Warning! This article was written by me a very long time ago, and no longer accurately reflects my views! Reader discretion is advised.
Scamming people out of their hard-earned money. Is it unethical? Obviously. But how much? The penny-pincher inside of me - especially my old self, from before I became a wageslave - wants to condemn every practice that results in someone having to part with their money for no return, but the Social Darwinist inside me says, that if someone is so lacking in intelligence that they allow themselves to fall victim to a scam, then their money is better off in the hands of the scammer.
But, the main subject of this article won't be scammers. The title is intentionally provocative, and meant to be thought-provoking. What kind of a person could defend scammers?
You see, I have this friend...
I have a friend from the USA. Let's call him Dave. Dave and I agree on many things, but we also disagree on many things. Both of us support Universal Basic Income, but while I'm more of an anti-statist Libertarian who thinks that Capitalism can be salvaged, he's a Statist who wants to regulate away landlords and put all sorts of sanctions on companies. Another disagreement between he and I is on people who have already succeeded at finding an alternative source of income - alternative to being a wageslave, that is.
Dave has childish fantasies about enacting violence upon cryptocurrency miners, scammers, shills (those whose videos are sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends), those who have a Patreon, etc. Me on the other hand? I salute these people. Before I became a wageslave, I used to look down on people like Belle Delphine - now that I know what "honest work" is like, I actually salute her for managing to avoid it, and sell her bathwater for so much that if she rationed her money wisely, she could retire right now and never have to do anything in her life.
Obviously, I get annoyed, when a video I am watching goes "This video was sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends"- who doesn't? But unlike Dave, at the very least, I understand why these people do it. As much as I like to praise Patreon for bringing back patronage, people aren't terribly charitable these days, so if you want to be a full-time content creator, you better get used to swallowing your pride and shilling.
Dave calls these people "parasites", but a true parasite exploits a host who is none the wiser, and gradually sucks all the life out of the host without the host even noticing it - these people on the other hand are gamblers gambling their livelihoods on either you liking their content (YouTubers) or you being stupid enough to fall to the scam, both of which are very risky strategies. Crypto-miners are basically gambling with their electricity, as there is no guarantee that it'll be profitable. What these people are doing doesn't sound like the road of least resistance to me, not by a long shot.
A world half full, a world half-empty
The people that Dave is complaining about and has fantasies of enacting violence towards are products of a world that's in the cursed middle-ground. The cursed middle-ground between what? Between Capitalism and Socialism.
My other friend Geri laments the death of Capitalism, while Dave complains that we live in an ultra-Capitalist Corpotatocracy where everybody is at the whims of big corporations. Surely, the complaints of both can't be valid at the same time, can they? But yes they can, because we live in a system that combines the worst of both worlds: just like in any true Capitalist system, everything comes with a price tag attached, but just like under Socialism, the government taxes the hell out of you and puts red tape on everything to prevent innovation and self-sufficiency.
The end result is a terrible system, where self-sufficiency is all but impossible if you don't have the starting capital, or the luck. For most people, pretty much the only viable option is becoming a part-time slave for some company in an office or a factory. Sure, if you're unlucky enough to be born with a major debilitating disability, but lucky enough to be born in a country that financially compensates you for being born unlucky, good for you; likewise, if you somehow managed to make it and become self-employed, jolly good - but for most people, it's either the plantation, or the starvation.
Have a garden at home? Jolly good! Plant some potatoes in it, and you've got the food situation sorted! Except, you still have to pay for water and electricity, so obviously, you'll have to sell some of your potatoes - but what if people don't want to buy them? Then you're screwed. No survival on zero income.
Okay, but what if you do have the starting capital, and invest it in some solar arrays, water pumps, etc. to produce your own electricity and water? Nice, but you're still not free - the government mafia will still come to collect protection money (property tax) for the "privilege" of living on their land, meaning that even if you have every single one of your needs accounted for, you still need to accrue capital to avoid having your property confiscated and you getting sent to jail.
See where I'm going with this?
If you ask me, an ideal system would be one that combines the best of both worlds rather than the worst, e.g. a night-watchman state but with UBI. If we can't have that, then please give me one of the two extremes, but not this cursed middle-ground that combines the worst of both worlds.
It's a dog-eats-dog world
All the people that Dave is complaining about are products of this terrible world I just described. A world where life itself costs money. It's a dog-eats-dog world, and people do whatever it takes to survive. I don't blame them. If my "job" was to make videos on a weekly basis and shill for some sponsor, I'd do it. I'd gladly trade my current day-job for being a part-time shill for Raid Shadow Legends, if it was an option for me. Hell, I'd even do some unspeakably unethical things, if they paid enough to ensure retirement for life within less than a year.
In a world without UBI, unless you become a welfare-rat, you either become shill for Raid Shadow Legends, you join the ranks of criminals by scamming fools out of their hard-earned cash, you become a part-time slave for some company (or God forbid, the government), or you starve to death. I guess a lucky few do make it and become succesfully self-employed, but let's face it: they're not representative.
