Hoo boy. I've got a lot of thoughts on the subject, which I can hopefully organize well enough to be edifying:
1. As a 43-year-old financial professional, I think that people like me have a modest social obligation to engage with scammers. The young and elderly tend to be naive or cognitively declining, respectively, and people in other occupations don't always have an instinctive feel for what is and isn't a normal business transaction. I don't consider the obligation unlimited, obviously, but sometimes the cost/benefit is pretty good.
To give two specific examples: first, I'm the target of direct deposit scams (wherein the scammer impersonates an employee of a company and asks someone with access to that company's payroll to change their direct deposit information, and thus redirect the real employee's next paycheck). I have a quick reply to obtain the scammer's bank information, which I then forward to their financial institution with a request to freeze the account. All told, this takes less than 30 seconds of my time and forces the scammer to set up a new bank account.
Second, fake law enforcement callers can be kept on the phone for a surprisingly long time by confirming basic details like my address and phone number - those are effectively public records and there's no security risk in acknowledging them - and then asking for as much detail as possible about the supposed crime that I've committed. I have to stay on the phone too, of course, but that's less of a cost when I'm driving / sitting in an airport as opposed to productively working in my office.
2. /r/scams is a great resource, although sometimes the people there don't have compassion for a scam victim who is slow to acknowledge the existence of a scam.
3. US federal law enforcement superficially cares about the issue - for example, the FBI has a dedicated website for internet crime at https://www.ic3.gov/ - but they will never be able to engage with a scammer in real time or give timely feedback that the complaint filed with them was worth the time and effort it took to file. I think there's an opportunity for state attorneys general to make a name for themselves by taking on scammers; they obviously will have victims in their state who give them jurisdiction, and their offices are smaller and can be more nimble in their response.
3. Hearing Indian English is a major red flag that the person's calling to scam (or at best, to sell a legal-but-dubiously-valuable service), which is obviously unfortunate for the many law-abiding Indians. Jacobin had a great piece on this a few months ago: https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-empire-calls-back
4. I'm hopeful that the antitrust revival leads to better service from Amazon and the like. Competitive businesses have a hard time getting away with things like you've cited, although I agree that there's been a decline in service quality everywhere in America over the past few years.
5. Last but not least: American scam victims might well be gullible, greedy, or dumb, but we need to think of them as *our* gullible, greedy, dumb family, neighbors, and countrymen, and deserving of our loyalty on that basis.
Good stuff. Thank you. The last point - yes. There's something very misanthropic about the idea that I'm fine because I'm smart and responsible, and the most vulnerable people deserve no protection or even deserve to be fleeced. I didn't mention it but yeah I've lightly followed the antitrust stuff, and I think that would probably be good.
This piece does a great job of articulating a feeing I encountered at an airport this weekend.
My wife and I returned from our honeymoon in Costa Rica on Saturday. Along with (or perhaps because of) being an incredibly beautiful, sustainable country in every conceivable way, the population is almost jarringly friendly. We were running a bit late for our flight, and the agents immediately sensed that and escorted us to the front of all the airport queues. Nobody asked questions, nobody got angry that we were cutting, nobody gave us dirty looks. It was truly just people helping people, with the understanding that we would all get where we were going either way.
Landing in Fort Lauderdale was a dystopian hellscape. TSA agents screaming angrily at lines of tired, worried customers. Customers in the face of TSA agents screaming at them. Every employee we talked to gave us a different or unhelpful answer, or barely looked up from their phones. No compassion, no acknowledgement of our shared reality or desire to improve it.
I mused aloud in the passport line how everyone in this country seemed so miserable. Everyone around me (who had also just returned from Costa Rica) instantly agreed, and one insightful traveler noted that the TSA agents are reflecting the energy of the anxious crowd, but the crowd is mostly anxious because it feels like you are in it alone and nobody who is ostensibly there to help you cares to do so.
Apologies for the rambling post here, but you really hit on something I felt very acutely. It doesn't have to be this way; in fact it would be easier and more efficient if it were not.
Agree. Americans are just a deeply unhappy population these days. Is this because things around us seem to be constantly falling apart (everything from our politics to our clothes that don't last more than 4 washes), or is everything falling apart because we are so unhappy? It's a vicious circle either way.
