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So... it's hard out there. My girlfriend is successful as an independent massage therapist, after working many years in day-spas where she had to accept lower

So... it's hard out there. My girlfriend is successful as an independent massage therapist, after working many years in day-spas where she had to accept lower wages and give up a lot of her income. Because she's successful, she's constantly being hit upon by female friends either inviting her into schemes or asking her for advice. (Some of these friends, she helps do their taxes - for free, because these 30-something women can't figure it out - but she doesn't give them financial advice). Knowing a lot of these people and watching their schemes get derailed, I've come to a few conclusions. 1. Financial literacy basically doesn't exist. It's a miracle that my girlfriend taught herself. I'm not one to say that it's being intentionally suppressed in our educational system; I think the people who teach and write curricula are equally unequipped, so it's just a generational problem now in America. 2. The most paranoid / suspicious / likely to believe conspiracy theories are the ones who fall hardest for obvious ponzi schemes over and over. It's not clear to me why people who wouldn't accept a sandwich from a stranger are willing to put their life savings into an obvious scam (other than low IQ?) 3. It's brutal being a girl who gets into her 30s with a few kids and has no money and no prospects. Big companies hiring these women thrive on their desperation, so they're tolerant of smaller scams screwing them over and perpetuating the sense of there being no creative/industrious outlet for them. 4. Women's lib has been hijacked to the point that it's just another excuse for oppressing American women. This doesn't have to come in the form of workplace discrimination at Google. It's that the very inclusiveness of Google gives an excuse to the rest of society to dump the worst tasks and the most burden on women, with the excuse that everyone's now equal. That combined with a serious deficit in understanding the complicated schemes taking advantage of people results in this head-shakingly bizarre situation where tropes like "taking control of my life" are, over and over, just joining the latest iteration of Avon or tupperware parties. So not to just sit here and complain, I'd offer a couple solutions: 1. Bring back real accounting and home eq classes 2. Have serious discussions in school about the life-altering consequences of early pregnancy 3. Tech companies need to take an active hand in labeling these things as MLMs or viral fads or simply not good investments 4. Women in their 30s-50s, who are a huge driving force of our economy, need to have paths to advancement that don't require going through get-rich-quick schemes, and this isn't something that can be accomplished by a few companies trotting out female VPs of marketing or something. Equal pay isn't enough; equal opportunities are what's needed. A final thought; Jan 6th was supported by as many women as men. So was the Nazi occupation of Poland. Women can't be discounted as a force of political disaster if you create an underclass of so many disenfranchised people. The growth of these schemes among women is a very bad sign for our future as a democratic / market-based polity.

maxbond 4y ago
On the subject of falling for scams over and over, I found this interview illuminating: https://youtu.be/rTPUQHPMLks https://youtu.be/rTPUQHPMLks Tl;Dw this man has been involved with ponzi-MLM after ponzi-MLM, and after coming on Coffeezilla to discuss one that's just blown up - it comes out that he's already in another one. But as he's fallen for scheme after scheme, he's also built a network of equally gullible people (he's a financial educator (!!!)) - so he actually ends up being pretty high up in the pyramid and making money. Who knows what reflections he may have had after this interview and what changes he may have made to his life, but when Coffeezilla tries to explain this to him in the interview, it just sort of rolls off of him. (Iirc anyway, I haven't watched this interview in a year.)
- noduerme 4y ago
  Hah. I have a friend like this and we find it hilarious. Literally every time a cryptocurrency or a meme stock blows up, he's shot himself in the face. Not for nothing, he's also prone to talking about taking radical measures to protect his kids from climate change, and doesn't feel it's worth living if the climate warms up by 3ºC. He's one of my oldest and best friends, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about where this all comes from. His grandfather was an SS officer (and I'm a Jew- my grandparents, of course, were also Jews)... his father, a wonderful human being, and a serious anti-racist Austrian. Yet this form of obsession continues. Timothy Snyder makes some great remarks in "The Black Earth"- "There need not be any compelling reason for concern about life and death, as the Nazi example shows, only a momentary conviction that dramatic action is needed to preserve a way of life. [...] Perhaps the experience of unprecedented storms or relentless droughts will jar expectations about the security of basic resources and make Hitlerian politics more resonant. As Hitler demonstrated [...] humans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present." No one is immune from this kind of thought process, but all of us should be immunized by our socialization with one another. And rational investment (as opposed to irrational risk-taking) is a security token for society. The opposite is a bet against a rational future.
busterarm 4y ago
> It's that the very inclusiveness of Google gives an excuse to the rest of society to dump the worst tasks and the most burden on women, with the excuse that everyone's now equal. I agree with literally everything else that you said except this one snippet. Women still aren't taking jobs that kill them and they're still not taking jobs that give them PTSD and cause them to commit suicide. If you think the worst tasks and the most burden are being given to women, please remember that we're talking about office work exclusively and not hard, body/life-destroying labor. Men just aren't complaining about it. Also workplace discrimination at Google is equally as likely to go the other way. Every tech company that I've worked for has boldly and loudly claimed that they pay women more money for the same roles as their male peers to counteract the gender pay gap. Even the hedge fund I worked at 15 years ago made it very transparent that women were paid 4-8% more in the same roles.

