Are moral standards scripted for the poor?

[Johnny boy]

Is coca cola bad?

Why is that your decision to make? Who should make that decision? An organization of elected officials? A single leader?

How about the billions of people on earth, each able to choose freely to either buy it or not buy it, and have the freedom to do so?

That's why the free market is so beautiful. It's the original decentralized force. Each man must work for his money. His work makes the money matter to him. His hours and his effort and a piece of his life went into each dollar, and he gets to choose what happens to that dollar. If he decides coca cola deserves his dollar, what moral right do you have over this man? Are you his mother? He is free and should decide what deserves the money he has earned with his time and effort and intelligence.

Together there are billions of economic decisions each day. What to buy, what not to buy, where to buy it, etc. And the people who produce these things are motivated to make good decisions to serve these consumers otherwise they cease to exist. The business owner wants to be rich. He has to produce something of value in an efficient enough way to make a profit. The employee is motived to work doing something reasonable for reasonable pay. He can work anywhere he wants. A job paying $1 an hour would get no takers in america because they can go get something better. So the company has to have an efficient enough system to pay workers a rate at which they will work there, and still make a profit. The consumer is motivated to make good purchasing decisions otherwise he wastes the money he's earned. Each piece of the machine has authentic motivations and each persons decisions are guided by these motivations each and every day. What a beautiful, elegent, justified system.

It's given us every modern luxury and the incredible wealth we enjoy today. Even a person with hardly any skills can work a mindless job and live in a house that has the incredible technologies of electricity, running water, watching tv. It's a miracle and these things exist because of the power of the free market.

The free market is moral because it allows people to make their own decisions.

Your subjective morality is not the authority. You don't get to make decisions for other people. Business people laugh at you talking about morality not because they are bad people, but because they know that manipulative people use 'morality' as a justification for control.

You might say "oh, so the moral compass of our society is the almighty dollar?"

In economic choices, yes. The personal motivations and subjective views of each free man guides their economic decisions. As it should.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Edit*

I think I misdirected my opinion.
If I'm just looking at *is it scripted*

I def remember as a child some Saturday morning cartoons that would have the *sleezy*salesman with the greased up hair and cigar and suit selling his own grandmother out of her last coin. With a sort of foggy background that always loomed around him.

So I def feel like there is or was a scripted narrative back in the saturday morning cartoon days that selling products made you a *bad guy* and not near as upstanding as the dining room newspaper reading father in the sparkling white kitchen enjoying his 2 days of freedom or caffeinating his 9 to 5 before leaving Johnny and the misses for the day.

Y'all need to listen to the podcast episodes by @Kak regarding this.

It does not pay to be a crook. It simply doesn't. It might appear to work for a little while, but it never works in the end.

Look at Bernie Madoff - he was not a real businessman. He was a scammer. He is now in prison. Or Epstein - we know how that went.

No, you will make the most money by providing real value, not ripping people off with perceived value that does not live up to expectations.

That's bad for your business.

Also, it depends on what your morals are. If you believe that having money is evil, you better quit right now because you're never going to make it. That's not a good moral. However, if you believe in treating people fairly and dealing honestly, that will actually help you.

 

[Matt Sun]

The fact that immoral people can make a lot of money doesn't mean that morality prevents you from doing so as well. There are many examples of moral people that make cash (Mj Demarco to name just 1, but basically every rich organic farmer or producer of goods that don't intoxicate your clients). Like would you say making cars is immoral ? No... And car manufacturers are very rich. I think you are just putting the focus on certain companies instead of others.

I like looking at ways to compete with this companies, like if you made a sweet drink that's also healthy (hint, it exist, it's called kefir).

Just don't get the limiting belief that you must be immoral to succeed when reality is that is not true.

 

[WJK]

After mulling over this thread, I think that you do NOT accept the truism that Life is not fair. It never was and it never will be. Stuff happens to everyone all the time.

Some people take that lemon and make lemonade. That unfortunate event becomes the whole reason for them to strive and thrive. Others are completely mowed over. They are totally destroyed in one swipe.

 

[WJK]

Actually I view it like life is already unfair what are the chances if you play ‘fair’ XD

I play "fair" every day with people who need a break. And I'm doing fine. You should try it.

I provide the only low/moderate-income housing, the only self-service Laundromat, and the only full hook-up RV spaces in my community. There's a lot of us out there quietly making a difference. Some of us feel like we make a big difference.