I don't think that we as a society have truly come to grips with how much Covid broke things. We want to pretend everything went back to "normal" in the summer of 2022 or so, and yet for many people, including me not that much changed. Sure, I can go to a restaurant without a huge ordeal, but I still work from home 90% of the time, still have most non-family communications via computer and still have to make a reservation for most things that pre-covid I could just wake up in the morning and randomly go do without a plan. Kids are still dealing with virtual learning on snow days. Stores have remained all virtual or permanently shut down. And those things may not be exactly what Addison is writing about but I think they all tie together to contribute to an overwhelming feeling of "wrongness" that alot of us have. That then leaves us vulnerable to scammers. Because in a world that went so unbelievably sideways in March of 2020, is it so naive to believe the worst when you get a phone call in the middle of the day saying your grandson has been kidnapped or that the IRS is going to arrest you?
Yes. 100%. The last four years have given middle- and upper-middle-class Americans a taste of what collapse might look like. I have another explicitly COVID-related piece coming out soon, and I basically say the pandemic was like a test, and we failed it.
Excuse me if I don't see this example as painting Costa Rica (or yourself, for that matter) in as favorable a light as you do. You were late, which was your fault, and so you prevailed on (likely armed) agents of the state to impose on every other traveler for your benefit, and to bail you out? Repugnant.
How do you know none of them missed their flight because of you? You don't. And when they didn't protest, you saw this as indicative of their good will? I think it's more indicative of their slavishness. But you're the squeaky wheel that got the grease, good for you.
I agree flying from American airports can be a massive pain (though I've had as many good experiences as bad [shout out to Long Beach Airport!], and equally bad experiences in foreign airports too). But, as everyone should know by now, TSA achieves nothing in terms of safety and only magnifies the stress of traveling. Abolishing the TSA would be a great first step to making everyone's travel in the US more like Costa Rica.
To be extremely clear: We did NOT request to be skipped to the front of any lines, because I am not the type of person who would do something like that for the exact reasons you mentioned. We had to take a small propeller plane from another part of the country to the main airport, and that was late through no fault of our own. We likely would have been fine without any "slavishness". However, the staff clearly saw the anxiety on my wife's face and came to us asking if we needed help; looked at our passes; and said "Follow me". At no point did we ever request special treatment.
I'm a fraud investigator for a large financial institution and every word of this rings true. I have seen clients of every level of sophistication get taken in. Some are too generous. Some are being threatened with phantom legal action like the woman in the article. Some are the stereotypical lonely person who thinks they're getting a shot at romance. We all want to think we're too smart to get conned, but even that is something the con artists count on. I'm not too proud to admit that I lost a couple hundred bucks to a guy who claimed he could fix my dented fender in the parking lot at a gas station with the tools in his trunk. I play it back and boy did he do a good job. Parked me in before selling me his pitch so I couldn't just leave, had a convincing set of tools, and started working before I could even say "yes" or "no" so I'd feel obligated to let him finish. At that point I felt obligated to pay him even though he ended up just making the problem worse and I had to drop a grand at a real body shop. I felt like an a-hole for a week once I figured it out.
Great comment, thank you! I had a guy offer me that once, declined (I think the damaged part was plastic which they can't even fix if they're good, I don't think). Basically, ignore everything.
Consumer advocacy isn’t much help in a society in which everyone is advocating that we consume more and focus on getting the lowest cost at any cost. I sometimes think I would be healthier and happier if I stretch buy nothing day to cover as much of the year as possible. But when I do buy something, I now try to buying locally from a real person at a physical location. It becomes a social interaction as much as a commercial transaction.
I mean consumer advocacy in the Ralph Nader sense - the rights of consumers in a civic sense - but yeah, it is nice to support businesses where you actually interact with real people. I use Amazon/Walmart/etc., but they don't satisfy every need and when something goes wrong it's not always the most convenient to right it.
I had a run-in with a similar caller several years ago, fortunately I'm a lawyer and figured it out before I bought any gift cards though. I did give away my SSN, which was unfortunate but I've not had any repercussions. Just a few months ago, I got an email from my office administrator asking about a change to my direct deposit, which was also fake.
These are cumbersome and a pain in the ass, but not really that threatening. Matt Yglesias, on the subject of the obesity epidemic (I'm 280 lbs, btw), is of the opinion that it represents our experiencing some downside from historically high levels of prosperity and freedom. I agree. When the poorest people are the fattest, I'd say it's a reasonably good problem to have.
