10. A Critique of Pure Self-Interest and Unethical Shortcuts

Professional ethics is not a critique of profit. No sustainable firm can survive without revenue, investment, and the possibility of being compensated for risk. Individuals likewise have a right to benefit from their skill, time, and initiative. The problem begins when profit moves from being one sign of success to becoming the sole measure of what is right—when every route that increases income or reduces cost is treated as acceptable regardless of its source and consequences.

Under this logic, the main question is no longer “What value has been created?” but “What can be appropriated?” The customer is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to make a sale. Labor is not a partner in production but a cost to be reduced as far as possible. An economic partner becomes a source of information and connections, and another person’s knowledge becomes a ready-made route for shortening one’s own path.

There is a difference between profit generated by creating value and profit generated by extracting value. The first may come from making a better product, genuinely reducing costs, taking risks, innovating, or providing a useful service. The second feeds on situations in which an individual or firm captures a greater share of resources, information, or power without adding proportionate value.

From Value Creation to Rent-Seeking

In economics, “rent-seeking” does not mean renting out property or receiving any form of income. It refers to activities that direct resources toward obtaining privileges, barriers to entry, exclusive licenses, or benefits derived from institutional and political advantage instead of creating new value.

In her classic article “The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society,” Anne Krueger showed that when licenses and restrictions create special benefits, individuals and firms may devote substantial resources not to increasing production but to competing for those privileges. The social cost is not limited to the privilege itself; the time, capital, and effort spent obtaining it are also diverted from productive activity.1

This concept should not be generalized to every public subsidy, regulation, or license. Some regulations are necessary for safety, consumer protection, or prevention of public harm. Rent-seeking becomes relevant when the primary objective is to obtain a discriminatory privilege or restrict competition rather than address a real risk or provide a public service.

The Law on the Implementation of the General Policies of Article 44 of the Constitution also prohibits discriminatory governmental assistance or privileges granted to one or more firms where they lead to market dominance or disruption of competition. Article 52 lists privileges involving domestic currency, foreign exchange, credit, exemptions, discounts, preferential treatment, and information.5 The provision shows that an economic benefit is not exempt from competitive scrutiny merely because it has a legal or administrative appearance.

A firm that devotes its energy to keeping others out instead of improving itself may profit in the short term, but it deprives the market of the mechanism that should force it to improve quality and reduce costs. In such an environment, the decisive skill is no longer production; it is proximity to the place where privileges are distributed.

A Shortcut Is Not Always the Shortest Route

An unethical shortcut looks attractive from an individual perspective because it removes a cost that someone else has already paid. One person spends years learning a market; another takes their customer list. A team reaches an effective method after repeated testing; someone with access to internal files presents the result as their own without traveling the same path. A firm invests in building credibility; a competitor creates a similar appearance in an effort to redirect part of the customers’ trust toward itself.

From the actor’s point of view, each of these behaviors may look “smart.” They have avoided the cost of research, advertising, training, or testing and reached the market faster. But what is a saving for one participant can create new costs for the entire economic environment: companies close off information, contracts become heavier, collaborations more limited, and people become more cautious about teaching others.

The Industrial Property Protection Act treats acquisition or disclosure of trade secrets without the owner’s permission as infringement while distinguishing, in the circumstances it specifies, independent acquisition and reverse engineering from trade secret infringement. The law differentiates between “traveling an independent path” and “using unauthorized access.”8

This distinction matters to professional ethics as well. Reaching a result faster is not unethical in itself. Innovation often consists precisely in finding a shorter and better route. The issue is whether that shorter route came from solving the problem or from eliminating another person’s rights.

When Customer Ignorance Becomes Part of the Profit Model

In a transaction, the seller usually knows more about the product than the buyer. This information gap can be reduced through clear explanation, credible warranties, and the ability to compare options; or it can become a source of income that depends on defects and limitations remaining hidden.

Unrestrained self-interest tells the seller that as long as the customer has not asked the right question, there is no need to disclose a decisive fact. Ethically, that defense is insufficient. A customer cannot ask about a risk whose possible existence they have no reason to know.

