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419 Emails From A Cultural Perspective
dasboy writes "The LA Times has an article entitled I Will Eat Your Dollars about Nigerian 419 scammers that presents some of the cultural basis for the crime. They follow some young men in Lagos who toil over computers all-day and long into the night to snag a new victim. They even have a fight song entitled 'I Go Chop Your Dollars.'" From the article: "Scammers, he said, 'have the belief that white men are stupid and greedy. They say the American guy has a good life. There's this belief that for every dollar they lose, the American government will pay them back in some way.' What makes the scams so tempting for the targets is that they promise a tantalizing escape from the mundane disappointments of life. The scams offer fabulous riches or the love of your life, but first the magha has to send a series of escalating fees and payments. In a dating scam, for instance, the fraudsters send pictures taken from modeling websites."
"the American guy has a good life. There's this belief that for every dollar they lose, the American government will pay them back in some way."
This is not a new thinking. Many crooks try to justify what they are doing by making it seem that they are not hurting anyone, at least not as much as they are.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
The lyrics there are helpful because the accent is hard to understand.
The truth is people don't have time to investigate every purchase or offer they're made. And often the more desperate someone is the more eager they are to grasp at straws that purport to offer a way out of their desperation. Just watch the televangelists who sell prayer rags for debt relief.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
[They] have the belief that white men are stupid and greedy.
That's rather ironic. If you read 419eater or any of the other "scam the scammer" sites out there, it's pretty clear who the stupid and greedy ones are in this game.
While I don't have too much respect for the intellect of the average American, the people who actually fall for these scams are probably the most stupid and greedy among our population, but they are a fraction of a percent of Americans. Most people have long since been trained to spot these things for what they are now and recognize that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. The Internet is no different from the rest of life in that way.
The scammers, however, are too stupid to realize that if a scammee is asking for absurd, ridiculous acts to be documented on film, then the joke is almost certainly on the scammer.
I have pretty much no empathy for these people, no matter how poor they are or what adversity they have faced. They have turned to common thuggery to steal that which they feel entitled to, instead of trying to earn an honest living the way we, or our parents, or our grandparents who came from equally poor backgrounds in other parts of the world did. Every time a scammer dies a miserable death, baby Jesus smiles.
Until the entire continent of Africa learns a more constructive ethic of hard work and self-help, all the charity in the world won't help them.
Once they get a dupe, they want to milk him for as much as possible. If you fell for the $20 scam, it seems unlikely they would be able to extract more than $20 from you before you realized that something was wrong and quit sending money. But if you fall for the $10 million scam, they may be able to extract tens of thousands of dollars before you realize something is wrong.
So as long as the number of people who will be duped falls slower than 1/dollars, they have an incentive to make the amount as high as possible.
Also apparently once they find a dupe, it requires significan work to fool them into sending the money. This work is probably constant per dupe. Thus getting $20 from 1000 people may not be worth the effort, while $20,000 from one person is.
These people think they're scamming the "rich american", when I bet that more often than not they're scamming some old person who lives off medicare and drives across the border to Canada to get their medication, or some poor guy who's retarded and subsceptible to the weakest of scamming tries.
In which case, they (the victim) isn't exactly guilty of greed as much as being gullible.
The phrase "stealing candy from a baby" comes to mind.
It's also a massive implementation of cultural relativism. America typically is extremely arrogant in international affairs, applying its standards and judgements to the rest of the world. For example, in India, the average worker lives off of $12-$13 per MONTH. This is well below what America considers to be a "poverty" level. Yet the country's population of 1.2 billion continues to grow. Not to mention cotton is free in India, 10 pounds of rice can be bought for $1, and their cultural and spiritual beliefs find no need for materialism (espoused best in America I think by Wal-Mart and other discount retailers). It's all a question of standards and culture. People in India don't think they're poor, they enjoy living. People in America, with all of their wealth and "development", are never satisfied. Intriguing. We think we have it best, but this is a nation NOT built upon ideals of liberty, but of property. Also intriguing. But we have the right to be the judge and jury over other nations?
Did anyone ever look into how many of the victims are seniors? Seniors are preyed upon by corrupt people everywhere. Alot of seniors barely have enough money in their retirement years to live. Alot of them require expensive medications to survive. The slightest chance of not having to worry about money, or being able to leave something for their children or grand children is enough for them to sink their last dollars into something that is most likely a scam. At some point in your life, the hope that it is reall is all you have left.
Whatever reason they may have is actually important to the situation, but I stress it is not excusable to go and murder, steal, and scam people, but if you want to defeat the enemy you must know their motives.
The problem is many people don't understand the difference between an explanation (why something happened) and an excuse (why what happened is okay).
This has led to the belief that understanding terrorists is the same as excusing the terrorists.
This has led to us not understanding the terrorists, and thus being ineffective at fighting them.
I have a real problem with any life view that makes failing to solve problems a requisite outcome.
The enemies of Democracy are
Because his self image rests on believing that he is a good person who is part of a good society. If he were to believe that he was a part of an unjust society, he would need to do something about the injustice in order to go on believing he was a good person.
The myth of modern American capitalism says that almost all CEOs are good and decent people and that the few bad apples are always brought to justice. The truth of the matter is that one almost has to be corrupt to get to that level in business, most who are caught get off with a handslap, and those who get brought to justice are still welcomed back into the fold by their corrupt cronies after they get out of the pen.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As Sun Tzu said "Know thyself, know thy enemy and win the battle every time.". (paraphrased)
Sun Tzu was giving advice to generals, not soldiers. He also emphasized that in battle, fleeing should not be viewed by one's troops as a possibility. You fight close to home or with your back to a mountain, and your strength will be doubled. In ancient warfare, most casualties occurred during a willy nilly retreat rather than actual battle.
To put it another way, one strategy in a game of 'chicken' is to throw your steering wheel out the window and make sure your opponent sees it.
Enemies are less likely to fight if they see their defeat as inevitable and their opposition's will is unbreakable and the possibility of a just peace is offered to them.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.