Ghostwriting Experience

I ghostwrote an essay for my old high school buddy who's now in business school.

Having neither the knowledge of economics nor the writing skill, and ghostwriting that essay more than a week after the real one was due, I was certainly not involved in any true dishonesty in that ghostwriting experience. On an intellectual level I know that I should not therefore feel any guilt for writing in answer to someone else's prompt, in (an attempt at) his voice, and under his name.

On an emotional level I also felt no remorse, no gut instinct telling me to come clean. Perhaps the lack of fear of being caught left my myopic self-interest unengaged, and without that all perceived wrongdoings were no more emotionally weighty than the cartoonish crimes of the villain in a bad action movie.

Perhaps my lack of experience being caught in a truly damaging lie lets me connect the cause (dishonesty) and the effect (punishment) only vicariously.
Perhaps I'm just so arrogant that I don't think the reader deserves the truth.
Or Perhaps I'm so lacking in confidence that I don't think my name as an author has any meaning.

I said in class that while capitalism is an evil necessary to the smooth function of our society but an evil regardless and therefore we should not let money control production where it will not amplify production. I now am starting to think that that evil is small in comparison to the evil of widespread compulsory honesty. If a lie will enable the synergy of a famous image with a genius for composition (not that my ghostwriting experience had anything to do with either of those ingredients) then let it be so.