Ethics is Efficient
Prologue to the LogLine Papers
*"Fraud doesn't pay when fraud is expensive."*
Why We Built This
Let me tell you why this works.
Not how. Why.
Every system you've ever used was built with ethics as an afterthought. A compliance checkbox. A legal department. An ethics committee that meets quarterly and changes nothing.
Ethics was the last thing added.
And that's why those systems fail.
The Insight
Ethics committees in parliaments are theater. Compliance departments are paper-pushers. "Responsible AI" is marketing copy.
But here's what nobody tells you:
Ethics is not overhead. Ethics is the dominant strategy.
When you make honesty cheaper than deception, people choose honesty.
When you make accountability structural, disputes disappear.
When you make verification cheaper than argument, trust scales.
This isn't idealism. This is arithmetic.
The Math
A major fintech processes $47 billion annually. Industry-standard fraud rate: 0.3%.
That's $141 million in fraud losses per year.
Add the teams that deal with fraud:
- Fraud detection: $30 million
- Dispute resolution: $22 million
- Compliance and audit: $18 million
Total cost of dealing with fraud after the fact: $211 million/year.
Now imagine a different architecture:
Every transaction requires a signed intent before execution. Every denial persists as evidence. Every decision produces a cryptographic receipt. Fraud doesn't just fail—it leaves a signed confession.
In this architecture:
- Fraud detection shrinks because fraudsters can't probe without leaving evidence
- Disputes collapse because both parties signed the same receipt
- Audit becomes verification, not investigation
Estimated cost: $40 million/year.
Savings: $171 million/year.
This isn't theory. This is why LogLine exists.