Mark Rober's Prank And The Truth About Scammers And Capitalism
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- čas přidán 16. 06. 2022
- You've probably seen Mark Rober's wildly popular video where he pranks scam call centers. As satisfying as it is to see these awful places get a small taste of their own medicine, there's something deeper we need to talk about. Scam call centers are just one cancerous offshoot of bureaucracy under capitalism, and while pranking these places may be cathartic, it's not enough to tackle the root cause.
Mark Rober's Prank And The Truth About Scammers And Capitalism - Second Thought
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Citations and Further Reading:
Mark Rober’s original video
• Pranks Destroy Scam Ca...
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Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
files.libcom.org/files/Capita...
www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog...
theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=3454
www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-...
Milton Friedman clip and article
• Milton Friedman: The P...
www.hoover.org/sites/default/...
Jacobin article
jacobin.com/2019/03/capitalis...
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This is fun.
2 videos in a row where I disagree with a couple things being said.
Thanks for challenging me and making me think
Keep it up
Ps. I still disagree with plenty, specially the last video, which is refreshing because usually I agree with most things in your videos lol
@@xouri8009 I’d like to hear what you disagree with in the video. I agree with the points mentioned but I’m curious as to your point of view.
Said it before, ill say it again, im happy you made the channel switch. At first i hated it because i had bought into all that free market propaganda about liberalism being the best we can do, But thats a lie. we can always do better and thanks for spreading the word.
david graeber has a couple of really good books that touch on this: The Utopia of Rules, and Bullshit Jobs.
oh and william davies the happiness industry is another
Why do you excuse people stealing money as 'low level workers' just because they arent leading the company doesnt make them any better
I had a friend once who worked at a call center and she once described her job as “being the middle man so that corporate doesn’t have to help customers and customers have someone to yell at that they’re not getting helped” that really opened my eyes to how exhausting it must be to work that kind of job
very accurate
And how immoral/unethical your friends will be without batting an eye. They know the system is corrupt but uphold the system anyway, probably while actively resisting change.
You know not all call centers are scam call centers right?
Honestly if my only choice was to work in a call center, I would literally blow my own brains out. That would be the final straw for me, personally 🤷🏾♂️
@@troywalkertheprogressivean8433 or their friend had to take a shitty job to survive? Like what are you even saying here
I will never forget the first time I got scammed. Dude promised me he would double my money. I'll never see that full rune armor ever again...
Nice to see an osrs reference
You're lucky. I lost my bandos chestplate and tassets.
Ah, Runescape - those were the days.
Trimming armor
A guy baited me to go with him together out in the pvp wilderness, cant remember the reason but he told me bring me lots of gold and my dumbass brought all the money i had in the bank. After crossing the border suddenly this guy with iron set went full hi level magical attack on my armored ass. Good times
Anyone who's ever worked in a call centre can tell you how obsessed with statistics they are. TLs regurgitating numbers at you, the judging eyes on each second of personal time.
This is giving me flashbacks of being on the top of the charts at the cost of my mental health and the customer having their problem actually solved, not just putting a bandaid on the situation.
yeppp it fucking sucks to work in a call center
Similar situation in Web Dev.
Phone woke me up regularly at 3AM (usually cokehead clients), "Oh, sorry to wake you, could you make xyz changes to our site, I know it's late/early, but there's nobody using it right now, and we are paying you £xx.xx per hour, sooo...?"
I don't work in Dev anymore. Life is too short to appease these manky parasites.
Literally there right now. The one I am has so many tracked statistics it's ridiculous.
Literally became a supervisor in a call center to at least protect my team from bullshit like that
I used to do telemarketing during one sad summer in college. I can promise you that everyone there is desperate - my co workers were all either straight out of prison or sex work or didn’t have papers (undocumented) and needed a cash under the table job that didn’t ask questions.
There’s a supervisor that hovers around your desks all day and listens to your end of the calls.
Whenever you start saying something like, “I’m sorry” or “I’m just reading off a script,” they make you hang up the phone and give you a lecture about staying on the script. If you do this more than a few times, you’re fired. If you don’t make enough sales, you’re fired. And when you’re making minimum wage (and disabled and unable to drive in an area with low access to public transit that isn’t near many jobs before work from home was a thing) that $25 bonus for talking an elderly person into buying whatever you’re selling can literally be the difference between eating one day and going without food the next.
Most people on the other end of the phone are genuinely down on their luck, can’t find another job, aren’t trying to scam you, and REALLY need the money. I didn’t meet anyone doing it that had any other option, and I put in my notice literally the day I found a better job. I don’t have a criminal record though and have citizenship papers - before cursing out a telemarketer, try to imagine what job hunting would be like with a felony or without a social security number and put yourself in their shoes. It’s okay to just hang up, but if you can listen to the little speech & wish them a good day, trust me - it really does make the work a tiny bit less awful. But please don’t be cruel to these people - our boss will already criticize us when we hang up with you for not making the sale and it costs nothing to be kind.
Because unemployment exist, shitty jobs also exist. If the United States were the paradise of the working class, managers and CEOs would have to be part of the telemarketing force.
i try to hang up as fast as possible to give them a chance to make a sell with someone else, since i know i don't want anything
In my cable call center job they basically wanted us to sell on top of providing support. The only way out was if a customer was irate. If a customer was nice to me, I'd get in trouble if i didn't reward their niceness with a sales pitch.
Corporations are perfectly bureaucratic by themselves, with or without government participation. It's part of any big scam, because rationalizing a system that favors some over others as fair takes a pretty elaborate setup.
Yeah, just look at any terms and conditions, work contracts, and any other legal documents companies write up.
That is the whole missing joke is that capitalism IS bureaucratic. Every business is basically a govt in of itself. When I was going to school, I was told go to private ones but here is the thing, the private ones fucked me over. Public did not. The private ones left out key details to where if I had those, I would have made a different decision.
AND this is also why consolidation is bad.
@@altrag I agree, but I could have said "scheme," but went with "scam" because of what you say. You can get greater efficiency with scale, but they always try to squeeze too much out of that effect.
@@altrag Bureaucracy. This exists no matter the size of the company, no matter the size of the govt.
I have been in IT since 1998. You are not going to get rid of call centers. Even on a local level they will exist. It is part of customer service. You have a problem with product, you then call their number, and someone talks to you about the product.
What happens is scale. Our central govt is going to have the biggest bureaucracy because it rules over the entire country. States will have smaller bureaucracies because they just deal within their state borders. Counties and Municipalities even smaller bureaucracies because again, their scale is just within their very small borders.
As these institutions scale up they can be siloed. Siloing is common for large entities. In small entities when you called someone telling them my phone does not work and later called back and said my computer is not working, you more than likely got the same guy. As entities get larger they silo these functions so now you have a computer guy and a phone guy who may or may not sit next to each other. As entities get even larger this gets more pronounced to where these different groups do not talk to each other directly but indirectly through a ticket system. Tickets just get transferred to that assignment group.
With consolidation we run into other issues. The Mouse for example is at least 60+ companies rolled into one. If you were to separate all of them you would get 60 HR depts, 60 IT depts, etc. Due to consolidation though comes the siloing which is the centralization of skill sets. It also means the reduction of staff.
So instead of all those smaller depts taking care of their respective areas and just standardizing policies, protocols, and procedures they turn to centralization which does the same thing in the end but with one small disadvantage. They handle the entire company now, all former 60+ entities but with a small staff as this skill set is moved to the cheapest labor market, typically 3rd world countries, like Florida.
