On Pyramids

Some months ago some friends and I went to a Brasilian rodizio here in Bologna. One my friends was quite intrigued about the decoration of the place, which was indeed unusual for the Italian standards: the restaurant itself was huge, with a water fountain in the middle, and a randomly chosen set of huge, excessively colorful paintings. Everything was bigger, brighter, fuller than the average; apart from the disturbing lack of taste, the whole place was clearly a demonstration of excessive, and most likely sudden, wealth.

I could tell that the style of the place caused an impression on my Italian friends, who are certainly not used to this "excess as power" mentality (at least for restaurant decoration). This is a very southamerican attitude, I am afraid, and thus something possibly hard to understand from the European perspective. Here's a quick hypothesis of mine: social progress in countries is such a rare thing that when you finally get something better in your life you tend to show off. So, for instance, it could occur that when someone 'progresses' (say, gets promoted in a job), she or he gets the biggest plasma TV (car, apartment, boob operation) available and invites the whole neighborhood for an (equally excessive) party to 'celebrate' the promotion. Making sure others see your new plasma TV (car, apartment, boob operation) is way more important than the money/loans involved in paying it.

In the Colombian case, the "excess as power" approach is intimately related to the drug trafficking business. Drug money has reached pretty much every single layer and structure of Colombian society; the cultural degeneration it comes with is, in my view, one of the most disturbing effects of drugs. It is often an underestimated consequence too, I think. Here I am referring to a collective mentality that pushes people to get money and power by all means. This is beyond standard capitalism in that the respect of certain "core values" (let alone laws) has been abolished. Under such a mentality, the principle of hard, legal work and education as the basis for social progress is no longer valid. Why would you care about finishing high school when someone you know offers you a job that pays much more money than the allowance your dad gives you? More dramatically, why would you study when your father went from poor and excluded to rich and socially accepted without touching a book or getting a regular job? Why would you pursue a degree on Law when a "powerful friend" can buy you a political career and put you in Congress?

This kind of ethical/moral dilemmas are increasingly common in Colombia. We're a poor country, and given the lack of opportunities, many are tempted to take the easy road. Unfortunately, this is an attitude that won't be easily erased from the collective concious of my country. In fact, if this attitude ever changes, it will take several generations of Colombians.

What would occur in the meantime? Well, things as the events I am about to outline. These days Colombia suffers (yet another) social and political crisis because of a huge financial fraud, in the form of the major pyramid scheme in years. The idea of a 'pyramid' is simple: you 'invest' some money, convince others to do the same, you obtain absurd benefits (say 150% in a month), and make sure many others join as well so to keep the scheme running. Yes, you're stealing money from others, but the trick is to climb up to the top of the pyramid and get enough idiots for the base.

Of course, this is not a sustainable business and sooner or later the scam is discovered. This is not a new thing, and one is surprised to know that people are falling again and again in the old tricks. Very shocking stories arise. The intrguiging thing that makes me wonder is why people are so naive so to join pyramid schemes and similar 'businesses'. The best answer I can come up with is this perverse mentality when it comes to 'easy money' that has been triggered, among others, by the drug dealing culture. Indeed, although many people affected in the pyramids are indeed very poor, a significant amount of people are actually well-educated ones trying to take advantage. They sell their properties and obtain bank loans so to 'feed' the pyramid, with the hope that many others will join and the absurd benefits will eventually appear.

Why would someone educated (say, a university professor with a PhD) join such a scam? Of course he does it in the understanding that the 'pyramid bank' is indeed a scam and that he's actually stealing money from others. He's just trying to get advantage of the situation. In our distorted scale of values, this is the obvious thing to do. That's the real shame: how this 'pyramidal greed' turned out the be the main thing for people, and how it changed the lives of millions for ever. Apart from the obvious financial and personal consequences (say, broken friendships, destroyed families, collective depression and increased rates of suicide attempts) there have been political consequences (the government saw the thing coming and did nothing on time to stop it), as well as social consequences, including riots all over the country and manifestations supporting the pyramid banks initiators (!). This last consequence is not because of the illegal-distorted mentality or love to money, it is simply because people are really, really stupid.

Now, to conclude, a video of a (loosely related) song that I like very much and that conveys a lot joy and happiness; perhaps the same joy and hapiness those affected by the fraud will experiment during this Christmas.