The Sucker Complex

https://itsjoeco.substack.com/p/the-sucker-complex

by 1cvmask • 5 years ago

216 230 5 years ago

itsjoeco.substack.com

fnord77• 5 years ago

the author has some good points, but mixes corrupt/criminal activities with activities that are meant to protect the economy (paying covid rent)

verifex• 5 years ago

I think the article has some flaws because it seems like the point of the article seems to try and link the sentiment given to people who commit deliberate unethical/corrupt behavior to non-deliberate and otherwise less-fortunate people, which I think is a bit of a disingenuous argument.

smackeyacky5• 5 years ago

Its a deliberate conflation, a sleight of hand that happens in American discourse all the time.

As an example, Americans are hostages to your incredibly inefficient health care system. Not only is reasonable discussion of public health outside your overton window, the reason it stays outside is the instant clamour of voices saying "free stuff is bad and you are bad for advocating it".

The only way to get access to reasonable care seems to be either military service or full employment. The rest of the world is incredulous that losing your job means losing access to healthcare.

That truly strange conception of "freedom" americans are always so afraid of losing is a massive illusion for the majority of a population deathly afraid of the financial ramifications of a health crisis.

Yet you have no functional way of talking about it, because of the sleight of hand discourse exemplified by the article.

I truly feel sorry for americans at this point.

epicureanideal2• 5 years ago

There's still moral hazard there, because no doubt many people already had the sense that the government would do something like that, so intentionally didn't pay their rent.

smackeyacky5• 5 years ago

Classic "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".

Just because welfare cheats exist doesn't make welfare bad. The vast majority of recipients were worthy.

paulpauper4• 5 years ago

these are just edge cases that get a lot of media coverage. By in large, people in tech, law, finance , etc. are making a lot of money and while being ethical and hard-working. The fear that society is overflowing with opportunists who are just looting the system or getting by without work, is overblown. I understand the author's frustration, but incompetence, favoritism, lying (except perjury), and nepotism are generally not crimes, and very few people are able to get by without doing the necessary work. Also, plenty of non-famous people also engage in shitty behavior too but it's not newsworthy.

arciini• 5 years ago

Similarly, I think powerful people have always behaved as poorly as in the examples he mentioned. It's just that nowadays, data-driven traditional and social media uses the outrage to make money. This does unfortunately lead more people to think that cheating is OK, but I think for the most part, our systems do eventually work to correct that.

emodendroket9• 5 years ago

Certainly even the Founding Fathers had a lot of business entanglements that would lead one to seriously question whether they didn't have a conflict of interest (e.g., how much was Washington's decision to mount an army to secure the Ohio territory influenced by his own significant personal holdings there?). But it feels to me like at one point we had, to some extent, mastered this problem, and now we've moved away from even trying.

luckylion• 5 years ago

Probably. Maybe it didn't have that much of an impact on society because it wasn't known. E.g. in Germany during Covid-19 measures, multiple CDU politicians got caught doing shady deals with companies, either by having the state overpay for masks for a kickback, by pushing for emergency certifications for some tests (again for cash), and other corrupt behaviors.

This wouldn't be a large issue if nobody had known - even if the state had overpaid by half a billion, that's not even a day's worth of money. However, since it came out, there has been a massive loss of trust in politicians and public institutions. Those who doubted before now saw proof that it's all just a scheme, and others just lost a lot of trust.

We'll have to see whether anything happens beyond the accused promising to donate the proceeds, but I'm not holding my breath.

emodendroket9• 5 years ago

But this article cites multiple examples from the highest levels of business and politics to make the point.

paulpauper4• 5 years ago

if you dig deep and long enough you will find examples for any group at all levels..

the examples he gives are weak. For example, Trump's hotels saw an increase in business after he became president. Is this a surprise or a bad thing, given all the media coverage he got? Of all the things we can fault trump on, is this the most damning, which was not even under his control?

JKCalhoun8• 5 years ago

Sounds like the "Welfare queen" that people want to get all enraged about all over again.

DerSaidin• 5 years ago

Also happening on an international level with countries ignoring climate change?

rlanday3• 5 years ago

That’s not good behavior but I think it’s not really the same phenomenon. That’s more of a coordinated action/tragedy of the commons problem where people want to bury their heads in the sand and do nothing because the problem can be mostly ignored for now.

Supermancho• 5 years ago

This is a case of the Broken Windows Theory.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/broken-windows-theory

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 5 years ago

This dog-eat-dog "if you don't steal, you won't survive" endemic level of corruption and ubiquitous legal broken windows is IME not uncommon in shitty third-world countries (of one of which I'm an expat) where scarcity leads people to prioritize their own needs over common decency and consideration towards others. The "everybody else is cheating, this is the baseline" attitude always felt wrong, but, just like the article said, you were made to feel a fool if you didn't participate in it. The US felt like a place that, while not immune to cheating, had strong social and legal norms around it.

The most recent phenomenon of this kind I can recall was people lying to vaccination centers about having medical conditions that would help them skip the line ahead of everybody else. I was and still am vehemently opposed to lying about that, despite having been told numerous times that the government would have just thrown the doses away if nobody used them up by lying about their status. Again, you were made to feel a sucker.

doovd• 5 years ago

This dog-eat-dog "if you don't steal, you won't survive" endemic level of corruption and ubiquitous legal broken windows is IME not uncommon in shitty third-world countries

No different in most first world countries

jmeister2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I’m an immigrant like the other replier too, you kids need to dump your books and travel the world, outside Americanized liberal cities.

dandanua3• 5 years ago

You're also a sucker if you don't invest in crypto. This "sucker" trick is very primitive, it's common to see that teenagers use it to control each other. What's horrible is that significant power structures in our world use it to control the population. This is a huge marking of cultural degradation, in my opinion.

rlanday3• 5 years ago

I hated the vaccination thing sooo much. I was already annoyed that the US is becoming a communist country where all the most valuable goods (e.g. vaccines) are given to powerful politicians (members of Congress) instead of letting people in the private sector buy them with their own money. The fact that people started lying to jump the line ahead of all the honest people in addition to the people who would’ve paid for them with their hard-earned money pissed me off royally. It made me feel like a sucker for working and paying taxes. I identify very strongly with the author of this article.