So now your little old area gets to call a group that handles the entire company coast to coast and you are in a queue and it may take hours or days before your issue gets fixed and if other elements get involved because it might be a back end issue you have to deal with siloing because the person you called is just tier 1 and does not have access to the systems to where your problem lies. As a tier III person this is annoying AF when I have to call for myself because I know what the issue is but the tier 1 is tied to a script and cannot get me to the higher level than I need. Many companies also push self service help, to where it tells you, did you do this? Have you tried that? That is because they do not want to hire tier 1 people which is sad because these were the gateway jobs to higher knowledge. I am not involved in hiring but I get people who have no tier 1 or 2 experience and really should not be in my area.
In their defense though siloing is justified due to security by having less people access certain systems but the disadvantage is efficiency in getting people back up and operational. These are soft costs that no one really adds up to make things more efficient.
We never had adequate staff even before Covid. I am still down nine people. I am down more people than I have people. We have SLAs and if we do not meet them then we pay financial penalties. There is no way we can leave our tickets in work in progress and not break SLAs.
In the private sector, efficiency is more to do with are we making money. It is not so much about how well depts speak to each other etc.
@@altrag I have worked in IT since 1998. I started on a call center IE a help desk. Yes they are the same thing.
I think it's important to also know that you can't escape some bureaucracy. Some of it makes our world a safer place. For example, quality and safety engineering roles. Those literally developed out of multiple deaths and maimings of humans to make workplaces and products safer. They add extra bureaucracy to the engineering process, but they've also saved countless lives. It gets a bad reputation because if you are doing it right, nothing happens, so it leads to people asking why we need it. Other forms of bureaucracy exist soley to make things more difficult for people seeking benefits or assistance, but we should be careful to distinguish the two forms.
Your comment reminds me of the "trailer" from the last week tonight segment on civil engeneering
@@MarcelaElviraTimis I'm unfamiliar?
As the posters at my dad's paper mill say, "Safety doesn't happen by accident."
@@X_TheHuntsman_X it's this one czcams.com/video/Wpzvaqypav8/video.html the "movie trailer" at the end is very funny
But we call such safety procedures
And no one really dogs on it
I don't like Milton Friedman because he said "immigration is only good when is illegal, that way you don't have to give them rights to those workers''. and people love him in his time and accept it like if it was ok.
he wants slavery... yikes
Question. I see that I have three comments but can only see one. Why is that?
@@JorgeHernandez-oh7xv Maybe it's spam in the process of getting deleted? idk
Friedman was the lowest kind of academic. Totally bought by big money.
I just can't believe people agreed with him in those days and still do just to keep minimum wage a thing.
"Human lightning rods" is the perfect way to describe call center workers
I’m reminded of the David Graeber book where he shares a frankly infuriating tale about trying to jump through hoops to help his disabled mother, only to be strung along until she literally died.
Sounds like Bullshit Jobs. If I remember correctly it was stories from someone who worked with disability benefits that felt as the people in front to deny as many applications as possible.
@@eldizo_ I believe it's utopia of rules
Means testing is a great example of bureaucracy that hurts people and costs money. Research shows that means testing costs more than not doing that, and it also denies money people need. So like, you spend more money to """"save money"""" than you actually save
I have witnessed this obsession with measuring firsthand. In all my previous jobs we had projects and deadlines and as long as we got them done on time everything was alright. My last two jobs, however, both used "time tracking" software and required us to log everything we did and what we worked on down to the minute. It's one of the reasons worker productivity has continued to increase even though pay has not. It's ridiculous.
In my first two software developer jobs after finishing the 3.5 year training, I had the same experience in germany; Those first two jobs, one of which i stayed in for about three years, the other for only one, were extremely pedantic in writing down to the minute what you did, and you better not forget a single thing or you will get asked why writing a test for feature X took this time 30 minutes longer than my median for a similar task. It was sickening in the end.
After that I had two more positions at different companies and the one I am currently in is a more senior developer in a really big company and it is sooo much better for your mental health to not having to note down every single thing you do, to not possibly be questioned about every moment.
Side note: The first two companies were software agencies that developed software for customers, so they wanted to take all your times, double them and then bill them to the customer, who'd usually complain about all the hours worked so they were able to give a "gracious" 20-30% off, still having 1.7 times your time that gets paid. So of course they were enthusiastic about you writing down every keypress you did, however I didn't get any bonuses for more hours, so I couldn't care less.
I find it hard to believe this would do anything but lower a person's productivity.
@@Alex_Barbosa it does, but bc we measure the productivity with the same metrics the numbers look better than before, so artificially productivity has improved.
its actually driving worker productivity down... the amount of time spent tracking activity is actively adding to the workload and interfering with the ability to get anything done
At school we have what I like to call "dictatorship of the marks".
What they called bureaucracy, is regulation. Credit, banking, stock, bonds, private education, borders. They are all plagued with bureaucracy whether private or public. Those in position to exploit anything, just don't want regulations.
Seems like there's more "regulations" on things that benefit poor and disabled people. A lot of things could be simpler and more straightforward but still regulated
CEO’S and billionaires don’t think it’s bureaucracy because they control the entire company structure. Anyone who’s had to work at a big corporation before knows they are riddled with extremely inefficient bureaucracy everywhere
@@no_peace You're absolutely right, and that was the purpose of Friedman's grift. It's also one of the reasons so many of those call centers are in India. Sure they're really cheap, but more importantly, India has almost no regulation and what little they have is rarely to never enforced.
@@no_peace To expand on Rick's point - when capitalists say "we need to eliminate government bureaucracy", they mean "we need to eliminate regulations that protect workers", but hope workers hear "we need to make the DMV more efficient".
@@masaufuku1735 Bolsonaro basically made an "optional" unregulated work law, basically you could "choose" to work under worker laws or be a service provider, of course the only person actually making the choice is the employer, he said it would increase employment by making the worker cheaper, but unemployment became higher even with people working during the pandemic, if you got covid and couldn't work you didn't have any recourse because technically you were your own boss, companies that had to close simply fired everyone, without unemployment benefits, basically everyone entered the food delivery path
Under neoliberal capitalism the line between legitimate business and scam is exceedingly blurry
There’s a line?
@@mooseymoose Mostly a sand based one
"Neoliberal" is just another word for "Conservative."
@@theresedavis2526 Not really, it's a bit more complicated than that, though both essentially boil down to right wing capitalism. The thing with neoliberals is they pretend to be left wing sometimes, and even convince themselves. (See: The Democrats) Neoliberalism tries to restrict the debate between progressivism and conservatism to only the social sphere, while being ostensibly fully fiscally conservative. Although since Clinton/Blair's "third way" neoliberalism, with massive stealth privatization quietly handing public services over to private companies, we haven't really cut down on public spending, the only difference is public spending directly funds private profits. So rather than true conservatism it is really just a big scam.
@@Lincoln_Bio It sounds like true Conservatism trying to appear left wing. Conservatives advocate for privatization of all products and services for the benefit of profit.
I wish JT had talked about the 'chilling effect' of capitalist bureaucracy, which I'd argue is worse than government bureaucracy due to the underlying profit motive of capitalist bureaucracy. Certain medical procedures in the US, for instance require pre-authorization from the insurer, and the doctor has to thread the needle through a specific set of tests and procedures in a specific order before asking for pre-authorization for a costlier procedure (such as an MRI). This takes time - a few weeks or months sometimes, and its not uncommon for the patient's condition to have deteriorated further despite the doctor having known exactly what the patient needed weeks ago. And yes, some patients pass away before the procedure, which -pardon the morbidity - is more profitable for the insurer.