This week I lined up the help that saved a woman's life and the lives of her 2 little kids, from the abuse of her live-in boyfriend. They were my tenants. She snuck out while he was sleeping. She came to me for help. She left last night with her kids to go to be with her family. He's in jail with 3 felony charges. It was about 4 days of heavy drama and now she and the kids are safely away. He'll swear that I didn't play fair since I called the police on him.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Antifragile]

That's too primitive of a thinking. Sucrose affects gut bacteria and fungus (E.g. Candida), which later signals your brain to take more refined sugar. Also, there are so many cognitive biases exploited by corporations, that "freedom of choice" can't really exist among laity.

take it a step further the Jonny’s argument falls flat. Should we be free to sell cocaine to children because of “free markets”? Clearly, no.

it’s just not that simple or black and white. Welcome to the real world.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

There are a lot of broad generalizations going on here. It doesn't make any sense as a question.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

The way that business people might be seen as “immoral” because business people hace to be more “flexible” and not confined to the rigid rules that people get indoctrinated from schools since young. If you have the mindset that you only cross the road when the light is green then nothing gets done, and probably you are best suited working for a government bureaucracy.

This is a really good point.

There is a severe lack of creativity and the ability to be a "self starter" with most people.

People who fall into that average category are going to view you as "immoral" simply for breaking out of a box!

It doesn't even have to be something bad - it could be as simple as finding a new way to do something, but they still don't like that. You have to be willing to think differently.

 

[Deleted70138]

How about the billions of people on earth, each able to choose freely to either buy it or not buy it, and have the freedom to do so?

That's too primitive of a thinking. Sucrose affects gut bacteria and fungus (E.g. Candida), which later signals your brain to take more refined sugar. Also, there are so many cognitive biases exploited by corporations, that "freedom of choice" can't really exist among laity.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Antifragile]

Hi WJK, Yes I agree but there’s a team of people counting on poor guy to make a poor choice to make a buck off him. I mean poor guy seems to be a bit lonely in this situation XD

How Gambling Habits Are Formed by Charles Duhigg

All the passages below are taken from Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.” It was published in 2011.

Are We Responsible for Our Habits?

The morning the trouble began—-years before she realized there was even trouble in the first place—-Angie Bachmann was sitting at home, staring at the television, so bored that she was giving serious thought to reorganizing the silverware drawer. 9.1

Her youngest daughter had started kindergarten a few weeks earlier and her two older daughters were in middle school, their lives filled with friends and activities and gossip their mother couldn’t possibly understand. Her husband, a land surveyor, often left for work at eight and didn’t get home until six. The house was empty except for Bachmann. It was the first time in almost two decades—-since she had gotten married at nineteen and pregnant by twenty, and her days had become crowded with packing school lunches, playing princess, and running a family shuttle service—-that she felt genuinely alone. In high school, her friends told her she should become a model—-she had been that pretty—-but when she dropped out and then married a guitar player who eventually got a real job, she settled on being a mom instead. Now it was ten-thirty in the morning, her three daughters were gone, and Bachmann had resorted—-again—-to taping a piece of paper over the kitchen clock to stop herself from looking at it every three minutes.

She had no idea what to do next.

That day, she made a deal with herself: If she could make it until noon without going crazy or eating the cake in the fridge, she would leave the house and do something fun. She spent the next ninety minutes trying to figure out what exactly that would be. When the clock hit twelve o’clock, she put on some makeup and a nice dress and drove to a riverboat casino about twenty minutes away from her house. Even at noon on a Thursday, the casino was filled with people doing things besides watching soap operas and folding the laundry. There was a band playing near the entrance. A woman was handing out free cocktails. Bachmann ate shrimp from a buffet. The whole experience felt luxurious, like playing hooky. She made her way to a blackjack table where a dealer patiently explained the rules. When her forty dollars of chips were gone, she glanced at her watch and saw two hours had flown by and she needed to hurry home to pick up her youngest daughter. That night at dinner, for the first time in a month, she had something to talk about besides outguessing a contestant on The Price Is Right.

Angie Bachmann’s father was a truck driver who had remade himself, midlife, into a semi-famous songwriter. Her brother had become a songwriter, too, and had won awards. Bachmann, on the other hand, was often introduced by her parents as “the one who became a mom.”

“I always felt like the untalented one,” she told me. “I think I’m smart, and I know I was a good mom. But there wasn’t a lot I could point to and say, that’s why I’m special.”