I'd say something similar about scams. These are obviously enabled by new technology, and every technology has the potential for misuse, and of course illegal activity that victimizes others can't be tolerated. But the vast majority of technologies are put to good and pro-social uses. Frequently, there is an adjustment period where things seem to (or may actually be) getting worse faster than they're getting better. This period brings out everyone's inner Luddite, and things get ugly fast, with everyone confidently predicting that this time, no for real, technology and freedom are going to be bad.
For a blog that is supposedly about how urbanism is not an 'eat your vegetables' policy prescription, I perceive a great fear of freedom from its content. The hilariously wide-of-the-mark swipe at Amazon is case in point. Amazon has created enormous surplus for essentially all of humanity. There is, as usual, some downside. There are scammers on Amazon, your local mom-and-pop that charges you 120% of what something is worth will go out of business, there are more delivery trucks on the road, Amazon might themselves screw you if you sell on the platform, etc. But more people have access to more things for a lower price and quicker than ever before, which raises their standard of living and something unquestionably to be celebrated.
The fact that illegal items like emulators and ROM hacks of Pokemon games are available is not something I would really consider downside (it's a case-by-case basis), even if some of those illegal items don't work as described (this is a risk, but like all risks, can be managed). Nintendo makes a great product, far better than most video game companies, but their business practices leave something to be desired. Nintendo will charge you full price for every one of its products, forever, until they stop making them and you can't have them for any price. Legit, refurbished, Game Boy Colors go for $100+ on Amazon, and legit copies of the original Pokemon game go for about the same. Or, you can get a 3DS for $300 and pay $154 for the 'renewed' version of Pokemon Red and Blue for the 3DS. That's absolutely insane (part of it is that the originals are becoming collectors items, which is fine).
But if I'm not a collector, and just want to play the game, you can bet I'm getting an emulator and emulating them. I did, after all, own a Game Boy Color and copies of most of the early Pokemon games. It would be great if I could play this game in a manner sanctioned by Nintendo for a reasonable price, under reasonable circumstances, and with a reasonable amount of effort. But that's not the case, and the reason it's not the case is that they've made it so for their own (bad) reasons.
Think of Nintendo like a luxury goods company, but in some ways worse. I recently read an interesting article on Substack about luxury accessory manufacturer Hermes, and I was absolutely disgusted by their elitist business practices (which is, of course, normal in their end of the market, which doesn't make it better, just more understandable). But at the end of the day, the items they sell function like any other. You can put your wallet and phone in a Kelly bag or in a grocery bag, and the same utility is achieved. It's not like Hermes can deny to ordinary people the ability to carry around their things, which means that it's all essentially fun and games. Other than in the literal sense of course, that's not true of video games. There's only one Pokemon Red and Blue.
I'm reminded of a comment I wanted to make on this blog's even-more-tyrannical take on speed governors for vehicles. Of course violations of the speed limit and traffic laws are victimless crimes, unless there is actually a victim. I don't obey traffic laws. I run through red lights, don't stop at stop signs, drive 90 mph. This is because I have places to be and don't feel like spending all my time on the road.
Fortunately, because I have access to reason and agency, I only do these things when it is safe to do so, and I've never harmed another person by doing any of these things. If I did, I'd be liable civilly and criminally. That's completely fair. My freedom is obviously not worth other people's lives. But when I'm at a deserted intersection and the light is red, I'm going through it.
Traffic laws are designed to enact and serve a public policy: road safety. I agree with that. It should be safe to drive and for pedestrians and bikes to use the road as well. But in a sane world, these laws do not exist independent of that policy. If following a traffic law does not enhance safety, and breaking the traffic law does not diminish safety, it may as well not exist. I know when this is the case, and am able to distinguish one case from another. If you can't, won't, or don't trust yourself to do so, fair enough, follow the rule. But just because your morality and agency are stunted does not mean that mine is, or that I think I should be able to impose myself on others.
Might it be chaos if everyone thought like I did? Probably. Might we all have a healthier relationship to road safety if we understood that the responsibility of operating a vehicle safely is one every motorist shares, and can't be outsourced to a legislature? Maybe. But fortunately, most people are subservient and don't think twice about all the ways their freedom is being chipped away every single day. This leaves non-compliance as essentially the only option, but paradoxically also makes room for those of us with agency to actually take back some measure of what we've lost. You can call me a free rider if you want, and in practice, it might even be accurate. But I'm not special. Anyone can do the same, and I encourage it.