My uncle who is a diabetic found these shoes for diabetics that help with circulation to help prevent amputations but they were expensive.
He calls his medical insurance and asks if they will cover it. They said no. He asked if they would cover the amputation. They said yes. He asked how much the surgery was. They said typically 20K. He said the shoes cost a lot less than that. They came back with, yes, but even with the shoes there is no guarantee you will not need an amputation and if so then we would be out the cost of the shoes and the surgery. You may never need the surgery as well without the shoes.
Excelent example of bureaucracy not only being hard to deal with, but deadly.
feels like the video production quality got wayyy better in the past couple months especially, great vids
Thanks so much!
@@eaphantom9214 I came to say this. I like the new face vids too!
@@SecondThought You need to make a few videos about the zionist deep state in the U.S, nothing will change in the U.S until it escapes the control of Israel.
Thank you
agreed! the interpersonal aspect has been increased so much that it feels a lot more like a conversation and not just a lecture.
@@TheOnlyCaprisun yay parasocial relationships /s
There are only a handful of lines more meta, clever, and genius than “This guy hated bureaucracy like I hate coming up with an analogy.”
How is that line so clever? There's lots of quotes more clever than that. Just because you like Second Thought, doesn't mean everything he says is so clever.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7cbut not all are that meta. The line is itself an analogy, it’s clever in a way that’s different to just straight up journalistic cleverness
Heads up, this video was a bit quiet for me! Love the work man, keep it up.
Honestly yeah but hey it’s nice change from the others so yeah I really don’t mind it
W mogswamp is a socialist
No way mogswamp is a commie 💀💀💀💀💀
Based
@@blockmanhatecommentguy6280 mogswamp is based af
I work for a credit card disputes dept and I have definitely been thinking this same thing for a while. Shit's fucked up
I hope you get emotional hazard pay and free therapy as part of the job training because you'll need it. I am so sorry you have to deal with that but I get it. Someone has to. I just hope you are paid enough to make it worthwhile!
The paperwork hurdle for getting into public housing is just staggering; I just gave up on it and scrounge around for the lowest rent I can find or shared housing. At one point Milton Friedman proposed abolishing all welfare systems and instituting a basic income of around 10,000 per year, given out as direct cash payments, mostly as a way to avoid the bureaucracy in the social services sectors, this was in the 1070's. Today that idea would be considered a far left pipe dream.
Damn, the 1070’s were ahead of their time. Ye olde universal basic income.
@@moon-moth1 The US has more vacant houses than homeless
Both are numbered in the MILLIONS
It's uncapitalistic to put homeless in houses. The system needs homeless to scare the workers to work for scraps, so they will not fill those vacant houses.
The kicker with UBI in exchange for abolishing existing social welfare programs is that capitalists love that prospect, at least the billionaires who are convinced action is necessary; what exactly stops everyone from just jacking up their prices by whatever amount they're now guaranteed all citizens will possess? I think Daddy Hakim did a video on this from the leftist perspective that explained it way better than I ever could.
@@RoyalFusilier UBI is just pure income redistribution. it's no more likely to cause prices to go up than any other kind of redistribution whether it be welfare, a higher minimum wage, or universal healthcare. Either all those things make prices go up, or none of them do.
Even if there was some inflation, the % of inflation will be the same for everyone, whereas UBI increases your income by a variable % depending on how much you were making before UBI, meaning that the poorest are the most protected from any UBI caused inflation.
We also can't entirely discount market pressures here. Obviously there are many market failures that happen but companies absolutely risk losing customers & thus profits if they raise prices, though certain reforms do need to happen to make this more true than it currently is.
Same here. I am 72 and homeless. I prefer that to always jumping like a starving dog for housing that does not exist.
As someone who has worked in a call center, nah, I couldn't find any kind of joy in a video like that. Feels too much like an example of how capitalism and colonialism have alienated us from other people, giving us acceptable targets to lash out at for things they have zero control over.
I've been thinking the same thing as well. We have all the resources for international solidarity, but we can't do it because we've been alienated this way.
I can't feel bad for scammers that ruin the lives of people who are often not rich either.
it'd be like trying to feel bad for Saudi or Russian soldiers while they rape other countries because of shitty circumstance.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 How about American soldiers, then? Doing the same thing on a bigger scale, but getting less attention for it because it's in a name of a more powerful empire. You're still focusing on the acceptable targets.
while agree that they are caught in a system and we need to change that not pester the players, but at the same time we are all responsible for your actions. zero control is a bit of a stretch
I recently spoke with a legit call center worker in India and asked about this topic, mentioning a CZcamsr who exposes it. The man I spoke to had seen the CZcamss and from what I understand him saying, the low level scammers can make two to three times as much as legit call center workers. Seems it's greed without ethics for the lower level employees to the top people. So ALL are to blame.
"This guy hated bureaucracy like I hate coming up with an analogy" absolutely beautiful word crafting
Libertarians loathe big government, except for the military, police, and the courts, but if there's one big thing libertarians love is big business. Milton Friedman was a business advocate, the government was just a competitor to be defeated, and it's from Milton that we get the idea that every problem can be solved with business, it's more than just throwing money at the problem, but running those problems like a business, in addition, making money from keeping those problems.
True
your deadpan style of humor is so great and makes the video engaging and fun. keep up the fantastic work!
Thanks so much!
Neoliberal rhetoric: "State bad, because it leads to monopolies and bureaucracy, two things that are definitely not a feature of the market."
I can't come to terms with you conflating trained heartless scammers with your average "lowly worker". This is not the same! They are not ignorant of how they make their money. Anyone who does jobs such as these in any industry are knowingly bad people. They are not are fellow workers, they should be held responsible for doing bad things.
Why are you getting this angry at the workers though and not their bosses who are actually responsible for this and are the ones actually making money from this? Many regular and perfectly legal businesses are just as horrible so it's weird that only in this instance do people get this enraged.
@@hedgehog3180 Because they are willing to participate in a objectively horrible operation. As I said anyone in any industry that will knowingly participate in horrible business practices should be held responsible. That includes the boss, the accountant, the shift managers etc... From shady car salesmen to tech companies that misuse power, and everything in between. They all make money. I am angry because these things erode trust and slow progress. These things can damage a good persons life severely, it can even cause suicide. I reject the title of "enraged", but i'm certainly concerned enough to speak up and disagree. My question is why are you okay with it?
”if we went after everyone whose job made the world a worse place, a lot of people would be in trouble“
That's a good phrase from this video. We are all very used to modern war on crime propaganda, so it's easy for us to laser focus our concerns on drug addicts, robbers, scammers and other "scum". I'm working in a clothing company for example. We're not scamming anybody and our buisness is not shady. So, hi, fellow worker, let me tell you about synthetic microfibers which polluting planet's body of water. I have a fine salary, because our buisness grow for a last 10 years. We depend on fast fashion, because if people had to buy 1-2 piece of clothing every 5 years company would never be able to hire workers like me with a sales that rare. And as a grown adult I hope you are, you probably know that people doesen't really need a fast fashion. So... this knowingly bad people need to participate in a work where they scam a specific person, an old white granny for example, while I'm participating in work in industry, which is one of the biggest contributors in our climate collapse in future and changes in climate already hurting thousands of people mostly in global south... sounds not that terrible when it's not a specific poor granny being a victim? Both our work hurt people and we both needed to put food on our table. One of the most important differences between us - is that in a place I live, I can choose between working in clothing company or some other buisness, and where this guys live they often choose between this shitty call centers and sewing a part of cheap merchandise we actually sells.
