Griftonomics: Why Scams are Everywhere Now

Go to hensonshaving.com/tomnicholas and enter "TOMNICHOLAS" at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase.
A video about how "passive income" money-making schemes took over the internet, and the world.
Written, directed and presented by Tom Nicholas.
Edited by Georgia Burrows.
Chapters
00:00:00 AI Money-Makers
00:08:00 1. Work Sucks, I Know
00:24:40 2. The Grift Gets Wider
00:40:50 3. The Rent is Too Damn High
00:59:54 4. Grifts All The Way Up
01:14:29 5. Picks & Shovels
01:34:59 6. Temporarily Embarrassed Billionaires
01:42:12 Henson Shaving
01:44:39 Thanks for Watching!
Bibliography
You can find a bibliography for this video on my Patreon, here: / video-why-scams-86916304
Grifts and scams have taken over. Everywhere you look online, gurus are offering quick and easy ways to make money. Social media feeds and the KZbin homepage are dominated by "passive income" strategies which promise a sure-fire path to financial freedom.
At the same time, there has been a rise in anti-grifter content too. Creators including Coffeezilla, Dan Olson, Münecat and Mike Winnet have all dedicated time in recent years to highlighting that making easy money online can actually be a little more difficult than these gurus like to suggest.
Whether you're a financial freedom seeker or a sceptic, it's clear that grifters and scammers are the zeitgeist.
But, while these schemes might initially seem somewhat low-rent marginal, they actually take influence from some of the most successful businesses in the world. And, not in a good way.
This is the story of how grifts and scams took over not just the internet, but the world.
Watch this video ad-free on Nebula at nebula.tv/tomnicholas
Support my work on Patreon at / tomnicholas
Twitter: / tom_nicholas
Instagram: / tomnicholaswtf
Patreon: / tomnicholas
Website: www.tomnicholas.com
Select footage courtesy of Getty
Music from Epidemic Sound

[@Tom_Nicholas]

Hopefully you've noticed that we're really been increasing the production value of what we make over the last few videos. I'm really proud of what we're putting out but doing so is fairly costly. If you'd like to support me and my team to make more videos like this then you can do so in a couple of ways: Firstly, you can check out today's video's sponsor Henson Shaving at hensonshaving.com/tomnicholas Secondly, you sign-up to my premium streaming service Nebula (with 40% off an annual plan) at go.nebula.tv/tomnicholas Thirdly, you can support the channel whilst getting access to video scripts, early bits and weekly updates on what I've been working on at patreon.com/tomnicholas Thanks so much and I hope you enjoyed the video!

[@user-op8fg3ny3j]

The concept of paretian rent/excess profit (like the example you made of landlords making money simply for having money to own property without creating anything of value or increasing productivity in the economy) seems very similar to the Islamic ruling on Riba

[@dayegilharno4988]

ALL PROFT IS UNEARNED YOU ABSOLOUTE DRONGO!!! There you go, happy to help.

[@DragonDrummer2]

I am excited for this! Also, I have greatly enjoyed your brief appearances on other channels! Thank you for your efforts.

[@robertfaucher3750]

42:45 You know just caused you filmed it doesn't mean your editor won't cut it out... I mean they haven't cause I watched it but still!

[@itzzaamia]

i can't believe you got margot robbie in a bathtub to explain landlords

[@juliekring7574]

The "this is how I make 1k a day on Etsy" made my blood boil because idiot dropshippers marketing mass manufactured crap on etsy has pushed out all of the actual handmade goods. And Etsy doesnt do a damn thing about it because the increase in sales volume is good for their margins. There are a bunch of really sad posts on reddit from artists who are just trying to figure out how to sell their art

[@ThyrzaSegal]

aren't there other platforms? I sure would like to sell my art for an etsy-like commission! Just submitting a pile to a gallery today for a 50% commission.....but no selling effort on my part.

[@juliekring7574]

@@ThyrzaSegal I suppose "artist" is the wrong word. A proper artist can exhibit at shows and operate their own website. What I'm referring to is more craft goods. Say you're a hobbyist blacksmith and you make very artistic looking handmade knives.

[@juliekring7574]

@@ThyrzaSegal and as said towards the end of the video, essentially no. The platforms are monopolies and any competing platform doesn't have the user base to justify the effort.

[@aroace7913]

@@juliekring7574 I imagine it also be a pain having to deal with more than a few sites were you sell stuff.

[@Dahlily]

And also, as a etsy customer looking for cool handmade products, I feel like a fool when finding only ai generated content. Makes me want to not use etsy that much anymore

[@Durrutitv]

Back in the before times, when I was a child and grifts were run through infomercials and 900 numbers, my parents told me something that stuck: never trust someone who gets rich by selling their ideas to get rich, if they worked they wouldn't need you to buy them.

[@AlRoderick]

I felt the same way about a lot of things related to crypto. Why would you trust someone who wants to sell you a pre-built mining rig? If it really could pay for itself by plugging into the wall, why didn't he do that?

[@toriitoraa]

You had a clever set of parents, props to them

[@crazydinosaur8945]

@@AlRoderick same, i have never understood how anyone can trust someone who sells "how become rich" because if it works, why do they need to sell it to me. they are rich aren't they... because if there is one thing i know about rich people, its that they didn't become rich by sharing there business tactics

[@hedgehog3180]

A collory of that is that if someone does have a successful get rich scheme they wouldn't want to sell them because that increases competition and makes things harder for themselves. This is why patents and copyrights exist, because if you have a great idea you want to get everything out of it that you can. nVidia isn't selling the blueprints to their graphics cards, they're getting rich off of selling the cards themselves, someone who is selling you a blueprint probably knows that it can't make money.

[@Otzkar]

To be honest I feel like that for any advertising. Whenever you see a big poster in the subway and think about how much it costs to rent that out, also think about how they are going to make that money back by selling you their product. At the end of the day it's all about money and if someone is paying thousands for advertising they are likely making thousands back..

[@conansboy]

"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor." - Paulo Freire

[@grimkahn3775]

Fr

[@RenixGames]

that's a pretty sweet quote actually, and very accurate! Even sums up the way I feel sometimes

[@savshady15]

Great quote

[@keithberjeron763]

So that explains why I'm this way

[@keithberjeron763]

​@@RenixGamesI echo your thoughts on the matter, especially the final part.

[@brunnokamei9623]

Pro-tip: Whoever got filthy rich will kick the ladder after getting there. So, never trust advices from those people.

[@delg1211]

..except the real ones (like Buffet), who also gives his how to. But as Buffet says, getting filthy rich his way is Not fast and easy ;)

[@RolferShannon]

It's like golem there's never enough. As soon as you hit one level that's not enough. Look at Ryan Reynolds he's an actor that's been acting since he was a child. He starred in major blockbuster movies making more than most of us in a month and we have ever made our entire lives. He also has a cellular phone company. I haven't looked it up but I'm sure he has many other business adventures he's pursuing along with all the other people that are in Hollywood in their position have to be to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of increasing wealth.....

[@duncanidaho8234]

The point is these people don’t think they are on a ladder, they think they’re on a pyramid, but if they admitted that then the form of grift they hope they are running would be too obvious.

[@thislightful]

Correct! Well said! I love the KZbin commercials, where they’re going to share their get rich quick jobs/side money etc. with us! Surely, if you find a niche you’re not going to share it.

[@calumjones]

Not always, if for example they're retired and don't need the business model anymore. Or if they moved businesses into something easier. I'm retired and could sell my business model but I cba to put together a course, and I already have enough money to where I don't really need more income (hence low motivation to do such a thing).

[@thesporehero]

As Dan Olson put it: Actual products are time consuming to develop and produce. Advice is free, easy to manufacture, and has incredibly nebulous value.

[@YourIdeologyIsDelusional]

Oh, do not underestimate the raw power of ideas and information. Look into a man named Edward Bernays. He was a "consultant," and he's close to single handedly the reason why our society is dominated by insane ideology and corporations run everything. People think that "wokeness" is new, but Edward Bernays was using feminist ideology to sell tobacco products to flappers _all the way back in 1928._ All these screeching blue haired activists are part of rainbow capitalism, something that has its roots as far back as the roaring 20s. After that, he went on to manufacture consent and ignorance about the US Coup in Guatemala, and the deep state has been using his propaganda methods since. He was single handedly the most effective propagandist in the history of man, and few people know who he is because he spent his entire time in the back rooms of institutions, selling advice. His ideas are so ingrained in our society to this day, that supposed rebellious anti-capitalist activists are using his capitalist propaganda to make money on platforms like KZbin... Without even knowing who he is. Latch on to an ideology, sell people confirmation bias, and use the cult you're pandering to as a captive audience you can sell things to. That was the basis of Edward Bernays' propaganda methods, and I think there is no better example of this grift than one Anita Sarkeesian, would be feminist activist that started her career in _mid level marketing._ One man with very dangerous ideas can corrupt an entire society if he has the right connections. Information is physical, and real, and it can make or break entire civilizations. It should not be surprising that there is an enormous amount of wealth tied up in it.

[@nvelsen1975]

The words of a man who's never set foot in a knowledge-intensive industry then. Because while many a fool may brand himself as 'expert', there's just no pricetag you can put on having someone who knows what they're on about, especially when you yourself don't know at all or don't really know. But give me a call when the Olsons of this world have succesfully secured permits for their first 10 property development projects, I'd love to hear it (even though I'm positive my children will bury me long before it happens).

[@wreaverfizzlefen3234]

@@nvelsen1975 Check out this yuppie sellout 🙄

[@_annoyed4692]

@@nvelsen1975 Ah, he didn't say "permits". He also didn't say "good advice. Here's some easily manufactured advice: Don't take drugs, clean your teeth, those who buy cheap buy twice, and you need a high quality bed, a comfy chair, and good boots, the rest is not that important because it won't ruin your back. You're welcome.

[@flamemasterist]

​@nvelsen1975 The insecurity seeping through your comment shows you have quite an unhealthy relationship with your work, don't you? As someone in the field of consulting, you should be the first one to acknowledge how many "experts" only coast on their position and provide long-winded platitudes instead of solving problems and getting shit done. Not to mention that the "advice" here clearly refers to get rich quick schemes from grifters that never built anything themselves, not an attack on your career choice 😂

[@theentirepopulationofaustr6046]

The other infuriating thing about rent in comparison to groceries is that buying a loaf of bread doesn't mean I'll never be able to make my own bread in the future, but paying rent does prevent me from saving for a house deposit. I won't ever be able to own a house because I spend all my money paying off someone else's house. The only way I'll ever be able to not pay rent is to paradoxically not pay rent - by living with parents, housesitting, etc. I think it's ok to be resentful about that.

[@DevinMacGregor]

Exactly and a lot of people though do not have the option of living with their parents.

[@wforbes87]

Don't feel too infuriated, I grappled with those concepts for years. Eventually landed on 'well, it just be that way' and went on with life. About 5 years later I was able to buy a house with some luck/saving. In all honesty, it was not a great decision. The mortgage interest, insurance, property tax, maintenance, etc. probably won't be covered by property value increases in my lifetime. Bright side is I can kick a hole in the wall whenever I want, so that's a plus. Renting has downsides, but I'll probably sell the house and go back to it eventually.