The fact that you think you have the right to impose your crabby small-mindedness on me in this fashion (speed governors) is repugnant. I'm sure we'll all do well in the bright future where everything not mandatory in the mind of a village gossip is forbidden.
I've spoken in the past in the comments of this 'stack about my love for riding illegal trails on my bikes. Just on Saturday, I was at Shell Ridge in Walnut Creek, and lo and behold, the hikers and equestrians are hogging all the great singletrack for themselves! Same there as it is everywhere. I encountered three other people on these no-bike trails, and we shared the trail just as amicably there as on the bike-legal trails. I even got yelled at by a park ranger. I just rode away, where his little truckster couldn't follow.
Everywhere I go on my bike, railings and fences are going up, blocking off great fun lines and reminding everyone that big brother's here to keep you and your precious little body safe. I take responsibility for my own safety. I wear a helmet always, and pads when I feel the need. I decide whether I have the skill to ride a feature or not. When I crash, I do it so that I don't need a helicopter or an ambulance (yes, safe crashing is a skill, and crashing can be entirely eliminated). When my bike breaks, I hike it out. I don't impose on other people, and sure as hell don't let them impose on me, if I can possibly help it.
Stop worrying about what your neighbor is doing. Close the blinds. Mind your own fucking business.
Lot of missing the point here but my problem isn't with emulators - you wanna download ROMs, knock yourself out. My issue is a supposedly reliable, professional company selling this obviously counterfeit/gray market junk. To me that calls into question everything about the company's professionalism and its willingness or ability to police its own sales catalog.
What you call "freedom" or "taking responsibility for yourself" is fine for *you*, but no, it is false that there's no victim until there's a victim. When there's a victim, it's too late. There's no way to interpret what you're saying except that (other people's) lives are the collateral damage in (you and people you see as your own's) exercise of freedom. There's a difference between not wearing a seatbelt and doing something inherently risky with a vehicle on the public roads. Nobody *thinks* they're a bad driver and the vast majority of pedestrian and traffic fatalities are not intentional/murder, yet somehow 40,000 people a year keep dying.
Hoo boy. I've got a lot of thoughts on the subject, which I can hopefully organize well enough to be edifying:
1. As a 43-year-old financial professional, I think that people like me have a modest social obligation to engage with scammers. The young and elderly tend to be naive or cognitively declining, respectively, and people in other occupations don't always have an instinctive feel for what is and isn't a normal business transaction. I don't consider the obligation unlimited, obviously, but sometimes the cost/benefit is pretty good.
To give two specific examples: first, I'm the target of direct deposit scams (wherein the scammer impersonates an employee of a company and asks someone with access to that company's payroll to change their direct deposit information, and thus redirect the real employee's next paycheck). I have a quick reply to obtain the scammer's bank information, which I then forward to their financial institution with a request to freeze the account. All told, this takes less than 30 seconds of my time and forces the scammer to set up a new bank account.
Second, fake law enforcement callers can be kept on the phone for a surprisingly long time by confirming basic details like my address and phone number - those are effectively public records and there's no security risk in acknowledging them - and then asking for as much detail as possible about the supposed crime that I've committed. I have to stay on the phone too, of course, but that's less of a cost when I'm driving / sitting in an airport as opposed to productively working in my office.
2. /r/scams is a great resource, although sometimes the people there don't have compassion for a scam victim who is slow to acknowledge the existence of a scam.
3. US federal law enforcement superficially cares about the issue - for example, the FBI has a dedicated website for internet crime at https://www.ic3.gov/ - but they will never be able to engage with a scammer in real time or give timely feedback that the complaint filed with them was worth the time and effort it took to file. I think there's an opportunity for state attorneys general to make a name for themselves by taking on scammers; they obviously will have victims in their state who give them jurisdiction, and their offices are smaller and can be more nimble in their response.
3. Hearing Indian English is a major red flag that the person's calling to scam (or at best, to sell a legal-but-dubiously-valuable service), which is obviously unfortunate for the many law-abiding Indians. Jacobin had a great piece on this a few months ago: https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-empire-calls-back
4. I'm hopeful that the antitrust revival leads to better service from Amazon and the like. Competitive businesses have a hard time getting away with things like you've cited, although I agree that there's been a decline in service quality everywhere in America over the past few years.