After that first trip to the casino, Bachmann started going to the riverboat once a week, on Friday afternoons. It was a reward for making it through empty days, keeping the house clean, staying sane. She knew gambling could lead to trouble, so she set strict rules for herself. No more than one hour at the blackjack table per trip, and she only gambled what was in her wallet. “I considered it kind of like a job,” she told me. “I never left the house before noon, and I was always home in time to pick up my daughter. I was very disciplined.”

And she got good. At first, she could hardly make her money last an hour. Within six months, however, she had picked up enough tricks that she adjusted her rules to allow for two-or three-hour shifts, and she would still have cash in her pocket when she walked away. One afternoon, she sat down at the blackjack table with $80 in her purse and left with $530—-enough to buy groceries, pay the phone bill, and put a bit in the rainy day fund. By then, the company that owned the casino—-Harrah’s Entertainment—-was sending her coupons for free buffets. She would treat the family to dinner on Saturday nights.

The state where Bachmann was gambling, Iowa, had legalized gambling only a few years earlier. Prior to 1989, the state’s lawmakers worried that the temptations of cards and dice might be difficult for some citizens to resist. It was a concern as old as the nation itself. Gambling “is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief,” George Washington wrote in 1783. “This is a vice which is productive of every possible evil. . . In a word, few gain by this abominable practice, while thousands are injured.” 9.2 Protecting people from their bad habits in fact, defining which habits should be considered “bad” in the first place is a prerogative lawmakers have eagerly seized. Prostitution, gambling, liquor sales on the Sabbath, pornography, usurious loans, sexual relations outside of marriage (or, if your tastes are unusual, within marriage), are all habits that various legislatures have regulated, outlawed, or tried to discourage with strict (and often ineffective) laws.

When Iowa legalized casinos, lawmakers were sufficiently concerned that they limited the activity to riverboats and mandated that no one could wager more than $5 per bet, with a maximum loss of $200 per person per cruise. Within a few years, however, after some of the state’s casinos moved to Mississippi where no-limit gaming was allowed, the Iowa legislature lifted those restrictions. In 2010, the state’s coffers swelled by more than $269 million from taxes on gambling.

In 2000, Angie Bachmann’s parents, both longtime smokers, started showing signs of lung disease. She began flying to Tennessee to see them every other week, buying groceries and helping to cook dinner. When she came back home to her husband and daughters, the stretches seemed even lonelier now. Sometimes, the house was empty all day long; it was as if, in her absence, her friends had forgotten to invite her to things and her family had figured out how to get by on their own.

Bachmann was worried about her parents, upset that her husband seemed more interested in his work than her anxieties, and resentful of her kids who didn’t realize she needed them now, after all the sacrifices she had made while they were growing up. But whenever she hit the casino, those tensions would float away. She started going a couple times a week when she wasn’t visiting her parents, and then every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She still had rules but she’d been gambling for years by now, and knew the axioms that serious players lived by. She never put down less than $25 a hand and always played two hands at once. “You have better odds at a higher limit table than at a lower limit table,” she told me. “You have to be able to play through the rough patches until your luck turns. I’ve seen people walk in with $150 and win $10,000. I knew I could do this if I followed my rules. I was in control.” 1 By then, she didn’t have to think about whether to take another card or double her bet she acted automatically, just as Eugene Pauly, the amnesiac, had eventually learned to always choose the right cardboard rectangle.

One day in 2000, Bachmann went home from the casino with $6,000 enough to pay rent for two months and wipe out the credit card bills that were piling up by the front door. Another time, she walked away with $2,000. Sometimes she lost, but that was part of the game. Smart gamblers knew you had to go down to go up. Eventually, Harrah’s gave her a line of credit so she wouldn’t have to carry so much cash. Other players sought her out and sat at her table because she knew what she was doing. At the buffet, the hosts would let her go to the front of the line. “I know how to play,” she told me. “I know that sounds like somebody who’s got a problem not recognizing their problem, but the only mistake I made was not quitting. There wasn’t anything wrong with how I played.”

Bachmann’s rules gradually became more flexible as the size of her winnings and losses expanded. One day, she lost $800 in an hour, and then earned $1,200 in forty minutes. Then her luck turned again and she walked away down $4,000. Another time, she lost $3,500 in the morning, earned $5,000 by 1 p.m., and lost another $3,000 in the afternoon. The casino had records of how much she owed and what she’d earned; she’d stopped keeping track herself. Then, one month, she didn’t have enough in her bank account for the electricity bill. She asked her parents for a small loan, and then another. She borrowed $2,000 one month, $2,500 the next. It wasn’t a big deal; they had the money.

