Well, thank you for explaining. It makes helps me to understand numerous things (your situation and my own experience). It seems that each developing country is different; however, I understand the need to lie. Even if you were willing and able to be upfront, that could involve other things like kidnapping insurance, armed guards, etc.ertyu wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:43 pmThat's the size I'm looking at. Also, developing country. Which is why lying will be necessary. Think of it from their point of view: if you're unemployed and the economy is bad, and you have a hard time providing for your children or you have a family emergency, would you hesitate to tap any means necessary to put food on the table? You won't give a fuck some stranger worked his back off to save 30x yearly expenses and is currently scrimping so the money will last. What you see is, this greedy fuck is hoarding so much money when so little would make such a difference to you, and if he's so rich and has such earnings potential, he can fucking go get another job. When necessity forces you into unethical behavior, it's way too easy to make the person you plan to steal from the bad guy so you can justify your choices. Being honest allows you to develop authentic relationships, like GK pointed out, but at the same time, authenticity is a luxury only available at a certain level of societal affluence.
Testing waters first is an imperfect safety system as people can sustain a long con for quite a while, but it's the best compromise.
Since I am in the US, there is no real danger. I think that since the economy is so poor people are hustling for jobs, gigs, connections, etc. People probably don’t think we can help them personally get ahead, yet we are still a threat from an ego-standpoint. It took a few months living here to see the cracks, two years to realize the depths and try to play along, and three years for the existential crisis.
I am curious to hear more about “the long con.”