Maybe, if we had a Universal Basic Income, and everyone was given 1000$ per month, I'd be more partial towards Dave's criticism of scammers and shills - after all, if UBI covers your needs and ensures that work is optional, content creators would have no financial incentive to shill for Raid Shadow Legends, unless the video's production was that costly (under the assumption we only talk about cost in materials and equipment, excluding the opportunity cost of filming instead of doing something potentially more profitable).
But in a world without UBI, you do what you gotta do to survive. It's a dog-eats-dog world, and I'll even forgive those who sell drugs and weapons to terrorist organizations. Anything's better than being a wageslave.
But Metalhead33, why do you hate being a wageslave so much?
Isn't it obvious? Bob Black already made many good points about why it's such a terrible thing, but if you really want to hear it from my mouth:
"Work" as we have come to understand it following the Industrial Revolution goes against human nature. Humans weren't designed to sit in an office for 8 hours, work at an assembly line for 8 hours, live in huge cities where you're lonely in spite of constantly being surrounded by people, etc. Humans were designed to hunt and farm, and live in small, culturally homogeneous villages where everyone knows everyone.
"Work" consists of more than just work, the activity you were allegedly hired to do. "Work" has all sorts of unpleasant accoutrements that you will never escape, even if you like what you have to do: the schedules, the commutes, the meetings, the bugging by coworkers and your boss, the fact that you even have a boss to begin with, etc. Before Covid-19 forced companies to allow workers to work from home (God bless Covid-19), commutes turned my de jure 8-hour workdays into de facto 12-hour workdays (obviously not compensated in any way, shape or form). It's not enough for me to just do programming and software development - I also have to talk to people I'd rather not, I also have to adjust to some "corporate culture", I also have to work on their schedule, etc. And I resent the hell out of all that.
TL;DR: If you make your hobby your job, you lose your hobby, not the other way around. The saying "If you a job you love doing, you'll never work a single day in your life" couldn't be any further from the truth. "Work" takes something you may or may not like, and turns it into a daily chore that will inevitably start wearing on you.
No matter how hard you work, the government will still steal the lion's share of your hard-earned income. Taxation is theft...
... but if they are going to steal our money, they might as well spend it on Universal Basic Income, instead of stadiums or corruption.
It drains the life out of you to the degree, that you are too tired to look for alternative sources of income.
Modern, Industrial and post-Industrial work - along with school - is one of the reasons why children are constantly exposed to the pedophile danger. Because the office - where the wageslave parents work - has to be 50 kilometres away from home, because the school has to be 50 kilometres away from home. This is highly unnatural, to say the least. Throughout much of history, children spent the lion's share of their time in the physical proximity of their parents, not 50 kilometres away from them.
It's outdated. Yes, you heard me right, human labour is outdated. Automation is improving constantly. I reckon that we already have the technology to automate away most jobs, and the only reason we haven't done so yet is to placate all the plebians who insist that everyone must suffer as much as they did.
Think about it. The last hundred years was constant technological advancement that multiplied the productivity of individual workers, yet workers didn't get any more leisure time. Quite the contrary. Why?
It gets even worse. A medieval peasant worked 150 days a year at maximum. A modern-day Hungarian schoolchild goes to school 177 days a year. An adult Hungarian aged 25 goes to work 228 days a year. We went backwards!
It is typically useless. Most people work in the service sector, which mostly consists of fake and made-up jobs invented to prevent mass unemployment. Only a minority of people work in the industrial sector, and even tinier minority in the agricultural sector. Obviously, not every service-sector job is useless, but many of them can be automated, or at the very least made more efficient.
Who the hell likes waking up early, commuting to some office or factory, working for 8 hours and then commuting home tired as hell? No one. Yet this is the reality for most people. When the day starts, you better be ready to start your part-time slavery, and you better be in pristine condition to drive your car to work and then to home.
In the words of the aforementioned Bob Black: "Free time" is only "free" insofar that it doesn't cost anything to your employers. You're basically a self-maintaining robot.
In the words of Bob Black: most deaths can be attributed to work in some way, shape or form. People who die because of traffic accidents typically either get hit by a car driven by someone going to work or someone going home from work. People contact diseases at work, and many die from said diseases. People sometimes die from stress that work no doubt contributed to. People develop addictions (alcoholism, smoking, drugs, etc.) to cope with being a wageslave stuck in a dead-end job until retirement, which will probably never come for millenials, due to the demographics, with the ageing population.
And the list goes on...
When I first started working, I resented the commutes that turned my de-jure 8-hour workdays into de facto 12-hour workdays. Then, when home office came, I resented the fact, that I still had to work 9-to-5 with no flexibility. Now I can start working almost whenever I want, as long as it's 8 hours (though occasionally, I have an emergency situation that requires my intervention even after my 8 hour-shift has ended) - yet I am still not happy. Chances are, even if they reduced those 8 hours to just 6 hours or 4 hours, I still wouldn't be happy. Why? Because I hate work itself. The very concept of work.
And this is why I defend scammers. It's a dog-eats-dog world, and anything is better than being a wageslave.
If I live to see a day, when UBI is implemented and work becomes largely optional, maybe my faith in ethics and morality will be restored. But until then, I'll be a Social Darwinist with the belief, that there is no such thing as an unethical source of income.
