Pay Your Taxes

-- By AlexanderUballez - 27 Feb 2009

Life inside the Con

We are the Mark

Swindlers and sellers alike overprice products that, in reality, are worth much less. We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need. Who lets the conman get away with this? We could impose regulations on selling products for more than they are worth, but it would be impossible to enforce. Legislation would be undercut unanimously. Intellectually, the free-market shoulder-devil reminds us that no one would produce anything if there were no potential for a profit. Where does this opposition come from? Why don’t we prefer a system where we were not always at risk of being swindled?

We are the Conman

To varying degrees of success, we all try to buy low and sell high. We all try to price products much higher than their actual value, especially when the products are ourselves. We pack our resume, wear the conservative tie, and submit recommendations from professors that barely know us. We all love the system because we believe we can effectively use it to create value out of thin air. What’s the problem if we all have a chance to benefit?

The con works because the Mark thinks he is the Conman

Most of us will always be the Mark in a larger con. Even when you are “winning” the interview, you are still losing the game. Sure, you got the job even though other people revised your cover letter, resume and writing sample so extensively that they are barely yours anymore. To the Firm, it really doesn’t matter. The competition was artificial, the masses of law students who sent their information on December 1st want the job simply because everyone else does. Few of us knew what working at a law firm entails at that point. Yet we want it, and we believe that the practice of overpricing ourselves is a useful tool in attaining that which we desire. But we are wrong.

In order to stop being the Mark, we must stop being the Conman

Stop trying to make profit. Stop following the rush. And stop protecting the freedom to con, because that freedom does not benefit any of us. The honest man cannot be conned because he is never trying to get something for nothing.

Life outside the Con: Addressing the Need

Instead of creating new needs, we should direct our efforts toward alleviating the many needs that already exist. We live in a society where there are enough people who legitimately need our assistance that we do not have to ask ourselves the question, "who really deserves help?" Groups that help these populations are relatively easy to find, and have broadly appealing (in theory at least) goals of correcting social problems.

However, reasonable people can differ on the best approach.

Lawyers, by nature, create a need for their services. Expertise on one side of the argument creates a need for expertise on the other side. Skilled professionals in other fields do not, through successful use of their talents, create room for more of their colleagues to argue the opposite. When doctors cure a patient, new doctors on the other side of the health issue do not materialize to undo the work. However, for every band-aid Lawyers administer, someone else is paid to take it off and put it somewhere else.

The removal is not always wrong but, frequently, the remover is the one with a larger paycheck. How do we reach those who will not voluntarily give up their greed?

Life with the Con

The godcon

The nature of the reward is what makes the godcon unique. Instead of monetary gain, prestige and power, the godconman promises eternal salvation and pleasure after death.

What if the godconman believes in the absolute necessity of God’s Grace? Instead of creating a new need, he is actually showing us the light, and sharing with us eternal salvation? Of course, we argue, he is wrong! We could never prove his belief and therefore that which he takes from his followers while on earth must be the profit of a con, regardless of its afterlife implications. But what if the only reason we consider the godcon a con is because we are so hung up on material profit that we forget the value of intangible benefits?

So what if the godconman is right about heaven? What if we could prove it? What if the salvation is of this world, and it would only take a few dollars a week to attain it?

The goodcon

The goodconman convinces us that there is something worth far more than our money and time, something that will pay off in its own special way. He shows us that there is real value in the act of giving, in personal sacrifice and esprit de corps. He moves us all forward, together, because our own personal successes are nothing without the combined efforts of the whole. The goodconman offers us something larger than ourselves, and it costs him nothing to distribute. Exclusive membership, with a small donation.

Are we really being conned when we trade our money for ideals that we believe in? What if, through service and donation, we could each play a small part in a worldwide effort to make life better for everyone? What if a government mandated service and donation, and lawyers were deployed to fight the greed of those who put themselves first?

The con is this: You probably will not receive riches beyond your wildest dreams, but you will get something much better. You will be able to reflect deeply on your life and your accomplishments with a Peace of Mind that not only did you survive, but you helped others do the same. This peace cannot be wasted on new gadgets, cannot be traded and will not accrue interest. In fact, all you can do "is lose what you do have, and that only by not passing on the wealth to others with happy heart."

• Leff's point having been to show how little actual legal or analytic value there is in the labels, your essay seems to be intended to achieve the opposite effect by throwing the label "con" around with an abandon born of the conviction that it doesn't mean anything. Perhaps that's what we ought to expect if we take our social theory from "Fight Club," but that doesn't make the reader any more persuadable. All this window-dressing surrounds what, in the end: "Pay attention to your ideals in choosing your life's work"? So much windup to throw that pitch? Where's the new idea?