maxbond 4y ago

On the subject of falling for scams over and over, I found this interview illuminating: https://youtu.be/rTPUQHPMLks https://youtu.be/rTPUQHPMLks Tl;Dw this man has been involved with ponzi-MLM after ponzi-MLM, and after coming on Coffeezilla to discuss one that's just blown up - it comes out that he's already in another one. But as he's fallen for scheme after scheme, he's also built a network of equally gullible people (he's a financial educator (!!!)) - so he actually ends up being pretty high up in the pyramid and making money. Who knows what reflections he may have had after this interview and what changes he may have made to his life, but when Coffeezilla tries to explain this to him in the interview, it just sort of rolls off of him. (Iirc anyway, I haven't watched this interview in a year.)

noduerme 4y ago
Hah. I have a friend like this and we find it hilarious. Literally every time a cryptocurrency or a meme stock blows up, he's shot himself in the face. Not for nothing, he's also prone to talking about taking radical measures to protect his kids from climate change, and doesn't feel it's worth living if the climate warms up by 3ºC. He's one of my oldest and best friends, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about where this all comes from. His grandfather was an SS officer (and I'm a Jew- my grandparents, of course, were also Jews)... his father, a wonderful human being, and a serious anti-racist Austrian. Yet this form of obsession continues. Timothy Snyder makes some great remarks in "The Black Earth"- "There need not be any compelling reason for concern about life and death, as the Nazi example shows, only a momentary conviction that dramatic action is needed to preserve a way of life. [...] Perhaps the experience of unprecedented storms or relentless droughts will jar expectations about the security of basic resources and make Hitlerian politics more resonant. As Hitler demonstrated [...] humans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present." No one is immune from this kind of thought process, but all of us should be immunized by our socialization with one another. And rational investment (as opposed to irrational risk-taking) is a security token for society. The opposite is a bet against a rational future.

busterarm 4y ago

> It's that the very inclusiveness of Google gives an excuse to the rest of society to dump the worst tasks and the most burden on women, with the excuse that everyone's now equal. I agree with literally everything else that you said except this one snippet. Women still aren't taking jobs that kill them and they're still not taking jobs that give them PTSD and cause them to commit suicide. If you think the worst tasks and the most burden are being given to women, please remember that we're talking about office work exclusively and not hard, body/life-destroying labor. Men just aren't complaining about it. Also workplace discrimination at Google is equally as likely to go the other way. Every tech company that I've worked for has boldly and loudly claimed that they pay women more money for the same roles as their male peers to counteract the gender pay gap. Even the hedge fund I worked at 15 years ago made it very transparent that women were paid 4-8% more in the same roles.