re: #232 Birth Control Works

PEOPLE are all susceptible to grifters. Some more than others. It is not their fault.

Why Americans Get Conned Again and Again

While Balleisen’s text is often rollicking and engaging, it leads readers to a rather bleak conclusion: Americans don’t really want cheaters and con artists punished, or driven out of national institutions. On the contrary, the historical record Balleisen reviews suggests that many Americans actually admire con artists and seek to emulate them.

Fraud is a phenomenon that knows no borders, but American exceptionalism, as Balleisen shows, includes a special vulnerability to fraudsters and con artists. As he points out, “Many of the world’s most expensive and ambitious frauds have occurred in America” because “openness to innovation has always meant openness to creative deception.”

I think there’s a lot of truth to this. Canadians aren’t immune to cons, for example, but because our national character tends to be a bit more circumspect and cautious compared to the US, we’re less vulnerable to bombastic feel-good dumbfuckery.