JKCalhoun8• 5 years ago

I didn't feel like a sucker at all. I just hated those people that thought to cheat the system.

pjc502• 5 years ago

High-trust vs low-trust societies. In a high trust society you can generally get more things done more quickly and easily because you can spend less time and effort on trust structures; you can hire strangers rather than family members, etc. The downside is that there's a bigger, less heavily guarded return to cheating. And every effort to cheat to win that pot pushes the society closer to low-trust.

calahad• 5 years ago

Hard to take anything the guy says seriously when he calls this tweet "objectively amazing" a couple of paragraphs in: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1470899663087747072

danuker5• 5 years ago

It's almost Christmas. Suspend some of your disbelief!

palad1n• 5 years ago

Yeah, can anyone explain this one to me?

jacobolus• 5 years ago

The author is living in a Fox News fever dream, in which Elizabeth Warren’s badness is taken as an article of faith.

rubatuga• 5 years ago

Elon pays some tax

dionidium2• 5 years ago

What’s to get? “He “dunked” on her in a way lots of people found funny. She comes off looking kind of silly and weak and he comes off looking clever and acerbic.

Now, look, it’s tantamount to a schoolyard spat. I’m not saying it needs to mean anything more than that. But evaluating it as a spat, most people who read that exchange come away thinking he won it.

asn1parse• 5 years ago

not new

nickysielicki3• 5 years ago

All that is required to beat this, honestly, is a few people serving as positive role models with transparency and not abusing their authority. I can manage my little corner of the universe but I’m not holding my breath on the rest of the country.

Totally lost me in the last paragraph.

Can't everyone agree that these role models already exist? They're just hard to name because they don't do anything outrageous to steal our attention. The problem isn't that we don't know how to act properly -- the problem isn't that we need role models. The problem is that there's no reason to follow their lead.

The solution is nothing short of punishment of these people and enforcement of the law. The problem is the bad people.

emodendroket9• 5 years ago

A striking phrase I remember from the 2008 fallout was that one malfeasant was "not the type of person you send to jail."

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

I think you're looking for "malfeasor"

wayoutthere• 5 years ago

The solution is nothing short of punishment of these people and enforcement of the law. The problem is the bad people.

I have yet to meet a completely good or completely bad person. Most people I’ve ever met are both at different times and in different situations. Is a single mother stealing baby formula to feed her child a bad person? An addict breaking into cars to feed an addiction?

People in desperate situations do desperate things, and I think we can all agree that the legal system is applied rather unevenly to those without the resources to appear sympathetic in court (who also tend to be more desperate than the average person). We effectively criminalize being poor, so I’m not sure more criminal laws or more police will help that problem.

kinjba11• 5 years ago

The examples from the article are almost all rich people getting away with greedy behavior, not at all comparable to desperate crimes of the poor. Absolutely we need more enforcement of good behavior and punishment of bad behavior at the top (role models), not the bottom.

Pxtl4• 5 years ago

Yeah, transparency and honesty doesn't win elections. It's hilarious that this is a conservative posting this, since Trump spend 4 years wiping his ass with norms and revealing how broken the system is, and how all the "rules" were just suggestions he could abuse freely and half the USA still approved of him.

JackFr2• 5 years ago

Why is that hilarious? As a conservative, it’s worth noting there’s truly nothing substantially conservative about Trump. He singlehandedly did more damage to the Republican Party than anyone since Nixon, and I would say more. Purge is an ugly word, but absent wholesale house cleaning of Trumpist grifters from the party I don’t see a useful future for it.

However, it seems your point us that you fundamentally agree with OPs central thesis, but that you can’t believe someone politically aligned differently than you can have possibly made that argument.

nickysielicki3• 5 years ago

I take issue with you calling me conservative, I’m a libertarian.

emodendroket9• 5 years ago

Innumerate politicians who themselves mandate harsh covid restrictions living their lives ignoring their own mandates - serial violators Gavin Newsom and Phil Murphy got re-elected!

In the Newsom case, his opponent was someone claiming it was all a bunch of nonsense and if elected he'd do away with all restrictions immediately, so not a very strong vote for the person who's upset that he didn't take the whole thing seriously enough.

josephcsible5• 5 years ago

If Newsom says that you'll probably die if somebody without a mask stands next to you, and he stands next to you without a mask, then either he's a liar or he doesn't care about your life. If his opponent says you'll almost certainly not die just because somebody without a mask stands next to you, and he stands next to you without a mask, he can still care about your life and be honest.

emodendroket9• 5 years ago

Well yes, if you replace the actual claims about coronavirus and masks with different, absurd ones, then the argument is simple to counter. What if you didn't do that, though?

I would guess many voters don't want to vote for someone they saw as a lunatic, even if he acts in a way that's very consistent with his own beliefs. Exit polling showed coronavirus was a big issue for voters and they didn’t think Newsom went far enough.

danuker5• 5 years ago

The psychological effect on most is that they start to feel like suckers for not pushing the envelope themselves and it’s dangerous because a country of jaded people is not one that can work together to solve common problems.

Absolutely. Thank you for hitting the nail on the head!

Problem is, the looting can only last so long, until everything has been looted.

I suspect not much longer; if you put some of your wealth someplace undebase-able (say, gold or crypto), there is a chance you will make it to the other side.

See also Atlas Shrugged, where the producers keeping the world afloat ("Atlas") decide to go on strike and hide due to populist politics bleeding them dry of their hard work ("shrugged").

kukx• 5 years ago

In case of crypto you can easily go to 0 or near 0. However gold is historically stable in terms of a real value.

danuker5• 5 years ago

I would diversify.

Cryptocurrency is maturing, and that might mean we will see less volatility.

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/volatility-index/

And gold has also fallen 40% from $1825 in Aug 2011 to $1061 in Nov 2015.

https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...

smackeyacky5• 5 years ago

"Atlas Shrugged" is fiction.

danuker5• 5 years ago

It's strongly inspired by the Soviet Union.

kybernetyk• 5 years ago

But it becomes less so every year.

bambax3• 5 years ago

Yes, and it's also bad writing, and utterly stupid.

