"Do You Think You Are A Moral Person?" "I'm A Business Person"
A few weeks ago a criminal scumbag named Scott Tucker was sentenced to 16 years in federal prison for operating a pay day loan business in an illegal manner. Tucker used a Native American tribe in Oklahoma as a front for his business and to avoid state regulatory measures. In the process he amassed a personal fortune of 400 million dollars and became famous within the auto racing community as an owner/driver.
There is a new Netflix documentary series that exposes Tucker's crimes and demented attitude (he thinks he is the victim) titled "Dirty Money", and it is one of the best things I've seen on 'television' in a long time.
Dirty Money is a 6 part Netflix documentary series from Alex Gibney, the guy who made "Enron , The Smartest Guys In The Room" which was a great documentary film about that landmark financial scandal, and Dirty Money is just as good and as informative. I watched 4 of the episodes and they are all outstanding exposes of greed and in some cases criminality among prominent "business people". Two of the films stood out to me "Payday" the story of how two brothers built a payday loan empire that extracted a billion dollars from poor people who got caught up in the predatory interest rates associated with payday loans, and "The Confidence Man" , a film that is the story of the shady unethical and narcissistic business practices of, you got it, Donald Trump.
The episode on Trump is excellent and quite damning of his shallow level of business and personal ethics, but "Payday" is the one that will infuriate the viewer the most. It is not only the facts , which involve people who took out 100 or 150 dollar payday loans having to pay back 6 or 7 times the original loan amount due to 'finance charges' and 'loan renewals' buried deep within the small type on the contract, and having the money taken from their direct deposit paycheck accounts without their approval, but the outrage will also stem from watching Scott Tucker, his wife, his lawyer, and his race car partner, attempt to paint themselves as the victims of federal government over reach. As the feds are confiscating his expensive sports cars and race cars from his garage, his wife looks at the camera and whines about how unfair it is for a man to lose his "whole life" because the government wants to persecute him.
Throughout the 80 minute film there is a sense of entitlement that reeks among Tucker and his family and friends. He talks about how hard he worked to build the business, and others talk about how smart he is and how his extortion of poor people for outlandish loan interest rates was just "business". Even the Native American leader who lent his tribes name to the sordid proceedings seem to be affected with a sickening greed and hubris.
Frankly, it makes you feel bad about this country, when people who exploit others come to believe it is their right to do so simply because they think they are smarter and more clever , and insistent, than their victims, and such scumbags are seen as pillars of their community and even as heroes. For example, Donald Trump. People were anxious to pay thousands of dollars to join Trump University because they thought Donald trump "cared about" them and their future , when what he really cared about was getting the chumps money.
"Dirty Money" is currently playing on Netflix.
The title of this article comes from a question posed to Scott Tucker at the end of the film "Payday" .
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Yes, I believe I am a moral person. I decide my own moral code not what some crooked politician decides it should be. No moral person would ever vote for a Democrat that believes in stealing from one and giving the proceeds from that theft to another. Looking forward to the day we get rid of immoral Obamacare.
People would borrow say, 200 dollars, from Scott Tucker's company, AMG Services. They understood that they would have to pay back, say 300 or 350. 45 dollars a week is being deducted from the account where their paycheck is deposited. 8 weeks later they get a phone call from AMG Services demanding they pay up the 350 dollars they owe. The person says "what?" ""you have been taking 45 dollars out of my check every week to pay off that loan" AMG says, "no, all you have been doing is paying the interest rate and the new fees. The entire loan was due two weeks after you took it out, and since then you have been getting new fees and finance charges."
The scumbag who ran this operation will now spend the next 16 years in prison, and had all his earthly possessions confiscated to repay his victims. He should have got a life sentence.
Drop the libertarian nonsense because taxes aren't theft.
The "Love Of" Money is the root of all evil...
As I was watching this film "Payday" I began to feel very uneasy. Here were people who were by any definition greedy and immoral attempting to defend themselves and call themselves "victims" solely because they think that saying something is "business" makes it all ok. We have failed as a society to set the right boundaries for behavior.
I’m going to watch the Netflix series. The payday loan business is probably the most corrupt and unethical business model ever developed. Certain people are drawn to it, particularly those with addictive behaviors. A reason to not have to wait until payday is a powerful tool in the hands of an addict.
I once knew someone who was a high functioning drug addict. She had a good paying job, showed up for work, performed her job duties well - but what nobody knew was that she had a raging cocaine problem. When she burned through her paycheck, she started supplementing her habit with money from payday loans. Obviously, this ended in disaster. I’m sure there are a million instances of the same disaster occuring via gambling, strip clubs, or similar vices.
when people try and offer me advice,
I tell them,
no thanks, I have enuff already
Business people are no different than any other type of human, there are good and bad.
Business and morality are somewhat similar to comparing religion and science, it takes walking a fine line in order to walk hand and hand with the two.
It is curious that you would make such a comment on this thread.
The individual who is going to prison for 16 years CANNOT answer the question "do you think you are a moral person?", because , perhaps, he knows this is his one and only shot to justify himself on camera anymore and he doesn't want to be seen as laughably disingenuous, so he says "I'm a business person", intending it to affirm that morality doesn't matter.
In other words, he is saying that "business people" are not like everyone else.
To him perhaps, as I said there is good and bad in everyone.
Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, etc. slowly giving a portion of their fortunes away does not indicate a lack of morality on their parts. To concentrate on what one imbecile thinks is a dis-service to others.