5. Last but not least: American scam victims might well be gullible, greedy, or dumb, but we need to think of them as *our* gullible, greedy, dumb family, neighbors, and countrymen, and deserving of our loyalty on that basis.
Good stuff. Thank you. The last point - yes. There's something very misanthropic about the idea that I'm fine because I'm smart and responsible, and the most vulnerable people deserve no protection or even deserve to be fleeced. I didn't mention it but yeah I've lightly followed the antitrust stuff, and I think that would probably be good.
This piece does a great job of articulating a feeing I encountered at an airport this weekend.
My wife and I returned from our honeymoon in Costa Rica on Saturday. Along with (or perhaps because of) being an incredibly beautiful, sustainable country in every conceivable way, the population is almost jarringly friendly. We were running a bit late for our flight, and the agents immediately sensed that and escorted us to the front of all the airport queues. Nobody asked questions, nobody got angry that we were cutting, nobody gave us dirty looks. It was truly just people helping people, with the understanding that we would all get where we were going either way.
Landing in Fort Lauderdale was a dystopian hellscape. TSA agents screaming angrily at lines of tired, worried customers. Customers in the face of TSA agents screaming at them. Every employee we talked to gave us a different or unhelpful answer, or barely looked up from their phones. No compassion, no acknowledgement of our shared reality or desire to improve it.
I mused aloud in the passport line how everyone in this country seemed so miserable. Everyone around me (who had also just returned from Costa Rica) instantly agreed, and one insightful traveler noted that the TSA agents are reflecting the energy of the anxious crowd, but the crowd is mostly anxious because it feels like you are in it alone and nobody who is ostensibly there to help you cares to do so.
Apologies for the rambling post here, but you really hit on something I felt very acutely. It doesn't have to be this way; in fact it would be easier and more efficient if it were not.
No don't apologize at all - I like these kinds of comments. Thank you!
Agree. Americans are just a deeply unhappy population these days. Is this because things around us seem to be constantly falling apart (everything from our politics to our clothes that don't last more than 4 washes), or is everything falling apart because we are so unhappy? It's a vicious circle either way.
I don't think that we as a society have truly come to grips with how much Covid broke things. We want to pretend everything went back to "normal" in the summer of 2022 or so, and yet for many people, including me not that much changed. Sure, I can go to a restaurant without a huge ordeal, but I still work from home 90% of the time, still have most non-family communications via computer and still have to make a reservation for most things that pre-covid I could just wake up in the morning and randomly go do without a plan. Kids are still dealing with virtual learning on snow days. Stores have remained all virtual or permanently shut down. And those things may not be exactly what Addison is writing about but I think they all tie together to contribute to an overwhelming feeling of "wrongness" that alot of us have. That then leaves us vulnerable to scammers. Because in a world that went so unbelievably sideways in March of 2020, is it so naive to believe the worst when you get a phone call in the middle of the day saying your grandson has been kidnapped or that the IRS is going to arrest you?
Yes. 100%. The last four years have given middle- and upper-middle-class Americans a taste of what collapse might look like. I have another explicitly COVID-related piece coming out soon, and I basically say the pandemic was like a test, and we failed it.
Excuse me if I don't see this example as painting Costa Rica (or yourself, for that matter) in as favorable a light as you do. You were late, which was your fault, and so you prevailed on (likely armed) agents of the state to impose on every other traveler for your benefit, and to bail you out? Repugnant.
How do you know none of them missed their flight because of you? You don't. And when they didn't protest, you saw this as indicative of their good will? I think it's more indicative of their slavishness. But you're the squeaky wheel that got the grease, good for you.
I agree flying from American airports can be a massive pain (though I've had as many good experiences as bad [shout out to Long Beach Airport!], and equally bad experiences in foreign airports too). But, as everyone should know by now, TSA achieves nothing in terms of safety and only magnifies the stress of traveling. Abolishing the TSA would be a great first step to making everyone's travel in the US more like Costa Rica.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-security
To be extremely clear: We did NOT request to be skipped to the front of any lines, because I am not the type of person who would do something like that for the exact reasons you mentioned. We had to take a small propeller plane from another part of the country to the main airport, and that was late through no fault of our own. We likely would have been fine without any "slavishness". However, the staff clearly saw the anxiety on my wife's face and came to us asking if we needed help; looked at our passes; and said "Follow me". At no point did we ever request special treatment.