[@cesarbretschneider]

(I'm a renter and it sucks to me as much as anyone). I think this channel has a very strong bias against landlords. If you follow a few economists on here you'll see that renting is not actually that bad and that it's often a very good financial choice. Rent often feels like "rent-seeking" because we cannot comprehend the time frames that these investments occur in. You can estimate the number of decades it would take to pay off the apartment or house you live in and it'll probably shock you. Your landlord had to pay an exorbitant price to get that apartment they are renting out to you. This sucks for both you and him. Your example would be more akin to saying that the grocery store is keeping you from buying your own cow when they sell you milk. That said, a good chunk of landlords suck. I've been lucky and only had great ones. There's many that will not treat their tenants well, and will engage in rent-seeking. Those can rot in hell.

[@habba5965]

I think one of the biggest downsides of renting is uncertainty of your living space. At any time you can be told that you need to leave within X months, or that the cost will go up etc. If you want to settle somewhere, have kids that go to a nearby school,... This is a constant source of anxiety. Buying a house has freed me of this

[@pi3794]

@@DevinMacGregor p😮

[@friendlylaser]

I remember office jobs made fun of when I was in school and young adult after that around 2005-2010. There was so much content disparaging office jobs as boring, unfulfilling and meaningless. 15 years later I inhale toxic chemical at a factory everyday and dream of working in an clean office where you can go in your own clothes, make jokes around water cooler and sit comfortably staring at the screen instead of lifting 50kilo canisters filled with sulfuric acid. Office job is like an unreachable paradise for me. Just imagine - working with paper and tables, while it is clean and air conditioned, wow.

[@sholem_bond]

Yeah the idea of "I have a stable job that didn't require me to go into debt and spend over four years in college to get hired for, that doesn't break my body (or only breaks it very gradually, a little at a time) and guarantees I'll get paid if I show up (plus industry-standard benefits like a retirement plan and health insurance plan)... But it's a boring job so I hate it," is honestly a worldview that aged very poorly once Millennials (like me) joined the workforce, such as it exists these days. I remember most of us saying and thinking constantly, "I'd love a stable job with good benefits whose only drawback is 'boring.'" (Of course, a big source of tension in the overall plot of "The Office" is that the jobs in question aren't actually "stable," because layoffs or plant closure are either happening or in danger of happening throughout at least the early seasons of the show, back when it seemed like "paper-free offices" were the direction most white-collar workplaces were headed in the early 2000s. Because people thought back then reducing deforestation would save the planet, rather than focusing on energy efficiency/green energy sources, as we focus on today.)

[@DrewLSsix]

The issue is existentialism, meaning the solution is entirely doable by a change of mindset. Firstly, theres no reason a job needs to be particularly fulfilling, its a mindset that your job is a significant portion of your being. If Jim had changed his mindset to his job then career being a simple means to fulfilling his life's desires outside of the office the thought of moving upward wouldn't have held such existential Dread. Same goes for the alternatives we often project our desires on, usually the good ol' days. As if every peasant farmer simple knew their work was practical useful and thus fulfilling. Maybe shilling paper is inherently unfulfilling work, maybe being an old fashioned paper maker is inherently more honorable work, or maybe the paper maker just kept his head down, did the dreary work, and finished the day with some alcohol like the rest of us.

[@Itried20takennames]

My dad had a saying about work that was “there is a reason they pay you money,” meaning that jobs aren’t there to be fun or fulfilling, just boring or hard stuff that needs to be done. I repeat that to my kids but also say that if you dread your job and it is making you miserable in general, then time to do everything in your power to switch as soon as you responsibly can, even if just a lateral move to the similar position in a different setting. And having worked in Occupational Medicine and toured many factories, agree with the OP on factory work and hate to see the many people who wax poetic about how great factory jobs are and wish there were more left in the US. They forget that most factory jobs are often physically hard, dirty, demand either a fast pace or doing endlessly repetitive tasks, noises, have chemical or other hazardous exposures and are hugely polluting to wherever they are. Factories aren’t just sunshine and “jobs!”

[@pckyart]

horrible news bro young people in 2023 still see office work as a slog and to be honest, any job where you can be fired instantly or be subject under stress is still a hellhole, ngl. the idea that all office jobs are not subject to abuse, overworking, etc is very silly to me. people at the bottom barrel of those jobs are still very much subject to depression, existentialism, and the fear of homelessness or pain

[@Roadwarior2]

The grass is always greener on the other side ain't it?

[@nat369i]

Airbnb has actually added to the housing crisis and rental crisis simultaneously. What used to be long term rentals are now short term rentals. Homes that would otherwise be in the market are now short term rentals. This has hit many small towns very hard with many out of town investors jumping on the short-term hustle. Many families are homeless while homes sit empty waiting for that one couple to rent for the weekend. These homeowners call themselves "business professionals" now or investors. Most businesses have ethical policies in place so they can be held accountable and if they aren't there are laws to stop these businesses from taking too much and not giving back. But these "business people" have none. It's a "free for all". They aren't held accountable for anything. It's all about their pockets being full and not what's good for society as a whole. We are a broken society. We need to do better.

[@shcdemolisher]

Agreed. But sadly when you are human, you are a reactionary race, not an actionary one. Aka you react more then you act. You react to things instead of ensuring there is no need to react when it comes to society. (or something like that) We likely aren't going to be that way until the next millennia, if not ever. But if we can at least START getting better, like throwing out the shit in society that is smothering our potential as a real society then at least we can sleep better.

[@Simipourfangirl]

I kept seeing Airbnb ads but it was strangely trying to prompt me to be the one who would rent their house out... I also get a lot of investment ads when I'm not even interested in that stuff.

[@joshjonson2368]

You're either very stupid or very delusional if you believe the solution to a broken society is to "do better". Yeah right as if harmful bacteria that is multiplying at a vicious rate understands the incentive to "do better" lol

[@RageUnchained]

@@Simipourfangirlthat’s the rich trying to claw any wealth you do have away from you. You invest it they lose it and then shrug and say “sorry your fault for being poor”

[@velevetyy]

i keep arguing with my dad sometimes because he will just be like "people are entitled to make money" but people aren't entitled to have homes for themselves to live in to allow them to make money?

[@annabeinglazy5580]

My dad tried his hand at being a landlord about a year ago and it was honestly hilarious and sad. Because he was kind of justifying his venture saying that he is "a good landlord"... You know... The magic one who cares for his tenants. Does repairs on time. Isnt a total ahole. All of which are guaranteed by law here in germany. Then he started complaining how hard it was to find tenants. I asked what his requirements were and... They were insane. He wanted a public sector employee (special job security and all), or a certain income threshold, no children, no more than two tenants, no house sharing. so by his own requirements, he wouldnt give my sister a flat, because shes a single mum and therefore a risk. When i told him how unrealistic his requirements are, he gave me a rant about "rent nomads" (a popular spectre here in germany) and then complained about our laws protectig tenants and leaving landlords at their mercy. I was very relieved when he finally gave up trying to rent the flat.

[@-TheUnkownUser]

Your dad discriminating a sector of the population that, ironically (and sadly) your sister belongs to. Lovely…

[@loreta4665]

right? surely there are laws against tenant discrimination@@-TheUnkownUser

[@infernoglass_]

many such cases...

[@weebfourg]

how is an empty flat good for anyone?

[@cynicalcitizen8315]

Those requirements are not plentiful even in the US.

[@duckdudette]

Tom's continued assault on foreign languages is nothing short of inspirational

[@Tom_Nicholas]

I am nothing if not committed.

[@tilleul6917]

Son accent français est plus affriolant qu'un croissant beurré parisien !

[@Thrlta]

oh my 😹 endlessly funny!

[@karl_margs]

The way he utters French phrases with an Italian accent is exquisite

[@Atoll-ok1zm]

Tbf he is English. It's practically genetic.

[@jonvia]

My mom has been part of so many MLMs, its shocking that she never thinks its a scam. They make her buy an inventory that usually ends up collecting dust and the MLM couldnt care less. Thats actually the point. Its sad to see her lose friends and family (me included) over endless texts about joining her "team" or buying her products but she decided to act like this. I cant trust anyone that would rather try and make a buck off of their own son's friends than respect personal boundaries. I lost all respect for my mom when she would go behind my back to try to recruit my friends into it, especially after I told her countless times to leave me and my friends out of it.

[@KD-ou2np]

Why do you think she does it? What did she do before MLMs? Just curious about this type of person who would pursue it to that extreme

[@pax6833]

It's sad to see what desperation and a lack of common sense (or willingness to ignore it) will do to some people.

[@edmondduong]

,

[@Lebon19]

That reminds me of that one cosmetics company which I don't remember the name of that recruted women that tried selling their products and how tried to recruit them in their scheme.

[@connorrowe8787]

@@KD-ou2npit catches both the desperate and those that think they deserve it all. Same setup as OP but with a long history of gold digging. Quit a 6 figure job cause she thought she was gonna be rich without having to put in the hours anymore. Lost the house, lost her boyfriend, lost her kids, yet refuses to go back

[@joeyjojo84]

My former boss closed his business rather suddenly because he, quote “wanted it to be a passive form of income but has come to realise it’ll never be 100% passive and there will also be issues that require his attention”. No shame. Told us this to our faces. For context, most of the workers, including myself had only been onboard for less than a year. Very minimal training, no supervision, feedback etc. he was the only leadership figure. He didn’t appoint any supervisors or middle management types (because he didn’t want to pay them, no doubt). So if there was an issue, we called him. Which he hated. But there was no one else. He would come into the office (begrudgingly) about once every two weeks. Sit on his computer shopping, playing games and watching videos etc. again, no shame, didn’t even try to hide it. Anyway, long story short. I realise now he must have read this 4 hour work week book and decided he’s give it a crack. I hear he’s broke now.

[@KD-ou2np]

So frustrating that there are so many greedy idiots like this who have the money to mess around with property ownership, investing, and starting businesses while so many honest ppl will never have those opportunities

[@GhostVanguard]

That's really sad because I know people who have more or less done it before but the sheer amount of upfront work is insane. 60-80 hour work weeks till you can get a good enough crew and train some management to run it how you would, then you can finally relax some and pay the management more while you only work about 20 hours or so, more when needed.

[@joeyjojo84]

Yeah so sad. Cry me a river.

[@dsnodgrass4843]

One of the reasons "passive income" scams have so much appeal in the modern era is, that trying to start any legitimate, "active income" business is far more difficult now than it ever has been. Your input suppliers will gouge you if they think you're going to make any money from using their products, and your customers will lowball your prices to the last penny if they can. If an honest dollar is so hard to earn, than a dishonest one looks a lot better.

[@Godblessuss]

my tractor dealer - "You'll make so much money off this it won't matter what it costs" 😂

[@turtleanton6539]

Faxx😊

[@turtleanton6539]

​@@sax0catsad but real

[@cleanerwhite9470]

And it's only small businesses that get lowball by customers. Big brands can do whatever they want, even selling a toothpick for $100 and we would still buy it as long as it has a logo.