_” if we went after everyone whose job made the world a worse place, a lot of people would be in trouble“_
And that’s why I feel as though my hands would be cleaner stealing from most companies than working for them.
Call centers are one of the most exploitative work places there are, so in the end it boils down to working class people being mean to each other for corporate benefit. -_- Great video, thank you!
i really like the new format :) the balance between theory and entertainment is on point
Thanks! I’m glad you like it
@@SecondThought I think it’ll also make it very accessible to a wider audience as well as young people
As a former call center worker, hearing about this "practical joke" video hit me hard. When I started my job in tech support, I was given 3 hours training when I really needed a couple weeks. Then I was required to end calls within 9 minutes (which later got reduced to 7), an impossible task if I was going to be helpful at all. On top of that, the average wait time before getting to me was 55 minutes, so all of my callers were desperate for help.
I would plan my two daily breaks around the callers that took out their frustration on me the most. I still remember the caller who told me they would throw their feces at my window and that they lived in the same town as my call center and knew where I worked. I also remember the caller who told me they wished my whole family was dead. I had to become numb to all the customers who cried and begged for help, or as numb as I could be. I had to take up smoking and have regular cry breaks to cope. The hardest part was knowing I was a cog in this sick system and that I was actively spending my energy in what made the world a worse place.
I knew these callers' frustration was warranted (though not their tactics), but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all. Anyone who had the power to change anything was so far removed from customer and worker complaints, and that was very much by design. If I had to deal with a "prank" involving cockroaches being released on top of all that, I couldn't have handled it.
Everyone you know is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind.
Thank you so much for this comment. I dunno if this is the place but I'm going to talk about my experiences too lol. To make money for groceries and transition related things (I'm transgender) I used to work doing remote calls for what could be generously called a political survey farm, and, often, we had to ask folks their opinions of trans people. Holy shit, some of their answers were so vile. Especially then, since I was earlier on in my transition, what they said to me hurt so much. I don't even want to know what they would've said if they knew I was trans. Leaving that job was probably the best thing I could've done for my mental health. I don't want to imagine how I would be doing if there were any Mark Rober type antics going on while I was working
There's a difference between real call centers and Scamming Call centers
@@lesbianesti if you worked at a scam call center tho it would be different and I'd feel no pity. It's not the same
@@JointedSpagel exactly, the scam callers are pretty apathetic and I couldn't care less about what happens to those miserable people
@@ARobberyShrub I understand, but it's more complicated than that. I did tech support for a cybersecurity company. A good portion of my callers had just been scammed usually by one of those call centers, with both their computers and bank accounts compromised, and that's why they were calling. That's not a problem I can solve in 7 minutes. I was instructed to tell these poor souls that if they wanted any real help with that issue my call center would charge $140 to help them get everything cleaned up. The purpose of this set up by management was to offer the crappiest free service they could get away with in order to hook customers into paying for more service, thus turning desperate people into a "revenue generating" opportunity. Sometimes my supervisor would listen in to make sure I sold the paid support as much as possible and some of my pay was dependent on those sales.
My point is I would never have agreed to do any of this if I didn't have to pay rent, and a little part of my soul died every day. I imagine many of the scam call center employees feel the same. I took the brunt of the hate when the real people to blame were far above my pay grade.
"Friedman was an adviserto Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher"...and Augusto Pinochet. We shouldn't forget Pinochet. "Free Market" (as if such a thing is even possible) ideologues should _never_ be allowed to forget Pinochet.
The really sick part is they often stand by Pinochet to this day. Evil people.
I'm very cautious with cybersecurity, and I definitely don't want to deal with scammers. But come to think of it, at least computer scammers are quite easy to avoid, you just need to be informed on it. On the other hands, things like private insurances are fundamentally a scamming business, but I was force to live with it because the government have ties to insurance industries. Yeah, I can not have an insurance, but having to choose between having to pay for something my taxes should already be covering and get some access to healthcare or risk a certainly of facing bankruptcy from just one accident don't seems like a choice isn't it? Most people and I would rather have an affordable access to healthcare and not having to pay private insurance for it, but we know we're not given that option in some countries. How is that different from getting mugged with extra steps? And despite talking points from the right, doctors and medical professionals don't benefit from private insurance, they're also workers having to work for an institution with ties to insurance companies - doctors outside private practices (pretty much most of them) don't get to determine their salary, and by saying doctors would get paid less under universal healthcare (which isn't true) is ironically just blaming doctors for the expense in some countries. Would you prank doctors for the insane price of healthcare in the US?
The entire system in the US is a scam lol. It's funny to see people here defending being mad at distant poor people, AGAIN, and ignoring the people here doing the same thing scaled up by a hundred million
True the private insurance “industry” in of itself is a scam
Insurance: The industry that provides the least while charging the most. How could the profit motive possibly work when they get more by denying you the very service they are ostensibly there to provide?
@@pauljimerson8218 When people's job is dependent on not understanding you will have a hard time convincing them
Aka we all know this, its fucking obvious, but everyone who can do anything about it is bought out or Bernie Sanders
Exactly
Speaking of Milton Friedman, Matt Stoller's book Goliath does a wonderful job documenting the journey of the Chicago school in a historical context, from the Mellonism days to the New Deal, to Bork and beyond.
Matt Stoller..the same guy that went on Jimmy Dore and spewed the same MSM lies about China?
I love the anti-scammers who call in and hack their computers to steal and delete their data. Call other victims to tell them they've been scammed. Call their police on them. That's all cool.
But harassing the low-level workers? That's pointless. That doesn't change anything. That doesn't help anyone.
I wish i could believe all these anti scam videos are for real. I've seen many and it seems to me that I always hear the same Indian voices and they are always reacting in a very similar way. Almost as if they were just paid voice actors or friends of the video makers. Also the 'fact' that most of these scam centres have internal cameras freely accessible over the internet and that they have no separate servers to store victims' data is a bit hard to believe, as they do earn enough money to cover that.
Any day they're not working someone isn't getting scam. You lack empathy
im not sure if you realize it or not, but that video he made was made in part with some of the biggest anti scam channels.... the ones you are talking about :P
Are you serious? Yeah, I don't give a shit, these people scam innocent people for thousands of dollars
These low level workers are just as guilty. They are the one's that are manipulating and yelling at your grandma and wiping out her bank account. They deserve a lot worse than some harmless pranks.
"You're in Milton (Friedman's) world 🌎 . It's like Disney world but... well actually it's a lot like Disney world. If you're adult and you're okay with that, you might want to sit down and think about that. "
❤ Loved that part.
Dosent really challenge his ideas on a deep level. Most of his arguments have been tackled before. For example in a truly free society and truly free market you can only make money by creating something of value. Pretty much all the richest people in the u.s got that rich by creating something of value. Mcdonalds is valued by society because it offers cheaper quick and tasty meals. Amazon has made the retail experience cheaper and more convient. These scammers are committing fraud. The provide nothing they don't invest or sell a product or do good deeds they just steal money.
ive never been so that went over my head a bit lol
Remember, mainstream economic theory doesn't gain favor because it's works but because it justifies those in power.....the video actually hints on it towards the end (at approx. 15:28)
Correct!
Thanks for this. Never realized how much I disliked Friedman and his thinking. The one contra example I think of is a municipality was getting quotes for trash routes. The trash workers got together and submitted a bid that was much more efficient because they worked the routes and knew the customets.