Bachmann never had problems with drinking or drugs or overeating. She was a normal mom, with the same highs and lows as everyone else. So the compulsion she felt to gamble the insistent pull that made her feel distracted or irritable on days when she didn’t visit the casino, the way she found herself thinking about it all the time, the rush she felt on a good run caught her completely off guard. It was a new sensation, so unexpected that she hardly knew it was a problem until it had taken hold of her life. In retrospect, it seemed like there had been no dividing line. One day it was fun, and the next it was uncontrollable.

By 2001, she was going to the casino every day. She went whenever she fought with her husband or felt unappreciated by her kids. At the tables she was numb and excited, all at once, and her anxieties grew so faint she couldn’t hear them anymore. The high of winning was so immediate. The pain of losing passed so fast.

“You want to be a big shot,” her mother told her when Bachmann called to borrow more money. “You keep gambling because you want the attention.”

That wasn’t it, though. “I just wanted to feel good at something,” she said to me. “This was the only thing I’d ever done where it seemed like I had a skill.”

By the summer of 2001, Bachmann’s debts to Harrah’s hit $20,000. She had been keeping the losses secret from her husband, but when her mother finally cut off the stipends, she broke down and confessed. They hired a bankruptcy attorney, cut up her credit cards, and sat at the kitchen table to write out a plan for a more austere, responsible life. She took her dresses to a used clothing store and withstood the humiliation of a nineteen-year-old turning down almost all of them because, she said, they were out of style.

Eventually, it started to feel like the worst was over. Finally, she thought, the compulsion was gone.

But, of course, it wasn’t even close to the end. Years later, after she had lost everything and had ruined her life and her husband’s, after she had thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars and her lawyer had argued before the state’s highest court that Angie Bachmann gambled not by choice, but out of habit, and thus shouldn’t bear culpability for her losses, after she had become an object of scorn on the Internet, where people compared her to Jeffrey Dahmer and parents who abuse their kids, she would wonder: How much responsibility do I actually bear?

“I honestly believe anyone in my shoes would have done the same things,” Bachmann told me.

 

[WJK]

Good on you!
I’m repulsed by the weak man like that. He has what’s coming to him.

And I'm having him served with a DO NOT TRESPASS order while he's in jail. It took a few days, but we got him arrested, got a Protective Ordered signed by the judge and accepted by the Marshall, got her boxes of stuff shipped, got her airline tickets, and got her and the kids out of town. He can't threaten or hurt her or the kids anymore. It's not really part of my job or business, but I was there to help her.

So, when people talk about that no one cares, it's a myth. A woman I know who is a clerk at the Court helped the woman fill out the Protective Order. Then that clerk shepherded the order through getting it signed by the Judge that afternoon. We hand-carried that order to the Marshal's office. The ladies at the post office opened their counter for me so we could ship her boxes on Veteran's Day. I called them at the last minute the night before and took them the boxes. They know me and I called in a favor. When I told them what was going on, they opened their counter on that holiday. They got her boxes sent. Everyone around here pitched in helped her get ready to go. And one of my tenants took her and her kids to the airport so she could leave. I believe that most people are basically good and kind if they get a chance.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Dino_saur]

Hello Din here, Found the book and forum yesterday, I consider myself quite awake yet MJ’s book got my stubbornness for working years on my art passion and nothing clicks,

Back to the topic it has been on my mind that the people in control are not ‘educated’ by moral standards.

Are Coca-Cola going to feel bad killing tons of people with sugar?

Are doctors(some) going to feel bad selling you on the most expensive plan to cure you while there are cheaper ways?

The more I look I find more examples like get people addicted on pain killers?
The market just makes money it has no time for morals, perhaps morals are keeping me poor?

up for discussion,
Din

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Mathew Verble]

Mmmm. I think that if you have a strong belief system in any way can certainly slow you down.
Being fluid is extremely important in all endeavors.

The biggest moral compass to business from what I've gathered is are you fulfilling a markets needs/wants.

If you make available something someone wants. Are you morally obligated to tell them they can't have it if it has sugar in it? I think you are probably morally *right* to include a warning label if there's inherent danger. But I'm pretty sure you are legally obligated anyway in most cases.