I'm a fraud investigator for a large financial institution and every word of this rings true. I have seen clients of every level of sophistication get taken in. Some are too generous. Some are being threatened with phantom legal action like the woman in the article. Some are the stereotypical lonely person who thinks they're getting a shot at romance. We all want to think we're too smart to get conned, but even that is something the con artists count on. I'm not too proud to admit that I lost a couple hundred bucks to a guy who claimed he could fix my dented fender in the parking lot at a gas station with the tools in his trunk. I play it back and boy did he do a good job. Parked me in before selling me his pitch so I couldn't just leave, had a convincing set of tools, and started working before I could even say "yes" or "no" so I'd feel obligated to let him finish. At that point I felt obligated to pay him even though he ended up just making the problem worse and I had to drop a grand at a real body shop. I felt like an a-hole for a week once I figured it out.
Great comment, thank you! I had a guy offer me that once, declined (I think the damaged part was plastic which they can't even fix if they're good, I don't think). Basically, ignore everything.
Consumer advocacy isn’t much help in a society in which everyone is advocating that we consume more and focus on getting the lowest cost at any cost. I sometimes think I would be healthier and happier if I stretch buy nothing day to cover as much of the year as possible. But when I do buy something, I now try to buying locally from a real person at a physical location. It becomes a social interaction as much as a commercial transaction.
I mean consumer advocacy in the Ralph Nader sense - the rights of consumers in a civic sense - but yeah, it is nice to support businesses where you actually interact with real people. I use Amazon/Walmart/etc., but they don't satisfy every need and when something goes wrong it's not always the most convenient to right it.
I had a run-in with a similar caller several years ago, fortunately I'm a lawyer and figured it out before I bought any gift cards though. I did give away my SSN, which was unfortunate but I've not had any repercussions. Just a few months ago, I got an email from my office administrator asking about a change to my direct deposit, which was also fake.
These are cumbersome and a pain in the ass, but not really that threatening. Matt Yglesias, on the subject of the obesity epidemic (I'm 280 lbs, btw), is of the opinion that it represents our experiencing some downside from historically high levels of prosperity and freedom. I agree. When the poorest people are the fattest, I'd say it's a reasonably good problem to have.
I'd say something similar about scams. These are obviously enabled by new technology, and every technology has the potential for misuse, and of course illegal activity that victimizes others can't be tolerated. But the vast majority of technologies are put to good and pro-social uses. Frequently, there is an adjustment period where things seem to (or may actually be) getting worse faster than they're getting better. This period brings out everyone's inner Luddite, and things get ugly fast, with everyone confidently predicting that this time, no for real, technology and freedom are going to be bad.
For a blog that is supposedly about how urbanism is not an 'eat your vegetables' policy prescription, I perceive a great fear of freedom from its content. The hilariously wide-of-the-mark swipe at Amazon is case in point. Amazon has created enormous surplus for essentially all of humanity. There is, as usual, some downside. There are scammers on Amazon, your local mom-and-pop that charges you 120% of what something is worth will go out of business, there are more delivery trucks on the road, Amazon might themselves screw you if you sell on the platform, etc. But more people have access to more things for a lower price and quicker than ever before, which raises their standard of living and something unquestionably to be celebrated.
The fact that illegal items like emulators and ROM hacks of Pokemon games are available is not something I would really consider downside (it's a case-by-case basis), even if some of those illegal items don't work as described (this is a risk, but like all risks, can be managed). Nintendo makes a great product, far better than most video game companies, but their business practices leave something to be desired. Nintendo will charge you full price for every one of its products, forever, until they stop making them and you can't have them for any price. Legit, refurbished, Game Boy Colors go for $100+ on Amazon, and legit copies of the original Pokemon game go for about the same. Or, you can get a 3DS for $300 and pay $154 for the 'renewed' version of Pokemon Red and Blue for the 3DS. That's absolutely insane (part of it is that the originals are becoming collectors items, which is fine).
But if I'm not a collector, and just want to play the game, you can bet I'm getting an emulator and emulating them. I did, after all, own a Game Boy Color and copies of most of the early Pokemon games. It would be great if I could play this game in a manner sanctioned by Nintendo for a reasonable price, under reasonable circumstances, and with a reasonable amount of effort. But that's not the case, and the reason it's not the case is that they've made it so for their own (bad) reasons.
