THE BIZOP NEWS

Image via Wikipedia

One of the major themes in this blog, running through the examples of fraud and deceit, is that fraud, misrepresentation, and lies are not anomalies in civil society. They are the very fabric of social life and rational action.

Accepted sales techniques, persuasion by attorneys, and calls to action by politicians use the same methods exploited by shills, con criminals, and fraudsters. This view was made clear most recently by Cialdini.

However, in some cases of fraud we more easily detect a play, pattern, or rehearsed mannerisms.  

These cases are the business opportunity fraud, ponzi and pyramid schemes.  By studying these financial tragedies, we learn to detect their true purpose.  

Much as a professional magician enjoys deconstructing a trick or cognitive illusion, we seek to dispel the attraction of fraud, schemes, and outright deception.

We seek to dispel the attraction not by marshaling our cognitive forces against influence techniques, but by rather by avoid the swamps of enticement.  

Don't argue with the snake about the properties of the apple, just stop talking to snakes.

Erving Goffman explicitly used the idea that we could understand adaptations or acceptances of failure by looking at how con criminals cooled out their marks.

"In cases of criminal fraud, victims find they must suddenly adapt themselves to the loss of sources of security and status which they had taken for granted.

A consideration of this adaptation to loss can lead us to an understanding of some relations in our society between involvements and the selves that are involved.

In the argot of the criminal world, the term "mark" refers to any individual who is a victim or prospective victim of certain forms of planned illegal exploitation.

The mark is the sucker‑the person who is taken in. An instance of the operation of any particular racket, taken through the full cycle of its steps or phases, is sometimes called a play.

The persons who operate the racket and "take" the mark are occasionally called operators."

What is important about Goffman's essay is the he explicitly used the model of a fraud to explain ordinary social transactions.

This is not the only way to explain social exchanges, but it has a certain appeal.

Imagine a society in which members of the in-group were treated one way, and the "other" was treated as a mere means to an end.  In other words, consider our history.

Persuasion, the type practiced by con criminals, might be way that the in-group could obtain what they wanted from the "other" without resorting to violence. Pure anti-Kant: treat the other as a mere means to an end, like cattle, pigs, or even carrots.

The evolution of the in-group, with its practices of deception,  and inclusion of the "other" could very well be the basis of what we call civil society.  This is a theoretical conjecture, and something we are trying to flesh out on this blog.