Article 7 of the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights prohibits false advertising and the provision of incorrect information that deceives or misleads consumers. Article 8 also criminalizes collusion and imposition of conditions that reduce supply, lower quality, or increase prices.6

In electronic transactions, Article 50 of the Electronic Commerce Act does not target only direct lies; it prohibits an act or omission that misleads or deceives the audience regarding the quantity or quality of goods and services. Articles 52–54 likewise emphasize accurate and clear understanding of information and disclosure of the business’s identity.7

These provisions illustrate an important legal boundary: silence is not always neutral. If a supplier knows that omitting a fact will materially alter a customer’s understanding, failing to state it can be part of the deception. Legal responsibility depends on the circumstances and the competent authority’s decision, but the ethical criterion is clear even before legal adjudication: the other party’s ignorance should not be designed into the profit model.

Profit from Eliminating the Competitor—or from Improving Yourself?

Healthy competition pushes a firm to improve. It lowers price through efficiency, raises quality, understands customer experience more accurately, and builds solutions to real problems. In unhealthy competition, energy is spent weakening others instead of improving oneself.

The Law on the Implementation of the General Policies of Article 44 of the Constitution prohibits collusion that leads to price fixing, restrictions on production or sales, imposition of discriminatory terms, division of markets, or limitations on others’ entry. Article 45 also covers, where competition is disrupted, practices such as hoarding, coordinated refusal to deal, discriminatory pricing, predatory pricing, and misleading statements.5

Not every price reduction, difference in transaction terms, or refusal to cooperate is anticompetitive. Legal characterization depends on market structure, costs, the effects of the conduct, and the view of the Competition Council. Professional ethics nevertheless asks the firm to answer a prior question: does my advantage come from greater efficiency and value, or from closing a path that should remain open to others?

Even a lawful intellectual-property right is not an unlimited license to eliminate competition. Article 51 of the Law on the Implementation of the General Policies of Article 44 of the Constitution states that exclusive rights and privileges arising from intellectual property should not result in violations of anticompetition provisions and gives the Competition Council authority to adopt corrective measures in such circumstances.[5]

Article 129 of the Industrial Property Protection Act likewise treats false statements against a competitor, creation of misleading similarity, false advertising about a product’s nature or quality, misleading comparative advertising, and collusion to exclude competitors as forms of unfair competition.[8]

Competition, then, is not only a right to enter the market; it also carries responsibility for how one remains in it.

The Normalization of Small Deviations

Many unhealthy environments do not begin with a major decision to deceive. First, quality is reduced slightly without telling the customer. Then a figure in a report is presented a little more optimistically. An expense that should have been recorded is set aside “temporarily.” A manager knows a delivery promise is unrealistic but hopes a solution will appear later.

Each decision looks small on its own, and a ready justification exists: “This time is an exception,” “Everyone does it,” “If we don’t, the competitor will,” “We’ll make it up later.” The problem is that a repeated exception becomes a rule. Newcomers then treat what they observe as the normal standard of the profession.

Language changes in such organizations as well. Concealing a defect becomes “message management,” squeezing a supplier becomes “cost optimization,” using confidential information becomes “market knowledge,” and erasing a colleague’s intellectual contribution becomes “consolidating ownership.” Changing the name does not change the conduct; it merely reduces ethical resistance to it.

The dangerous point is reached when the person no longer feels a need to justify the behavior. What was initially done with hesitation becomes part of the normal way of working. At that stage, an organization may still have a professional appearance, regular meetings, and formal documents while its real norms differ from what is written in its ethics charter.

Legality Is Not the End of Ethical Judgment

Law needs definitions, evidence, and a competent authority in order to be enforced. Professional ethics operates across a broader field. Conduct may not yet fit a specific legal category, there may be insufficient evidence to prove it, or the law may be silent about a new technology or business model.

Someone who asks only, “Can I survive a lawsuit over this?” remains at the lowest level of responsibility. A professional should assess not only whether conduct can be defended legally but also what it does to another person’s rights, trust, and ability to choose.

This should not lead to subjective judgment or accusation. The fact that someone regards conduct as unethical is not enough to treat another person as a criminal or deprive them of rights. Punishment and legal liability require evidence and procedure. The distinction between ethics and law matters precisely for this reason: ethics can criticize conduct, but it should not replace the court.

Conversely, a legal gap does not create ethical immunity. A firm that deliberately designs its product or contract around the customer’s inability to understand details cannot rely on the absence of an explicit rule about that exact technique as proof of fairness.

