Our society is full of scammers, some scammers go to jail quickly, while others reign supreme over us and laugh in our faces as their scams are legalized, and they do it without impunity. In this article I will present you the top 5 most popular scams, and how to avoid them (if possible). You will become a victim of at least 1 of the scams, it is just unavoidable, but atleast protect yourself against the others. I will rank them by their magnitude:
5) Ponzi Schemes
Ponzi schemes are the classic scam. It is so classic that it has been used even before Charles Ponzi existed, but it wasn't called that. From antiquity, all sorts of scammers have relied on this to make good money, from selling fake islands to selling fake medicine, they have made a lot of money. We are no less deprived of them in the crypto space where things like OneCoin and MMM are allegedly ponzi-schemes as well, and they are still active.
Most of them shut down very fast, like those scammy Bitcoin Doublers, but some of them work for 1 year +. It's very easy to avoid them, just don't invest websites that offer too high returns without any proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so unless you get good proof that their system is really legit, you should not invest in it.
4) Penny Stocks
After a scammer has grown out of making ponzi schemes, they move into the stock market to get access to more sucker money. The stock traders are no more intelligent than you average public, and they are also gullible enough to give their money to scammers. Penny stocks is a pretty easy scam, they just create a shell company, and have no product whatsoever, just rely 100% on marketing/advertising to sell a dream to suckers. I used to work for an investment firm, trust me, I have seen plenty of penny stock scams, and they all have the same pattern. It is the same always:
- Create a shell company
- Have nothing, just an idea that sells
- Rely 100% on marketing / advertising to promote that idea
- Get investors by promising them that your idea will make a lot of money
- Sell all your stocks while they are buying for huge profit and resign from the company
- Retire
It is always the same pattern, so if you can identify this, you may protect yourself from stock scammers.
3) Insurance Scam
While the previous 2 scams have a high risk of jail, from this onward the risk of jail is pretty much 0. This is one of the best scams that exist out there. And I am not talking about people ripping off insurance companies, that is nothing, I am talking about the insurance companies themselves ripping off people.
Don't get me wrong, insurance is a real useful business model, it protects people who have a small cash-flow against sudden debts that are big, but I am not questioning the theory of insurance here, I am questioning the practice of it.
Basically when you sign up to an insurance you get a 100 page contract, that you will probably not read, or even if you do, you won't understand all of it. Then you pay your monthly premium, and you think you are covered. Then some accident happens to you, and the insurance won't pay.
Hahaha, this has to be one of the best scams out there. So you pay your premium like an idiot and you think you are covered, but when something bad happens, the insurance won't pay, because in that 100 page contract, they have room to interpret your damage as they wish, so they can just refuse to pay you, and then you are fucked. Of course you can take them to court, but that will probably take 5-10 years to settle, and you may or may not win, but you will definitely lose a lot more money on the court costs.
So it's a perfect scam, they get monthly fees from you, and they won't pay your damages if they happen. Of course they might pay smaller claims, just so that they don't lose their reputation, but trust me, they won't pay big claims whenever it is possible. And the sad thing is that you have agreed to this scam, on that 100 page contract.
2) Banking Scam
When it comes to banks, the amount of scams here is just uncountable. They have fractional reserve banking, which is basically lending stolen money, to bailouts which is stealing requesting taxpayer money , to bailins which is stealing customer money, to creating fake derivatives, which is will end up stealing from one of the 2 categories mentioned earlier.
I can't believe the honest practice of storing people's money, like the goldsmiths used to do hundreds of years ago, has turned into a den of thieves and scammers. It is a completely legal scam, the chance of going to jail is zero, how many bankers go to jail?
Well we are lucky that we have cryptocurrencies, so that we can protect our wealth from inflation, fractional reserves, and bailins.
1) Government
When it comes to scams, the king of scams is the Government. Nothing comes even close to the number of scams the Government does to you. It is 100% legal, in fact they make the laws, so of course it is, technically and figuratively too. It may be immoral, but who cares about morality if you work for the Government. Whatever they do, they are protected by an army, and the police, so they can get away with anything any anyone who disagrees, they send down their might on them.
Anyone who challenges the Government will have to face their police force and their army, so they have a massive amount of force that protects their criminal behavior.
Their scams are usually the following:
- Taxation = Stealing money from you in order to protect you from thieves
- Healthcare = Stealing money from you so that when you get sick, you can get into a government hospital and die there because they are ill-equiped.
- Education = Stealing money from you, so that you and your children will be indoctrinated to love the Government
- Police = Stealing money from you so that you are protected on the streets. But occasionally you can be shot dead by the police, and they get away with it.
- Regulations = Prohibiting your freedom, in the name of giving you more freedom
- Welfare = Helping the poor, by giving them welfare ,and creating dependent parasites of them, who will never break out of poverty
- Voting = Giving you the illusion of choice, while realizing that almost all politicians are the same (rare exceptions)
- Pensions = A ponzi scheme, designed to make dependent voters from the elderly
- Free Housing = A project designed to make you essentially
homelessbut to rely on government housing, to become dependent on them - Price Controls = Interfering with the free market, in order to give protection to a choosen group
- Monopoly = Government grants monopoly to people who lick their ass better, see Taxi vs Uber
- Violence as Virtue = All government laws are commands, you either obey them or they will hurt you, there is no room for negotiation there
- Propaganda = Governments constantly spew out propaganda how beneficial they are, but in reality, everything evil can be tied back to them.
Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol-Pot, you name it, have all came out of Governments. Everything the government says, it's the opposite in reality.
- When they talk about giving you freedom through legislation, they usually imply making you their slave.
- When they talk about making you wealthy through taxation and legislation, they imply making you their poor cattle slave that will barely have any money
- When they talk about making you smart through public education, they imply making you an indoctrinated zombie that will not question orders.
It is the biggest form of evil that exists on Earth today, and it masquarades itself as this protector of humanity.
DISCLAIMER: This article doesn't advocate for comitting these crimes, it is only for educational purposes. In fact I would love if these scammers would stop doing these scams.
Credits: Keith Tucker via http://whatnowtoons.com/
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