74B52• 5 years ago

Neither gold nor crypto will bring you to what ever "the other side" is (so much wistles).

Crypto currencies are bound to a functioning infrastructure and can be unpredictably volatile. Gold is no currency at all in the sense of a common trade value and this is the essence of it all. No, actually its labor. Labor is the only kind of value and any "worth" (eg money) has to be translatable to that. Crypto and gold is not.

danuker5• 5 years ago

"the other side" is (so much wistles)

What I mean here concretely is failure/bankruptcy of the current system after people get fed up, and re-emergence/prioritization of institutions of justice and rule of law.

This may be just a dream however. Don't hold your breath.

Gold is no currency at all in the sense of a common trade value

I don't mind it not being a commonly transacted medium if I can buy and sell it without a lot of fees. For my purposes, even cheap good cars or real estate constitute a store of value, albeit less liquid ones.

Labor is the only kind of value and any "worth"

Value is in the eye of the beholder. If I value my productivity less than you do yours, I might not accept payment in work.

wallacoloo3• 5 years ago

Labor is the only kind of value and any "worth" (eg money) has to be translatable to that. Crypto and gold is not.

crypto and gold can be exchanged for labor products in much the same way that other wealth can be (a house, stocks, bonds) — by first being exchanged for money. what do you mean when you say these things aren’t “translatable” into labor?

anm89• 5 years ago

Neither gold nor crypto will bring you to what ever "the other side"

If only there was some kind of marketplace where you could make incredible amounts of money with your 100% certain understanding of the future, this would be incredibly useful knowledge!

Alas, it doesn't exist and all there is to do is impotently yell at other people on the internet that they are wrong.

Labor is the only kind of value

I wonder if we took a survey of professional economists how many would agree with this statement. I'm going to say less then 1%.

jl27182• 5 years ago

Has labor ever been used as the basis of a national currency?

diordiderot• 5 years ago

Sadly every half wit middle manager & pencil pusher thinks that they're atlas, meanwhile there org survives on tacit knowledge of underlings who don't 'work to rule'

bambax3• 5 years ago

See also Atlas Shrugged, where the producers keeping the world afloat ("Atlas")

For the record: in Antiquity, Atlas doesn't hold the world, but the sky.

See https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2017/02/09/misunderstood-m...

avgcorrection4• 5 years ago

See also Atlas Shrugged, where the producers keeping the world afloat ("Atlas") decide to go on strike and hide due to populist politics bleeding them dry of their hard work ("shrugged").

And the former aristocrat from Tsarist Russia shrugged, went to America and made mediocre literature and a widely discredited philosophy.

jmeister2• 5 years ago

Atlas Shrugged was the #2 favorite of entrepreneurs and business leaders, after the Bible, according to surveys by Fortune up until the ‘00s.

She’s had a profound positive impact on America, sent countless young men and women into entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

If we had Ayn Rands today, we’d have discontent youth building alternatives instead of throwing tantrums and destroying.

randallsquared• 5 years ago

Uh, "former aristocrat"? Her father was a business owner before the October Revolution, a class usually pretty distinct from aristocrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#Early_life

kgin• 5 years ago

undebase-able (say, gold or crypto)…

Can’t debase something that has no base.

Crypto has upper limit on supply (usually) but but no lower limit on demand. It can go to zero tomorrow based on feelings.

epicureanideal2• 5 years ago

This only gets worse if we do something crazy like forgive massive amounts of debt, whether it’s student or mortgage. The psychological effect on the people who have lived within their means and met their obligations will be radicalizing.

Yep.

bredren2• 5 years ago

The psychological effect on the people who have lived within their means and met their obligations will be radicalizing.

First, this entry tries to conflate student loan forgiveness with a potpourri of ethical issues. It is not similar to the other examples.

It is reasonable to question the structure of US policy toward student loan programs. They are predatory compared with those of other nations.

If the US comes to terms with this problem, and major restructuring is done, is debt forgiveness on loans that are no longer even possible to get some massive psychological burden?

It seems more like sour grapes of having to run your own loans through bad policy.

brandonmenc2• 5 years ago

Exactly.

The psychological fallout will be immense if an entire generation who have had their lives destroyed by and are still on the hook for these loans sees everyone else go to school for free, relatively or in fact.

drcode• 5 years ago

I definitely feel like a sucker already for diligently paying off my school loans. A giant loan forgiveness program is probably coming.

sulam4• 5 years ago

I wouldn’t feel that way. Not paying those loans has a large impact on people’s ability to do relatively normal things like buy a house or get a non-POS credit card. Those effects won’t go away even if their loans are forgiven.

I do think you have a case to feel aggrieved, but at the end of the day you can choose to be someone who lives up to your standards or not. Getting upset about it is as much a choice as anything else you do.

simonbarker873• 5 years ago

Picture your cousin invited you to go do a little looting last summer and you demurred. Eventually he shows up with a bunch of new Nikes but is later arrested only to have his charges dropped and record expunged. How does that make you feel?

The clear intent from the author here is to make the reader feel like they too should have gone looting. This implies, to me, that the author perhaps doesn't have a particularly strong moral compass of their own because my honest answer is:

"My cousin is incredibly stupid and lucky that they got away with this, I'm glad I didn't join them because even getting away with it I would hate myself. I'm concerned my cousin thinks this behaviour is ok, think it's time to dial back the contact with them"

I absolutely don't feel: damn I should have gone looting too.

spiderfarmer• 5 years ago

You don't. I don't. But people who were on the fence will absolutely join in the next time.

a-dub• 5 years ago

"I'm concerned my cousin thinks this behaviour is ok, think it's time to dial back the contact with them"

maybe

"I'm concerned my cousin thinks this behaviour is ok, think it's time to consider what the relationship is worth to me, and if its important, attempt to influence better behaviors otherwise dial back contact with them"

instead

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

You're falling into the trap of thinking that there are "moral" people and "immoral" people and never the twain shall meet. This is empirically false: there are frameworks in which almost nobody will transgress (e.g. North Korea) and frameworks under which almost everybody will transgress (e.g. Nazi Germany). Most people benchmark their behavior from external cues.

