Why Are We Suddenly Surrounded by “Grift”?

If the opposite of a grift is a square deal then you can see why the president's whole life is a grift because he doesn't want to win anything that doesn't also entail you losing. Zero-sum or bust.

"The personality type that responds to this sort of thing is, naturally, not restricted to the right. Trump’s election opened the field for a parallel play among liberals, spurring the rise of the “Resistance grifter” — a type of social-media personality who shovels forth alarmist news and wild speculation about the president’s perfidy, posing as a lonely hero standing against it and raking in donations or subscription money along the way." I'm sure there are some left-wing grifters. But until I see Rachael Maddow selling over-priced gold bars and survivalist kits, I won't be convinced they are a real problem, like the right-wing grifters actually are. And given Trump's actual perfidy, it's hard to see what "wild speculation" about it would be.

Nice piece. Grifting is a way of being. If you want to get to the heart of this and be reminded how essential it is to America's small-C constitution, read the Duke and King section of Huck Finn.

Trump is not a grifter. He's far worse. He's a con man. Playing a deliberate con to rob as much as he can, from as many as he can con, for himself. No matter how much damage he does, no matter how many get hurt as a result. He is dangerous. Do not downplay who he is, what he is, and what he is doing. As for grifters, they may or may not be doing real harm, but all of them are one step away from full blown con artists, like Trump. No need to glorify or otherwise honor what they do. Grifters, con men, they are all harmful to any society they are in. That's why, when their grifting, or their con finally gets uncovered and exposed, they have to run for the hills. Or they will be tarred and feathered, imprisoned, or lynched.

The financial services industry is webbed with sticky black tendrils of raw grift. Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Edward Jones--you name them, they're all a con in as much as they try to convince you they're astute money managers when a blind chimp with hurling a dart backwards is as likely to find the right stock for you to invest in. INDEX FUNDS! (Or Exchange Traded Funds) are the way to go. No one ought to use one of the financial advisors working for a big brokerage house. It's a massive con. Find the Freakonomics podcast and the specific episode "The worst thing you can do with your money". They interview the guy who started the first index fund (he also started Vanguard). It's an eye-opener. Do it NOW because it will make a huge difference in your retirement.

America is a grifter’s paradise – always has been. Just look at our foundational myths. “All men are created equal” (except no one believed or practiced it); our first settlers, the Puritans, claimed to be the “chosen people” ( which gave rise to our enduring con of exceptionalism) , and who took possession of land promised to them (the “promised land” - except that it was already inhabited) ; and “the American Dream” (which, to give credit to George Carlin, only happens if you are asleep). The fact that these are myths yet we believe them to be true is a massive con, with the irony being that the con is self-inflicted. We’ve made a bargain with the devil: for the right to feel that we are all equal, exceptional, and have the same opportunity to be powerful and rich, we get to live in a Darwinian jungle called reality that doesn’t care about myths. Today with technology and the internet we have grift and graft on steroids. We “voluntarily” surrender our personal information to gain access to many platforms and sites which is then sold to anyone who can pay. With one hand technology offers salvation, and with the other it offers the opportunity to be hacked and your identity stolen. “Identity theft” – you can’t feel more violated than that. It’s the ultimate hustle. It’s so America.

Why are are even looking beyond New York for grift? Look at the massive grifts involving figures at NYCHA or the Port Authority of NY/NJ. And of course the incredible corruption related to any construction project that costs multiples of anything similar anywhere in the world (look at the work of Alon Levy or this newspaper’s reportage as well). East Side Access for example is one of the most improperly managed projects ever yet our public figures don’t say anything! Why? Because their incentives are to do nothing to insure they are able to step into plum consulting gigs after public office to continue the grift (look at the career of ex-MTACC chief Mike Hordnicenau. He left to join Tutor Perini despite overseeing projects that regularly budgets and timelines. He should have been forced to resign in shame.)

