The Parasite Economy
Nobody enjoys being made to look ridiculous,and being cheated is even worse. People tend to be less upset when others are conned then when it happens to them – a truth captured by La Rochefoucauld’s observation that there is something not wholly unpleasant in a friend’s misfortune. We’re speedy to assume that anyone who fell for a scam must have been foolish.
Still, I’ve seen clever, sensible people duped by fraudsters. They’ve received emails appearing to be from close friends who claim to have had their phones, money, and cards stolen while abroad and urgently need cash. teh recipients have sent money and afterwards confessed to feeling naive, as if they’d committed some crime.
For a while I got messages from strangers in Africa claiming to be relatives of deposed rulers. If I would only give my bank details, they promised, tens of millions would be transferred to me – half for me, half for the ruler’s impoverished family – ofen signing off “Yours in Christ.”
I used to be proud that no scammer could trick me. But pride comes before a fall.Recently I needed a visa for a distant country that required online purchase. I instinctively went to the web and found a site that looked official, even displaying the country’s flag. The visa looked costly, but I reasoned the country needed revenue. Only after I’d paid – irrevocably – did I notice tiny print saying “This is not an official government website.” Further checking showed I’d unnecessarily paid $150 to a parasitic intermediary; the visa itself was cheap on the actual government site. Caveat emptor. Technically I hadn’t been cheated – I’d been warned and the submission went through – but I still felt a fool.
That experience made me wonder whether the economy benefits or suffers from such parasitic middlemen. There are many of them,whole pages of sites perched above official pages like venus flytraps waiting for victims. They probably create a few jobs, and the money simply shifts from one pocket to another; the recipient might spend or invest it as I would. In aggregate, the economy may not lose out.Yet it feels unproductive and morally dubious. Some customers eventually realize they overpaid; others never do. We could try to weigh the displeasure of the deceived against the gain of the beneficiaries in a felicific calculation, but such calculations are fraught and pleasures and pains are not easily commensurable. My instinct is that these schemes reduce overall human happiness more than they add to it.
That led me to a broader question: how much of our economic activity is similarly pointless? In wartime Britain, posters asked travelers whether their journeys were necessary, implying that frivolous trips wasted resources. That was odd – if a train was already running, the marginal impact of an extra passenger was negligible. Transport systems aren’t very responsive to demand, and there may be good reasons to maintain services even without immediate need. Still the poster’s question parallels another: is your work truly necessary? Necessity isn’t a neutral, physical property; it carries moral weight.
I recall a period of industrial strife when the government cut the working week to three days to conserve services. Production dropped, but not as much as expected: instead of a 40 percent fall it fell by only 20. That suggested that in a normal five-day week some time was unproductive – people were passing time rather than producing value. Perhaps they were having meetings.
But killing time has its uses. The comfortable idleness that some imagine technology will deliver may turn out to be miserable rather than blissful. Predictions of the death of work have been made before; labor-saving technologies typically change the kinds of work we do instead of eliminating the need to work. This time might be different, but I’m skeptical.
When I reflect on whether my own work is necessary, I can only say: both yes and no.
No one likes to be made a fool of, much less actually swindled. Such is the defect of human nature that we are much less upset when we learn of other people who have been swindled than when we have been swindled ourselves, and, in accordance with La Rochefoucauld’s great dictum, that there is in the misfortune of our friends something not entirely unpleasing; we are not wholly sorry for those who have been scammed. They must have been fools to be taken in by something so self-evidently dishonest.
I have known good and intelligent people, however, who have been cheated by hackers. They have received an e-mail, apparently genuine, from a close friend claiming to have had his telephone, his money, and his credit cards stolen in some out of the way country, and therefore in need of immediate financial assistance—which the recipients have then sent. They confess their naivety or simplicity as if they had been guilty of a crime.
