Just me Or Is Grifting Getting Worse?

[TPFanatic]

i know what sheisters are i grew up with one. the sob coached me in eliciting INADs out of the smallest technicalities or alleged feelings of remorse. i HATE my heritage i fkn hate it.

ive always been a rules-follower. once i realized the CORRECT rules i follow them by intent and text. do unto others, golden rule, constitution, civil rights act, ethics guidelines, etc..

never had patience for deceptive businesses and ive met enough of them. usually in the boonies or stix, private sector, individual sellers, but public sectors that have been taken over by federalists are just as bad if not worse. in casual social interactions with private individuals ive met some real characters, an idiot process server who I hired who started treating me like my Defendant since he wanted an excuse to overcharge me. fired him. an idiot mechanic that wanted to charge me to replace my brand new spark plugs. fired him. an idiot who told me to call him instead of 988 and then ignored me. fired him with prejudice.

is it the manufactured inflation BS squeezing the compassion out of everybody or are people just [censored]

[unix_joe]

It's only going to get worse.

America is in a death spiral.

People will do what they have to in order to get by. The Big Short was a decent movie that explained a lot and also warned where things were going.

Regarding heritage, I've never eaten a dog but I've been accused of it several times. In fact, there's an episode of the cartoon, "King of the Hill" where people who share my lineage are accused of the same thing during a cookout.

I was also accused of spray painting the swastikas on my house when they told me to go back to where I came from. People are idiots.

I kind of wonder how the new bans will affect Lenovo, who made great computers after all. At least I never had to bake one in the oven to keep it soldered, and at some point over the past 20 years, the palm rests stopped squeaking.

I will say, grifting has always been in an underlying theme in our society. I enlisted in the military in 2002 because of some stuff that happened in New York, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, etc. and it was the right thing to do. Subsequently, I found myself part of the occupying force of a country that we invaded that never posed a threat to the US and had nothing to do with the attack. Because our then supreme leader "spoke directly with god" and knew that was what we were supposed to do.

Funny enough, that's where I discovered ThinkPads as we had a pretty sizeable contract with it. That's the only place I ever saw pre-installed malware on a ThinkPad, and the brand was still American owned at the time, not Chinese. One of the guys who wrote an article on some of my co-workers in Iraq grifted his way all the way up to the Vice Presidency. Small world.

[RealBlackStuff]

Wait until all the fun starts on January 20, 2025.

[TPFanatic]

the great actions of all Americans are undermined by egregious foreign policy:

36: Passed the civil rights act, education act - bombed a million Vietnamese.
37: Passed the rehab act, patriot acted without the patriot act - bombed a million Cambodians.
39:
40: created offshore call center jobs - contra.
41: amended Civil Rights act, passed ADA - bombed Iraqis.
42: intervened in Europe with NATO, ignored a genocide in Africa, and sent that kid back to Cuba.
43: Passed patriot act, multiple autism acts, ADAAA - bombed millions of Afghans and Iraqis.

and so forth we continue to bomb terrorists and those who harbor them.

sometimes we bomb our own terrorists by accident on purpose.

sometimes our own terrorists bomb us on purpose by accident.

Undeniably the coarse of history shows that every time foreign interests vs American interests collide, the Americans "win" and a lot of foreign nationals die. remarkably simultaneous to any American war, there are a large number of various foreign wars also occurring, that America may or may not be funding, with thousands more dying, but Americans are also averse to sending Americans to personally be involved in those wars.

i draw a vector, remarkable for having a distinct direction, between any act of terrorism against America and the result that occurs in that nation that harbored that terrorist.

i believe certain cultures had to be taught not to [censored] with America or Americans. certain cultures have the natural rights to believe what they want. but they are not allowed to murder our civilians, bomb Pearl Harbor, and destroy our meccas. if nothing else i think certain cultures learned to keep it in their own domiciles and democratically take over their townships. for example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreen ... education/

unfortunately stateside has become so disorderly and distrustful that concurrent to all that foreign warfare, Americans are attacking Americans. the cold war never ended, it just intensified. maybe if i wasnt confined in a John Blanchard-esque Turpin-style homeschool for 25 years id have realized this long ago and already knew how to cope with this nonsense years ago and become a successful finance bro capable of surviving on my own by now. as a matter of fact i tried to join the army but realized i was too mentally ill to get past admissions. i already have PTSD. then i met a career coach who was a captain in Vietnam and he told me not to enlist. that just gives me guilt.

i love Americans and i love humanity. as soon as i have my life together i'm moving to the isle of mann.

[ansic]

It's hard to interpret what you are saying TPFanatic. What are we going to discuss in this thread?

[TPFanatic]

apologies. at times i am percevied by others as incoherent.
i have recorded autism and a record-pending attention deficit disorder.

i believe i am like the guy who made TempleOS, simply schizophrenic, but without any evidence of psychosis. theres a great Dutch pyschologist Dr Jim Van Ohs who describes that madness is a normal component of the human experience. i am a very mad individual at times, but who isn't?

