administrators did not hold all of these positions; it is not even clear they held any of them. By so flagrantly lying to its students and faculty, Harvard sent the message that none of its positions could be trusted and that the university itself could not be trusted. These institutions, too, are worthy of criticism and reform. Social institutions have placed too much emphasis on the expansion of their popularity and not enough on the possible negative impacts of their ambition.

Social institutions are not under attack; they are simply no longer attractive to the young. The way to resolve this problem is not by merely defending them but by reforming them. To make our institutions honest, there should be a war on lies—one which will refocus society on telling the truth rather than appeasing fraudsters. Only that way can society return to a truly social one.

MAIMONIDES

A version of this article originally appeared in Wealth of Nations, the February 2025 print issue of the Salient.

1. Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2020.

Aleksandra Sandstrom and Becka A. Alper, “Americans with Higher Education and Income Are More Likely to Be Involved in Community Groups,” Pew Research Center, 22 February 2019.

2. Jeffrey M. Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Falls below Majority for First Time,” Gallup, 16 October 2024.

3. Daniel A. Cox, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,” The Survey Center on American Life, 7 April 2022.

Jamie Ballard, “Millennials Are the Loneliest Generation,” YouGov, 30 July 2019.

4. Richard Windsor, “4B Movement: What Is It and How Did It Start?,” The Week, 15 May 2024.

5. Cristina Fernandez-Portero, et al., “The Effect of Social Relationships on the Well-Being and Happiness of Older Adults Living Alone or with Relatives,” Healthcare, vol. 11, no. 2, 11 January 2023.

6. Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law,” Princeton University Press, Ch. 1-2, 6, 2017.

7. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Many U.S. Catholics Question Their Membership amid Scandal,” Gallup, 16 October 2024.

8. “A Deep Dive into Party Affiliation,” Pew Research Center, 7 April 2015.

9. George A. Akerlof, “The Market for ‘Lemons’: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” Market Failure or Success, 18 December 2002.

10. Alexander Schaefer and Jin-yeong Sohn, “Unravelling into War: Trust and Social Preferences in Hobbes’s State of Nature,” Economics and Philosophy, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 171–205, 30 July 2021.

11. Claire Lee, “Half of Married Korean Men Have Cheated: Study,” The Jakarta Post, 1 August 2016.

12. Matthew S. Schwartz, “Missouri Sues Televangelist Jim Bakker for Selling Fake Coronavirus Cure,” NPR, 11 March 2020.

Robert D. McFadden, “Harold Camping, Dogged Forecaster of the End of the World, Dies at 92,” The New York Times, 17 December 2013.

13. Tom W. Smith, et al., “General Social Surveys, 1972-2018: Cumulative Codebook,” NORC, 2019.

14. George A. Akerlof, “The Market for ‘Lemons,’” Market Failure or Success, 18 December 2002.

15. Louis J. Sirico, “Automobile Lemon Laws: An Annotated Bibliography,” Loyola Consumer Law Reports, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 39–55, 1995.

16. United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012).

17. Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law,” Princeton University Press, Ch. 4, 2017.

18. United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012).

19. “Annulment Isn’t Necessarily a Simple Exit from Marriage,” Sarno Da Costa D’Aniello Maceri LLC, 14 December 2023.

20. Elizabeth Horowitz, “The ‘Holey Bonds of Matrimony: A Constitutional Challenge to Burdensome Divorce Laws,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, vol. 8, no. 4,, pp. 877–901, August 2006.

21. Alex MacLennan, “Adultery Laws: 19th Cheat Code for the 21st Century?,” BJCL, 2 May 2023.

22. H. Hunter Bruton, “The Questionable Constitutionality of Curtailing Cuckolding: Alienation-of-Affection and Criminal-Conversation Torts,” Duke Law Journal, vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 755–800, January 2016.

23. Gregory J. Holman, “Liberal Christian Group Calls on TV Networks and Roku to Drop Bakker Show,” Springfield News-Leader, 11 March 2020.

24. Max J. Krupnick, “Harvard Responds to Violence in Israel,” Harvard Magazine, 13 October 2023.