SideburnsOfDoom• 5 years ago

The clear intent from the author here is to make the reader feel like they too should have gone looting.

IDK, I would say that the intent of this kind of writing it so make the reader feel a kind of "righteous anger" response; you know the visceral kind that damps down on slow rational analysis of the argument presented. Propagandising.

dandanua3• 5 years ago

I second this. Honest people can feel anger, not that they should do the same.

paulpauper4• 5 years ago

The clear intent from the author here is to make the reader feel like they too should have gone looting. This implies, to me, that the author perhaps doesn't have a particularly strong moral compass of their own because my honest answer is:

This is a really uncharitable interpretation.

simonbarker873• 5 years ago

It’s a pretty uncharitable article that uses the noisier easier to find “people getting away with it” stories to lay seeds of discontent without producing any data to show how many people are getting away with it. It’s easy to find the stories that make people angry but no where reports “system works as expected 4,000,000 times this year” stories. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t but anecdata to support the authors world view is also uncool.

lordnacho• 5 years ago

Your moral compass is also not a physical instrument though. If everyone makes a point of adopting an orphan, or feeding the homeless, you'll feel pressure to do that, too. Likewise there are countries where evading tax is a national sport, and countries where people play it straight.

What he's saying is we have established rules that are there to protect a sometimes vague notion of fairness, and when people break the rules or enter a grey zone without punishment, it seems to move the line of what is acceptable, in a way that makes fools of people who thought they understood the rules.

I have a lot of sympathy for his ideas. All those examples are corrosive, and I've been around a few people on the same fringes. Ultimately bad behaviour will push out for behaviour, because it's a lot easier to get money and status that way.

desmosxxx• 5 years ago

in a way that makes fools of people who thought they understood the rules

Exactly this. A system that incentivizes bad behavior and fails to protect/reward moral people exerts pressure on those with good morals.

Morals may stop you from repeating such behavior at first, but if it becomes a key to getting ahead then you can bet those morals will be slowly chipped away.

justsomeuser• 5 years ago

I agree, I would think the same too.

But I think the combination of a social environment where none of your peers have that thought, and being too young/not trained to think critically results in large groups of people just following their animalistic instincts.

roenxi• 5 years ago

My cousin is incredibly stupid and lucky that they got away with this...

This little phrase touches on the mismatch between your view and the article. What Joe is arguing is that if people get repeated evidence that it isn't luck, that it is a routine occurrence, then they will shift their view.

At some point, if you see stuff like that happen a few times, you'll have your faith that it is stupid tested. There isn't a natural - or even moral - law saying people can't loot. It all comes down to social standards and law. A society that allows looting is pretty stupid though, it is really destructive.

pfortuny• 5 years ago

Where do you get that intent as “clear”? I did not get it.

He is complaining that the absence of the application of the rule of law leads very easily to the elimination of society, because lots of people do not wish to just be suckers.

It is hard to be a sucker.

moritonal• 5 years ago

Would you have the same feeling if the metaphor was closer to home. Making assumptions here, but say a friend that contracts and pays less tax due to it. They are very successful but technically breaking a law or two, but everyone does it so who's the sucker?

simonbarker873• 5 years ago

I’ve already been in that situation and choose every time to pay the tax, keep things clean and straight forward. Our financial advisor used to poke fun at me and my business partner for how straight laced we were.

In year 7 of the company we got pinged for a random HMRC PAYE audit, we passed (with a couple of minor infractions that we simply didnt realise about - like buying bacon sandwiches for your staff every Friday is actually taxable) but it was still pretty stressful. If we had done half the stuff people had suggested we do because “everyone does it” we would have had a much worse time in that audit.

Yeh I have self employed friends and other directors who may or may not be as buttoned down as they should be and I’m sure they will be fine but I’m not wired that way and it’s treated me pretty well in life so far.

I hear from many people that my opinion of them matters to them a lot, that they follow my lead, that they loved working for me, that they think “what would Simon do here?” which is worth way more to me than skirting some rules for an advantage at the cost of my credibility, integrity and self respect.

heavenlyblue• 5 years ago

It's not about a moral compass, it's about the "market of deviance" (I don't know how to eloquently put the point I am making, maybe there's a better term).

If let's say, you are an employee of a company in a not-so-ethical market, and everybody around you acts unethically, then you have no way of playing against the market: you will either be fired for not doing your job, or you could call everyone on it, but no one will help you.

There's the other point to be made: if everyone around you acts unethically, then maybe it's your standards that are too high? Or maybe you are just delusional in your thinking about what "ethical" actually means.

t8e56vd4ih• 5 years ago

moral compass is something for wealthy and or humble people.

marliechiller• 5 years ago

"not true". See? I can throw out spurious comments too!

Cyril_HN• 5 years ago

I won't feel like that. I don't feel like that. I have felt like it licenses lesser moral transgressions though. "They got away with that, so I should be able to get away with [thing that is wrong but also considerably more mild]."

That isn't right, but it is a feeling. It's a feeling I dismiss. But, still, if it's a feeling I feel then I imagine it's a feeling others feel and I imagine that not everybody dismisses it either.

Corruption of that kind happens very, very slowly.

Aperocky2• 5 years ago

While having a moral compass is great in this case, because you LOST nothing. Sometimes it's a lot more damaging because in certain environments having it means giving up things to people who don't.

JKCalhoun8• 5 years ago

This implies, to me, that the author perhaps doesn't have a particularly strong moral compass of their own

Yeah, that was my takeaway too. I have never watched looters on TV and wished I were there with them looting.

Serial rapist, murderer never caught? Does not make me think, hmmm, why not me?

The whole article is kind of creepy.

phil21• 5 years ago

Yeah, that was my takeaway too. I have never watched looters on TV and wished I were there with them looting.

You've never seen some slimey techbro that knows 10% of what you do technically go on to make million on a more or less worthless app/product/etc? Knowing that what they sold was basically snake oil and now they will never have to work again while you trudge along for the rest of your life "doing the right thing"?