[@orppranator5230]

@@sax0cat Passive income has had so much appeal for a while. It’s not just the past couple years in the 2020’s

[@enelezed454]

Being born in 1998 means that I was helpless watching the 2007/2008 recession unfold before my eyes. That when the pandemic hit, I was working catering and got laid off with no warning. Then unemployment denied me, and I couldn't get anyone on the phone to help. I was on my own, my parents far away for the first time. I remember being so bitter about how much attention the high schoolers were getting- im dying here, but yeah no its sooo sad prom was virtual, how will you ever survive. Now I'm in my mid 20's finally trying to go to school, and the housing crisis is currently crushing my dreams. No dorms available, all apartments in the town are so ridiculously expensive you'd need a trust fund to afford them as a college student. It's an hour away from where i live now, and I dont have a car. No wonder so many people went on to scam people. Theres not enough money in working the minnimum wage type jobs to even afford rent. Let alone enough good quality food to sustain yourself. God help you if you have kids and make too much money for food stamps.

[@blu3622]

Born in the 80s, I went to an expensive university graduating in December 2003. Not lucky enough to have been born into a wealthy family, my BA left me owing over 30K in student loans at 23. Fortunately, I was able to get a very good job with benefits and a future in the sector that I'd wanted. Then..... I was unceremoniously laid off in 2009 due to cutbacks. It took me 5 months of daily interviews to find another job. I had to take a pay cut and work harder at the UPS store, and my suv was repossessed the week I was hired. I was as bitter as well by then.... but I ended up getting a management position in a new UPS store near my home. I stayed there for 8 years, in which time I got married and had a child. We had finally paid off my student loans, and our vehicle... and could see the light through the tunnel. It was the end of 2019 😳

[@justinwatson1510]

Join a communist party

[@athena2824]

Make sure you vote!

[@blu3622]

@@athena2824 I've voted in every presidential election since 2000, as well as local elections and midterms. My designated polling location is only a couple of blocks from my home, and there's never a line.

[@helpanimals-]

I'm sad to read about your situation. On the plus side, maybe population worldwide shrink worldwide cuz due to billionaires cause climate change there's no point anymore. Maybe adopting. They deserve it too

[@kagitsune]

We also need to talk about the unfathomable amounts of unrewarding, disabling human labor that are required to maintain these grifts. The mining, the manufacturing, the shipping all along the supply chain... It's too much to hold in one thought. Human greed will always be a thing but when the entire economy is held up in "bezzle" assets and nothingburger jobs, we can only expect to see worsening and more frequent recessions and depressions as productivity ironically gets higher and higher.

[@SickegalAlien]

Specifically about the "make longer" feature in language AI: It's mostly used by office workers to write emails or reports to their supervisors. You're right that it serves no useful function in creative or educational writing, But seeing as many corporate managers take quantity as a sign of quality, it makes perfect sense there

[@aliannarodriguez1581]

A lot of supervisors are so overwhelmed that if you send them emails longer than one sentence their brains explode.

[@Doomer_Optimist]

Ya I would hate this as a manager

[@satyasyasatyasya5746]

*Every grift/scam ever:* get rich quick by passing on this grift/scam!

[@TheDarthbinky]

To the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

[@noahkarpinski1824]

And now that's basically what Twitter Blue is turning into This honestly is the worst possible timeline

[@darkdragon5520]

That’s basically just a pyramid scheme lol

[@Qardo]

​@@noahkarpinski1824Really, if you look at the timeline. No, point of the timeline is great. As the scam and grift has existed nearly forever. I mean, since the dawn of time for humanity.

[@wta1518]

Pyramid Scemes.

[@JohnSmith-ft4gc]

I absolutely love how Google is serving me up nothing but grifting ads, it actually enhances the vids by providing genuine examples.

[@4zdr456]

You know, you can always just change the ad-setting, right? I changed it and know the only ads I get is about manufacturing equipment.

[@TheZenBullet]

Yeah same So weird right?

[@antdowd918]

Ublock origin

[@bluebellbeatnik4945]

what do you mean by genuine examples?

[@kingacrisius]

​@@bluebellbeatnik4945 Examples of the scam ads that the video is talking about...?

[@CaseyEm]

If you've ever been a cashier, you know how much people complain about the cost of everything

[@lrose5522]

Tbh I think one of the worst scam ads I've seen lately was like "If you got into a car accident, don't call a lawyer, use this AI app".

[@phdupont2500]

“If I’d had more time, I’d have written you a shorter letter.” Conveying complex info simply and concisely is an art.

[@myaseena]

This is also a popular saying in computer programming: "If I had more time, I would have written less code"

[@relight6931]

I call that wisdom. Conveying as much information in so little words is an art in itself.

[@mikeciul8599]

@@myaseena I am a programmer, and there is a reason I love that quote!

[@paulpinecone2464]

"Simplify simplify simplify" -> Simplify³

[@a_8764]

Is this meant to be a criticism of the video? (Because I would agree with it)

[@tankermottind]

The original one weird trick to maximizing your passive income: Raise a band of mercenaries, conquer a patch of land, and get the king to acknowledge your possession because it isn't worth raising his own army to kick you off of it. (Serfs HATE it!)

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

🤣 in 5 easy steps

[@kornaros96]

Prighoznin liked this

[@GregSiekman]

@@kornaros96 Appropriate use of past tense.

[@HashFace253]

​@@GregSiekman... or is it???...

[@hypothalapotamus5293]

To paraphrase Herodotus: The tyrant of Miletus wanted to control the island of Naxos. So he got every Ionian Greek mercenary he could find with promises of gold and slaves to invade it. The Inhabitants of Naxos had been preparing for this event for years and had a wall, provisions for a seige, and an underground water supply. After the invasion failed, the tyrant found his port city filled with pissed off and heavily trained mercenaries he owed money to... It was then that he reallized that the regional capital, Sardis, of his Persian overlords was relatively undefended...

[@zoroark567]

I had some classmates argue to me that landlords provide a service by making housing more accessible than ownership. They didn’t seem to grasp that one person owning hundreds or thousands of houses might be a contributing factor in why housing is so expensive in the first place.

[@guyparisi]

Disclosure, I am a landlord. Sharpen your swords now. Landlords do provide a service, but it is hard to see it through the fog of the imbalance of supply and demand in this area. The argument assumes that if there were plenty of houses available, then no one would rent. This simply isn't the case. The "economic rent" means that you do not have to have a 30 year contract with a house, and you are paying a premium to have that transitive relationship. This is why you don't buy a car every time you go on vacation to a new state. Back to the fog. The supply of homes is the problem. We need more than we produce. As long as a landlord does not have a monopoly on the supply, then they are not in a position to change affordability. Landlords do not decrease the amount of homes available to be lived in. Point of fact, if a house is unlivable then someone needs to make it livable again before it can be put to use. That is also providing a service. Affordable housing is a problem because there is no economic incentive to make more of it. You want to run me out of business as a landlord? Then build 100,000 more homes. We don't want to stop that... But all of your neighbors do, if the plan is to put them nearby you.

[@zoroark567]

@@guyparisi right, it’s definitely not property management companies and REITs who are lobbying cities against high density and affordable housing that would slow down rent inflating at 5-10+% annually. Tell me how a 16% increase in my rent in one year is necessary to provide the service when the property manager profited half a billion dollars the previous year and after six months still had not fixed basic maintenance issues I was contacting them about every week. That’s not increasing the price of housing? Really? Are they even providing me the ‘service’ I supposedly pay them for? It’s easy to feel like rent isn’t fucking crushing the labour class when you’re not the one paying rent. How is someone supposed to ever stop renting if their rent is scaling faster than their income?

[@randomguy019]

​@zoroark567 I swear these landlords have a sixth sense when people call out their phony balony business, and crawl all of the woodwork to justify being a parasite. I mean, if ya gonna suck the lifeblood of the working class, at least don't pretty it up with a bunch of half-truths and lies.

[@alexbrown7708]

@@guyparisi KZbinrs are closing to having a real job then you are. They also provide more of a service than you.

[@bulletflight]

​@@guyparisiYou should just place "You will own nothing and be happy." on every single short term rental agreement you make, because leases to single mothers working as nurses are too unprofitable.

[@Spolchen]

"Learn how to get 10k by buying my 10k course!" - Every Grift atm

[@carlosfromearth]

My favorite part about watching this video on KZbin is that the ad algorithm believes advertising a scam whilst watching this is a good idea.

[@exantiuse497]

Not surprising. Advertisers on KZbin include certain keywords for the algorithm to prioritise. A video game ad will be more likely to show on a gaming-related video, a kids' toy ad on a video related to children etc. The grifter whose ad you saw probably wanted his ad to be shown on videos that had to do with economy so the algorithm showed it to you. Likewise if you watch a video bashing a specific company, you'll likely see ads of that company on that video. It's humorous I also want to dropship a free tip to you for only 50 dollars: start using ad block. If you want to support a youtuber just donate 1 dollar to him, he makes more money that way than he would if you watched a thousand ads on his videos

[@carlosfromearth]

@@exantiuse497 Ahhh gotcha. I’ll go ahead and pay you the $50 in NFT’s. A fair exchange I’d say.

[@MaksymCzech]

And if you ever tried to report an ad advertising scam, you would recognize the following inevitable response: "We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies, which prohibit certain content and practices that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall online ecosystem."

[@jessed6151]

Yup, inmediately underneath this video was thumbnail that literally said "get rich quick" with some falsely enthusiastic looking goober's wide eyes and smile hoping to reel in sad fishes.

[@JarofMayonaise]

@@MaksymCzech We've investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing. Move along, nothing to see here.

[@scarpfish]

Grift is so everywhere that you probably aren't able to get through this video without KZbin pushing an ad that is a perfect example of it.

[@therajaofashbourne8483]

LITERALLY!😂

[@fish3977]

I were listening to this and the ad came just at a cut where I thought it was just an example used in an intro

[@krunkle5136]

Unless you pay for a premium subscription, which is really how it should be. It's either pay up or watch endless ads. Those servers don't fund themselves.

[@ScuubaSteefe]

Almost every ad except HelloFresh ended up being a grift of some kind. It's unreal 😂

[@hedgehog3180]

@@krunkle5136 Paying a premium fee to a company that is barely regulated and does fuck all for its users isn't really justifiable. I pay a license fee for DR but in return for a fee that is around the same or lower than KZbin Premium I get access to several radio and TV channels with professionally produced content, online platforms for all of that, that I can access anytime, anywhere and which has an enormous library of generally trustworthy content, and a pretty reputable news site, oh and I actually have some influence too. KZbin Premium only removes annoyances they put up like ads or “gives” you basic features of the internet like downloading, all of this can be accomplished with addons. KZbin isn't a production company, it is merely a distributor and while I can choose to let some of my subscription go towards a creator that's not a particularly compelling case when I can just go give it to them directly myself. To add onto this KZbin doesn't provide the basic services you'd expect any other media company to do like moderating, fact cheeking or screening their ads, made worse by the fact that KZbin constantly tries to push far right hateful crap regardless of how many times I tell it to stop. If DR suddenly aired some unhinged right wing bullshit I could complain both to its editorial department, monitoring agencies and raise the issue politically and DR would be the one accountable, but KZbin can just wave their hands and say “oh we didn't make it” and do nothing. I pay for things that I think are worth buying, KZbin Premium just isn't, if running the platform really is too expensive without it then KZbin can set up a paywall, but they obviously won't because their entire model relies on having a large userbase.

[@misspatvandriverlady7555]

I wish being exposed to a great deal of life hadn’t taught me that being a skilled liar, combined with luck, is how people actually make a lot of money, but here we are! 🤦‍♀️

[@elijahhernandez906]

True, but they lose not only respect from others, but alsp thier own self respect.