Always wondered why nobody ever put this together. It’s not the fault of the people in the call centers. I doubt they much enjoy their jobs any more than we do, the centers seem soul crushing and draining and unpleasant. Like you said, we all have jobs that forward this evil system directly and indirectly. None of us are any better than the call center workers. Ironic how in a America we hate call center workers, but love our precious civilian-murdering troops and police so much…
100% agreed I actually think about this stuff all the time because I have a small business and I get scam calls all day everyday and I also had a telemarketing job when I was young I even had a job selling encyclopedias 40 years ago I wouldn't wish that kind of job on anyone
I can't roll my eyes any harder, go back to reddit man.
Everything they do over there, people do the same or equivalent legally here
*or worse
I disagree. To diminish the line between legitimate csr and scammer is unfair to the legitimate employee. Scammers choose to speak down to people and get paid under the table netting more personal profit at anothers expense. there is plenty of discord over police. Support our troops fear our govt is said for a reason. Usa hates any underpaid undertrained employee with a shyte attitude. it just so happens customer service has many of them.
There's a famous Trek movie quote where Scotty has disabled the engines on another starship ordered to give chase after the Enterprise: "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." and he promptly hands some critical parts of the other ship's engines to Kirk.
The reason scammers exist at all is because the system has become so complex, it has been made easy for them to do their form of "stopping up the pipes". The system has trained people to have lax security and to let their guard down, because the "normal" process has become so complex and onerous, people don't want to deal with it.
As an IT security consultant, I laugh at how stupidly obvious these scams are, but I know that people don't know what I know and I can see how they've been lulled into a false sense of security and trust of the "system", especially if they are elderly or otherwise not able to see through them.
As for the call center workers / scammers, I don't have a huge amount of sympathy. I regularly tell them they are better than that and that they should find better or more honest work elsewhere. The scammers specifically I don't have much respect for at all. It is one thing to be a legit call center worker doing legit work for a company, and something totally different when you *KNOW* what you are doing is wrong, without a doubt stealing from someone else half a world away, even specifically preying on the weakest of us. Some of them even revel in it. They don't *have* to do that. They can say "no". I would do anything else, any other job, rather than knowingly and wantonly steal from someone else. It's a moral choice, and I don't have any empathy for people (and businesses) with those kinds of morals.
So, yes, while I agree that scammers are just a cancerous outgrowth over an already deeply sick system, I also can have schadenfreude over seeing those with no respect for others get a little accelerated karma.
As for the rest of the legit call center people, and everyone else working for this stupid, abusive, and generally exploitative capitalist system: unite and quit en masse. Have solidarity with your fellow worker, wherever they are in the world, because we all have to work together to make progress and kick this crap system to the curb.
Search for spock and the sabotage of Excelsior
@@bensoncheung2801 The same way it always does. A catalytic event of significant proportions and importance, leading to the first dominoes falling.
The issue isn't that those events don't happen often enough, because they happen every day, everywhere. It is that the rest of the dominoes aren't ready to fall in with them. We have to get out of the isolationist "that's their problem" mindset, because the same, or worse, will eventually happen to just about everyone. It's OUR problem, too. That is solidarity.
I know with at least one of the scams, the IRS one done out of India, some workers have been interviewed in the past and a lot of the workers thought they were legit calling tax evaders on behalf of Uncle Sam.. they can get scammed too..
The thing is how are these people worse than workers in the oil or arms industry? They both cause harm and everyone should be aware of that at this point. When people say that it's justified to hate scam call workers because they decided to do something morally bad I fail to see how that doesn't apply to like a good 50% of the economy, so many legitimate businesses do far more harm and are far worse yet we never see this kind of attitude towards them. Everyone seems to understand that you can't get angry at the workers on an offshore oil platform, but like the damage the oil industry has done to this world completely dwarfs that not just from scam call centers but from organized crime in general.
@@hedgehog3180 You're inserting exclusionism into what I said. I don't *exclusively* detest scam call center workers, nor did I suggest they were the worst. I will specifically point out that I extended it to a much broader spectrum in the closing paragraph of my post.
Even still, when it comes to a question of morality, someone who is willfully and with full knowledge going after the weakest among us, even to the point of reveling in it are far worse /people/ than someone who is working in the oil industry. Yes, the oil industry as a whole is doing FAR more damage, but on the scale of one oil worker, I severely doubt they can be fairly considered to be knowingly hurting other people. So, from a pure moral standpoint, the scam call center worker is worse.
We all feel some hatred towards the low end scammers and that's justified. Victims or not, they are holding the knife. It would be interesting and an awful lot more useful though to see that type of work being turned towards the big fish.
Didn’t they also get some of the leaders arrested though?
That's generally why I like Jim Browning because by targeting the IT systems he's actually hitting these operations where it hurts and actually impacting the people who run this.
Amazing work man. Super professional, informative, entertaining, and well put-together. Your dry humor is right up my alley as well 😂
imo the best feeling in the world is when you talk to someone on the phone, tell them this is all bullshit and then apologize because you know it's not their fault, and they are like "yes, I understand" with a bit of a tone that's off script. It's a little spark of empathy and solidarity in the darkness.
Hell no have you not seen an scam videos before lol? They try there hardest to try and lie and scam there victim even though they are called out for there bullshit!
another amazing one JT. a suggestion from me would be to add subtitles, my hearing isn't the greatest to say the least and i definitely think a lot of viewers would enjoy proper subtitles other than the auto generated ones.
I swear i saw you comment on a hakim vid
@@randomsnow6510 she's everywhere lol
@@randomsnow6510 yeah i do tend to comment a lot
Definitely do this!
The artificial stupidity of capital in itself is completely right. Brilliant video, it goes hard
Yet another banger by Second Thought! Keep up the good work
I also felt bad that the pranks are basically only effecting the low level employees and the not the people who actually are benefitting from these scams, the owners and executives of these scam call companies. It just felt like the anger was missplaced on people just doing their jobs and not the ones that are actually getting all the money from these scams. At least one center was shut down I guess, that's a good thing, though ig the owners still got out unscathed
The people who actually own it are basically impossible to get at. I don’t care what excuses are made, these “workers” are responsible for evil and they absolutely deserve this.
@@killgriffinnow " these “workers” are responsible for evil and they absolutely deserve this"
I don't think you want go down that route. If that's the case then anyone who works in a big corporation deserves what's coming for them.
@@killgriffinnow this take is bad and you should feel bad
Imo everyone has responsibility: the owners for the greater evil, and the callers for willingly participating in it. Hitler was responsible for his evil, but so too everyone who was under him -- wouldn't you say the same in this situation?
Re: rober's vid. Clearly he is playing a prank on the callers for his youtube audience - it is non-traumatic and non-injurious. It also does some good by putting fear of punishment into them, and helping them rethink their actions.
Not in the video is how he's working with authorities to try to do something about the guys at the top. What, do you think one American on the other side of the world can personally do something about this problem?
What I enjoy about Rober is he knows how to have fun with positive effect (scaring the callers), and also understands that bigger things need to be done (working with authorities). He just has the sense to know that going public with an investigation is likely to ruin it, and is boring to his main audience besides.
@@MishaFlower big difference between "I do numbers for a petrol company that is ripping off the world" and "I personally call, trick, and scam the most vulnerable people in society".
If we are responsible for standing against systematic racism, even when we ourselves are not "actively racist", then we absolutely are responsible for the kind of work that we choose. -- and if "capitalism makes them need to take these jobs so it can't be helped" is the response, can we not say the same about racism?