The primary Topic, or Subject, is Grifting, also known as Dishonest Business Practices, which is illegal.

respectfully

TPFanatic

[rumbero]

apologies. at times i am percevied by others as incoherent.

I must admit that my initial reaction to the first post was to report it as incoherent spam, thinking that perhaps your account was hacked. I now regret having done so and am happy nobody took that report serious. Please accept my sincere apologies for being so ignorant and disrespectful.

theres a great Dutch pyschologist Dr Jim Van Ohs who describes that madness is a normal component of the human experience. i am a very mad individual at times, but who isn't?

Thanks for the inspiration! Some basic information about the work and theories of this psychologist:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_van_Os
TED talk "Connecting to Madness" (youtube.com/watch?v=sE3gxX5CiW0)

Madness cuts both ways: It can be a source of serious damage, but also a fountain of unbridled creativity. Its all a matter of how this chaotic source of consciousness is ultimately perceived and managed by the person under it's spell and, for better or worse, by the people (s)he is surrounded with. Some become fantastic artists, programmers (TempleOS), mathematicians (John Nash, Gödel, Erdös) and amazing musicians (Thelonius Monk, Frank Zappa), others become malevolent dictators (Hitler, Stalin) or future US presidents [...]. Just like escaping one's own shadow is physically impossible, the benefits of genius can't be had without being paired with madness.

The primary Topic, or Subject, is Grifting, also known as Dishonest Business Practices, which is illegal.

Illegal? I always thought this was common business practice since ever!? Just think about the time investment for all the work done by 99% of almost everybody, and the return of benefits generated by that majority mostly being harvested only by the remaining percent of the populace. There is a minor disparity of shared benefits to be perceived here. Has been like this during at least many thousands of years of recorded history and there is no end to be seen.

[axur-delmeria]

To be fair, the oldest business complaint found so far is written in cuneiform on a tablet that dates back to 1750 BCE. So grifting has always been there.

TPFanatic, I'd say it's an effect of the unequal distribution of wealth-- so much is hoarded by so few that the rest of us are fighting for scraps.

[unix_joe]

Another grift: came home to NC for the Christmas break from my current overseas posting. Playing hide and seek with my son. Found him under the dining room table, which is a very nice handmade table that we bought from a Christian furniture store back in 2017.

Now back in November 2017, when we first got this dining room table, we paid a great deal more than fair market price for the table because it is made in America by God-fearing folk, etc. The lady told us who worked on it, that the wood came from Pennsylvania, but it was painted here, etc. We actually bumped into another guy from our church in that store. It really worked out because he had a truck, he helped us get it home and in the door. And of course he was buying his own furniture there because he also wanted to help American Christian workers. Nice wholesome story for how we got our American dining room table.

So imagine my surprise when after "finding" my five year old hiding under the table tonight, laughing about it, he asks me, "Did we buy this table because it's from Vietnam and it's Asian like we are?" And I said no, we bought it because it's made in America, by Americans like we are. And he said, no, it's made in Vietnam. And he showed me the huge stamp on the wood underneath the table. Made in Vietnam. I've never had a reason to crawl under there before.

I guess you should have seen the look on my face. I couldn't do anything but keep laughing. But in all honesty it's been a very good table regardless of who made it. But also, if we are about to go to tariffs on everything foreign, then I imagine we as a country are about to get a lot of big surprises.

Now I'm curious, seven years later, if that Christian shop is still in business. I might have to take a visit up there some time, in my big Ford, which are actually made in Mexico these days.

[solidpro]

Once the social contracts were allowed to be eroded to where we are now - where nothing makes sense anymore, our fragile capitalist society falls apart.

My two boys (13 and 15) really don't have any meaningful experience of mindfulness, creativity, hard work and I somewhat get it. I grew up trusting (our) social healthcare, climbing a ladder, being paid honest money for honest work, building something of value, aiming to own a house or buy a car and own it. Even the idea of relationships is scewed. We speak about being good, about trying hard, about 'carrying the flame' somewhat. And then we see a news story that everyone voted for a felon and a pointless crtypto coin made someone £100m overnight. More money than I will ever earn with my life of hard work and diligence.

And (lots of) money is where the success and happiness is, right? That's what they're told.

They see people creating pointless disposable 'assets', making a $1bn and disappearing. What's the point in scraping your knuckles or becoming a nurse? Just be shocking, sell adverts and pay someone else to be a nurse. Easy. They see success through likes and dislikes (it really doesn't matter whichever makes the most revenue).

I've earned more than I ever thought possible and on one side I still wonder if I'll be ok and on the other I despair at all those around me who are just getting by and will end up with nothing.

Capitalism didn't win against communism. Communism failed first.

[ajkula66]

Now back in November 2017, when we first got this dining room table, we paid a great deal more than fair market price for the table because it is made in America by God-fearing folk, etc. The lady told us who worked on it, that the wood came from Pennsylvania, but it was painted here, etc.

Just to make you feel better...we fell for the very same story/scam back in 2005...most likely the same table as well.

Sometimes you're the hunter and other times you're the prey...or so they say...