[@thecrazycapmaster]

I can confirm this man’s done his homework on the gig companies, because as a DoorDash delivery driver myself, that’s exactly what DoorDash has been doing over the past 3 years 🤣

[@tp-li1wy]

A few months ago, in a class on "Engineering Economics and Financial Management", my Prof said this: "As long as it's legal, do it. I don't understand why people get angry at Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg for what they do with the wealth they earned legally". I tried to explain why their wealth felt shady, but I was unaware of the terms or concepts to articulate my concerns. I understand now; I was bringing up that this wealth is collected by economic rent, and thus this influence these people hold feels exploitative. Tom, you provided, for free and under 2 hours, more context, background and relevant lingo than 2 courses of 4 credits each in economics.

[@ca-ke9493]

Legally doesn't mean right. And also didn't Facebook go against privacy laws knowingly?

[@troywalkertheprogressivean8433]

The rich"s wealth is fake, unearned, and stolen. The rich have stolen trillions.

[@troywalkertheprogressivean8433]

Real economics if you're interested. kzbin.info/aero/PLXwwoN4Y_asaJWt669mhUiv4_NZQ2Ce2Q

[@unfairlive2]

Your prof is correct, in the sense that if it is legal you should do it. He's not correct in not understanding the the anger. People's opinions are their own and it is also perfectly legal for them to have a very negative opinion on your methods... Legal does not equate correct, and correct does not equate 'can't be angry'.

[@Jokoko2828]

I'm not at all surprised that your prof doesn't get the difference between legal and right.

[@OmnipotentNoodle]

This puts very astute words to something ive been stewing on for a while: *everything* is a scam nowadays, and almost every company is trying their best to deceive or mislead you. Some arent, but theyre nigh impossible to distuingish given that "all those other companies are scams" is a favoured tactic by rent-seekers.

[@Tom_Nicholas]

Yeah, one thing I would have like to have touched upon in this video but didn't get a chance was the way in which many subscription services seem to be predicated on signing you up and then making it as difficult as possible to cancel.

[@hedgehog3180]

It feels like 90% of the economy as you interact with it as an online consumer is empty in this way, from scams to scalpers to “software as a service”. Your grip on things is weak and everything is ephemeral, even physical products are like this because they all break so easily so you have to replace them regularly.

[@karl_margs]

​@@Tom_Nicholasnot just the difficulty canceling but licensing rather than owning the product is a huge problem too. This is the streaming video and music model, and it's becoming an issue with video games too. Consumers are less likely to own the product and are simply paying for access to the archive/server

[@paultapping9510]

​@@hedgehog3180Vimes' Boot Theory of Economics is relevent here

[@Cabanaman]

My perception is decades of virtually all major financially successful people in America being parasitic unproductive exploiters has really created a hopeless toxic environment for those seeking economic mobility and only seeing one way out. The very idea of "productive" has changed and decoupled itself from objective labor or even use value. Any pitch for a money making idea from my zoomer brother or friends and family always seems to only work from a rent seeking perspective or otherwise produce nothing valuable. My grandmother was complaining about the rent freeze because older retirees were relying on those rents to live. How messed up is that, I said, that our elders are forced to siphon wealth away from the new generation, who consequently will never be able to afford doing the same? The incentives and concept of economic reality here is baffling.

[@OrdericNeustry]

Funny thing about Uber: In Austria, they ended up falling under the same laws as taxi drivers, so now uber drivers have to get a taxi license too. And there's not really a difference in price.

[@metalema6]

Lol, they should do the same in every country instead of letting them just ignore the law.

[@sholem_bond]

I started watching the Uber miniseries on Netflix with my parents, and one thing that struck us was that like... If there was just an app that maybe interacted with both a city's Department of Transportation and associated public transit systems, and local taxi services, to pair riders up with the closest rides and maybe also help them plan their trip to a given location, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH. As someone who doesn't drive and isn't great at plotting our extensive bus rides (like, trips requiring you to switch from one bus route to another), I would just benefit from an app allowing me to quickly and efficiently summon taxis, or find the nearest and most direct bus home (preferably without having to talk on the phone). We didn't need the "ride-share" aspect that allows Uber to box out unionized taxi drivers and skirt things like ADA* requirements. (*the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires that most privately and publicly-owned transportation providers adhere to certain requirements for their vehicles and stops/stations, so that [most] disabled passengers have [at least theoretically] equal access to these travel methods.)

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

All Uber drivers in Sweden are registered taxi drivers. For them, it's another stream of income during quieter periods.

[@CristalianaIvor]

I think here in Germany the rules are so Strict that Uber didn't even take off lmao

[@TheCoon1975]

​@@CristalianaIvorSo the government enforces a monopoly on a private service? That's kind of fascist to restrict options that might be better for consumers.

[@GoErikTheRed]

I’m listening to this while I do other stuff, and multiple times I didn’t realize an ad had started because I thought Tom was using it as an example

[@krea8402]

I think it's also important to mention that you CAN ethically sell digital items again and again: if YOU MADE THEM. Sell 3D models, art prints, designs, whatever. THAT is totally valid. But more and more honest people are being shoved out by scams and thieves who just steal everyone elses work and create the illusion that any digital product is probably stolen or copied.

[@A_Ducky]

Someone close to me makes vector art. It cost 30 cents for one way back 15yrs ago, before the person simply kept it as a hobby and not something realistic to make any profit. I've watched them spend days on just one piece..

[@sycration]

I'd honestly say those don't count. Those are works of art, however utilitarian they may be. I don't think it is ever ethical to sell software or the like, since that is "intellectual property"

[@TiffyVella1]

Mhm, true. I ethically sell 3d models that I create. It is extremely time intensive before there is ever a chance for any passive income. And I'm competing against others who ethically sell items they have minimally tweaked which is far less time intensive. And those who unethically sell items they have stolen which involves almost no effort.

[@krea8402]

@@sycration Do... Do you not know how software works?

[@georgeandrews1394]

​@@sycration So, it's a-okay for, say, Microsoft to sell a manual for how to use Excel (back when you'd do things like that)... but it's not okay for them to sell Microsoft Excel? It's okay to sell the soundtrack for a game but not the game itself? You do realize people have to _write code_ for these things, right?

[@gamewrit0058]

I read that awful book, soon after losing an adequately paid job with benefits in 2007, and what I remember most is the author saying to outsource to underpaid virtual assistants - and I think he said he'd also, unless it was another of his contemporaries, hired a cheap ghostwriter to speed write a book he could sell online. As a writer and unemployed administrative assistant, I was horrified by his careless exploitation of these other people, our fellow humans. To add insult to injury, the state-paid career counselor I met with around that time said I was to think up 5 "income streams"; for example, one of her clients had a summer food truck that the family drove to fairs to sell food until they had enough money to close up shop and enjoy the rest of the summer any way they wanted. Three people in my family consulted this department over the years, but all they'd do is offer classes on how to set up a LinkedIn profile or write a resume, etc. As university graduates with years of job experience, our problem wasn't lack of resume skills, but no income because no job, so material needs not met.

[@stevem815]

Asking a government department how to make money is like asking a fish how to ride a bike. If they were honest they'd say 'well first you need a monopoly on violence....'

[@matthewsheeran]

I agree with your 80:20 analysis. As a software developer I apply the rule daily but often digress into building some initially unnecessary infrastructure only to find it eminently useful and timely later on when initially it was genuinely in that unnecessary category.

[@rabbitcreative]

My mom is hooked on Tony Robbins and his ilk, paying for website services that promise features that don't exist yet. She's paying for features that don't exist. I'll say it one more time: She is paying for non-existent features.

[@nessamcness2399]

Eww Tony Robbins the ultimate ick...

[@vm360fly]

I love how all these grifters' advice always boils down to : cheat and commit fraud.

[@s1nistr433]

Pretty solid advice in our current economy

[@we8608]

It's the imperial way of doing things.

[@flexinclouds]

And *buy my course to learn my secrets* 🙄😅

[@blake9746]

At least the practice what they preach.

[@Jane-oz7pp]

that and "commit human trafficking" when you take Tate into it

[@JordanSullivanadventures]

So true that passive income scammers pander to that roleplaying fantasy of being a startup founder: believing yourself to be that one special genius who makes it over all the suckers.

[@bobthegamingtaco6073]

I think it's gone one step further. They're now selling the fantasy of having the corporate boot taken off your neck. Exploitation is bad enough that like, I wouldn't wanna run a business, but I sure would like to only work 40 hours a week and still pay rent, and that's the new sales pitch for some of these guys

[@littlebrothermoneywithmich6178]

I don’t understand how running a business is better than a 9-5. With a 9-5 I get to go home at the end of the day. I can always invest a portion of my paycheck into passive asset classes.

[@keithparker1346]

​@@littlebrothermoneywithmich6178freedom of choice. Following your passion. Being your own boss

[@audiodood]

omg oscilloscopecore

[@rockinmel1]

The problem that Tom won't talk about (out of respect for his viewers) is that most of these grifts target people who somehow believe they will be able to think their way through a passive-income scheme when they struggled to handle a "normal" job with defined duties. Speaking of preying on the vulnerable, Tom needs to follow this up with today's Big Grift of political pot-stirring for money, which not only enriches some (but not most) but also has the great side effect of corrupting democracy.

[@elizabethkeenan7063]

By political pot stirring do mean the paid trolls who invaded every political news and topic site leading to the 2016 election, amazing how they disappeared soon after. Or is there a new more sophisticated scheme I’m unaware of OR are you referring to the electoral system itself and the big players who are ‘the usual suspects’ ?

[@jbern2185]

Yes, the ego-driven, outrage performance art being performed by grifters pretending to be patriotic, ordinary americans with "the real information", "telling it like it really is" while being funded by billionaires. They're riling up vulnerable idiots with anger and rage using conspiracy theories or cynical attitudes toward our democracy. The self-help people and gurus with "a proven strategy" to make money aren't sharing their secrets of how they got rich, they're getting rich grifting the vulnerable.

[@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvus]

The first one I understand but the second one makes me hesitate to guess you shoehorn in your biases to justify bad behavior.

[@jbern2185]

@@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvus I get it. Some of these "gurus" get a huge boost in popularity when they come out with a book or get featured somewhere. They get addicted to being featured, being the center of attention, and addicted to having a following for that time. So they try to keep is going or parlay into something else when the original gimmick starts to run dry. The r-wing media, pundit side is way too alluring for an ego-driven, self-promoting narcissist cause That niche supports almost anything that virtue signals them, and that's why they're constantly being grifted on. Further, it's an easy niche as you just pander to what that audience wants to believe which is "the other side is evil, nasty, hate the country, responsible for everything wrong in the country/world/your life, and you're the real patriot". Too easy Robert Kiyosaki is a good example. He came out with Rich Dad, Poor Dad and then a couple followup books later on. He did speaking tours, seminars, workshops, etc, but it all started to Run a bit dry. Then of course, there are the failed investment or failed pitches he was doing to his audience. So it started to run a bit thin and turn people off. Next, he went to financial predictions to get attention,,,, and his record is 99.8% incorrect cause he's always predicting "the bug recession or next great depression". - Yet, he somehow completely missed the 2008 and 2020 massive recessions and incorrectly predicted massive recessions for periods of extreme growth/opportunity. Why? Cause he started going a bit r-wing at first, then more r-wing later on,,, Cause it's a sweet market niche to get into for people addicted to having an audience. Jordan Peterson is another example. He just came out with some basic psychology and sociology narratives, got featured a lot, made all the media rounds, and then it started to fade a bit. He seemed to enjoy the money and attention he was getting but the mainstream wasn't buying it so much, so he went r-wing. He pretty much just said "screw the mainstream that barely pays attention to me, the r-wing audience is rabid for my content so this is where I'm going". It also helps that PACs started to pay him lots of money to quietly propagandize their interests. - that's the part a lot of those "patriotic", r-wing, grifter pundits don't tell their audience.

