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We have confidence in our ability to
acheive the goal set.
The ego skillfully represses
the weight of false
confidence.
"It is strange the way
the ignorant and
inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when
the informed and the
experienced fail.
All you need in this life is
ignorance and confidence, success
is sure."
Samuel Langhorne
Clemens
Confidence is a requirement of every Ponzi
scheme.
Ponzi schemes promise high returns on
an initial
investment.
Charles Ponzi started buying and selling postal reply
coupons using agents in his native Italy.
Ponzi, pocketing millions,
enjoyed a sumptuous life near Boston
and was seen as a celebrity
investor, the Warren Buffett of his
day.
Ponzi was raking in $250,000 a day but the the arbitrage on the
postal coupons could never pay the returns he promised so he simply paid off
previous investors with new invested capital.
Most did not take their
profits, but simply reinvested in the pyramid scheme.
A pyramid scheme is an illegal
scam based on a hierarchical setup.
The most famous kind of pyramid
scheme is, perhaps, the Ponzi scheme.
People define themselves in
terms of social groupings.
This is a
well-understood principle in social psychology.
We tend
to trust people we identify with as they remind us of ourselves.
85% of
public high school students responding to a survey of future of career goals
state they wanted to be a
television celebrity.
We expect to hear truth from members of
our perceived social
grouping.
Every individual has a unique set of verbal and nonverbal
behaviors.
Behavior under relatively stress-free circumstances may be
completely different than when the individual is experiencing stress.
Judging by
appearance we tend to be
far less skeptical of
charming people.
Cognitive bias allows one desirable trait to
judge more positively overall.
It is a myth that liars avoid eye
contact.
The most brazen, actually overcompensate to "prove" that they
are not lying by making strong, direct eye contact and holding it
steadily.
Nervous people blink their eyes often but
deceivers blink less
under the increased mental effort of creating a lie, remembering the lie,
inhibiting the truth, and preparing for follow-up questions.
Although we
tend to suspect people who squirm or fidget
the first physical
reaction to stress (before the urge to fight or flee) is to freeze - which
means that liars may actually reduce movement and gestures - not increase them.
Flattery combined with fear
purchases confidence man
snake oil.
It is
easier to believe abundant lies than it is to believe disturbing
truths.
During
the crack cocaine™ boom of
the 1990s, the image of
the millionaire crack
dealer implanted itself on the
public consciousness.
But a great many crack dealers
still lived at home with their moms.
Sudhir Venkatesh originally sent
by his thesis advisor into a Chicago housing
project to administer a
sociological survey discovered the answer.
After a harrowing
encounter with a local crack gang, he befriended its leader and virtually
embedded himself with the gang for six years.
Sudhir was given a pile of
notebooks containing four years worth of the gang's financial transactions a
trove of data that, when subjected to an
economic analysis, proved incredibly revealing.
The gang was organized a lot
like McDonalds.
The
gang was one of about 100 franchises of the Black Gangster
Disciple Nation.
The
franchise leader whom
Venkatesh befriended, a college graduate named JT, reported to a board of
directors.
JT employed three senior officers and, depending on the
season, from 25 to 75 'foot soldiers'
meaning street level salesmen.
(Autumn was the busiest season for selling
crack; summer and
Christmas time were slow.)
At the bottom of the organization were as many as 200 'rank and file'
members, who weren't employees but did pay
dues, hoping to one day become 'foot soldiers'.
JT took
in revenues of about $32,000 a month.
Not counting wages, it
cost JT about $14,000 to operate, including $5,000 for the wholesale purchase
of cocaine™ and another
$5,000 as a kickback to the board of
directors.
JT single largest expense was the wage he paid himself:
$8,500 a month, for an annual
salary of about $100,000.
100 leaders of JT stature within the
Black Gangster Disciple Nation network.
These were the drug
dealers who could indeed afford to
live large.
Each of those roughly 20 directors stood to earn about
$500,000 a year.
120 men on the Black Gangster Disciple Nation'
pyramid made bank.
But
the pyramid they
sat on top of was gigantic.
Using JT'
franchise as a yardstick -
three officers and roughly 50 'foot
soldiers' - there were about 5,300 other men working for those 120
bosses.
Then there were the 20,000 unpaid 'rank and file' members, many
of whom wanted nothing more than a chance to become a 'foot soldier'.
And how
well did that dream job of being a 'foot soldier' pay?
About $3.30 an hour.
JT' three officers didn't do much better:
about $7 an hour.
So the answer to the original question is they don't
make much money.
They have no
choice but
to live with their mothers.
A crack gang works pretty much like the
standard capitalist
enterprise.
Those near the top
of the pyramid make a big wage.
But
selling crack
is more dangerous than most
menial labor.
Anyone who was a member of JT gang for the four years covered in the
notebooks stood a l in 4 chance
of being gunned down in the street.
That's more than
five times as deadly as being
a lumberjack, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls
the
most dangerous job.
So if
crack dealing is really
the most
dangerous job in America, and it pays less than minimum wage, why on
Earth would anyone take such a job?
For
the same reason a Wisconsin
farm girl moves to Talmudwood.
For the same reason a
high school quarterback
takes steroids at 5 am.
They all want to succeed in an extremely
competitive field, if you reach the pinnacle,
you are paid a fortune
(with the attendant glory and
power).
But in each of
these glamour professions, the same problem exists: A lot of people are
competing in what is essentially a tournament.
Earning big money selling crack isn't
more likely than the farm girl
becoming a movie star or the
high school quarterback
playing in the NFL.
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors
of "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of
Everything."
"Since the early 1980s our nation has been
traveling the
deregulation highway, a road
with no rules or direction.
We have let enterprise be free,
business go unfettered,
the good times roll!
Look at how the deregulation
highway takes us over a cliff.
"The Reagan Revolution" was
the beginning, when we started
seeing rollbacks in government
safeguards, regulations
protecting food, drinking water and the
environment.
With the Gain-St Germain Depository
Institutions Act of 1982 came the
savings and loan crash,
a pit stop that cost taxpayers $150
billion.
William
Jefferson Clinton added the "Bridge to the 21st Century," along with his proclamation
that the "era of big government was
over."
During the Clinton
administration, Congress repealed Glass-Steagall, which kept
commercial banking and
investment banking
separate.
Henceforth, banks could offer investment advice as well as
loans - one-stop shopping
on the road to disaster." - Al
Meyerhoff
"Deregulation of the markets
really took hold in 1994 with the GOP's "Contract
with America," the first to go
were the nation's securities laws.
Over a Clinton veto, Congress
enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act,
making it far more difficult
to prove securities fraud.
"Necessary" to "free" the markets of red tape and trial lawyers, it
gave the green light to Kenneth
Lee Lay and Dennis
Kozlowski and led to the
Enron,
WorldCom,
Tyco and
HealthSouth fraud
debacles.
As a result, small
shareholders lost hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is past time
to get off the deregulation
superhighway." - Al Meyerhoff
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