REVERSAL
The powerful never forget that what is offered for free is inevitably a trick.
Friends who offer favors without asking for payment will iater want something far dearer than the money you would have paid them. The bargain
has hidden problems, both material and psychological. Leam to pay, then,
and to pay weIl.
On the other hand, this Law offers great opportunities for swindling
and deception if you apply it from the other side. Dangling the lure of a
free lunch is the con artist's stock in trade.
No man was better at this than the most successful con artist of our
age, Joseph Weil, a.k.a. "The Yellow Kid." The Yellow Kid leamed early
that what made his swindles possible was his fellow humans' greed. "This
desire to get something for nOthing,
" he once wrote, "has been very costly
to many people who have dealt with me and with other con men. . . .
When people leam-as I doubt they will-that they can't get something
for nOthing, crime will diminish and we shall all live in greater harmony."
Over the years Weil devised many ways to seduce people with the prospect
of easy money. He would hand out "free" real estate-who could resist
such an offer?-and then the suckers would leam they had to pay $25 to
register the sale. Since the land was free, it seemed worth the high fee, and
the Yellow Kid would make thousands of dollars on the phony registration.
In exchange he would give his suckers a phony deed. Other times, he
would tell suckers about a fixed horse race, or a stock that would eam 200
percent in a few weeks. As he spun his stories he would watch the sucker's
eyes open wide at the thought of a free lunch.
The lesson is simple: Bait your deceptions with the possibility of easy
money.
People are essentially lazy, and want wealth to fall in their lap
rather than to work for it. For a small sum, seIl them advice on how to
make millions (P. T. Bamum did this later in life), and that small sum will
become a fortune when multiplied by thousands of suckers. Lure people in
with the prospect of easy money and you have the room to work still more
deceptions on them, since greed is powerful enough to blind your victims
to anything. And as the Yellow Kid said, half the fun is teaching a moral
lesson: Greed does not pay.
