Exploitation
I’ve begun to realize over the past few weeks that modern American society is built upon the exploitation. Here’s why:
As I was driving to Fort Worth a few weeks ago, I passed a number of billboards for the Texas Lottery. Of course, lottery billboards are nothing new, but instead of proclaiming this weeks’ grand total or mentioning how much money you could win by scratching off some metal from a piece of paper, it announced that the Lottery had pumped over nine billion dollars into Texas education projects. I passed it, and thought, “That’s nice…the Lottery has paid $9 billion to help kids learn to read and write.” But then I thought, “What an odd way to advertise a lottery.”
In reality, what the billboard said was this: “The Texas Lottery is a funnel organization, taking your money and pumping it into schools, while cleverly giving a small percentage back to those who paying for the program.” Some genius figured out that they could snooker a large group of people into paying a voluntary tax with a small percentage of getting rich. If you think about it, it’s a genuinely brilliant plan. Except that it exploits mainly poor people who are looking for a way to get rich quick.
If you consider the stories associated with the Lottery, it seems like a mixed bag. I mean, every time someone wins $200 million plus, they make the evening news with a larger-than-life check and a huge grin on their face. It seems like all smiles. But the statistics tell a different story: most of the people who win the lottery go broke or lose their friends. They go broke because they don’t know how to deal with the money. Or they lose their friends because they were too generous. Or maybe they weren’t generous enough. Other families are torn apart and some lose their lives because of foolish choices. Did the Lottery unilaterally cause these events? Probably not, but if you want to look at an interesting chain of events beginning at one point, then you could peg it on the Lottery. And in spite of the wonderful thoughts of millions of dollars, it just hasn’t been a helpful for those who have played and those who have won.
So what is the lottery then? It’s a state-sponsored exploitation of poor or ignorant people who dream to get rich. This means that our very government is in the business of exploitation.
The old adage goes, “Misery loves company,” and I say that miserable actions also love company. And by no means is the government unique in their targeted exploitation of people.
Every day I stop by my mailbox on my way home from work, and every day I walk away with another set of envelopes, addressed to everyone from Andrew to Russell, to medical and to Mrs. Smithson. And who are these envelopes from? American Express, Capital One, Chase, MBNA (now Bank of America) and more. I receive an average of 12 credit card solicitations on a weekly basis.
I usually wonder how they can afford to constantly send the same invitations over and over and over. I mean, how can this be cost affective? But then again, I assume that the world is like me, and judging by the sheer volume of credit card crap, the world does not operate in the same manner as I do. The constant salvo of advertisements tells me that they are successful in generating revenue. So how do credit card companies make money?
Every time you use your credit card, Visa / Mastercard / Amex gets a percentage of the sale plus a small transaction fee. This amount is split up between the said company and the issuing company, in many cases, the companies listed in the paragraph above. In effect, if I spend $1,000, the financial institutions pocket $20-$30, depending on various factors. Some credit cards offer things like Cash Back or a Reward Program, usually about 1% of your purchases. This is a further incentive: “Hey, you’re already spending a bunch of money, so you might as well get 1% back!!!!” It seems like a generous move, doesn’t it?
But how do these companies actually make their money? I’m sure we’ve all watched Dateline and seen the stories of people who have thousands of dollars of credit card debt, stuck in an eddy of 15%-20% interest rates, and minimum payments that will move them out of debt in only 30 years. And all the while, they pay back their actual debt over and over because of this exorbitant and exploitative policy.
And who do credit card companies target? Everyone, really, starting with college students who dream of nice things but haven’t yet developed the means to pay for this. So you convince a bunch of poor students to buy a bunch of stuff, put it on the credit card, and worry about it later. It’s genius. You’ve just created a market for yourself for the next 30+ years. You build a little debt, and when you really need something, you have to use your credit card because that’s the only option.
It’s not the credit card industry’s fault that people are foolish and can easily be connived into doing dumb things, but I do question the validity of an industry that is totally based on exploiting people who obviously lack the faculties to make good decisions.
Where is the collective societal moral outrage over these two things?
Of course, these aren’t the only ways that business and government exploits people… I can think of several more offhand: sports ticket prices and apparel, fashion magazines, movies, television, among many others.
So why did I write this epic? As I looked around, I was sickened at this repeated and obvious misuse of people, and I wondered, “Does anyone else see this?” And I guess more importantly, I wonder, “Does anyone else care?”
Comments
Ryan Said: (September 17, 2006 03:23 PM)
This just goes to show how fortunate a person is if they succeed in avoiding these types of exploitation. I recently heard about how you can set up a credit card for your kid when they're little, so that by the time they're 20, they have good credit. I see that ending not well for most people for the same reasons you describe.