For a time, I received messages by e-mail from Africans unknown to me, who claimed to be the cousin of a deposed African dictator or government minister. If only I sent my bank details, some tens of millions would be deposited into my account from the dictator’s ill-gotten gains, thus rendering them licit. I would then keep half, and send half to the dictator’s poor, suffering family. Such an e-mail would often end with “Yours in Christ.”
I prided myself that no swindler would ever get the better of me with his wiles; but, as is well known, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
A few months ago, I was travelling to a distant country that demanded that I should buy a visa online. I went, of course, straight to the internet, and up popped a site which looked very official, complete with the flag of the country. The visa seemed very expensive, but no doubt the country needed the money.
It was only a little later, after I had sent the money, irrevocably, that I noticed in tiny letters, that “This is not an official government website.” Further research revealed that I had paid $150 more than I needed for the visa, via a quite unnecessary and completely parasitic intermediary, the visa being in fact very cheap when bought directly from the government site. Caveat emptor! I had not in strict parlance been swindled, since I had been duly informed and the visa application was in fact made; but I felt a fool, which is not altogether a pleasant thing to feel.
Then I began to wonder whether the economy as a whole benefited from or was harmed by a parasitic intermediary such as had relieved me of my $150. I discovered that there were many such intermediaries, whole webpages of them in fact. They sat there, above the official government website, like Venus flytraps waiting for flies such as I to land.
Such webpages presumably created jobs: not very many of them, but some. The money was merely transferred from my pocket to someone else’s, who for all I knew might use it more wisely than I. He or they would spend or invest it as I would, though perhaps differently. If I had thrown money out of the window, someone would have picked it up. There was no loss to the economy overall.
And yet I felt that this branch of the economy, while it required ingenuity, was not very constructive or productive. Certainly, it would have produced chagrin among those, like me, who realized too late that they had been fooled. Presumably such a site had many customers, only a percentage of whom would ever realize that they had overpaid through carelessness or naivety, the rest not knowing that they had been plucked like a chicken; but the chagrin of the percentage would have to be weighed in any felicific calculus against the pleasure of the beneficiaries of the morally, but not legally, dishonest scheme. There are insoluble theoretical difficulties with felicific calculi, of course, because it is impossible to reduce pleasures and pains to common units of measurement; but overall, I could not help but feel that, whatever the overall economic effect of such sites as the one that had caught me out, they were more likely to detract than to add to the sum of human happiness.
Then the question arose in my mind as to the percentage of economic activity that was similar in uselessness to that of this ecosystem of semi-theft. During the war in Britain, travellers on trains were asked before they went, by means of posters, whether their journey was really necessary, the implication being that they were wasting resources if they took train journeys unnecessarily. This was rather odd, because if the train was scheduled to run anyway, the marginal difference, if any at all, of taking a frivolous passenger must have been so small as to be unmeasurable. Transport systems such as railway networks have never been quickly responsive to demand, and perhaps there are sometimes arguments for maintaining them even in the absence of immediate demand.
Be that as it may, a similar question to that of the wartime poster arose in my mind: Is your work really necessary? This begs the question as to what it is necessary for. Necessity is not a natural quality like length or breadth or density or specific gravity; it inevitably has a moral quality.
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I remember that, during one of Britain’s periodic economic crises caused by union strikes, the government decreed a three-day working week rather than five to cut down on the need for the services normally supplied by the striking unions. Production did indeed decline, but not by the percentage expected. It should have been by 40 per cent; in fact, it was by 20. This suggested that, during a five-day working week, a full day was spent unproductively, by people merely filling their time rather than doing anything of economic value. Perhaps they had meetings.
But filling time is not without value in itself; the life of prosperous or even luxurious leisure that, according to some eminent persons, artificial intelligence promises in the near future, is probably more likely to be hellish than utopian. I have heard promises of the death of work, or of the necessity to work, thanks to advances in technology, several times before in my life, but labor-saving devices seem simply to change the kind of labor required rather than to abolish the need for labor altogether. It may be different this time, but I have my doubts.
When I look back and ask myself whether my work was really necessary, I can only answer, “Yes and no.”
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