[@breawycker]

​@@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvusthat is what the Cambridge analytica and Russian interference into the 2016 election scandals are about

[@drakkenmensch]

As a former World of Warcraft player who made a lot of gold on the auction house system, playing the markets of buying and reselling merchandise to make "easy and quick profit" is something that takes time, dedication and potentially lose you a lot of money if you place your bet on the wrong item. Finding the correct item to resell is never a guarantee of profit because guess what, you're not the only one who can look auction listings and figure what can be sold for more. A product can be in high demand one moment and drop off the face of the market the next. During the Lich King expansion, I had a week long run of selling MASSIVE amounts of Cobalt Bullets my engineer could mass produce with cheap cobalt bars. Other players would buy out my entire inventory and post them at double the price... and then I would restock my inventory immediately at the same price. And they'd buy me and and I'd restock. After a week of this game of cat and mouse, cobalt bullets stopped selling and NEVER SOLD AGAIN. I'd made a ton of profit for not a single gold of investment, so I called it a win and moved on to other profit ventures.

[@MeiinUK]

Lol.... I suppose if you literally find a way to lock them. Some people actually stocks them and hold.... 😂 .... The name of the game is to accumulate and then pass it to your next generation. Done.

[@xaviermarican4557]

The idea that you can make 6 figures off of selling public domain books by yourself is so insane

[@hieronymusbutts7349]

​@@Praisethesunson hey asshole, that's my copyright!

[@Raderade1-pt3om]

I heard case of somone got copyrighted for their own photos that they released in public domain, what bs. while at same time theres endless duplicate stuff thst gets away with violating copyrights

[@erebusvonmori8050]

One major factor is just how much harder living on minimum wage is getting. For a lot of people the prospect of passive income offers an escape from a life where they are running out of hours to work to keep their heads above water

[@metallboy25]

I literally need to work 12 hours, 7 days a week right now. Its depressing and unsustainable. I keep telling myself its temporary, its going to get better in the future. But then I hear that quote about people thinking they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Which makes me wonder. Is it ever going to get better, or is it just wishful thinking?

[@RustOnWheels]

@@metallboy25do you live in China or America?

[@satanic_rosa]

@@RustOnWheels The only two countries in the world, eh?

[@RustOnWheels]

@@satanic_rosa the only two hyper capitalist countries in the world where people have AND access to internet AND need to work 12/7 to get by.

[@metallboy25]

@@RustOnWheels UK

[@thomasamar2700]

I like that last point you made about rent seeking behaviour from mainstream companies. Software that used to be purchased as a one-off fee (Photoshop for example) are increasingly migrated to subscription models, where users have to pay a monthly or annual fee to continue using said software. That's rent seeking, right?

[@PaulSpades]

Well, they used to charge an arm and a leg for "updated software" each year before that. With the current subscription model, Adobe makes even more money because they can extort more people, but the number is smaller for monthly payment. I have a Creative Design( whatever nonsense name they used) license for CS3, that I got from work after they bought CS5. I'm theoretically not supposed to use it because they prohibited license transfer, so it's still pirating, but it works. So... please don't pay for Adobe software, ever. You're only enabling them to buy out competitors like Macromedia and Figma. If you can't own the software "product" and can't sell it, just don't buy it. You only own the right to use it till Friday and you are actively making sure that they stay a market monopoly.

[@thomasamar2700]

@@PaulSpades yeah, totally agree. I have a very old CS4 "for life" license, so I'm using that. It's old but it still works, and it does the job for all my Photoshop needs.

[@PaulSpades]

@@thomasamar2700 I mainly used Fireworks which they somewhat "upgraded", after they bought Macromedia. Of course, they had to remove it - since nobody knew how or wanted to work on it. I get it, old codebase, they couldn't be bothered to support it anymore. But I moved to Figma a few years ago, and guess what... they also bought Figma. Adobe is like that annoying chewed gum that gets on your shoe, and then sticks on the thing you try to scrape if off with, and then sticks to the thing you're trying to scrape off with from the scraper. Adobe is also the only company in existence that has actively and maliciously removed software from user machines (the flash player), trough a windows "security" update that cannot be reversed or omitted.

[@Wumblebum]

In all my studies of modern history, the sheer amount of scamming and such always seems to become more prominent in times of inequality and financial hardship... I always expect this stuff now. The grifters smell economic crisis, and they come scuttling out of the dark corners and sewers etc. etc. like wretched little bugs. Boy, isn't the free market just swell?

[@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvus]

You think this is a free market? That’s funny.

[@lawrencehan463]

A true free market cannot exist for long.

[@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvus]

@@lawrencehan463 It never really ever did exist tbh

[@lawrencehan463]

@@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvusI'm not saying a real life example. I am saying theoretically, it cannot exist for long, nor should it be something we desire, at least not in an conservative or ancap sense.

[@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvus]

@@lawrencehan463 I mean a market that allows for competition to keep prices low and quality high without it developing into monopoly while also using the fundamentals of Meritocracy for easy and quick class mobility sounds pretty good to me, completely unrealistic and unreasonable like finding a red head who isn’t crazy but still something to strive towards.

[@wm6589]

Watching this video while being interrupted by the very same grifting ads that Tom is talking about is like an avant garde performance art experience, its beyond immersion, perhaps even satire. Love the vid! :D

[@juliekring7574]

Hahaha god I know... There have been times that I didn't skip the ad because I thought they were being used as evidence.

[@CodexSan]

I can point you towards a Lil program called ReVanced. 😏😏😉 Be gay, do crime.

[@victoriab8186]

especially given it's hosted on a platform which he has very carefully, almost pointedly, avoided mentioning anything relating to

[@ollie6606]

Nah fr when i got the first ad i literally thought they were just fucking w me but it was a real ad 💀

[@silversoul5285]

Nothing like LEarNINg2Trad3 in this one simple, easy, definitely-not-a-scam online course.

[@tomhomunculus]

This video is much needed. My bf is one of the smartest, kindest guys I know, and he was falling for bitcoin scams. He got lucky on his first one, was finally able to buy a decent car with that money, but he thought that was evidence it wasn't a scam. He started taking interest in NFTs and other scams marketed to the bitcoin bro demographic and it was a video much like this one which made him see it all for what it was. Even though my gut was screaming scam, I couldn't articulate against their pitches because I didn't know enough about that sort of thing to argue convincingly. Videos like these save good people who are just desperate to get out of poverty from getting grifted.

[@subcitizen2012]

There's a difference between fads and scams. Just because your gut feeling was right once doesn't mean it's always going to be right.

[@rubyrootless7324]

please get your bf out of that, my dad gambled a huge chunk of his life savings away through crypto and he's still saying it's great, everything's great. literally an addiction super dangerous, that shit

[@TheNewton]

Many scams are structured so lucky successes just leads to the deeper scams. pyramid schemes are built on this idea, a few can have a lucky payday and become converts for the scam.

[@Waspinmymind]

@@subcitizen2012Scams take advantage of fads. And most fads start as scams. The entire diet industry is proof of that.

[@BernhardErnst]

Add another one or two fun trends here from the software industry that happened to me: Many companies always want to use subscription plans so that you can use their software. Virus scanners do actually get some worthwhile updates, so those I can understand. Example 1: A few years ago, I used software for run file system caching. This meant buying the software per computer, then there was an annual subscription. Example 2: Some companies come out with new software version of purchased software, even if the upgrade from the previous version is minor. The software automatically checks the license key as well as checking for updates. The moment a new update is available, it gets updated. When the year is up, the major version number changes. The existing license key is for the major version. This then resulted in me having to buy a new license key which was essentially a disguised annual subscription.

[@viharsarok]

Companies are run by people and people need monthly salaries. Go figure.

[@somebodycooliguess1597]

I'm going to throw my 2p in and say that get-rich-easy schemes seem particularly attractive to disabled people Even with legally protected reasonable adjustments in the workplace, the world of work can be daunting, especially if you're the one fighting to get your needs met and/or your disability limits the amount you can do in a day or week. That and government benefits often aren't enough to live on, especially if you pay rent, and you may need to jump through lots of hoops to keep them In a world where everything is harder anyway and you need money to live, I can absolutely see disabled people being particularly vulnerable to this kind of scam

[@ochrence]

Tom, thank you thank you thank you for putting the spotlight on Airbnb even if briefly. In large swaths of the US including my hometown, makeshift and often illegal hotel empires have utterly destroyed the housing market and brought numerous communities to their knees. The incentives for these unethical and predatory passive-income practices are simply too good for many, including people I know, to pass up. We must regulate, and we must regulate yesterday.

[@bobthegamingtaco6073]

I agree, but how many politicians do you think run real estate "hustles"? They can't regulate or they'll lose their millions of dollars

[@ruthspanos2532]

@@bobthegamingtaco6073 I literally have a State Representative who is sponsoring a bill to protect her Airbnb type business.

[@bobthegamingtaco6073]

@@ruthspanos2532 yup, officials are part of the elite class that is ruining us unfortunately

[@stevem815]

What's wrong with airbnb?

[@ochrence]

@@stevem815 It heavily encourages the already wealthy to buy up the entire housing stock in an area and rent it out short-term for massive profit, effectively shrinking the housing market for locals at any price since they can no longer buy nor even rent these properties.

[@artwithlavi206]

"The Four Hour Workweek" was a miserable read. But, in the midst of all the dystopian bullshit, there was one part that stuck out to me: the recommendation to first take a look at your life and figure out how much you ACTUALLY need to give you an idea of the parameters within which you can work. The book presented an alternative to my worklife that was so shitty that I had all the motivation I needed to make major changes in my life. I was ultimately able to ditch the side hustles and the amount of hours I worked dropped, largely because I valued my free time more. So, in a way, I guess the book did help. Kind of like one of those "Don't be like me, kids" PSAs.

[@unexaminedlife6130]

Some people will conclude that they don't actually need much and go live somewhere cheap or in the woods, no joke, I wish that was me 🤣 what a relief it would be. I need to see my loved ones a lot.

[@leifarnemo6443]

@@unexaminedlife6130 My ex actually had (or still has, as far as I know) this philosophy, and made it work by minimising all expenses. Dumpster diving for food and clothes (the only problem with this is you end up with too much if you get greedy), buying a reasonably cheap house in the sticks with savings and basically not spending money on anything means she gets by quite comfortably. She works online as a psychologist, and can decide herself when she works and how much. I wold estimate she works less than 10 hours per week, and the money just keeps piling up. When she needs/wanst something that actually costs money she can easily afford it. She recently bought a used Tesla for around 40 000 $, cash.

