Ten Scams You Encounter Every Day

Recently by James Altucher: I Woke Up Scared and Angry Today

I distinctly remembered we all threw our bodies on top of each other. We were making a mountain of bodies. We were all laughing and wrestling to see who would get to the top of the bodies. I was on top. I was three or four years old. We were in “Yellow Duck Nursery School”. Laughing. Having fun.

Then I took a shit. A big one.

And we were all in shorts. Something I like to describe on CNBC as the “trickle-down effect” began to occur.

Everyone started yelling. Everyone started insulting me and running away from me. A teacher hit me. The next memory I have was that I was on the “special kids” school bus in the middle of the day. My mom was waiting on the driveway. “What did you do!” she said and took me by the hand and brought me inside.

That may have been my first memory.

What we do with our bowels is very important to us. We basically viscerally remember the times we shit on others. The more people under us, the bigger the memory.

The government, the media, the advertising industry, society, culture, your bosses, your parents, continue this trickle down-effect.

BONUS SCAM: Trading stocks is a totally rigged scam. Anybody who doesn’t listen to me is just jerking off in a madhouse. I have so much proof the system is completely rigged that the only way to win is if you are on the side of the people doing the rigging. There are 300mm people in the country and probably about 200 people who are rigging the system. Good luck trying to fit yourself into the club of 200 while you lose all of your money.

Here’s other scams which involves groups of people doing massive poops on others (ok, I toned down the language):

A) Advertising. I spoke to a guy who used to run a TV network. He said,”I would never in a million years buy a TV ad. They are useless.” I repeat: He RAN a TV network. His whole job was to sell ads to all the losers who would listen to his lies. All advertising is like that. We’ve evolved into an age where content creates branding. If you don’t stand out through valuable content, you’re useless. Advertising seems like a small scam. Does it equal the level of these other scams? And yet, we’re exposed to something like 10,000 impressions of ads per day. And the companies that pay for those ads are even being scammed because they don’t have people who understand the value of creating real content.

Now we’re fooled into thinking that personal branding is important. When people talk to me about “personal branding” the first thing I think is, “ok, so you’re a liar.” Why do I need a personal brand? Why should that be any different than the honest me? Are people afraid to show their real selves (rhetorical question because the obvious answer is “yes”).

B) Housing. I’ve said it in a million articles so I’ll be concise here as to why it’s a scam: Banks borrow from the people with checking accounts. They pay 0.5% or whatever. That’s a loan you give the bank and you can call it back anytime you want by writing a check or withdrawing the money. They then take that money and lend it out at 6% to people who want to buy a house. The multi-trillion dollar banking industry makes almost all of its money that way. Multi-TRILLION. So they have to keep making you think that you don’t have “roots” (a Neanderthal call back to our Mother Earth mysticism) unless you own a white picket fence, a house that can’t be moved, a home for your children, etc. Trillions of dollars are at stake if you don’t believe in this scam. For all the other reasons, check out my articles. [See the most popular article every on this blog: "Why I’d Rather Shoot Myself In the Head than Ever Own a Home Again" – actually, that article links to the most popular article because it’s a response to a response of the original article]

C) Education. I know, I know, I’ve written about this a million times. But think about it: why is it that just about everything single thing you learned in history class has to be relearned when you are an adult just so you get the reality of what happened. And when I was growing up we somehow ran out of time to learn about the Vietnam War. Surprise. The reality is, society needs your parents to work. So what the hell are they going to do with you? Well, they really should just let you play in the mud all day. But municipalities justify exorbitant taxes by saying, “no,no, no, that’s illegal! They have to go to school and get tested and standardized and we will love them from nine to three so you don’t need to feel guilty.

D) Happiness. The entire modern concept of happiness was re-created with commercial images to fool you in various ways. So that people can advertise to you (“if you buy this, you’ll be happier than if you buy that”), so that companies can convince you to work (“if you make this amount of money and we treat you vaguely nicely then you will be happy”). So that self-help gurus can sell you everything from food to exercises to positive thinking to make you think you will be a little bit happier. I do think there is such a thing as “happiness” but it takes a very different form than the one usually shown at surprise birthday parties.