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Criminals tend to think that everybody else is a criminal too, and get offended when caught because they feel singled out. But it's not true, it's just a copin

Criminals tend to think that everybody else is a criminal too, and get offended when caught because they feel singled out. But it's not true, it's just a coping mechanism they adopt to excuse themselves. It's amazing how pervasive this mentality is. The premise of buying something for one amount of money, processing it and then selling it for more is totally alien to people in this mode of thinking. In their mind, a man could not possibly make money by buying uncooked hotdogs, cooking them and selling them for more. No, he must be stealing the hotdogs, or using fake hotdogs, or stealing the wages of his employees, or some other scheme. Anything other than simple honest business, which they feel sure cannot exist. Unfortunately you seem to be thinking in this mode, since evidently you believe that criminal activity is the only way somebody could get through medical school.

jongjong 3y ago
Well it's hit and miss but these days you can point me to just about anyone who you think earned their money 'fair and square' and I can point out many different ways that it was not quite as 'fair' nor 'square' as it seems. The role of privilege is just so significant. Privilege is often the product of unethical machinations that happen behind the scenes or happened behind the scenes at some point in the past. Once you understand that value creation and value extraction are two very different concepts and that only the latter is rewarded AT ALL, you start to understand how we got to where we are today. It's not value creators who are rewarded. Over long periods of time, our system almost completely dispossesses value creators for the benefit of value extractors. Money, in its current form, is the root of all evil. In a highly competitive global environment, you cannot win without cheating. That's a probabilistic fact because if there are 10K intelligent people competing in the same area (which is very common in global markets), the probability that maybe 100 of them will be cheaters is very high and the cheaters have a huge competitive edge over the non-cheaters, hence the winner in a winner-takes-all market is much more likely to be a cheater.

jongjong 3y ago

Well it's hit and miss but these days you can point me to just about anyone who you think earned their money 'fair and square' and I can point out many different ways that it was not quite as 'fair' nor 'square' as it seems. The role of privilege is just so significant. Privilege is often the product of unethical machinations that happen behind the scenes or happened behind the scenes at some point in the past. Once you understand that value creation and value extraction are two very different concepts and that only the latter is rewarded AT ALL, you start to understand how we got to where we are today. It's not value creators who are rewarded. Over long periods of time, our system almost completely dispossesses value creators for the benefit of value extractors. Money, in its current form, is the root of all evil. In a highly competitive global environment, you cannot win without cheating. That's a probabilistic fact because if there are 10K intelligent people competing in the same area (which is very common in global markets), the probability that maybe 100 of them will be cheaters is very high and the cheaters have a huge competitive edge over the non-cheaters, hence the winner in a winner-takes-all market is much more likely to be a cheater.