Before I describe the social experiment that I would like to do (see the very bottom of this thread), let me give you a background story that made me think in those terms.
So, 10 years ago, I went to India to do postdocs. Before I came to India, I had a debt on my American credit card. Since Indian salary is very small, there was no way I could pay it off. Now, Indian prices are small too, so living in India on the Indian salary is the same as living here in America on the American salary (which is the part that scammers aren't getting -- more on this later)
In any case, I googled Messianic congregation in India but it turned out to be much smaller than the ones I been going to. Just a pastor, his wife, his two kids and five orphan kids. He kept talking about wanting to build a separate building for a church and separate building for an orphanage. What he told me is that if I were to give him 4 thousand dollars to buy a land, he will take pictures of it in order to collect donations to buy the buildings. But, before he does it, he will use the money he collects to pay me. So he was going to pay me back the 4 thousand within a month, then he will pay me additional 15 thousand within the next few months (that way I can pay off my credit card loan from the US) and only after that he was going to build the church and the orphanage.
Since I was desperate to pay off the credit card, I fell for it, but he never paid me anything. Instead he kept asking for more and more money to buy plane tickets to do all the arrangements. But then, at some point, he admitted he lied to me although he still claim that *now* he is saying the truth and will return me the money if I listen to what he said this time. In any case, what he said is that the church and the orphanage is the truth. The part that was a lie was that he will pay me first before building the church and the orphanage. His actual plan was to do it in the opposite order -- and he even shown me the new orphans that he took (it used to be just 5 orphans and now he had like 20 orphans or so). So I told him "just send back those orphans and pay me back the money". But he said "no I can't send them back, what will they do?" and I said "I don't care what they do; its not your job to help them; you can't afford it, you don't take upon yourself something you can't afford; it IS your job, however, to pay me back the money that you own me, so please send those orphans back and pay me back the money". He refused to do it -- and there was no way for me to force him to since I didn't collect the receipts back when I was giving him money. So out of frustration I kept telling him that he lied to me and he was like "well if I were to tell you the truth you wouldn't have given me money and what would my poor orphans do" and I was like "well, the fact that I wouldn't have given you money if you were to tell the truth is the exact reason why you SHOULD HAVE told me the truth: you shouldn't force people to do something they don't want to do" and he was like "I didn't force you to give me money: I wasn't physically taking them from your hand, you gave it to me" and I was like "yeah but I gave it to you because of your lie".
In any case, the above conversation made me feel like the scammers might not be *purposely* doing something wrong but, instead, they have different *mentality*, so that, in their eyes, what they do is the right thing. After all, why did he help orphans instead of just using the money for his own intertainment? So apparently -- in his eyes -- he is a good person: he is helping orphans. But he doesn't realize the following three things:
1. He doesn't think lying is wrong no matter what. Rather, he thinks "the end justifies the means". I guess the situation in which the Westerner would agree its okay to lie is in case of hiding Jews from the Nazis and lying that the Jews aren't there. So could it be that the scammers perceive other situations in similar ways?
2. He doesn't realize that Americans aren't that much better off than Indians. He only knows the part that Americans have more money, but he doesn't know the part that prices in America are much higher. Also, even though Americans do make more money, I am wondering whether he exaggerates it in his mind. Does he assume Americans are all millionares?
3. He doesn't realize that *even if* Americans had a lot more money (which they don't) its not their moral obligation to help the poor. In his mind anyone rich is morally obligated to help anyone poor. So he sees himself as morally obligated to help the orphans and he sees me as morally obligated to help him.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am not justifying his behavior. On the contrary, the fact that he doesn't understand those things makes me all the more pissed. If he were to tell me "hey there are no orphans, I just took your money for that trip to Australia I had where I stayed in 5 star hotel", I wouldn't be nearly as upset. In this case, I don't have to be puzzled why isn't he getting something so obvious. I would know that he knows that what he did is wrong, he just chose to be selfish. Simple enough. But when he is doing it to help the orphans then yes that makes me wonder why is he thinking that what he does is a good thing. And the fact that he thinks its a good thing when he takes my money, that makes me even more angry.
In the context of the above, I propose the following social experiment I propose to write a scam letter where a scammer admits beforehand that he is a scammer (as opposed to him who admitted it few months later). That would make it all the more clear that the scammer simply thinks what he does is a good thing (why else admit it beforehand). And the purpose of the experiment is to see the reaction of others. Will others be surprised that the scammer admitted it beforehand? If the answer is no, then this would confirm my point: namely it would mean that everyone knows that scammers see what they do is a good thing, which is why nobody is surprised.
Unfortunately, I can't carry out this experiment in the way I would have wanted to for two reasons:
a) If I did that, then people would think I am a scammer and I would get banned
b) That scam letter would be deletted really quickly so I won't have time to see the results of the experiment
So, instead of doing that, let me write the letter that I *wish* I were to write, and ask you what you would think in this *hypothetic* situation. So here is the *hypothetic* letter I wish to post:
Quote:
TITLE: Please help the humble scammer
BODY: I am coming to you with a humble heart. My poor, poor daddy, in Nigeria, is dying from maleria. I am in desperate need of money to help my poor daddy. I been desperately running several scams to help him, including a lottery scam I ran recently. I collected 1284 dollars through those scams, but I need another 875 dollars. And don't take it the wrong way, I didn't want to hurt any of those people I scammed. They are my brothers! But if I didn't scam them, they wouldn't have given me money, and what would my poor dying daddy do? For you its easy, you all have millions of dollars. But for me its really hard, I struggle to get a piece of bread, and now I have this situation with my poor dying daddy. Please help.
So the point of this experiment is that the "scammer" admitted himself to be a scammer, to the point of referring to himself in this way in the title, and then in the body repeatedly admitted that he was scamming people -- but justified it on moral grounds. So the question is: would you be surprised if you were to see such a letter?
30 Jan 2020, 10:57 am