Same with the environment. If we all have responsibility for our environmental choices (even though definitely companies are doing far far worse damage - both can be true), then surely we say that there is responsibility for what kind of work you participate in.
I used to be an insurance representative. if I was sent a glitter bomb every time my boss forced me to ruin someone's life by not paying a claim for petty reasons, I'd still be shiny today. the low level employees have no control
You aren't cheating people, these guys are
@@nathanmckenzie904 just following orders?
@@mooseymoose let's not compare someone who is following a legitimate corporate policy to the nazis
@@nathanmckenzie904 if lives are being destroyed and it’s legal, what then is the difference that you demand that I not make a comparison?
@@mooseymoose as an insurance agent there are things I can't do, and value I can add
As an example: I write you a life insurance policy. The policy is legally binding to both you and the carrier.
However, it has a clause that says if you commit suicide or die sky diving which would be in the clause of our contract then there is literally nothing I can do to help you.
On the other hand of you develop and die of cancer 4yrs after I write the policy then the carrier will write your family a check. A legitimate check that they can use for whatever they like. Maybe it's bury you, maybe its to throw a huge party. I don't care but the point is your family gets something out of the $$ you put into it. Usually it's WAY more than you put into it.
With scammers you pit $$ into it and never get anything out of it!
No one who has given a dollar to one of these scammers has ever gotten a penny out of it, and never will.
Yes it sucks when I have a client that dies from doing something that went against their policy, but in the end I know that a large portion of my clients,, or their family will get some sort of return on investment.
What ROI does someone who sends 5k to one of these scam artists ever see?
The answer is 0.
Never has and never will !
A few years ago I got a scam caller in my voice mailbox asking me to call back. I called them back and recited Poe Dameron's lines from the scene he trolls General Hux. I figured out that I could call them as many times as I wanted, and trolled them for a few days with different characters. I was the IRS. I was Paul McCartney. I was having too much fun listen to their frustration. Then I got this one person to pick up who begged me to stop. She was crying, and I could tell she was genuinely upset. She told me this was her job, and she hated her life. She told me she wanted to die. It was a sobering moment for me. I realized those people shouldn't be valued solely on the amount of annoyance they had given my life, and I stopped bothering them.
There's one major mistake - they don't have jobs, they are criminals. Unless you also want to say that "Mafia goon" is a job, or "contract killer", or "shoplifter", or...
As someone currently studying New Public Management and seeing what shit he caused and how just privatsing everything is not the plan I feel very vindicated.
Indeed, few realize just how much destruction he wrought and murders he caused. Study on and learn well!
Oh, and if you get a chance to, check out Naomi Klein's book, Shock Doctrine (if you haven't already)
@@krejados1 It's on the list!
After I got my master I got a few books to read.
@@michimatsch5862 Sweet! Prepare to be thoroughly disgusted.
Also, congrats on your achievement.
your humour is so sharp 😭 it also helps me understand the concepts you're explaining way better lol keep at it!
No scamming is not justified under any circumstances
I love scambaiting videos, and the small pranks of Mark Rober were pretty fun but I always also find myself thinking of how such things could be fixed properly aswell, good to see I am not alone in this.
The best kinds of scambaiting videos are ones like Kitboga where they don't have any anger towards scammers but instead waste their time by keeping them on calls.
@@freedomgoddess Didn't say I am, there are a bunch of other channels that attempt that but unfortunately they are also only making a little dent in the gigantic business structures.
People like Jim Browning are also amazing in their work and very ethical, but they also can't fix the problem themselves cause it's a bigger problem.
What we need is to take out the executives and bank-rollers in charge of those criminal 'businesses' of destroying the livelihoods of the elderly and vulnerable. However you want to interpret that. Naming and shaming, getting their pictures on the news and forcing local police to do something about it is one way to accomplish it, I suppose. Or at least materially destroy their ability to do business (damaging their IT equipment badly enough that they have to replace it, persistently impeding their operations in a way that gets a large number of victims out of their traps, etc.). If it doesn't accomplish either of those, scambaiting can only ever be minorly helpful in fighting the machine, and care must be taken that collateral damage (such as to the lives of the workers) doesn't exceed the minimal amount of good done by harming the business.
That said, I see this as needing bigger, gutsier operations to take the scammers down, not giving up and letting them off scot-free OR harassing their workers too badly.
@@freedomgoddess this is literally the fucking pancake argument lmao
2:10
Isn't Mark still working his way up the chain?
He said his goal was to take the glitter bomb to the very top.
I'd love to see a glitter bomb without the glitter, just a massive 50kg nitroglicerin bomb
It's a joke by the way
@@Fred_the_1996 I'd love to see the kind of porch pirate who could steal a 50kg package
@@Fred_the_1996 only if he gets it into a Shell or Northrop Grumman or NewsCorp board meeting
@@theregalproletariat broke gym rats💀
Your channel is next level. I think this is the best channel on YT! What you are saying is so important. I have never heard such concise, fact-based, easy to digest commentary like this. Subscribed! And you are the first channel I’ve ever subscribed to on Patreon!
I’ve been binging your videos! Keep cranking them out…and stay safe!
I wouldnt say scammers are innocent and dont deserve to be pranked though. In the Mark Rober video he disclosed their salaries, and they make 9k+ a month. They know their job is criminal and can choose any other place to work, but instead go for the easy bucks stealing from the elderly. They deserve all the pranks they get.
Have you seen the jobs in India?
@@qjtvaddict 9k per month is a fantastic salary for literally any country, India or not. But crime is crime - you should see how much drug dealers and thieves make
I know this comment is like 6 months old but I think the main issue is that the people taking these jobs probably don’t have any other option ( and some don’t know they are in scam centres ) and instead of punishing those people who are just taking the job out of necessity it would be better to punish the boss / main person behind the operation.
Good video.
And don't neglect your dental health, the world needs you around. 🦷 ✨
lol don’t worry, just a joke
@@SecondThought "We fixed his teeth incorrectly. As a joke."
I feel no pity for them because they work for "Scam people out of their money Inc." and they know this. If someone started a burglary business and people willingly got hired and then got shot on the job while burglarizing, I wouldn't feel bad about it.
Well, they do work for scam call centers for the same reason burglaries and similar crimes are common. The majority have to choose between "Feed your family with crime, or just die." It's easy for a middle class person to look down on people who do what they must to survive.
But beyond talking about your feelings, we can look ahead at possible solutions. If we stick with capitalism and a neo-liberal / right wing system, the situation will only get worse. So we propose unity and solidarity in the working class, from across the world. We propose fighting for the improvement of working class lives wherever you are. And finally, you should be fighting for a Trotskyist form of socialism. Stalinism poses a lot of the same problems as neo-liberalism, so if we're going to achieve an equal society that cares for all, we need to get it right from the start.
this.
I hope these bleeding hearts also feel bad for all the shitty conscripts in Saudia or Russia who slaughter civilians on a regular basis too.
Capitalism gives these people the choice of this or destitution when no other job is available. I cant blame someone for choosing an immoral job over destitution.
@@user-zw8wq9zi9t true, but you cannot ignore their victims either
@@dexorne9753 Indeed and that also necessitates considering the harm inflicted on the victim too. There is a good reason why most people would probably have very different reactions to a hungry person mugging a pensioner of their weekly shop to eat vs shoplifting the same goods from a billion euro supermarket chain. The latter is not exactly going to experience anything like the same trauma while noting the loss down as inventory shrink, nor are they going to potentially go hungry themselves over it.