We live in a world of grifters. Today’s NYT: Wooing of Jared Kushner Trump Directed Illegal Payments L McCrae Dowless Jr. corrupts NC Election Paul Manafort Told Multiple Discernible Lies Medical Journals: Top Doctors Ties To Industry Live Streaming Your Broke Self For Money ...and that’s just the front page. We should all be grateful for the grifters... otherwise the papers would have nothing to print.

Why are con artists and grifters and their ilk so successful at their trade? The answer is simple. The dupes are greedy. If it is not a $$$ con, it can be fear. Lemmings.

Grifters possess ego-drama in abundance. They thrive in much of America where our culture grooms us to cultivate ego-drama.

I would also add that the opposite of gift is paying your fair share of taxes. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (may have) said: They buy civilization.

Depressing except for the last part in different ways than other critiques of, or much news about, society. Begs two fundamental questions: why are we such easy marks and how can we avoid turning to responses of excess, overgeneralized cynicism? Regarding the first, what is it about our assumptions that keep us vulnerable? The article gets at some of these, such as secret admiration for the skills or audacity of the grifter. But maybe we're also overestimating our abilities to see through cons, even when others have begun to, or aspects of society are getting so complicated, unless you follow them you're vulnerable. While not an unfair commentary for the most part, who and how were some cons detected early? How could we learn from that? Why did grifters turn to cons when they could have used their talents in other ways? We could also use some development of that last, more hopeful section in a language column. How about looking at some more hopeful words? Not with either naivety or cynicism at either extreme, but analytically, fairly, and somewhat comprehensively. Like the one you did on "nuance," I suggest from my fields: "sustainability," "regeneration," "holistic," "systems thinking," "interdependence," "equity," "optimization," "empathy," "density," "community," "complexity," "tipping point," "metrics," "rationality" and its opposite, "thrivability," "mindset," "mental model," "framing," "cognitive bias." Where do these have value and what pitfalls do they need to avoid?

I guess in this complex world of ours, which is getting even more complex by the second with the proliferating creations and innovations of anything by almost anybody, mostly with the chief aim of generating fast, massive profits for businesses and gaining instant wealth, fame, power for individuals; grift, is the ‘natural and effective’ methodology for these ‘hunters’.

What we all need to be schooled in is rhetoric, the art (and, to some, science) of persuasion. When we become knowledgeable about and even practitioners of the art, we can at least begin to sort out (and pass legislation—if needed, it may already be on the books) the grifters from the old-timey square dealers. Any way you look at it, we need more of the latter. Where to start? How about the entire (yep, entire) world of advertising. Lots and lots of people should reevaluate their career objectives. Does saying “advertising” and “square-dealing” in the same breath make sense?

Grift is another word for fraud that dusts that legal term with a patina of cleverness & panache (the better to sell noir movies . . ..) A thought experiment provides insight: A great deal of the population (by tautologic definition) wants to be able to get what they want. Yet only a percentage of the populace has the energy, morals and self-discipline to seek to achieve their success through hard & superior work. What happens to the rest of the folks: they don't simply accept failing to achieve their goals, but they rather choose to use other means to get to where and what they want in society ... For a decent percentage their schemes of self advancement or profiteering include fraud. If one observes closely, fraud writ large (ranging from the manufactured personality to Machiavellianism at work to the concealment of key information in consumer transactions) in fact is a major thread of US society. I listened to a recent EconTalk podcast in which the interviewee, a Stanford B School prof, made a convincing case that the entire financial system bailed out by the USG after the 2008 financial crises (with literally trillions of USDs), was at its core in significant part a fraudulent scheme (tails we win, heads you lose) in which no one was held to account . . . ..

There is nothing "old-timey" about "rectitude and integrity, honest work and firm handshakes and mutual respect." The highest technologies, are the techniques we use to connect with each other, foster trust, think clearly, and subsume ourselves to a larger purpose. Ethical behavior is the future, if we are to have one at all.