Pain pills, cigarettes, alcohol (easy low hanging fruit I know) all come with labeling and or warning pamphlets of the dangers. You sign a ton of paperwork for a medical procedure and can ask your Dr or gooogle if there are other avenues.

The consumer has an obligation to use some form of intelligence before making a purchase. If they choose your item to buy, unless you have a monopoly which rarely exists anymore, I dont understand what kind of moral obligation could hinder offering it.

 

[Private Witt]

I could make an immense amount of money at this point if I broke my moral codes.

Also if I broke governmental laws that I know I most likely could get away with but is just not worth the sweat.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Mathew Verble]

Edit*

I think I misdirected my opinion.
If I'm just looking at *is it scripted*

I def remember as a child some Saturday morning cartoons that would have the *sleezy*salesman with the greased up hair and cigar and suit selling his own grandmother out of her last coin. With a sort of foggy background that always loomed around him.

So I def feel like there is or was a scripted narrative back in the saturday morning cartoon days that selling products made you a *bad guy* and not near as upstanding as the dining room newspaper reading father in the sparkling white kitchen enjoying his 2 days of freedom or caffeinating his 9 to 5 before leaving Johnny and the misses for the day.

 

[Private Witt]

Hey man, The moral I’m addressing is more long term or ‘soft’ like a can of coke is not going to kill you but it takes time, Also there are clear things we shouldn’t do and are bad.
Also question for you are there some morals that are not law-breaking or doesn’t hurt people that if you give up can make you more money? Because I’m thinking the same.

Yah I fit that category as I dabble in multiple industries that are considered vice sectors and there are tons of paths to take to make large amounts of money by selling certain things that both can instantly and take time to destroy my client base.

Yes on the second question, I have personal morals that hold me up from exploiting others. There is no question if I got a little dirty but still inside the law I can change both my personal and business finances greatly, but I wake up every day with no worries about my past and current behavior and just watch all the shitbricks implode themselves and just keep to the moral standards I have both imbedded naturally and developed throughout my life and business journey.

 

[ljean]

I am all for having the complete freedom to make my own choices when it comes to food, drinks, drugs, alcohol, etc. However, the dilemma arises when the government uses my tax dollars to subsidize health care. Would I rather pay for my neighbor's lung cancer treatment after 50 yrs of cigarette smoking, or would I prefer that smoking was outlawed...?

 

[Kevin88660]

Hello Din here, Found the book and forum yesterday, I consider myself quite awake yet MJ’s book got my stubbornness for working years on my art passion and nothing clicks,

Back to the topic it has been on my mind that the people in control are not ‘educated’ by moral standards.

Are Coca-Cola going to feel bad killing tons of people with sugar?

Are doctors(some) going to feel bad selling you on the most expensive plan to cure you while there are cheaper ways?

The more I look I find more examples like get people addicted on pain killers?
The market just makes money it has no time for morals, perhaps morals are keeping me poor?

up for discussion,
Din

Complex answer. Yes and No and not the way you think it is.

The stereotype that successful business people are selfish is just plain wrong. People who built large organization hiring thousands of people or more with millions of recurring revenue from millions of satisfied customers, are selfish people pursuing their own agenda and interest only? Chances are successful business people are on average much much less selfish than average people.

Lying and cheating your way do not work. If you sell sth expensive people are already assume you might be cheating them, when you even aren’t. So it is not as easy as you assume. Customers are not idiots either.
The more successful you are the chances are you are more ethical than your competitors and you treat them better, and far more ethical than average joe on the street.

The way that business people might be seen as “immoral” because business people hace to be more “flexible” and not confined to the rigid rules that people get indoctrinated from schools since young. If you have the mindset that you only cross the road when the light is green then nothing gets done, and probably you are best suited working for a government bureaucracy.

Successful Founders are often accused “stealing an idea from someone”, spamming ads on platforms and public spaces when they have no marketing budget, putting some marketing spin to market themselves without telling outright lies when they need their first customer or investors badly…Civilian values and code of conduct cannot help you survive in a war zone. You have to be “street smart” and play dirty when the circumstances dictate.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[WJK]

So the ‘rich’ made selling questionable items legal by writing their own laws I think. I get your point sir but I always have second thoughts when I see that poor guy lose all his money gambling.

The point is that the poor guy has a choice here. He doesn't have to gamble. He can make another choice. It's not the rest of the world's obligation to take care of him when he acts against his interests. You cannot save a person from themselves.

