I was recently reading 'Why We Cheat' (Stanford Alumni publication Sept/Oct 2015) and it says there are two conditions that can motivate students to cheat.

The first is 'the perception that "everybody else is cheating, so it can't be that bad;"' and "second, the worry that "I'll fall behind unless I cheat."

What I find perplexing is that the article limits this to students rather than looks at this in the context of the broader community. There are people cheating the system at every turn when it comes to corporations and politicians, and especially politicians who turn into lobbyists for various industries. Where it is evident that they are all jumping on the bandwagon for fear of falling behind and clearly because everyone is doing it too.

Somehow students are supposed to be immune to the lure of cheating when politicians, the people we elect to represent us are cheating on us, we the people, and completely selling us out, with corporations who are clearly more 'people' than us.

Do we really expect students who are under a lot of pressure to perform well and get good grades, to behave better than our politicians? Well clearly there are consequences for students who are caught cheating unlike politicians and corporations who can afford good lawyers so they can avoid consequences themselves.

One of the worst things anyone can say to another is that they are a follower, that they can't think for themselves, that they are a 'sheeple'. Indeed, college entrance essays ask for your leadership credentials.

And while we may disdain followers we know more than likely that we are all followers at some point or on some issue and that we as a society are basically all followers. Argh! The reasoning is we all need each other; while it is theoretically possible we can be independent enough to go off and live by ourselves in the desert or wilderness or wherever, we use the language we were taught by our parents to think, read books written by others, think thoughts inspired or thought by others, and endure the same kinds of hardships others have endured before us.

Our socialization is our strength and while we may sneer at followers we depend on them for pretty much everything. The best teams are full of team players, rather than stars. Stars have egos everyone has to deal with; team players cooperate with each other and help each other. While teams may have stars in them, those stars will no doubt be followers in other things too. We can't all be exceptional in every aspect of our lives.

It is naive to say 'I built this all by myself' when I depend on other people to process and prepare the materials I will use to build anything.

One day I was in a group on Facebook where a libertarian woman told us a story of her mentally disabled son whom she would send to government-run functions - I assume so she could have a break and so he could socialize with peers - yet she told us that these functions were dangerous. I asked her what she thought should be done and she said: I thought I had explained that.

She had offered no solution; I assumed she meant that a private corporation should be set up to manage these kids. A private corporation would be expensive and probably want to set up a crony system where it a) must make a profit and b) is fully subsidized by the government, like debt collecting for government fines and prisons. This has turned out to be a massive rort for these corporate parasites, based on the lie that 'government is necessarily less efficient than corporations', which is the greatest con ever worked, and it is still working on the minds of Americans.

The government under-funds these projects because they are constantly battling for funding for other projects that probably affect more people.

It was clear the woman wasn't independent enough or interested in starting this business herself, otherwise perhaps it would have occurred to her that this was the solution she was after. But I can understand not everyone being independent enough or wanting to be an entrepreneur.

I think, alternatively, parents of these kids should get together and figure out the kind of activities these kids would be good at and enjoy, and supervise it themselves. I can understand not everyone coming up with my idea but even with my putting the idea out there, it is still likely no one will do it, it needs a critical mass of followers for an idea to take off. What I was doing is 'independent thinking' rather than 'leadership'.

No, I am not interested in doing it myself because I don't have mentally disabled children and if I did I would seriously consider having aborted the baby if I had known in would be mentally disabled. I think it is irresponsible to have a child that will need constant supervision and would be unable to care for itself in our society after I am unable to care for my child myself, instead of burdening my other children with the disabled child or trusting the state or someone else will take care of my child. I think Sarah Palin is totally irresponsible because as a woman who had a disabled son she should be advocating for better care facilities for the mentally disabled.

Yet these people don't want a government? I don't understand how libertarians can want to live without a government when people who are directly affected by government run programs can't even come up with a solution for a problem they directly experience.

When there is a revolution, often someone who takes the place of the previous head of state often surpasses the tyranny of that person because they are modelling their leadership style on their predecessor (or following the leader). In the past, leaders, i.e. monarchy, were groomed for the role of leadership. The heir apparent was taken under the wing of the monarch and taught how to be a good leader, noblesse oblige. We see absolutely none of this in CEOs or GOP presidential candidates... There is the idea that anyone can be a good leader, but leadership is a skill that can be taught or a talent that can be nurtured, it's not in-built into our DNA like following is.

Clearly the government was intended to be a negotiation between elected representatives, and this is the simple bit: one person cannot think of everything, but corporations have hijacked government with legislation making people irrelevant. This is the part that is wrong. This is what we must protect against - as the founding fathers tried to protect us against corporations before - which was the original reason for the revolution. Corporations have taken away our ability to cooperate directly with each other that was probably based on our ability to negotiate directly with each other, this maintains their power over us.

Whenever a government is removed from power, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, the countries don't become anarcho-paradises, they become hell-holes, and the reason is we are all following the leader.