Conversation

Grifts are undertheorized, and too often conflated with long cons, scams, frauds and other more blatant soft crimes. Lemme offer a definition. A grift is a scheme that profits from the existence of a real problem without actually addressing it.
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Small grifts merely exploit the problem. Big grifts perpetuate it. A grift is particularly stable because unlike a true scam it doesn’t offer decisive solutions that claim to fully solve it and can therefore proved to not work. Theranos was a scam, not a grift.
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Grifts are not frauds either. Occassionaly they may rely on misinformation, bad science or philosophy but rarely on intentionally falsified information or scholarship. Frauds involve deliberate lying that could be exposed. Grifts are built on shaky but not false ground.
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Grifts feed the urge to “do something” to stop feeling helpless in the face of hard problems. If it looks like a theater about a hard problem, and fits the “-washing” suffix, it’s a grift. Greenwashing Covidwashing Wokewashing Magawashing Security theater All grifts.
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Grifts feed what was called the politicians syllogism is Yes, Prime Minister: We must do something This is something We must do this Usually the utter mismatch between problem and supposed solution is obvious to experienced people. It is obvious how it will fail on day 1.
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But it is really hard to explain because the weakness is at the level of systems impedance mismatch. You can’t prove it can’t work. And sometimes a grift is timed right so it is active when broader forces actually cause movement on the problem, and the grifters can claim credit.
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