Glad you're feeling better, fam! I love your videos and appreciate you for going the the hard road to keep the integrity on point. Keep up the amazing work! This one, specifically, is next level. Great job tying these points together!
Ok , if i understand :
Burocracy is used to measure economic activity ,
More buisness implies either :
No privacy since our economic activity is being exploited trough soo many venues ,
Even more burocracy since we are constantly working ...
First new deprogram ep and then more JT content ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ thank you comrade
Hope you enjoy it all 😁
Awesome rebrand. And it’s good to finally see the person behind this awesome content! 🙌🏼
Capitalist Realism is a life changing book. Absolutely fantastic.
Maybe if Law Enforcement would investigate these scam call centers & arrest the ones at top who are actually profiting off all this, these pranks wouldn't be necessary.
It's my concern as well. But thanks to zero cooperations regarding this problem with the affected countries and the fact that not only the Home Countries of the Scammers are plagued with Corruption and the statespersons/Law Enforcement Agents of their country can be easily bribed, but also the victim's country hosts the companies that facilitates the money transfer (MoneyGram, Western Union) also take profit from this makes the idea of removing these weeds impossible because "What about the Job market/What about the profits" argument
11:00 He was also an advisor to Augusto Pinochet, you should have definitely mentioned that.
I was wanting to write about this for a while but thank you for bringing awareness to this topic with the exposure you have. Thanks a ton ❤️🙏
YES ‼️ Ive been thinking about this for so long so I cant wait to watch. Thank u
Damn I'm really glad this video came out. I had been thinking about this for a while too. How it's kinda fucked up they did that. It feels like remotely attacking a McDonald's employee from across the ocean.
Because individuals don't have agency and/or McDonald's is in the buisness of directly stealing money from individuals?
yeah, nah.
When was the last time a McDonald's employee took part in a scam to rob old people's bank accounts?
@@cyantwo936 lmao holy shit you missed the point so hard
A mcdonalds employee provides your life with value. They prepare the food you pay for. These scammers just take your money and run. Why should I sympathize with thieves who attack the poor a s helpless?
@@appropriate-channelname3049 because these call scammers have even less say in their own lives than McDonald’s workers in America do, who we know are coerced under threat of destitution and homelessness to work shitty jobs. People in other countries with even fewer labor laws have equally little choice. You and I would do the exact same thing in their shoes. I’d rob old white people in other countries who are far wealthier and more comfortable than I’ll ever be every single day if that’s what I had to do to survive and feed my family. Have empathy. It’s the system that is turning us against each other. It has nothing to do with the morality of individuals. That is toxic idealism.
I feel like this video understates how vile the workers at those scamcenters are. They're not bothered at all when they scam the most vulnerable people, and if you call them out on their scam they won't hesitate to throw heavy insults at you and your mother. They're not victims of the system they're in. They might not be the ones sitting at the top, but if they were, they wouldn't change a thing.
I agree, sometimes this channel has some good stuff but this is kind of an L post.
Are you telling me these people are just genetically predisposed to be assholes? Or their parents raised them to be assholes? Everyone is shaped by the system they grow up in, I have no doubt that if these people were born into wealthy families there's no way they'd want to do a job like this.
It's easy to live a good life when you have a lot of options, but when people grow up with very few prospects in a system that encourages you to step on as many people as you need to to get ahead - you make compromises. You do things you'd otherwise object to. And then cognitive dissonance kicks in and you have to justify it to yourself somehow.
No-one wants to walk around thinking they're a bad person. This is why these call center workers come across as angry, careless, cold-hearted, nasty people. They've likely had to convince themselves that these wealthy old people deserve it, that they've benefited unfairly and it's fine to take advantage of them.
That doesn't mean that it's fine to be a call centre worker and be nasty and scam people no matter what. I still think it's a nasty thing what these people are doing. But my god is it easy to judge someone when you haven't experienced their circumstances. You've no idea what you would do if you had lived their life. This is why we need to fix the system, not sh¡t on the individuals getting the short end of the stick, even if they've become nasty people.
Another amazing video! I was working at a corporation in India and after 2 years, was put in a really toxic team with a truly horrible manager. After some really nasty fights, I tried to change my team but was not allowed to (bureaucracy). After some really intense battles and dirty politics, I finally managed to change my team. And even after I changed my team, my old manager tried to scapegoat me for random things in the projects I worked on. I eventually left the organization altogether and joined another smaller company (with obviously much lesser bureaucracy). It was a major help for my mental health and was learning a lot more as well.
I've never noticed you make too many jokes in videos before, but I actually really enjoyed every joke that I noticed in this one your sense of humor is really good, I'd love to see more
hmmm, weird... for me, any schadenfreude comes from the fact they're scammers, not personal revenge on bureaucracy. the connection never entered my conscious mind til now.
and while it'd obv be much more satisfying to see the owners get got, i have a hard time believing the minions for that company have NO alternative. Maybe they wouldn't make quite as much but this is such profoundly evil "work," I find myself having trouble sympathizing with them.
A thought: this is the other end of the spectrum from jobs where the workers are expected to be paid less than their worth because the positive social affect itself is supposed to be part of their compensation. “Rewarding” work like teaching, healthcare practitioners, emergency services.
Basic pay can be looked at as monetizing interest (volunteering vs boring job).
We already monetize health risk (hazard pay).
This is monetizing morality. Why do we support an economic system that supports people having to choose between their morals and their survival?!
Do you think the same thing about cops? Because there's really no debate that cops are magnitudes more evil than scam call center workers.
I'm really happy this topic is getting discussed. This genre of video has always left me with a deeply unsettling feeling.
I love how baroque these videos are getting. Keep it up!
Milton Friedman was also an economic consultant to Agusto Pinochet of Chile, the same country which elected Salvador Allende, the socialist which was overthrown by the CIA in 1973. Friedman was part of the Chicago school that was started by Hayek and von Mieses.
This is a topic that I was not expecting
🥈
same
Hope you enjoy!
Fantastic video, man. I can see lots of humanism in this one. LOVE!
Oh man I enjoy you channel so much. Am so glad I found it. Amazing content. God bless you and I hope one day I will become your supporter.
Perhaps there should be a video on another phenomenon in Western society: Romance, Dating & Capitalism. Scams are huge part of this area of society in modern times, and it's a motivation that has driven many human relationships for centuries. It's definitely worth exploring.
Thank you for covering this topic, scam payback videos have always felt kind of weird to me and you articulate why well
I def hate the scammers less ever since i saw one be pretty savagely anti us, i hear ya brother.
I can understand not entirely agreeing with them. But I would say the example used in the video isn’t really the best. He didn’t just screw with low level workers, he had a massive impact on the system
@@theworld6710 SecondThought mentioned everything that happened in the video, I don't know what point you're trying to make because no Mark Robber didn't have a massive impact on the system, he got one center shut down but anyone who knows anything about this would know that really doesn't mean much.
@@hedgehog3180 I believe you’re mistaken. He actually did get a few centers shut down for a few days and a few of the top brass arrested. They show such in the video. I’d say that’s pretty significant. It’s impossible to know the long lasting effect of it, but it’s a lot better than it was before
Fun Fact - British Government or Royals.. Never apologized for Looting India... Neither returned priceless objects and artifacts.
Based British People
This content is EXCELLENT (and I say that not unfamiliar with your other content), and should be, like, required viewing in public school, or somewhere. Great work!
Thank you for covering this, on both the scam call center and bureaucracy level.
