There’s an old Carfax commercial where a nice grandpa needs to buy a safe car for his grand kids. He tells the used car salesman that safety is his #1 concern and the salesman recommends a used green Dodge Caravan with missing side door panels . Gramps takes the salesman’s word for it and buys the car only to pull over minutes later after the minivan starts to shake violently from a loose wheel. As the van is getting towed away to get repaired, the tow truck driver suggests that grandpa get a Carfax report.
Insurance and “protection” is the world’s largest fear mongering industry. People like my mother who incessantly worry over everything are willing to get ripped off in order to buy a peace of mind. When a tall black man from Allstate goes on TV, cites some statistic about how 8100 sons a year die from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome and asks if you are in good hands, my mom immediately starts fearing for the future and buys life insurance for a perfectly healthy son.
Call my cynical, but every time I’m told to give my time or money for some hypothetical better future or to prevent some hypothetical future disaster, my BS-meter goes off immediately.
The two most effective ways to get people to willingly part with their time or money is to prey on their hopes or fears.
There are examples of hope mongering everywhere, but the most applicable to the tech/design industry is the omnipresent spec work guy and stock option/equity guy. The spec work guy is the one that’s always saying, “Hey do this gig for me for free or cheap and I’ll hook you up with twenty HUGE BUDGET projects in the future, double your client roster, and even get you a meeting with Steve Jobs himself.” The stock option/equity guy is the one that’s habitually looking for a “partner” to “execute” his “genius” idea that will compete in a $16.2bil market. Stock option/equity guy is basically offering you the opportunity to be graced with his amazing idea and in return for doing all his work for free you’ll get 8% of all future potential profits.
No self respecting professional should be dragged into either of these schemes. Your portfolio of successful work is an indication of what you are capable of, you don’t need to do any spec work to prove yourself. The amount of equity you own in a partnership should be based on the percentage of work you do. “Amazing” ideas are a dime a dozen and are actually worthless if implemented horribly, so I would actually weigh execution and implementation heavier than coming up with the idea. You can always just take an established idea (like web e-mail) and come up with a better version (like GMail), effectively bypassing stock option/equity guy.
Other examples of hope or fear mongering:
- Bernie Madoff - Everyone involved knew that consistent 15% returns are impossible, but they all hoped that the dream would never end.
- The Lottery - The classic example of buying hope. For only $1, you can dream of a life full of material goods.
- The News - There are two kinds of news stories: ones that makes you feel all happy on the inside and ones that make you fearful of criminals, police, a neighborhood, human nature, or mother nature.
- Obama - ’nuff said. He is literally Mr. Hope.
- George W. Bush - Instilled fear into the public by saying, “We must do everything possible to prevent another attack on American soil.” Only one in many “giving up your freedoms in return for protection” fear tactic moments in history.
- Now that I think about it ALL Politics are based on hope or fear. Hope for a brighter future if you vote for Candidate A and fear for increased crime, crushing taxes, deteriorating schools, and a terrorist attack if you vote for Candidate B.
Ultimately the easiest situation where you can evaluate if a transaction is fair is when you pay for something now and get something now. All in the present tense. You are not buying something in the future or protection from something in the future. Figuring out how much something is worth in the future is pretty hard. Unless you own a DeLorean and have access to 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.
I like this article; I definitely get hope mongered more than fear mongered.
There’s an old Carfax commercial where a nice grandpa needs to buy a safe car for his grand kids.
You should probably add higher education to that list of hope + fear mongering with their hypothetical better future + absolute disaster if you don’t attend.