It's a SCAM Bro. Or is it?

Try spending a week on any social media without hearing these words. "It's a SCAM bro". The only difference is ___ is a SCAM. The ___ can be filled depending on the echo chambers you subscribe to.

What is a scam? Let's take a look at what makes up 99% of these "SCAM bro" comments

Crypto? Hell YES CRYPTO IS A SCAM BROOOO

NFTs? NFTs are such SCAM BROOOOO

Fiat Currency? GOVT MONEY is MEME and SCAM BRO

Religion? STORIES MADE UP BY HUMANS TO CONTROL OTHER HUMANS. SCAM BROOOO

Metaverse? ZUCKERBERG sucks bro. Metaverse is such a scam. Marketing BS.

VR? VR is a TV strapped to your face bro. Such SCAM. Can't move without motion sickness bro.

Let's go to even more taboo ones:

Global Warming? Democracy? Gender? Geography? Self-Help? Psychology?

The list goes on. The amount of tribalism between communities is astounding. What makes something NOT a scam and real?

Is it being able to touch something with your hands? Is it following some arbitrary law of physics? What makes something a SCAM and not SCAM. Bro?

Enough with meme language. We live in strange times, to say the least as reality seems to be stranger than fiction. One can argue this was always the case at all times in history but that is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that 99% of the things around us that shape our life could fit into the "SCAM" bro narrative.

What's funny to me is that people who call things scams seem to lack any sense of consistency. So if you are someone who hasn't subscribed to any ideology whatsoever and is looking for rational explanations for things, how do you navigate this space?

The trick is simple: "Compared to what?"

Ask that question every time someone says something is a scam.

Look for what it is that people think is real. Ask the person who calls things scams to define what they think is real. Watch them stare at you as you asked them for their kidney.

Let's take an example of something that is very prominent in our society.

Diamonds.

Are Diamonds a scam? Of course NOT.

But wait.

Let's look at the origin story of diamonds.

Diamonds and De Beers corporation.

De Beers is known for largely controlling the $80 billion diamond industry, creating artificial scarcity in diamonds to drive up prices and control the sense of a diamond's allure. Before 1870, diamonds were very rare. They typically ended up in a crown or a royal necklace of some royal king or queen but that is pretty much it. It all changed in 1870 when large deposits of diamonds were discovered in Kimberley, South Africa. Then what? Demand and Supply. Too much supply, not enough demand. Prices started dropping like crazy.

Then came Cecil Rhodes who started buying every diamond mine he could find and eventually formed the De Beers company. De Beers basically tried to own every single mine, not just that they bought up the entire supply from the mines they didn't own building one big monopoly of diamonds. So in simple terms, they created an artificial scarcity and marketed the hell out of it, as a symbol of love convincing two generations that this piece of rock that can be created easily in labs is valuable and worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. Every generation that came after that accepted it as the gospel without questioning it. What else does artificial scarcity remind you of? Crypto and NFTs. Fast forward 2 generations they will look at them just like we look at diamonds.

So the next time when someone says "It's a SCAM bro",

ask them "Sure, but what's real?"