[@MilnaAlen]

One grift I read about on Tumblr but haven't heard suggested much: "rock star" scientists. Just have undergrad students collect data unpaid, hire someone for 3 weeks to write the methods and analysis sections, and crank out those sweet, sweet citations.

[@Misslayer99]

There's actually scientists that do this shit already and have been for years. It's hard to tell how many but that's what happens when you have the "publish or perish" mentality that's pushed by academia. With AI, It's gotten even easier to put out garbage papers

[@jensenovesian2861]

The number of grifts is endless.

[@Korwinga]

1:13:30 I've run into this chain raising issue with the pizza delivery in my area. The Pizza Hut that covers my house used to have delivery drivers that knew where to go, but now all of their delivery goes through one of the food delivery apps. The problem is, that app cannot find my address for no discernable reason (I think I actually know the reason, which is that google maps has my block of our road mis-labeled, and I strongly suspect that this is why they can't find us, but nobody seems to have any ability to fix the problem). As a result, delivery from Pizza Hut gets sent to the middle of my zip code, or the middle of my city, instead of our house.

[@PaulSpades]

Oh yeah, google maps has issues with some addresses. And it tends to think the entrance to a building is where people park, which isn't very helpful in the city. There's no better alternative, though. And you can't call up google to fix it, because google is an "Internet Company", nobody answers the phone, and even if somebody did, they wouldn't know how to fix it. Delivery tends to be a better service when the company has one or a few drivers working in the same area every day - you know, like when the national postal services gave a crap.

[@wineoneone]

I can't tell if Tom has the BEST time filming the hustler sections or the absolute WORST.

[@Tom_Nicholas]

For context, I live by a busy road and have to do all my filming in the middle of the night. Which already has the tendency to slightly make me lose control of my faculties. The evenings I filmed those bits I think I genuinely transcended to a different plane.

[@blu3622]

Either way, they were highly entertaining 💸💰🤑

[@mikeciul8599]

I can't tell if more aggressive editing would have made them better or worse - on one hand, they would have been shorter, but on the other hand, they would have been more of a sensory assault...

[@darrentaylordigital]

As a professional digital marketer who knows how hard it is to run ads and generate traffic and sales to real, non-scummy products profitably, who has tried (and failed) to talk friends and family out of these "opportunities" before they lost money, I am so grateful for this video!

[@WhatWillYouFind]

There's a saying "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." You can support people and try to help them avoid being ripped off, but it takes THEIR own personal decision making to make it happen. It is an uphill battle with personal biases abound, just keep doing right and don't rub it in . . . in time they might come around. :)

[@darrentaylordigital]

@@WhatWillYouFind so true!

[@piccalillipit9211]

I had a friend, an intelligent woman, who genuinely thought she was talking to Mohammed bin Salman online. He was going to fund her charity. I tried to convince her it was a scam. Eventually she said he was sending the money when just had to do some stuff first and I said "let me guess you just have t pay a few thousand in transfer fees to initiate the transaction or something similar... ITS A SCAM" She said "YES" and I never heard from her again, presumably she was too embarrassed to face me. But I was so shocked, this woman was not an idiot. Very far from it, she was a well educated woman who had run a business, I have pondered many times over how she got sucked in.

[@humpteedumptee8629]

I had friends "invest" in the kyani pyramid scheme. I was like this is 100% a scam. and they were like no its made by billionaires and proceeded to show me the promotional video of the billionaires on their yacht bragging about how they got so rich they designed a whole now mlm system just to spread wealth to others. when they actually bought this stuff I lost about 20% of my faith in humanity.

[@zonazonabutthesecondzonais7051]

Leave it to a professional digital marketer with a solid color behind their headshot to announce to everyone that they are a professional digital marketer

[@HouseWiseInspections]

You captured every layer of it for me. I'm 32 year old marketer and have def been down so many of the rabbit holes. Thanks for doing all this research and assembling this masterpiece

[@emmaknightley]

Why does everyone always want to get rich? Why can't we just make our goals be "get enough and leave the rest to everyone else who needs it." So exhausting.

[@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear]

Because capitalism is based on greed, and human greed is not something that happens naturally, it needs to be stimulated; and so it is that our greed is constantly stimulated by a constant stream of ads, which results in people always wanting more. And if you want evidence that human greed is not natural, you can ponder the following question : if humans were naturally greedy and always looking to buy as much as possible, what would be the point of ads? Wouldn't people naturally spend time looking for good deals in order to have more for less money? All advertisers would need to do is set up shop in a supermarket or set up a website and people would flock to it to know what everyone is selling.

[@James_36]

@@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear think you are distorting things here and twisted it. Greed is natural... why do people want to be rich? mainly men... the answers are pretty simple

[@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear]

@@James_36 Again, if greed is natural, why are there ads everywhere? Somebody greedy is not going to be swayed by an ad. They're going to spend time comparing products and looking for good deals.

[@James_36]

@@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear I dont think you even know what greed is at this point

[@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear]

@@James_36 What do you think greed is? I don't see which greedy person would choose to buy the first thing they see instead of checking if it's not cheaper somewhere else so that they can buy more things with the same amount of money.

[@raresmircea]

This period of human economic history will be known as the grift era

[@beanoboy62]

Assuming we live long enough for history to be written about this period

[@TwoForFlinchin1]

The grifter age

[@DebatingWombat]

@@TwoForFlinchin1 Or, The Age of Grift.

[@stalfithrildi5366]

Its snappier than "capitalism" as a name, I'll give you that

[@samuelconnolly347]

Should it not be a portmanteau? They're impossible to escape in the digital age. Perhaps the Griftocene?

[@survivalofthefunkiest]

In the time between me discovering your existence, and you posting this video, I’ve watched all of your videos and podcast episodes. I was wondering why it was so long between uploads, but now I see it’s because you were crafting an absolute behemoth

[@Tom_Nicholas]

Yeah, this one's been a big project! Although I've got plans to do a few shorter videos in the near future which will hopefully come out in slightly quicker succession (or just not absolutely destroy us in trying to get them finished!). I hope you've enjoyed the videos and podcasts! Thanks for watching!

[@tirushone6446]

you just made me look at the video length. "oh my it's so long" 😳

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

This kind of quality and brilliance takes a helluva lot of time and effort. Whatever money this guy makes, he's underpaid.

[@pandamandimax]

@Tom_Nicholas This is a really great video and I really appreciate and applaud the effort it took you to make this. However I did want to share that this comment kept me from subscribing. I find creators that make brilliant videos sometimes, generally hours long and way more in depth and expansive than anything else similar, but they only post once or twice a year. I've unsubbed or not subbed to those few channels and instead I just like their videos because I know that the once or maybe twice a year they actually post it'll be suggested to me. 99% of the time they don't, so I don't feel inclined to subscribe to an account that spends most of the year sitting dormant. I genuinely hope that does not come off negative in any way I just thought you might be interested in why some subscribe while others don't. I will definitely watch any future videos of yours that come across my suggestions and upvote the crap out of them. As YT is my main source for video entertainment every night, I just want to be subscribed to creators actually releasing content, high quality (but not necessarily high *production* quality -the stuff that costs you the most and is time consuming, as that is secondary and not as interesting to me as the actual ideas/information being discussed in the video) content.

[@PyroChimp75]

Days like this make me so grateful I grew up with the early internet and not this one

[@CatherineA133]

Not sure why the algorithm recommended this video but it was a fantastic listen while tidying the house. I was momentarily nervous when it came to the sponsored content but so relieved when it was for a safety razor brand! I’ve been using one for a few years now and while I replace the blade every week or two, I don’t think I’ve spent more than $5 on razor blades over that time period, even with shaving my legs. And I no longer get razor bumps either! But back to the content of the video - you’ve earned a subscriber, well done!

[@Eliphas_Leary]

Got it. Open a window cleaner ballet school. Customers learn ballet while getting their windows cleaned by their teacher. Pure genius. Thanks, Tom.

[@williamedge5130]

Passe income

[@AlRoderick]

Invent a spray on coating that can a temporarily turn glass into a reflective surface. Do barre practice outside the window while you clean it.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

ballet school exclusively for window cleaners

[@sholem_bond]

Wax on, wax off (plié)

[@gleann_cuilinn]

I want to draw everyone's attention to housing cooperatives, which I have lived in and helped run for about 7 years. Housing cooperatives are living arrangements where tenants are "memver-owners". There is no landlord so there is no real estate speculation and no profit made from rent. All of the rent goes to paying the mortgage and other expenses like maintenance, or is put back into the community in the form of free food, social gatherings, communal tools and technology, and other amenities. As a result, the rent at my current co-op is about $500 less than everywhere else on the block, and we get more out of it. Landlords truly are utterly unnecessary.

[@BlyatimirPootin]

Indeed. Its simply the idea of needing landlords that's been pushed on us by landlords.

[@ddurlon]

Would the rent go down once the mortgage is fully paid

[@semilorekaji-hausa2078]

​@@ddurlonyes, typically

[@lenas6246]

i hate these thigns because for some reason they always turn into some kind of obnoxious co living with zero respect to privacy and the wish to not be bothered. I genuenly dont understand why people cant just co pay and mind their own business

[@jensenovesian2861]

The grift is even in the comments.

[@goodboi650]

Every single AI-productivity grift ad I have ever seen has prepared me for this video, and the payoff was worth it.

[@zarkovian]

My wife and my just went through a situation so bizaare we can't actually believe it. Short story, we jad a cast-iron case against a building materials supplier, and our insurance company spent literally 8 years dragging their feet and messing up so that we never even made it to court. It has been a litany of cockups which you cannot even begin to imagine, carried out by grotesquely incompetent and complacent idiots. A grift? It certainly feels like one. My rule is simple, and this farce only reinforced it: never, ever deal with people wearing a suit and tie, they're at best just absolutely useless, and at worst they are actively out to screw you.

[@kaseywahl]

"There's a reason writers are told to 'kill their darlings' and not 'force your darlings to multiply until a single pithy sentence has become an unwieldy mass of adverbs and adjectives.'" Tom, you're forgetting about on demographic: copy writers on LinkedIn. Their formula is: write => paraphrase what you wrote => regurgitate the idea in your copy until people confuse it for one of your personality traits.

[@_xeere]

I love that misunderstanding of the 80/20 rule. It's such a basic logical error that it reveals all of these people to be stupid or malicious (in many cases both).

[@Tom_Nicholas]

The blurb for 4-Hour Work Week also describes Pareto as a "forgotten economist" which just isn't true...

[@hedgehog3180]

@@Tom_Nicholas It's always hilarious whenever someone is declared “forgotten” when it's just that they aren't well known by the mainstream and are actually giants within their respective fields.

[@relight6931]

Would you be so kind to elaborate? I understood that on average from example 100 farmers with same amount of land, 20 farmers would be much more successful and produce much more crops or at least crops of a higher class. Over time with their excess profits versus others, they could buy more land, rince and repeat ad infinitum and in the end those 20 farmers could actually produce 80% of crops from finite starting land at start owned in equal parts to 100 farmers.. For that to happen, other 80 farmers would be out of business. Am I close?

[@BeautifulEarthJa]

@@hedgehog3180 well known by anyone that did 2 economics courses. I learned Pareto in high school.

