Back when I first started attending university, I lived far enough away I'd hop on the bus to get to class on time. On one ride, there was a guy playing a card game. It looked pretty easy to win: three cards, find the queen. He made it look easy of course. The first couple times, I won. So I bet the money I had - the money I needed to buy food that week - 20 bucks. As you can guess, before I realized what happened, the guy was hopping off the bus with my week's nutrition fund. Naturally it was a rigged game. There was no way he was going to lose and there was every way I was going to.
Three-card Monte is a variation of a shell game, a short confidence game, con game, played by a confidence man, con man, who earns the dupe's confidence and then scampers off with the dupe's valuables. Losing my money on the bus in a matter of seconds taught me a valuable lesson: a pot of lentil soup can feed a person for a week, there are people trying to take advantage of other people's gullibility, and I am one of the gullible ones.
I quickly learned that the perfunctory and most prudent path to follow is to not trust people when they tell you stuff especially if it sounds more promising than could be imagined (i.e. if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is). To put it another way, if you're not the one conniving money from others, you're the one getting swindled.
As I've grown older, I've noticed that the pitches look more polished, the methodology shinier, but the message is the same - give us your money, win some crap.
There are get-rich-quick schemes, pyramid schemes, and Ponzi schemes - named after Charles Ponzi - that are just flat out bilking scams run by smooth talkers like Bernie Madoff.
I can kind of understand why people give their money to these scalawags. There's a promise of something better, albeit a completely false one; it still represents a promise. That classic American dream of betterment, you know, the streets-paved-in-gold idea.
What's this guy offering?
His sites include all the bells and whistles to lure in dupes willing to part with their cash. They've got the flashing icons and the slogans, but they're terribly short on promises.
The fundraising sponsored by Trump is run by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee (“TMAGAC”), which is a joint fundraising committee composed of several participating committees, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (“DJTP”), Save America, and the Republican National Committee (“RNC”).
All contributions are divided into the sub-categories of participating committees and each contribution is divided differently depending on which committee has been allocated. I can't assume people who are visiting these sites and sending this caitiff cash are inclined to believe that all of their money is going to fight for overturning the election, but if they do think that, they're in for quite a shock.
Reading the small text provides that at least 50 to 75% of any donation goes to Trump's debts and Trump himself. As Philip Bump reported money raised "in the Save America PAC, unlike money contributed to a standard campaign committee, can be used to benefit Trump in innumerable ways. Memberships at golf clubs. Travel. Rallies. Even payments directly to Trump himself, as long as he declares it as income."
That's right. If you've contributed to Trump's fundraising since November 3rd, you've given money to a self-proclaimed billionaire for nothing in return, to pay his debts, and to pay him to play golf.
That leads me to my book choice of the day.
This book excerpt is from Maria Konnikova's The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time.
The confidence game has existed long before the term itself was first used, likely in 1849, during the trial of William Thompson. The elegant Thompson, according to the New York Herald, would approach passersby on the streets of Manhattan, start up a conversation, and then come forward with a unique request. “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” Faced with such a quixotic question, and one that hinged directly on respectability, many a stranger proceeded to part with his timepiece. And so, the “confidence man” was born: the person who uses others’ trust in him for his own private purposes. Have you confidence in me? What will you give me to prove it?
Cons come in all guises. Short cons like the infamous three-card monte or shell game: feats of sleight of hand and theatrics still played avidly on the streets of Manhattan. Long cons that take time and ingenuity to build up, from impostor schemes to Ponzis to the building of outright new realities—a new country, a new technology, a new cure—that have found a comfortable home in the world of the Internet, and remain, as well, safely ensconced in their old, offline guises. Many come with fanciful names. Pig in a poke, dating back at least to 1530, when Richard Hill’s “Common-place book” suggested that “When ye proffer the pigge open the poke,” lest what comes out of the bag is not a pig at all. The Spanish Prisoner, called by the New York Times, in 1898, “one of the oldest and most attractive and probably most successful swindles known to the police,” dates back at least to the 1500s. The magic wallet. The gold brick. The green goods. Banco. The big store. The wire. The payoff. The rag. The names are as colorful as they are plentiful.
The con is the oldest game there is. But it’s also one that is remarkably well suited to the modern age. If anything, the whirlwind advance of technology heralds a new golden age of the grift. Cons thrive in times of transition and fast change, when new things are happening and old ways of looking at the world no longer suffice. That’s why they flourished during the gold rush and spread with manic fury in the days of westward expansion. That’s why they thrive during revolutions, wars, and political upheavals. Transition is the confidence game’s great ally, because transition breeds uncertainty. There’s nothing a con artist likes better than exploiting the sense of unease we feel when it appears that the world as we know it is about to change. We may cling cautiously to the past, but we also find ourselves open to things that are new and not quite expected. Who’s to say this new way of doing business isn’t the wave of the future?
In the nineteenth century, we had the industrial revolution, and many present-day scam techniques developed in its wake. Today, we have the technological revolution. And this one, in some ways, is best suited to the con of all. With the Internet, everything is shifting at once, from the most basic things (how we meet people and make meaningful connections) to the diurnal rhythms of our lives (how we shop, how we eat, how we schedule meetings, make dates, plan vacations). Shy away from everything, you’re a technophobe or worse. (You met how? Online? And you’re . . . getting married?) Embrace it too openly, though, and the risks that used to come your way only in certain circumscribed situations—a walk down Canal Street past a three-card monte table, an “investment opportunity” from the man in your club, and so forth—are a constant presence anytime you open your iPad.
That’s why no amount of technological sophistication or growing scientific knowledge or other markers we like to point to as signs of societal progress will—or can—make cons any less likely. The same schemes that were playing out in the big stores of the Wild West are now being run via your in-box; the same demands that were being made over the wire are hitting your cell phone. A text from a family member. A frantic call from the hospital. A Facebook message from a cousin who seems to have been stranded in a foreign country. When Catch Me If You Can hero Frank Abagnale, who, as a teen, conned his way through most any organization you can imagine, from airlines to hospitals, was recently asked if his escapades could happen in the modern world—a world of technology and seemingly ever-growing sophistication—he laughed. Far, far simpler now, he said. “What I did fifty years ago as a teenage boy is four thousand times easier to do today because of technology. Technology breeds crime. It always has, and always will.”
Konnikova, Maria (2016-01-11T22:58:59). The Confidence Game . Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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