If so, you are basically a saint if you have not considered the grifter path.

Or whatever similar situation applies to you. I doubt you are the type who would benefit greatly in social status by having a bunch of new sneakers like the example was.

The point of the article is we're making grifting more profitable than honest work, and this is a pattern I've been noticing for since I've been alive. Strange only now folks seem to be noticing.

The other point you made was "fear of getting caught" which is simply not a part of the calculation for many in some cities any longer. This part is rapidly eroding into a joke in many communities, and lets just say most do not share your moral and ethical compass but do (so far) share a fear of getting caught.

dqpb4• 5 years ago

Replace shoes with life-changing sums of money, and replace looting with something more gray-area, and I think you can cast a fairly wide net.

naruvimama• 5 years ago

What if this is happening to everyone around you? And it keeps happening again and again.

Then it is the norm.

scollet4• 5 years ago

Is this a meta argument or a commentary?

The author, I read, has more of a commentary than an argument.

If it's a commentary, then discussion stops there because it's preloaded with bias.

If it's meta, then we're working with inflammatory language like "sucker" which ignores the moral nuance of the subject matter.

The... "looting" that the author is referring to is equivalent to bumping a car when trying to parallel park.

I'm really trying to wrap my head around your comment.

julianeon• 5 years ago

This is also kind of a non-engineer's way to view the world.

It's like:

1. Something might happen. The outcome could be good or bad.

2. You wait for the outcome.

3. If it's good, you won! If it's bad, you lost. Depending purely on the outcome, you feel good or bad.

Whereas a more engineer-y way to view things is:

1. Something might happen. The outcome could be good or bad.

2. You base your decision - you choose it in advance - based on the odds of the outcome.

3. It's too strong to say "the outcome doesn't matter," but assuming you calculated the odds correctly, there's no regret: the right choice according to the odds is the right choice, period.

I'll say this: Even if I was a criminal, I would never choose to do something where I got arrested, on the slim chance that the charges would be dropped or expunged.

So in this example - even if I was a professional bad guy! - I would still tell my cousin he made the wrong choice. He chose very poor odds in doing something that got him arrested, and the fact that he came out ahead this one time doesn't change that.

suction3• 5 years ago

Curious about his examples involving liberal politicians, Chris Brown, and one extremely mild one for Trump. He's not fooling anyone though that this is mainly a hit piece on "libruls".

the_only_law• 5 years ago

It’s substack, basically medium for right wing pseudo-intellectuals

suction3• 5 years ago

Ah I didn't know that because I steer clear of all these platforms.

champagnois5• 5 years ago

We live in a time when the anchors on TV as well as the politicians running the government are telling their supporters to break laws.

Be it January 6th or the riots and looting we have seen for the past two years. Both sides have figures in their parties that are advocating for this madness and normalizing it.

I am a bit of a patriot who is pretty intent on leaving the world better than how I found it. I help people. I try to set good examples. This whole behavior of the right and left has left me thinking they are both morally bankrupt.

I disagree with the article. I do not feel like a sucker. I just feel all of this extremism is really sad and depressing.

_y5hn• 5 years ago

Which people go out and urge for looting?

champagnois5• 5 years ago

While difficult to pull up from search engines, throughout the riots and looting sprees and jury trials, there were two things I can roughly quote having heard a number of times from figureheads on the left:

John Lewis's "good trouble"

and

"If we don't get (X), then we need to burn it down!"

and

Also the bizarre stuff where jurors in the Rittenhouse trial were being stalked by an NBC journalist who claimed he was illegally stalking the jurors under company orders (NBC then lawyered up and denies this).

All three of these instances were widely reported at the time and I remember them. They all reak of an authoritarian willingness to trample our traditions and rule of law.

dataangel2• 5 years ago

Why are you carrying on with this "both sides" garbage? If you couldn't see an asymmetry under Trump you must be blind.

reactspa• 5 years ago

Climate Change Champion Elizabeth Warren Arrives On Her Private Jet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vavV0Q94MhA&ab_channel=TheDC...

paulpauper4• 5 years ago

"Jussie Smollett staged a hate crime, and was convicted of such."

Doesn't the fact he was convicted and received widespread ridicule everywhere disprove the author's point.

rlanday3• 5 years ago

Absolutely not. Quite the contrary. They originally dropped the charges against him in agreement for 16 hours of community service and forfeiting his $10,000 bond. He inflamed racial and political tensions for attempted personal gain, which is quite a serious crime.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/arts/television/jussie-sm...

amanaplanacanal2• 5 years ago

Politicians regularly inflame racial and political tensions for attempted personal gain. That doesn’t seem like a good argument.

yholio• 5 years ago

Jimmy Carter was a bad president but a great role model.

Jimmy Carter was a good president in an unfavorable period.

avgcorrection4• 5 years ago

My friend, a former Navy SEAL, used to tell his AOICs “If you drink two beers the enlisted guys will drink ten. If you punch a dude in the bar, the guys will kill someone. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think it’s a big deal.” At the end of the day, leadership by example is so incredibly important and ours are systematically failing.

Amazing that he takes that list of bad behavior and concludes that “and that’s bad because it means that normal people will do much worse things”.

Well at least normal people can’t do things like start wars.

mattbee2• 5 years ago

Hang on, what's morally wrong with merging late? Speed is lower, and you're using the highway more efficiently.

sulam4• 5 years ago

It’s only “wrong” in the sense that many people feel like it’s wrong with no objective basis for their beliefs. That said, when enough people feel a certain traffic behavior is wrong, it becomes true despite objective fact. Late merge when the lane you’re in is running 40mph above the lane you’re merging into and you are asking to be rear-ended or worse.

mattbee2• 5 years ago

I'm thinking of busy British A roads going from 2 to 1 lane, usually the last merge point is at a standstill. I've witnessed insanely aggressive behaviour by drivers trying to block others' merges.

My driving instructor always told me to behave selfishly, because "courteous" driving (flashing lights, slowing down, waiting for someone to emerge etc) is unpredictable by comparison! Courteous driving becomes its own form of aggression when another driver misunderstands.

contrast• 5 years ago

The author’s message - which includes concluding that he’s morally superior to most people - is undermined by his blatantly partisan selection of examples.