[@JimCroz]

@@relight6931 Close. The important factor (that is misunderstood widely) is that at the point that the finite amount of land is portioned out, there is no way of knowing which of it is the productive 20%. To discover that, all 100% has to be farmed, and then it becomes possible to determine the factors that lead to some of the land becoming more profitable, which can inform future decisions. The work done on the other 80% wasn’t wasted, it was necessary. The question is, do the farmers who worked it deserve any return? (My answer, yes)

[@teawitched]

the city I live in has a massive housing shortage. one of the main reasons for this is because of airbnbs as a lot of tourists come here. us normal residents have to fight for the few rented properties available (usually just a bedroom in a shared house), and due to their scarcity rent is high. wages in my area have not kept up, it is getting very expensive and the council won't do anything

[@ZonkerRoberts]

"No piece of text, whether be it a novel, a news report or a corporate evaluation, has ever been made better by being gratuitously padded out to increase the word count." Absolutely the most ironic thing I've ever encountered in a one hour and forty-five minute video!

[@Spiral.Dynamics]

The worst grifters are those who move to tax shelters or third world countries to take advantage of their economic suffering like vultures feasting on the dead.

[@theprofessionalfence-sitter]

How exactly are they hurting them? It is still bringing money into the country.

[@lawrencehan463]

In the same way billionaire charities and philanthropy don’t do what they claim. So vague in benefits without considering costs.

[@fictionindianspaceprogram-222]

​@@theprofessionalfence-sitterthey don't pay taxes there too. They'll just buy land, and cause an increase in land prices, hurting people.

[@MayorSom]

TFW you realise the likelihood of your tax money contributing to this is high

[@theprofessionalfence-sitter]

@@fictionindianspaceprogram-222 They might not pay taxes, but they still bring money into the economy. Further, such countries generally do not have a shortage of land and many of them do not even have well maintained land registers, so people there do not buy the land they live on, in the traditional sense.

[@doggytheanarchist7876]

This makes me so proud of Copenhagen. In at least 1 aspect. When Uber came here, the taxi driver's unions threw them right out. There was traffic blocks and Protests and Uber only got to function here for a few months, before they were effectively gone for good. Airbnb tho... Is actively ruining the housing situation in the city. Which was already the 2nd most expensive place to live world wide, before Airbnb.

[@B3Band]

You don't need Uber in a country the size of West Virginia, Whose main city is the size of San Diego, with no diversity, where everybody pays 60% in taxes to easily cover public infrastructure needed to avoid the necessity of ride-sharing services.

[@SpliffyMcYiffertons]

Hey, curious why you tossed in the bit about “diversity” in there

[@doggytheanarchist7876]

@@B3Band we have taxis you dingdong. It's not like we just ride polar bears around. But yes, we do allocate a sizeable amount of tax kroner to public transportation. But it's still not accessible to everyone. It's not like ride share is much different from taxis, except for how they fuck over their workers. And... FR? Did you just get butthurt to hear about a functioning union in a foreign country? That's so sad mate. Besides. The tax levels here, are the same as NY.

[@doggytheanarchist7876]

@@SpliffyMcYiffertons yeah. I'm curious about that too...

[@josephpotter5766]

@@doggytheanarchist7876and not even remotely accurate, population demographics for San Diego as of 2022 suggest a little over 40% of the population are white, 30% are hispanic and 17% are asian, with about 6% black population, with the rest made up of other groups, and some funge based on deported mixed ethnicities. Add in the fact that the tax rates for San Diego don't even approach 60% (Sliding scale of income taxation for example, but the average income earner pays around 7-8% and someone with an income of 10 million USD PA still only pays 35% income tax). The only conclusion I can come to is that B3Band has a form of brain worms as yet uncatalogued by human science.

[@NoNameNumberTwo]

Bravo. The way you connected the dots in this video was fantastic. The people ultimately have the power-we need to always remember that.

[@kville5796]

So love your content m8. So original, informative and absolutely hilarious. One of a kind.

[@suzanneoleander3224]

Omg, I'm an online writer for an SEO agency and AI has made an already soulless job even more depressing, but to us it is sold as a tool, that makes our life easier. Thank you for stating that AI written affiliate texts are depressing this has given me some of my sanity back.

[@BLooDCoMPleX]

I had the exact same experience, I know exactly what you mean. I had to quit SEO shit after a while and actually went into poverty for over a year.

[@ohmygodsteve5224]

same with me and marketing. Then i discovered that the ick i was feeling was just bc i was left leaning. The sheer simpleness of that answer saved me a lot of headaches tbh

[@009013M3]

It's not only soulless, but it's made search engines virtually unusable.

[@MadsterV]

affiliate texts are depressing already. SEO is depressing too.

[@j.2512]

it makes worthless spam even more souless and ever more spammy

[@poprocket2342]

Any passive income grift always sounds like they heard someone say that CEOs make money without doing any work and thought "that sounds like a good idea" and didn't read any further

[@GalvestonGuy]

Excellent video! I am sick of social media being complicit in all of these scams. Everyone has a price. Imagine selling out your country!

[@Kai-Made]

Hey Tom! The most ironic thing about you doing an iceberg/essay on grifts and scams...is that this video is on youtube...which literally just showed me a ad for a air bnb scam. Priceless. One can not make up this stuff.

[@agluebottle]

The Pareto Principle is actually a century old mainstay of the self-help genre. It gets a fresh boost at least every decade or so by whatever the new self-help blockbuster is. If you go back and flip through a copy of some of the earliest widely known self-help books like "Think and Grow Rich" from the 1920's it's quite depressing how grifters have been recycling the same dozen tired ideas for a century or more.

[@randomtinypotatocried]

I went through a phase of reading them and so many times the books keep repeating themselves. It makes sense now looking back at them

[@cw9475]

My mum is obsessed with self-help books and has amassed a collection of the things over the years. When I was a young teen she tried to encourage me to read them, but I noticed what you describe pretty quickly - they're all the same. Sure they change some words up depending on the topic (she had books on all kinds of self-help), but they're all "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense regurgitated over and over when you actually look at them. The worst ones are about things relating to mental illness (which she has some diagnoses). A lot of folk with mental illness aren't in a mental state or situation where they can simply "bootstrap" themselves out of it with a book, so these so called "authors" are just hawking to a captive audience who are struggling to find real help, and in desperation hand over their money for these awful books. When I see these books in particular I really feel that book burning should be a thing, specifically for them.

[@takuratakavarasha7812]

Napoleon Hill was really seeking a dream 🤣 that book was a WASTE of time

[@anotheryoutubeaccount5259]

Well, shit, if it works it works

[@CanteLizzie]

When I was in high school I was, for some reason, really into reading self help books-even for problems I didn't have. I didn't try to follow the advice, it was more just for entertainment. I remember thinking the 4-hour Work Week was especially heinous though. I especially disliked the part where they advised you to outsource your responsibilities to workers in Asia for, like, half the cost and then keep the rest for yourself. Talk about exploitation!

[@SianaGearz]

I suspect hiring a person in the Philippines to do the job for you is the only thing in the book that ACTUALLY works.

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563]

​​​​@@SianaGearz Well... that's the thing... I am from the Global South. The thing about the Global South is that... we are States. Like... Sovereign States. We have, like, labor laws, and a judicial system to back them up, and lawyers, and contracts, and our own legal tender, and stuff. People have jobs here, sometimes under arguably more favorable conditions than the ones offered to Americans (at-will employment is the most bonkers ideas I've ever heard of, and I don't know how you guys live under such grossly imbalance of power between the employers and the employees). The types of professionals these grifters tell you to hire from the Global South are, in no small part, College educated, who know better than to let their labor be exploited, and also quite like the legal protections they enjoy when they're working for companies in their own country, or as liberal professionals legally protected by their country's laws. Convincing them to sign a slightly dodgy, possibly illegal contract with a random stranger from halfway across the globe who's clearly very greedy, narcissistic and untrustworthy ranges between difficult and impossible. So this tip of "hire people from the Global South in order to pocket the difference between what their labor is worth and what you're paying them" is good (well, viable, at least) for the wealthy, especially for already wealthy corporations, but for the average middle class narcissist... not unless they stop paying rent and eating three square meals a day, since I've heard the Real Estate market is (pardon the dense jargon) absolute dogshit in all countries across the Globe.

[@challe535]

Well exploitation is integral to the capitalist system so I'm not surprised really

[@thejazzcat117]

@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563 Dude/girl, can I buy you a beer?

[@Yawyna124]

@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563 Excellent reference in your username, by the way.

[@draakisback]

When I was young and dumb, I tried out drop shipping and affiliate marketing. Both of these things were more or less in their infancy when I got into them. The impression I got after I stopped doing it was that you could potentially create a passive income stream, but you would need like 40 to 50 different blogs with unique content to make it worthwhile in which case you would probably have to hire people from Asia to write the content for you etc. It was very ethically dubious and I just simply couldn't go through with it. Fortunately, I landed a very good software engineering job after that and the rest is history. There was even a point in time where I bought an online business from a flipping website, let's just say that didn't really pan out.

[@marias6179]

Wow! This was so well made and generally fantastic!

[@Storytelless]

In eastern europe lobbying is called corruption as it should be. It's hard to understand why some civilized countries consider it legal and ok

[@paulh.9526]

I think it all comes down to campaign finance regulation. In the US lobbyists can finance the campaign of politicians in order to circumvent paying them directly (which would be corruption), whereas in most European countries campaign expenses are often capped and/or reimbursed by the state. What would be the point of a politician making a policy change for money, risking losing votes, when they can't spend it, and even if they could, it'd get reimbursed by the state otherwise ? This has plenty of other benefits that tie into a healthier electoral system

[@joinedupjon]

Wonder if it's correlated to social attitudes to 'tipping' - it's like a corporation is tipping a politician for giving them good service

[@StormSought]

The US really isn't a civilized country, is the straightforward answer. Whatever being a civilized country really means at this point anyway.

[@samuelconnolly347]

I lived in a country that's reasonably famous for corruption - India. And yes, it's everywhere (e.g., day-to-day police asking for bribes and what not). However, it's widely acknowledged and understood that corruption is commonplace, and that's wrong but you kinda have to just live with it. However, since returning to the UK I've realised that there's plenty of corruption here too. In many respects, it's far worse. We just call it 'lobbying'. That, and the countless billions of dirty money laundered in our cities (especially London) that is basically just accepted and is only superficially being tackled. So many politicians have conflicts of interest and because of various loopholes (e.g. shell companies) it's technically legal even if it's not ethical and/or conflicts with their parliamentary responsibilities. It's a sorry state of affairs.

[@Wraithfighter]

I think part of the problem is that it can be difficult to separate "corrupt lobbying" from "helping elected officials understand what the hell they're voting on". Elected officials need to understand what the problems are that need to be solved, they need experts who understand the complex systems well enough to know how to solve those problems, and so on. Obviously in the USA things have careened off a cliff, particularly when it comes to campaign finance bullshit. But if you need a problem solved with legislation, you need to get the people in charge of that legislation to both know there is a problem and how to solve it, and that can take time. Knowing that a system is currently fucked doesn't really help you fix it, you have to deal with what that broken system is actually supposed to be doing in order to deal with it properly.