 

[Dino_saur]

i believe for myself I believe you can have a business with morals. It just depends on the product or business. There's lots of materialistic objects or products you can design and make it out of earth's resources.

Your always going to find both sides of the coin in the business world in any social class.

I think if your talking about the poor, there is looting, hustling, stealing, even murdering and going to the Pawn shop. I wouldn't consider this moral. I had a friend killed by this scenario because someone stole their property.

Middle class can do the same thing by stealing stuff from the wealthy neighborhoods and blending in easily.

I wouldn't even assign a social class to the question. It's more of an individual basis of what they decide for themselves is moral or immoral in the way they interact in society, do business, and who they associate themselves with in general.

Hey Mattie, Yes I agree everyone has their own bar, when A and B are both picking apples if A invented a ladder and pick more apples B can decide to call him cheating or make a ladder himself. It all comes to the ‘average’ people since we morally agree the more people do a thing it becomes ‘right’ Yet I think average joe is not too smart and can be manipulated easily like watching TV. If B is a master on manipulating masses A using a ladder is going to be ‘immoral’ to a large group.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Yes thechosen1, Uber was seen immoral from my place from the local taxi drivers XD

Oh and it still is. New York City politicians like Alexandria O'casio Cortez (AOC) wanted to keep Uber out of the city to protect the unions - even though the people wanted Uber.

It's dumb, really.

 

[Jobless]

'The market just makes money it has no time for morals'

The market does not exist. It is just a commonly shared belief / system, like governments, corporations, organizations, etc. -- Groups of people. Individually these people are moral agents, but the entity they claim to belong to is just a concept. It is a claim of belonging (a tribe) one can 'hide' behind in an effort to escape moral responsibility and instead distribute it to the whole group or 'the system'.

Likewise, physical items are not moral agents either and cannot be considered good or evil. It may be wrong to sell and buy coca-cola, weapons, pornography-- but it depends on the circumstance of the sale with regard to the moral agency of the two people in the transaction.

It sounds to me as if you view some people as too stupid to have any moral responsibility. As if transactions often lack a moral agent as buyer or seller. As if average people are animals or inanimate objects?

If this shocks you, don't feel bad, because this belief is a prerequisite if ever you want to rule over others. A true evil person does not engage in commerce. He/she offers no right of refusal / choice for the victim. Since this is viewed by most as wrong and considered shameful, said person often hides behind a group entity and conceals what they are actually doing.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Antifragile]

I play "fair" every day with people who need a break. And I'm doing fine. You should try it.

I provide the only low/moderate-income housing, the only self-service Laundromat, and the only full hook-up RV spaces in my community. There's a lot of us out there quietly making a difference. Some of us feel like we make a big difference.

This week I lined up the help that saved a woman's life and the lives of her 2 little kids, from the abuse of her live-in boyfriend. They were my tenants. She snuck out while he was sleeping. She came to me for help. She left last night with her kids to go to be with her family. He's in jail with 3 felony charges. It was about 4 days of heavy drama and now she and the kids are safely away. He'll swear that I didn't play fair since I called the police on him.

Good on you!
I’m repulsed by the weak man like that. He has what’s coming to him.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

I don’t want to be rude to OP, but this is the total opposite mindset of a successful person. The premise is wrong and the topic is pointless. Change your mindset while you still can.

 

[Mattie]

I still don’t understand what the OP is asking LOl. Seriously. The question makes no sense to me and I can’t even vote. So, I guess I agree with what you said @thechosen1

There are some false beliefs out there projected with the idea in general that are mixed messages in certain social groups, populations, or cultures about what is unethical and immoral in obtaining financial wealth. Some of this might be Myths, theories, concepts, or ideas that people may just believe and pass on to others versus legit information. Fake News so to speak. Beliefs have an expiration date. I suppose it's whether you have a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset.

I watched a documentary one time on a football player that one a scholarship and had a chance to leave the Applachian Mountains. He did for a short-time and went back. This is where some individuals don't believe they should leave the lower class mindset and should remain loyal. If you live in places where there is no toilets, running water, and have a chance to leave, it might be immoral or unethical in their belief system. Fortunately, giving up the chance of a lifetime is the downfall once the exit is given for an 18 year old.

The person is young, impressionable, and who knows if they eventually found the courage to rise out of the situation.

The question is always is the story true, or false? Immoral or unethical can be subjective.