Personally, I’m of the view it’s a bad idea to spend time documenting in detail how “our tribes have failed to unite, and it is your tribe’s fault”. It implies a lot of pride, and a willingness to turn a blind eye to all sorts of bad behaviour.

I mean, if you just want to criticise a politician or individual you don’t like - fair enough. You should feel free to make a point how you like. No one should be expected to be pain-stakingly fair in every post or comment.

But if you want a grand narrative that includes, say, 10 examples of bad behaviour, demonstrate some thinking has taken place. Include 2 or 3 examples from whoever you consider to be your tribe. Don’t act like all the problems are other people.

jmnicolas2• 5 years ago

Partisan? I'm not from the US so I don't know all intricacies of you politics, but his first 2 examples are Biden's son and Trump. Seems he bashes both side to me.

smackeyacky5• 5 years ago

He picked the least worst of Trumps transgressions, by quite some margin.

scoopertrooper2• 5 years ago

The author skips over some pretty egregious examples from the past few years in favour of examples that best support their world view.

Where is the outrage over the Trump administration's rollback of consumer protection regulations that protect students from shady practices by for-profit colleges? Students are promised significant income growth, but are actually roped into poorly staffed courses, significant debt, and questionable career advancement.

Instead, the author bangs on about eviction protection for people laid off during the pandemic.

The author bemoans '90% of all charges against rioters and looters' being dropped in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, but links to a news article that only indicates that approximately 90% of all protest related charges were dropped across several jurisdictions. The vast majority of protestors were not engaged in looting or violent acts that would amount to rioting.

However, the author curiously ignores the fact that the vast majority of people that stormed the Capitol building in the hope of preventing the peaceful transfer of power managed to get off with misdemeanours.

Not even to mention that the former President's one-time Svengali, Steve Bannon, suckered Trump's own supporters out of 5 million dollars that he had pledged to use to construct a wall to keep out Mexicans; only to be pardoned for his troubles.

I think it's fair to say that political affiliation coloured this article.

mindslight2• 5 years ago

Indeed. The pattern of societal breakdown goes back much further, in mostly open display with the idea that successful business is self justifying.

The lazy response is to say that lawful business is within the rules of our society. But that only worked when there was still a social check on the specifics of business activities, and the amount of meta activity was small. Once accumulation of money became the success metric itself, it ceased to be useful one. And at this point we're long past it - the hard truth is that empty fraudsters like Michael Milken, Bernie Madoff, and Donald Trump aren't crass deviant outliers but rather the bedrock of our mainstream culture.

The article even uncritically throws out at the end "This only gets worse if we do something crazy like forgive massive amounts of debt, whether it’s student or mortgage", while completely ignoring what happened in 2008! 2008 wasn't straight "forgiveness" per se because the "loans were repaid" (this is likely what keeps the author's cognitive dissonance intact), but artificially low interest loans to prop up investment banks that would have otherwise gone bankrupt is a morally-bankrupt giveaway larger than any "student loan forgiveness" or "flash mob looting" could ever be. Especially considering that if anyone is able to model their future financial position, it should have been investment banks! But as usual, it's the kids^h^h^h^hplebs who are wrong.

Now I personally am still a believer in market economies, and I generally think that looking to the government to supply many services is essentially giving up. But I also believe it is horribly dishonest to advocate this position without continually acknowledging how much the government has wantonly distorted the "economy" for many decades (at least since getting off the gold standard), essentially making Wall Street an insider-benefiting Potemkin Village. At this point anybody talking about needing to respect "the market" while not directing that focus onto government monetary policy (hello no-debate little-media-coverage multi-trillion-dollar March 2020 stonk market bailout with commercial bond buying continuing to this day) or regulatory givewaway to big business, is themselves part of this problem right alongside "Pelosi".

dandanua3• 5 years ago

All that is required to beat this, honestly, is a few people serving as positive role models with transparency and not abusing their authority

In corrupted countries such people are getting killed.

jo33• 5 years ago

clown

kstenerud• 5 years ago

Actually, cutting in at the last minute results in the most efficient traffic flow for everyone. I wish more people would do this, it would help ease traffic!

bambax3• 5 years ago

Is the point of the article that the US, already the absolute worst country in the world, and in history, bar none, for percentage of its population behind bars, should ramp up punishment and somehow jail even more of its own people?

The first example given is about Hunter Biden selling art. So he's not an artist, he's the son of the sitting president, and he manages to sell things for a good price, that mainstream critics don't find interesting or beautiful ("widely panned art show")... Good for him!

Yes, it's quite obvious that some of the buyers are trying to get political favors; but that doesn't mean they will get them! The author just sounds envious.

ghusto• 5 years ago

These opinions you've expressed prove his point further.

dkjaudyeqooe• 5 years ago

How do the buyers get the political favors? They're kept anonymous.

johngalt• 5 years ago

percentage of its population behind bars, should ramp up punishment and somehow jail even more of its own people?

Corruption isn't only about who avoids punishment, but also who is the target of punishment. In highly corrupt environments you will often find complex and often contradictory rules, that produce a default state of guilt. The only way to avoid punishment is to participate in the corruption.

betwixthewires5• 5 years ago

The first example given is about Hunter Biden selling art. So he's not an artist, he's the son of the sitting president, and he manages to sell things for a good price, that mainstream critics don't find interesting or beautiful ("widely panned art show")... Good for him!

You're being naive. Nobody is buying the art, people are buying influence and laundering money. The man isn't selling art, the man is selling influence, and potentially other things. He splashes paint on a canvas to legitimize it for the accountant.

I don't think the point is that the US should jail more people, I think the point is that when lots of people see others getting away with stuff, some of them start to try to do it too, and you have a snowballing societal collapse.

roca• 5 years ago

It is necessary to train oneself and others to keep on doing the right thing even when no-one else is doing it.

bigpeopleareold• 5 years ago

I feel* like having to chase returns in an increasingly expensive equity market is a form of avoiding being a sucker. "Only a sucker" would let cash sit in a bank and let inflation eat away at its value or even invest at risk-free rates.