For quite a few years now, US customer support has been outsourced to a very specific few countries with very poor labor laws. And the subsequent call center industry that has popped up is infamous for relying purely on scripted responses instead of genuine product/service knowledge.
This has been proven as working as intended, given that a lot of companies only provide support per contractual duties, usually tied to marketing obligations, and find it 'financially defensive' to make this support almost impossible to achieve.
This is bureaucracy at its finest hour. Long wait times, disconnects, translation errors, racism included, etc. All of it designed to protect the decision makers up top, a lot of whom don't even know what they do for a living.
As such, sometimes the 'external' call centers (some exist as addressed to locations defined as US property) get closed down for various executive choice farts. This leaves a large population of unemployed call center workers, and a pile of unused technology that normally gets dumped in a landfill.
Or, newly unemployed workers with no means to protect themselves from con-artists who probably played more to steal from the landfill than to hire the desperate low wage workers.
This is the international economic hegemony of neo-Milto-liberalism working as intended... Death and all is just the garnishes to the meal.
There is only one way to help all the workers around the world to fend of these acts of predation....
I think videos like Kitboga's are better at dealing with scam callers like these. No physical actions are taken against them, just wasting hours upon hours of their time that could be spent scamming other less aware people.
“Bessie” is actually a CZcams/twitch scam-baiter himself, Kitboga (whose content is based but lol)
this is the video I made in my dreams about marks prank vid. genuinely elated that you made this. I love your shit
I watched this when it came out and omg im so glad that this video exist, i was so conflicted when i watched a streamer react to Marks video, i was like ''Is this wrong? Is it not? Why wouldnt it be? Why would it be?'' But something just didn't feel right, it was the weirdest feeling, im so glad this addresses exactly why someone would feel that way, great video as always-
14:10 that whole paperwork questionnaire with the teachers is just like mental health in Canada.
Being a patient we are expected to fill out these CBT daily cards and it soo dose not help stress or even solve any problems.
"This guy hated bureaucracy like I hate coming up with an analogy."
I see what you did there and I thoroughly approve.
I'm like as busy as a guy that's busy
It probably depends on the specific scam but a lot of those workers *know* they're scamming people. Their helplessness doesn't come from following a dialogue tree like a robot and being oblivious to the scam, it comes from the desperate economic situations that force people to choose between being complicit in a scam and abject poverty.
Anyway, great video! Whether or not the specific scammers in Mark Rober's videos are "in" on the scam or not is immaterial to the great points you made in this video. It was a good way to broach the topic.
Wow! Very insightful & thoughtful. I didn't think about the very good points you mentioned.
Amazing and easy to understand, I never really liked seeing those kinds of revenge videos and glad you were able to break things down like that and explain the root cause of call centers in the first place
Surely it would be a more effective action against these scammers if the bosses m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ stealing the money were targeted by professional con artists? You know, the people who operate "on the quiet" and embarrass their victims so much that the boss has no response to their new found poverty other than to claim State assistance or beg for food?
Banks are obviously difficult to hack and rightly so, but the human mind is not so resilient, or fortified, especially if the "mind hack" of the con-artist is unexpected, as it always is. It is also said that the more greedy, venal and exploitative a person is, the more easily they're conned, hence the saying, "You can't con an honest man" (which only applies to "high level cons", not scams, obviously.)
I wonder if this happens regularly, but we just don't get to hear about it because of the aforementioned shame & embarrassment of being conned?
@@saturationstation1446 Don't think OP was suggesting this as a solution to capitalism, chill
@@guy-sl3kr I wasn't, you're right - and a certain somebody else needs to have a quiet word with themselves in a darkened room before they give themselves a cardiac.
@@saturationstation1446 Good luck with that old boy.
[Cheeky edit, to add: Try "high level conning" a greedy head of State... See how long it stays in power! ;-) ]
@Zaydan Naufal I'm having some difficulty relating your response to my original comment?
Although, it is rather satisfying to note that Blockbuster are pretty much "dead in the water" and Enron are a distant memory.
@Zaydan Naufal Ahhh! Thanks for clarifying that for me.
Usually, the con works because the victim is greedy, is stuck in a supposed corner (this can be manufactured), and the saviour (grifter) is the only entity that can supposedly help. Sauté lightly in improbable profits, and serve on a bed of the old bait & switch. _Most cons are variants of the above_
I was unaware of the relationship between those two companies you mentioned, but am now - so thanks for that.
Great Video, sometimes the videos are a little bit talking about nothing, but this one was really great and more argumentative. And good to see ads on your videos 🌝
Every video you made so far I kind of agree with but can’t fully relate, and this video about bureaucracy is the first video I can 100% relate to.
I used to work at a call center and have had a pretty regular amount of experience as a customer to call centers. I also have an elderly disabled mother who is so prone to being scammed that I've stopped introducing her to other people, even ones I trust. While dealing with scammers on the phone and through my own experiences being berated by people in a legitimate call center I have come to the conclusion that they're just a person doing a shit job so they can go home and be a person with a real life.
That's literally no different from me. The credit card company I worked for ruined peoples days/weeks/lives all the god damned time. I couldn't bring myself to hate them anymore and they became just another aspect of capitalism that I needed to protect my mother, and myself, from.
@@saturationstation1446 it's one of the reasons I left that job. Now I manage a local restaurant and give away free pizza to shelters and food banks every week. I know not everyone can do it, but walking away from my soulless corporate office job and working for a local business changed my outlook on life.
Thank you for this! Someone had the balls to say something about this. Thank you.
Been awhile since I’ve watched a video of yours! Seems like you changed up your style a bit! Very cool.
Glad you're doing better. Great vids as always
i started watching scam baiting streams like kitboga when i worked in banking because i needed something to make me feel better after a long day of peoples' grandparents sitting in my office with their finances in shambles. over time though, I started to try and see the other side of why people get into the positions where they have to scam. it's not like people are evil and just get into this line of work for no reason. it's often because the effects of the west's stranglehold on the global south have dessimated their countries and economies and now this is the most dignified option they have for income. i find it sad on both ends. the scammer is often extremely poor s has no choice but to scam and the grandparents shouldn't be made into victims. scambaiting, while funny, does not address the real root of the problem when it comes to these results. the real problem is capitalism and these scams are not going to end until it is dismantled, no matter how much of a scammer's time is wasted by a baiter.
I call BS. The scammers are driven by the same thing that drives billionaires: greed. Listen to some stories of ex scammers. They have other options.
@@katelynnehansen8115 they aren't all in the same situation. Some are low level workers in call centers and some are doing it on their own. That's how capitalism works. Get workers to do what other individuals were doing already, and take most of their wages
i do also want to stress that i still watch scambaiting because the improvisation of the situations do still entertain me, so i think it's totally fine to still do that. i just watch through a different more emphathetic lens now than i did previously back in the day when i was dealing with the effects everyday in banking. i don't work in that industry anymore and it's been much better.
@@katelynnehansen8115 Why is it that whenever someone makes a point about how the root cause of this issue is capitalism people always hop in to explain why it's totally fine to hate the workers while ignoring the entire rest of the point being made. Why do you want to hate these people so bad? It's not even a relevant point to make.
@@hedgehog3180 while capitalism is the root of most of societies current problems, scammers have existed long before capitalism. Do not infantilize them by pretending they don’t know exactly what they’re doing, or that they have no other option. They, like billionaires, throw away any ethics to make easy money. Just because it’s less lucrative then a Musk or Bezos, doesn’t make it excusable.
Reminder to form or join a mutual aid group to improve your community :3