I’ve always thought it would have been fun to be a confidence man.
Just for fun, not to hurt anyone or cheat anyone, but just to see if it could be done. The movie The Sting looked like a good time…except for the gunfire that seems to often accompany the life of the con man.
(maybe I’m doing it right now—I live in the Caribbean, have the complete run of a resort I couldn’t afford to visit on vacation and the company pays me to do it...and I have plenty of time to write silly blog posts..btw I also practice my golf swing with clothes on, in case you were wondering)
Anyway, the life of the con man looks like fun on the challenge scale, but in reality, it’s a bad deal. It hurts other people, both financially and intellectually. People can make more money, but how do they recover from their shame?
The other problem with the life of the con man is that you can’t really share your triumphs with anyone else. Famous con men are in prison or at the bottom of the Hudson River.
I got the Nigerian scam thing the other day. This version had the wife of a prince in the hospital. The funds for her life and death operation were frozen in the US (the Patriot Act), but she promised ten times the money in six months if I could see clear to pay for her prostate surgery.
I’ll have to think about that…