This is a bit institutionalized, for example, with housing prices. Anecdotally, I know people who make great salaries but can't manage to save up for a place close to work. I was part of that for years until my bitcoin investment solved that problem quick.

The point is that if anything is a moral hazard that encourages avoiding being a sucker, it's this.

* I don't have clear examples

mwattsun2• 5 years ago

To my ears the author is describing corruption in society. I often wonder if America is getting more corrupt or if we just hear about it much more now due to the internet and social media. I think it's the later.

josephcsible5• 5 years ago

The author's point is that even if it is the latter, that's still a problem.

mwattsun2• 5 years ago

Well yes, but it's probably intrinsic to human nature and civilization so there's not much we can do about it except accept a certain level of it. Is America today more corrupt than the Gilded Age in the late 1800's that Mark Twain wrote about? Probably less corrupt today. Things might never have been better according to Steven Pinker in his books Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of Our Nature

betwixthewires5• 5 years ago

If it's the latter, I want people to lose faith in our society, because in that case the rule of law is a charade. In that case, society isn't crumbling, its being outed for what it is, hollow.

Why would you want to hide the corruption of the system to maintain it? Isn't that corrupt in itself?

arthur6667• 5 years ago

He conveniently forgets the biggest looters are in congress or the board room

blendergeek• 5 years ago

He mentions multiple members of Congress and several business people.

From the article:

My congressman, Tom Malinowski was actively trading stocks and options during the pandemic, shorting stocks and then not disclosing his trades by trade disclosure deadlines. He won his election in a squeaker and disclosed his trades shortly thereafter, but remains a congressman.

zaptheimpaler• 5 years ago

I think this is (or feels like?) a bigger problem the more you look "upwards" towards celebs, billionaires and politicians. Every media outlet talks about the same ~20 people most of the time - Trump, Elon, Boris etc. while the local news disappears and the local role models go with them. In a small circle everybody knows who the cheater is, they get penalized socially (even if not legally), you see the penalty, and there is little reason to feel like a "sucker" (i.e envy them).

The darker spin is that there are now mortals and gods, and us mortals should be content with our lot and not look up at Olympus even as they cheat and loot us. Corruption, inequality, moral decay.. which one comes first?

My answer is to be the change you wish to see in the world, which will of course be quickly dismissed as cliche or moralizing. But hey it feels better than calling myself a sucker and joining the looters.

Pxtl4• 5 years ago

People who don’t pay their rent are getting back-rent forgiven or paid off by taxpayers, same with people who haven’t paid their mortgage in 18 months.

This is grotesque. There's a pandemic on. Many people had their industries destroyed. Of course they need a hand. While there are parts that are good points about the hypocrisy of power, this is childish.

josephcsible5• 5 years ago

He's obviously talking about people who had the means to pay rent but chose not to.

Pxtl4• 5 years ago

He mentions regularly eating at Trump tower - so he spends his time on 5th Avenue. I don't think the guy really cares why people aren't paying for his real-estate investments.

gumby• 5 years ago

Boy does this guy have an axe to grind:

For a long time, people didn’t feel like suckers for acting ethically, they felt honorable.
Some notable exceptions to this, and their starkness really highlights how rare these cases are:
…
All that is required to beat this, honestly, is a few people serving as positive role models with transparency and not abusing their authority.

Sure, he cites some examples (and there are many more) but in my experience people everywhere try to do the right thing (and if they didn’t, nothing would work, which most people understand intuitively). And I say this having lived not just in wealthy countries but poor ones too (I’m an old fart).

Also, his examples are dubious: “flash mobs killing people”, really?

If it’s bad news it’s news (maybe I should learn about a possible threat). If it’s routine good news it’s not newsworthy. The author should put down the remote and go outside.

scollet4• 5 years ago

The article doesn't have an argument or a conclusion. The author FUDs on the floor.

We get that things aren't perfect, but being afraid helps nobody.

It's fine to vent to the world, but I think the "publish" button can wait.

dqpb4• 5 years ago

How do you vent to the world without the publish button?

chihuahua• 5 years ago

You stand on a street corner downtown and shout at everybody and nobody.

scollet4• 5 years ago

Get elected? Not sure. Happy holidays.

SpicyLemonZest• 5 years ago

I really caution people against tying together every bad thing they see into a grand theory of badness. It's very seductive, very satisfying, and inevitably leads to weird niche ideas you'd never endorse from first principles. I remember for a time I was absolutely convinced that most of the problems the author describes (some of them hadn't yet happened) could be solved if the police would just be harsher on criminals.

Aperocky2• 5 years ago

All that is required to beat this, honestly, is a few people serving as positive role models with transparency and not abusing their authority

Good article, but not sure about this conclusion.

You don't need a few role model, you just need rules that applies to everyone, ref: Singapore. Nobody has a moral compass? No problem, just pretend you have one while there, or else.

CosmicShadow2• 5 years ago

Regardless of the politics, it is frustrating to see people cheat the system and get away with it, that is universal.

I have this vague notion that this was less of a problem 30-50 years ago and people would be punished or more against doing this kind of thing just by way of culture and ethics, but I can't verify if that's true or not, or just the sense you get from movies and tv. I feel like every time people got away with things, the entire society slipped a bit and little by little it eventually eroded to where we are today, where it feels like we are hitting that exponential growth on the curve for societal shittiness.

There always seemed to be a notion of "that person can't do that and get away with it, it'll be all over the news" and that would ruin them or get them punished, but it feels like the last few years people have just called the bluff on that and taken it to it's extreme conclusion and can get away with saying or doing anything and it doesn't matter if it's reported on, people will just go "I can't believe they said or did that" and nothing happens or changes (It just got normalized). The smart cheaters took this as an invitation to get away with things more frequently and openly now realizing there are very few repercussions. The only punishment seems to be for a small scale person or business that's really only serving a local community. I guess there is no larger sense of community anymore?