[@antonSugar]

1:36:30 this mentality is so true. I have friends who believe they'll become millionaires by working 80 hours a week working at target. Their motto is "I dont criticize the rich cause thats where im going, i also don't criticize the poor cause thats where im from"

[@keithparker1346]

They are oblivious that most rich people were born rich

[@laurenbutcher6303]

I can see that quote overlaid on a black and white picture of a wolf smoking a cigar or something lmao

[@VinnieGer]

@@laurenbutcher6303or those British people with suits and ugly haircuts. They seem really obsessed with that one.

[@twynb]

let's do some math here. i don't know target's wages, google says it's between 12 and 22 dollars per hour, let's do 20 because it makes this easier and is more generous. so that's $20 * 80 = $1600/week. with 52 weeks in a year, assuming your friend is not taking any unpaid vacation, that's $83200 a year. sources are not really agreeing what the cost of living per year in the US is, at a quicj google i see figures between 12ish ahd 38ish k$ per year, let's take $20k/year for simplicity's sake. so we have $63200/year. so with $63200 a year, your friend got their first million after about 16 years. their first billion will take them 16000 years, which is roughly 8 times the time between caesar's death and the invention of the internet. and all of this is not accounting for taxes and inflation, and using pretty generous numbers.

[@anotheryoutubeaccount5259]

Makes sense to me?

[@vngt]

Incredible work Tom, it's crazy I've never seen your channel before.

[@JSquares]

Love how I kept getting “passive income” ads while watching the vid lol

[@agni-kai132]

In dungeons and dragons, Tiamat the goddess of evil dragons, requires her clerics to tithe 20% of any treasure they find. However in return she gives them magic and cool powers. If the goddess of evil dragons gives you more and takes less then Uber something is very wrong

[@singular9]

I don't remember who said the quote, some economist, back in 2007. "you can tell the economy is going down hill if the amount of scams out there is going up".

[@kevinmhadley]

Definitely a good watch. There are so many of these online promising vast wealth with no hard work. I’m glad to see someone take this on in such detail. Thanks

[@hrrawr]

I like these video transitions. It feels like you're holding the viewer's attention at just the right moments. I don't know what it feels like to make content like this knowing being entertaining and showy makes or breaks whether people will listen when this is stuff the whole world should have a better understanding of right now, but I have mad respect for you & your channel team for making those kinds of difficult decisions. Also, these outfits are really fun!

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

The other thing about the 80 20 rule is that even if you could somehow identify the 20% that gives you 80% of the results you are still only 80% done and have to do the remaining 20% to finish whatever you are working on.

[@Impossibleshadow]

They got a good saying about this in IT The first 80% takes 80% of the time. The last 20% takes the other 80% Progress is only really measureable when it is done. The rest is just management talk, or educated lying.

[@littlebrothermoneywithmich6178]

😂 awesome 👏

[@LimeyLassen]

Or it takes 80% of the work to find out what the 20% is, and then you do the 20%.

[@andreas4010]

Also that remaining 20% is usually critical. The guidelines is good for rough prototyping though

[@PhysicsGamer]

@@Impossibleshadow This is the context I usually see the concept in myself. It's getting a project over that last 20% hurdle that takes 80% of the effort. Instead claiming that you can do 20% of the work to get 80% of the effort is... very backwards.

[@EroticInferno]

My favorite highlight of capitalism was when that one kid saw the signs of the pandemic (assessing market conditions) so he went around to every dollar store and store in the area and cleaned out their product (investing in his business and taking a risk) so that he could mark them up when shit hit the fan (successful, profitable business). Then everyone got mad at him??? For being literally the PERFECT capitalist??? Hahahaha it was insane to watch an individual get dog piled into giving away the sanitizer for free when the entire system is that man and no one bats an eye because they’ve been told that “the system is good and right, there is no exploration.“ It’s amazing that so few see the direct connections

[@dawert2667]

No literally. At this point there isn’t a product on the market that wasn’t scalped from somewhere or another. Nothing is even bootleg anymore, because nothing is honest

[@olgap218]

In the Soviet Union, this phenomenon was far more common due to constant shortages. But yeah, capitalism bad /s

[@Waitwhat469]

It's that most people are willing to pull down someone on their class before going after bigger fish that bothers me

[@TheNewton]

Because that was a combination of gouging meeting crab behavior that detests "entrepreneurship" when that entrepreneurship is only possible via exploiting a bad situation. Biggest mistake is let himself be known instead of establishing a faceless company and a nebulous mission statement of helping people during covid.

[@johannageisel5390]

The problem was not that people got mad at the price gouger - the problem is that they don't get mad at all the other price gougers too, who operate under non-pandemic circumstances too.

[@utinsutiwi]

Thank you so much for making this well researched documentary/commentary. I feel inspired!

[@addicted2caffeine]

That was a really long vid. Glad I stumbled on this , I learnt nothing materially new but it did make me think and I really enjoyed your comedic approach 😊

[@Alex-cw3rz]

I think I bought a book off someome who had used Ferris's advice of reprinting a public domein book, it was an architecture book from the 1860s and an original will set you back 400 - 500 pounds. It has these beautiful fold out parts with building floor plans and sketches of buildings. The copy cost about 30 pounds, but the person who scanned the pages was so lazy and focused on profit that they didn't fold out the plans they scanned it with them folded in meaning non of the fold out bits were visable! So the book was utterly pointless it was also printed on the thinnest paper I have ever felt in my life. After disguarding that one I was lucky enough to get an original for £25 with just 2 pages missing that was cheaper than the copy. It's got an 1800s fly squashed between some of the pages and notes on some fancy house with a fancy stables an architect who owned the book at one point was going to make with costings etc. Including the selling points of the design to relay to the client.

[@DebatingWombat]

I fully expect to see a torrent of AI generated “spam books” before long (I already know artists who openly and honestly published AI generated books a couple of years ago as an art project). This will make well established problem of slapdash “Wikipedia and other web rehash” print-on-demand scam books already being pushed on Amazon seem quaint by comparison (I came across these around 10 years ago when researching some fairly niche topics). And I’m sadly almost certain that this will mean that the general online spam problem will be hitting the book format on a whole new scale.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

​@@DebatingWombat that would not surprise me

[@drewcampbell8555]

I have copyright on the fly. You owe me £800. MUNNY PLEEZ!!! 👐

[@Nomadith]

Minus the fly, that sounds fantastic! It's served its purpose and you have a little bit of a person's history in your hand. Also the whole fold-out planning sheets sounds really cool, like how a lot of memoirs or first hand accounts on topics like the Iraq war sometimes have laminate middle pages with photos taken by the writer or colleagues of theirs.

[@MadNumForce]

This failure to unfold folded leaflets is something public libraries do a lot when they mass scan their archives. Or at least did do a lot. I wouldn't be surprised what you bought is actually such a public library scan, not even the seller/printer own work. He probably has a good business grade printer, a shear and some basic binding machines, and print on order PDFs he grabbed off the internet.

[@guidoferri8683]

I love that you chose to show: - a bad photo of Mark Zuckerberg - a bad photo of Elon Musk - Jeff Bezos

[@LargeAndRobustPeter]

It's a good point to see yourself as the collectively impinged rather than someone waiting to break out, or essentially join the ranks of the top grifters. But personally I see freedom as finding a way to 'break out' that is actually something you would be happy to do with your time, as I'm sure making this video was for you. The concept of earning a modest living from something you actually enjoy doing seems to be lost on all those youtube videos pushing the same old schemes. Like most things, people want more for less. And it requires tremendous focus to generate something that's worth a damn that also falls in line with your values. Commendable video.

[@Spencergundersenmusic]

Your landlord breakdown in rent is incredible. Never had that perspective before.

[@DracoGalboy]

26-40% sounds like a dream coming from the US as a percentage of income for rent. I don't think mine's been below 45% since 2018

[@bobthegamingtaco6073]

If I remember correctly, there was a study that said to keep your rent under 33% of your income you need 3 roommates. People are back to getting married for economic reasons lol, marry your best friend, move into a 2 bedroom apartment with another married couple, and then you might be able to afford nutritious meals every now and then

[@cericat]

More than 30% is unfortunately a significant problem regardless of where you live as typically that means you can't afford your other costs of living. It's all disgusting and the rent seeking is getting far worse here in Australia even as the government refuses to even consider doing anything to rein in the greed.

[@bobthegamingtaco6073]

@@cericat totally correct, it's a shame to hear that Australia is having this issue too, I was kinda hoping it was just the US and maybe Britain, and that other countries were avoiding these pitfalls... guess power hungry rich people are the same the world over

[@bgreen7286]

I have now received the encouraging news that there is no property in Australia that I as an aged pensioner can afford to rent

[@AllTheArtsy]

I think part of the problem with work is that we truly have been sold on this idea that work has to be everything -- our dream, our career, our calling in life, our way to make a living, the way to make and maintain friends, etc. I've worked the same boring job for 8 years and I am doing well. I do my work well. I am well compensated. And then after I clock out, I have time and no stress for my hobbies, my family and friends, my pets, my other creative projects. Work is just work. I think if more people were fine with work just being the way they make money, working wouldn't be so life crushing that they'd resort to scamming or (unknowingly) being scammed instead.

[@tinoesroho]

♫ he's a PUNCH CLOCK HERO ♫

[@bobthegamingtaco6073]

Yup, but that is ruined by the fact that 1: you need work to buy food/a rood over your head And 2: there are more people than jobs Meaning that corporations can force you to make your whole life about work because if it isn't, there's always a chance that someone more exploitable will come along and do twice your workload for half your pay (luckily it seems you've avoided this trap but down here at the bottom it's basically a requirement to pledge allegiance to the brand in order to get hired on)

[@ruthspanos2532]

@@bobthegamingtaco6073 Unionize. It's not an immediate solution, to be sure. But it's the reason that the US used to have decent working conditions and adequate compensation until Reagan came along and got rid of them.

[@miuzoreyes6547]

For the working class, work is definitely more than just making money - it's a way to keep a roof over your head, to afford food and other basic human needs. If you don't have a job, you're risking running out of funds and therefore going homeless, which means that most people are going to accept any job they can get even if it makes them unhappy just out of necessity. Having to do what you don't want for survival is essentially slavery, and unsurprisingly, this makes people unhappy. Not giving a damn about what you're making basically splitting a person in two (a worker, which is just a machine for production and their physical selves that only gets to be that way when they eat/sleep/engage in hobbies,etc) makes a lot of people look for a way out, to stop living an unhappy life that was forced upon them and most people turn towards scams or other dishonest means. However, most people aren't capable of fraud on the big scale, so they often just get ripped off by opportunists like those get-rich-quick gurus, who are quite frankly just psychopaths.

[@andeggbreaks]

A lot of people can't find a job that they don't hate, with coworkers they like. And working full-time it's hard to maintain hobbies and friendships. A lot of jobs are stressful. A job that is unremarkable but doesn't impede on your wellbeing is still unfortunately not easy to find. I think your comment applies to some people though who genuinely don't know how good they have it with their jobs.

[@ZacandCompany]

I love this video! Thank you! I'm turned off by your portrayal of landlords though. As a renter myself, I couldn't afford to buy or build my own house so I feel like landlords maintaining properties and taking the risk of ownership are providing a service. My landlords and my friends who are landlords are working constantly. Sure they have more money, but they don't have a greater quality of life, just more stress to go with it. I feel like the same arguments would be more appropriate against big government but ultimately it can all go both ways. Thanks for explaining a phenomena I couldn't put into words. Great video