The Cost That Does Not Appear in Financial Statements

An unethical shortcut can produce profit for a time. Secretly lowering quality reduces production costs. Delaying wages preserves cash. Using a former partner’s knowledge shortens time to market. Exaggerated advertising can increase initial sales.

A substantial part of the cost appears later: customers become more cautious, employees hide information, partners demand stricter contracts, innovators share fewer ideas, and suppliers charge more to compensate for the risk created by distrust.

Knack and Keefer’s cross-country research, using data from 29 market economies, found associations between trust, civic norms, and certain indicators of economic performance. Zak and Knack likewise examined the relationship between trust and growth in a theoretical and empirical framework.[2][3] These studies alone do not prove that increasing trust produces growth through a simple direct relationship; later research has also produced mixed results regarding the robustness of some estimates.[4] Taken together, however, this literature does not permit us to treat trust as trivial or merely a moral concern.

Trust does not replace law, capital, or policy. Its absence makes all three more expensive and less effective. Contracts must become more detailed, monitoring must increase, and every new collaboration begins with suspicion.

Parasitic Growth and Productive Growth

Productive growth comes from increasing the ability to solve problems. A firm makes something better, cheaper, safer, or more accessible. Even if its product is not entirely new, it creates a real improvement in process, quality, or user experience.

Parasitic growth relies on infrastructure created by others without recognizing their contribution and rights. The reputation of a name, a team’s knowledge, a customer’s urgent need, a worker’s weak legal position, or a partner’s confidential information becomes a source of nourishment.

The boundary between the two is not always visible in the outward appearance of a business. Both may have high sales, elegant offices, extensive advertising, and growth charts. The difference lies in the path by which those results were built.

A firm may act in formally lawful ways based on contracts and existing gaps while shifting costs and risks onto people with less ability to defend themselves. Such growth may look successful in the short term, but it adds nothing to society’s capacity for trust and cooperation.

The Language of Success Should See the Path as Well as the Result

Economic culture tends to see the result more easily than the path. Revenue, market expansion, and company valuation are discussed, but less often do we ask how that success was built. Did the customer know the truth? Did workers receive their share and rights? Was a former partner’s information used? Was the competitor displaced through quality or through privileged access and destructive tactics?

When only the outcome is celebrated, the distinction between productive success and opportunistic success disappears. People learn that how they moved ahead does not matter as long as they are seen to be ahead.

The media, universities, professional bodies, and firms themselves all have a role in changing this language. Entrepreneurship should not be reduced to forming a company or increasing sales. Innovation is not merely a new name for a similar product. Competition is not the destruction of the other party; it is the ability to improve oneself in a field where the rules apply to everyone.

A Simple Test Before Taking a Shortcut

No professional situation has one ready-made answer, but a few questions can make the nature of a shortcut clearer.

Would this method still be defensible if the harmed party knew every detail? Does its success depend on the truth remaining hidden? If every actor in the market behaved this way, would cooperation and quality survive? Who receives the benefit, and who bears the risk and cost? Could the person have reached the same result without confidential access or unequal power?

A negative answer to one of these questions does not necessarily create a specific legal category, but it is a signal that the decision requires more serious scrutiny.

Profit That Consumes Trust

Financial capital is visible in accounts when it is spent; trust capital is not. It may take years to build and disappear through a handful of decisions. A firm that uses the trust of customers, workers, or partners for immediate gain is consuming an asset that is difficult to measure.

Sometimes that consumption remains hidden for a while. The customer has not found an alternative, the worker cannot leave, or the partner still lacks full access to records. The absence of an immediate reaction does not mean there has been no harm.

Unrestrained self-interest often presents itself as rationality, but it has usually done little more than shorten the time horizon. It sees today’s profit while shifting tomorrow’s cost to the market, society, workers, or the next generation.

Professional ethics does not oppose profit; it asks profit not to conceal its real cost. Income built on quality, skill, innovation, and service can make an economy larger. Income fed by deception, monopoly, breach of trust, and erasure of others’ rights may move one actor ahead while making the shared field poorer.

This distinction is decisive for Iran’s progress. The country needs more than more firms or larger transactions; it needs activities that increase the capacity for production, cooperation, learning, and trust. The next section of the article examines professional ethics from this perspective as one of the conditions for Iran’s sustainable progress.