Do role models exist or have any power to inspire or do they have to become something they aren't just so they can be big enough to be seen for their message? Perhaps in a world where there were only like 30-100 tv channels and no YouTube and shitty internet it was easier because there was really only so few options of who you get to see and they were more curated, but now anyone can be seen and the algorithms will just optimize you into something you maybe curiously or accidentally clicked on and take you into (and trap you in) your own tribe, healthy or not. It just feels like there is no way to dig society out of it's direction as all the holdouts will eventually give in or their children will. Why is every future sci-fi dystopian pretty much? You take today to it's logical conclusion.

JKCalhoun8• 5 years ago

Hmmm.... maybe. Or maybe 30-50 years ago gentlemen didn't get caught. What you see as "slipping" in society over the past decades has actually been increased public exposure of what has always happened?

Just an alternative theory.

JackFr2• 5 years ago

I don’t think you’re wrong, but is society better off when wrong-doing is exposed and not condemned or when it is hidden but broadly condemned?

CosmicShadow2• 5 years ago

Yeah I did think about that after, it may have been just as bad or even worse before, considering social progress today, but the exposure was just missing or even the exposure and log of the reaction.

pontus• 5 years ago

I've thought similar things: why am I paying rent / mortgage / student loans if it's all going to be forgiven? What kind of sucker am I? I do it because I know it's the right thing to do, but together with a sort of "rebel worshipping" that I see in the startup community (e.g. ycombinator at least used to have questions trying to figure out which rules you've broken in some clever way), I do often come away feeling a little too much like a goody-two-shoes.

There's often good intentions behind these things, but the argument made here is, I think, an important one to think about.

dqpb4• 5 years ago

Disappointed this one didn’t make it in there:

Chris Christie Closed New Jersey's State Beaches — And Then Went To The Beach

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/03/535335917...

justzisguyuknow• 5 years ago

How is this different from the typical authoritarian appeal for incresed "law and order"?

xivzgrev• 5 years ago

PSA: it is ok and optimal to merge while driving at the last second, not cheating as the author claims

It’s called a zipper merge. Per the state of Minnesota, doing so

Reduces differences in speeds between two lanes Reduces the overall length of traffic backup by as much as 40 percent Reduces congestion on freeway interchanges Creates a sense of fairness and equity that all lanes are moving at the same rate

https://www.dot.state.mn.us/zippermerge/

zhoujianfu• 5 years ago

I’m pretty sure a zipper merge is usually when two lanes merge into one, in that case it’s fine and normal when the actual merging happens at the end, with cars from each lane taking turns to become the final lane (like a zipper).

And I’m also pretty sure he means when there’s one exit lane that’s really backed up and somebody in the non-exiting lane next to it that’s not backed up drives right up to the last minute and merges in, thereby “cutting the line”.

Not the same thing IMO, although I am very frequently guilty of the latter!

mindslight2• 5 years ago

It's only wrong to "wait until the last second to merge" when that line is going extremely slowly or is fully stopped. Most of the time there is a line of cars moving along at 70% of the road speed before an exit, because there is some "leader of men" going slowly in preparation for the exit (or not!), with plenty of room in front of them. In this case you're helping everyone by passing that line and using the road capacity they're wasting.

karmakaze• 5 years ago

Zipper merging is not about 'when' you merge, but 'where'. It should be every-other car from each lane. Ideally this should be done before the end of the lane. It only ends up being the end of the lane and causing inefficiencies because of those who speed past their zipper spot, and are cheating.

If I see that happening a few times, what I'll do is move along in sync with the other lane leaving space ahead of me where the lane ends.

bichiliad• 5 years ago

I agree with this article in premise. I think about it a lot when it comes to masking up. I'm pretty religious about that, but when I see people on the subway going maskless, I sometimes think about whether I'm being ridiculous or not (the latest wave has been a bit of a reassurance, but the point stands).

I think the layer that gets left out is the abuse of power in these situations. If someone is unable to pay their rent and they get public assistance, I don't think that's getting off with bad behavior; that's a policy decision put into effect. If Nancy Pelosi is benefitting from insider trading because of her ability to steer and change governmental policy, that is abuse.

It sounds like I'm being picky about the examples here, but I think the part that rang the most true was about holding people in the positions of leadership responsible, much like the author's Navy Seal friend telling his AOIC's to lead by example. If the people in charge get away with something, and I'm way less publicly visible than they are, what's to stop me from trying?

silexia• 5 years ago

The government is easy to abuse and cheat. That is why we want the government to just focus on being a referee to society rather than taking resources from one party at gunpoint and giving it to another. When that happens, pork barrel politics cause massive corruption.

We also need to get rid of the outrage culture that prevents the smooth process of law and order.

DarylZero2• 5 years ago

Stopped reading at "Hunter Biden."

cudgy3• 5 years ago

… and then posted virtue signaling comment

DarylZero2• 5 years ago

LOL!!

Sporktacular2• 5 years ago

"This only gets worse if we do something crazy like forgive massive amounts of debt, whether it’s student or mortgage. The psychological effect on the people who have lived within their means and met their obligations will be radicalizing."

Not nearly as radicalising as a debt-laden permanent underclass.

And this just assumes debt comes from living beyond one's means, ignoring complexities like historical or systemic unfairness in how it's sometimes created and inherited. Investing in education to escape debt cycle is good for people and economies. It's so often subsidised because it generally pays for itself many times over. But when it doesn't, allowing it to deepen the cycle just keeps people in debt and suppresses economic growth.

The productive carrying the less productive is an ancient problem. They usually feel like suckers until they learn it's for the good of the society that sustains them.

jl27182• 5 years ago

Okay, but you understand that the bailouts are not for them, right? It’s for their lenders that would never get repaid otherwise. The bailouts let them charge high-risk interest rates with zero actual risk.

Sporktacular2• 5 years ago

No, the bailouts are directly for the borrowers. Just as bailing out an airline keeps the airline alive, not indirectly the creditors funding it. Of course the effect is on both but I'm avoiding definition torture.

But risk externality is a good point. Maybe one that needs addressing with a return to reasonable regulation, reigning in speculation/predatory lending, Glass-Steagall etc.

The Sucker Complex

Related Stories