Think of Nintendo like a luxury goods company, but in some ways worse. I recently read an interesting article on Substack about luxury accessory manufacturer Hermes, and I was absolutely disgusted by their elitist business practices (which is, of course, normal in their end of the market, which doesn't make it better, just more understandable). But at the end of the day, the items they sell function like any other. You can put your wallet and phone in a Kelly bag or in a grocery bag, and the same utility is achieved. It's not like Hermes can deny to ordinary people the ability to carry around their things, which means that it's all essentially fun and games. Other than in the literal sense of course, that's not true of video games. There's only one Pokemon Red and Blue.
I'm reminded of a comment I wanted to make on this blog's even-more-tyrannical take on speed governors for vehicles. Of course violations of the speed limit and traffic laws are victimless crimes, unless there is actually a victim. I don't obey traffic laws. I run through red lights, don't stop at stop signs, drive 90 mph. This is because I have places to be and don't feel like spending all my time on the road.
Fortunately, because I have access to reason and agency, I only do these things when it is safe to do so, and I've never harmed another person by doing any of these things. If I did, I'd be liable civilly and criminally. That's completely fair. My freedom is obviously not worth other people's lives. But when I'm at a deserted intersection and the light is red, I'm going through it.
Traffic laws are designed to enact and serve a public policy: road safety. I agree with that. It should be safe to drive and for pedestrians and bikes to use the road as well. But in a sane world, these laws do not exist independent of that policy. If following a traffic law does not enhance safety, and breaking the traffic law does not diminish safety, it may as well not exist. I know when this is the case, and am able to distinguish one case from another. If you can't, won't, or don't trust yourself to do so, fair enough, follow the rule. But just because your morality and agency are stunted does not mean that mine is, or that I think I should be able to impose myself on others.
Might it be chaos if everyone thought like I did? Probably. Might we all have a healthier relationship to road safety if we understood that the responsibility of operating a vehicle safely is one every motorist shares, and can't be outsourced to a legislature? Maybe. But fortunately, most people are subservient and don't think twice about all the ways their freedom is being chipped away every single day. This leaves non-compliance as essentially the only option, but paradoxically also makes room for those of us with agency to actually take back some measure of what we've lost. You can call me a free rider if you want, and in practice, it might even be accurate. But I'm not special. Anyone can do the same, and I encourage it.
The fact that you think you have the right to impose your crabby small-mindedness on me in this fashion (speed governors) is repugnant. I'm sure we'll all do well in the bright future where everything not mandatory in the mind of a village gossip is forbidden.
I've spoken in the past in the comments of this 'stack about my love for riding illegal trails on my bikes. Just on Saturday, I was at Shell Ridge in Walnut Creek, and lo and behold, the hikers and equestrians are hogging all the great singletrack for themselves! Same there as it is everywhere. I encountered three other people on these no-bike trails, and we shared the trail just as amicably there as on the bike-legal trails. I even got yelled at by a park ranger. I just rode away, where his little truckster couldn't follow.
Everywhere I go on my bike, railings and fences are going up, blocking off great fun lines and reminding everyone that big brother's here to keep you and your precious little body safe. I take responsibility for my own safety. I wear a helmet always, and pads when I feel the need. I decide whether I have the skill to ride a feature or not. When I crash, I do it so that I don't need a helicopter or an ambulance (yes, safe crashing is a skill, and crashing can be entirely eliminated). When my bike breaks, I hike it out. I don't impose on other people, and sure as hell don't let them impose on me, if I can possibly help it.
Stop worrying about what your neighbor is doing. Close the blinds. Mind your own fucking business.
Lot of missing the point here but my problem isn't with emulators - you wanna download ROMs, knock yourself out. My issue is a supposedly reliable, professional company selling this obviously counterfeit/gray market junk. To me that calls into question everything about the company's professionalism and its willingness or ability to police its own sales catalog.
What you call "freedom" or "taking responsibility for yourself" is fine for *you*, but no, it is false that there's no victim until there's a victim. When there's a victim, it's too late. There's no way to interpret what you're saying except that (other people's) lives are the collateral damage in (you and people you see as your own's) exercise of freedom. There's a difference between not wearing a seatbelt and doing something inherently risky with a vehicle on the public roads. Nobody *thinks* they're a bad driver and the vast majority of pedestrian and traffic fatalities are not intentional/murder, yet somehow 40,000 people a year keep dying.