I think this is a really good opportunity to see just how white-collar fraud falls in line with rational choice theory (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(criminology)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(crimin...</a>).<p>In the quoted article, Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty to pay a college counselor $15,000 to arrange cheating on an SAT test. Hence, one data point on the market price for cheating, as agreed upon by Ms. Huffman and college counselor, is $15,000. One claim about Ms. Huffman's net worth is that she earns $275,000 per episode of "Desperate Housewives", which airs weekly. This fine is about half a day's work for her, if that. For half a day's worth of work, she can doctor her daughter's SAT scores. This is assuming that the episodes aren't recorded at once and take much less time than one week for filming, freeing up time to invest in other income streams. So cheating in this case is a very rational thing to do, given zero cost for broken morals or ethics.<p>The only real "hard-power" argument I can think of for children who may inherit great wealth to gain intelligence is to avoid a run-around by the family lawyers after Mom and Dad croak. But even then, that doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence (Donald Trump is smart enough to avoid that fate), and it kind of doesn't make sense for a family lawyer to do that anyways. If the kids are stupid and can't manage their money, just charge more in fees instead of rocking the boat in order to pocket a greater portion of the pie.<p>Crime does pay, if we don't punish it. That's why people do it. It's especially true in white-collar crime.