I've even tried to help people who are too emotionally attached to certain circumstances or people, and they just were not ready or equipped to handle to the change in their life at the time. People have to be ready to change, or they will not budge from their beliefs on just about anything in life.

Whenever you believe something there is always someone that cannot imagine what your talking about can be correct since they never experienced something. When they experience it, then they will see differently.

It was a terrible thing to smoke marijuana or sell it in 1989, now it's quite different in 2021. Moral or Immoral? We seem to change our opinion on some things over time.

 

[Dino_saur]

I still don’t understand what the OP is asking LOl. Seriously. The question makes no sense to me and I can’t even vote. So, I guess I agree with what you said @thechosen1

Hahaha I should add 3rd choice ‘I don’t understand the question XD

 

[Kevin88660]

I think the bigger question is when it's not so cut and dry.

Monsanto could argue they provide "value".

The point here is that "value" is subjective and sometimes, corporations lie to further their profits instead of doing what's best for humanity...

Yes business owners and corporation could lie and do lie.

But teachers lie, your family members lie, politicians lie, your friends lie, your pastor lies…

I trust much more in a person or entity who says openly they are doing something for money or for their own good, than for the “greater good”.

The whole premise of non-business people not selfishly acting in their own interest is entirely a fiction.

I would say the average business person is far more ethical than the average non-business person.

An employee can afford to be an a**hole and just do a mediocre job and wait for pay day. A business owner has to deal with customers, suppliers and employee on a regular basis that he or she cannot afford to be an inconsiderate a**hole.

There is this advice that “never do business with your best friends because it might ruin your friendship”. Friendship are easy to keep when there is no money at stake. Things get ugly when money is at stake, and most people have never put that to a test.

On the other hands business people have taken years to train and learn the skills, temperament, and ethic involved in dealing with actual money and profits with other people.

 

[Iammelissamoore]

Y'all need to listen to the podcast episodes by @Kak regarding this.

It does not pay to be a crook. It simply doesn't. It might appear to work for a little while, but it never works in the end.

Look at Bernie Madoff - he was not a real businessman. He was a scammer. He is now in prison. Or Epstein - we know how that went.

No, you will make the most money by providing real value, not ripping people off with perceived value that does not live up to expectations.

That's bad for your business.

Also, it depends on what your morals are. If you believe that having money is evil, you better quit right now because you're never going to make it. That's not a good moral. However, if you believe in treating people fairly and dealing honestly, that will actually help you.

THIS RIGHT HERE!

When I read the title of the post, I found it interesting from the get-go.

Reading further with additional comments, I came to a similar point, while Coca-Cola and other rip-off companies may build billions, we're not always aware of the many lawsuits they pay - or settle, which cuts into their profits. The Wall Street hustles seem successful because of the constant lies they sell on morning news money segments - THAT is what keeps their businesses flowing, NOT the fact that they rip people off. ...and the global masses trust in the almighty morning news, therefore, these companies may seemingly thrive on their lies.

This post pushes further the importance of value. Not that I want to be a broken record, but when I first read about the importance of creating value from The Millionaire Fastlane, it took on an entirely new meaning for me. Many companies that did not necessarily take a nose-dive throughout this pandemic are offering real, tangible value.

Sadly there are far more scams now due to people's desperation from the disruption of economies, but if I have learnt nothing else, and trust that I am learning lots, companies that offer morals and value are thriving, even if the journey is a bit longwinded, but their success is solid and long-term.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Kevin88660]

This is a really good point.

There is a severe lack of creativity and the ability to be a "self starter" with most people.

People who fall into that average category are going to view you as "immoral" simply for breaking out of a box!

It doesn't even have to be something bad - it could be as simple as finding a new way to do something, but they still don't like that. You have to be willing to think differently.

Airbnb get the growth started by spamming on craglist with bots. Uber Ceo had assigned staffs to sign up competitors apps and jammed them with fake request to paralyze them. These happened in the early days when they had limited resources and used method that might be seen as unscrupulous.

I am not saying that you should agree and applaud their behavior. But the average business people is not, and should not be someone who only cross the road when the green light is on. Or else they will achieve nothing.

 

[WJK]

Hi WJK, Yes I agree but there’s a team of people counting on poor guy to make a poor choice to make a buck off him. I mean poor guy seems to be a bit lonely in this situation XD

The real question IF he can learn and figure out the system. And if and when does, will he be willing to change what he is doing and how he's reacting. It all goes back to the 80-20 rule. Very few people really get it.