Why Gambling is a Really, Really Bad Idea

 It may sound like fun, but playing with your income is no joke.

Some folks wonder why I am against gambling. Others, who have taken courses in probability, don't need to ask why.  Gambling is a form of a stupidity tax - it takes money away from people too dumb to deserve it, and transfers it to folks who are smarter than they are.

Life is all about risk-taking, so in effect, we all gamble every day, with investments, jobs, purchases, and even homes. Insurance is one form of legalized gambling that serves a function in society.  However, with all these risks, there are smart bets, there are safe bets, there are dumb bets and there are risky bets.  Smart folks take only the smart and safe bets, but might take a risky bet if the odds are good.  But they never take a dumb bet.  Gambling is about the dumbest bet there is.

There are many forms of legalized gambling in the United States now.  In my youth, gambling was largely illegal, except for Las Vegas Casinos, and the occasional Bingo game at the Catholic Church. Since then, gambling has expanded across the country, to the point where most folks live within a 30-minute drive of one Casino or another.  Government-sponsored gambling, in the form of lotteries, is legal in almost every State now.

By the way, why was gambling was illegal for so long in the US?  The answer is simple: Gambling did nothing to add to the bottom line of our country.  Rather than promote productivity, gambling only wastes capital and assets. The money spent building gambling casinos pales in comparison to the amount spent at the tables.  In terms of real job creation and growth, it is a false illusion.  It creates only dead-end and low paying service jobs.  Gambling destinations attract organized crime, prostitution, and drugs.  If you doubt this, spend some time on the Las Vegas strip - or better yet, a block off the strip.

And gambling ruins lives and families.  Since it caters to a part of the brain that triggers compulsive behavior, gambling can ruin a person financially.  Only people with the strongest of wills can resist the siren song of the shiny, loud casino.  However, like much of our society today, financially we cater to the lowest common denominator, and if someone wants to ruin themselves through payday loans, car leases, credit cards or compulsive gambling, then that is their "right" to do so.  Society has no right to interfere!

Just don't smoke while you're doing it, though.  That, we have laws against!

When you consider how anti-gambling our society was in 1965 or even 1975, it is amazing how the landscape has changed since then.  So long as a Casino can be said to be "good for business" or a lottery "helping the schools", then these forms of legalized gambling can be sold to the public.  I will not address the political implications of these actions.  It is the human suffering caused by gambling that is the subject of this article.

Gambling acts as a stupidity tax, which means that it is a tax on the poor.  And if you are not poor when you start gambling, you soon will be.  It is an unfair tax, in some ways, as it panders to the weaknesses of the human psyche, weaknesses that are often caused by more by chemical imbalances in the brain than by any moral failings. See my article, Are We Really In Control of Our Own Destiny?  As noted in that article, it has been discovered that certain chemicals, when given to people, cause them to gamble their life savings away.  It has less to do with self-control than with chemicals in your brain.

The mythology of gambling is shrouded in style and class.  Not a James Bond movie goes by without Bond, in his evening jacket, playing Poker or Baccarat in some elegant Casino, with stylishly dressed women sipping champagne or exotic cocktails.  The gambling industry plays up this angle, trying to cloak "gaming" (as they euphemistically call it) in a shroud of elegance and class.  If rich and sophisticated people gamble, it must be good, right?

The reality, as anyone who has been in a Casino knows, is that most people gambling are middle class or lower.  The mythology of the "high roller" coming to Vegas to gamble away a million bucks or more is just that - a myth.  The rich didn't become rich by pissing away their money on games or playing games with their money.  Most of the folks in the Casinos are regular folks, usually lower middle class or poor.

There are a number of forms of gambling, of course, and each has its own proponents and arguments why their form is a "good bet" compared to the others.  But in reality, they are all losing bets.

Wheel games are considered the ultimate sucker's bet.  These include the roulette wheel, the wheel of fortune type (or money wheel) vertical wheels, and the slot machine.  All of these games are pure probability.  You cannot put "English" on the wheel or otherwise alter the outcome.  Studying the wheel or machine cannot improve your odds.  For every dollar gambled on such machines, the house pays out less than a dollar.  Thus, over time, if you gamble on one of these fixed-odd machines, you will eventually leave with nothing.

This doesn't stop people from claiming to have "a system" for gambling with such machines. Slot machine mavens will follow you around the slots, and if you play a machine for a while and it does not "pay off", they will jump in behind you, convinced the machine is "due" for a payoff.  In reality, each spin of the slot machine, like the spin of a roulette wheel or wheel of fortune, is probabilistically independent from its preceding roll.  There is no system, period.

If you flip a coin 9 times and it comes up heads every time, what are the odds it will be tails the tenth time? 50/50.  Each flip is an independent event.  If you fail to grasp this, then you shouldn't play with your money by gambling.  Slot machine players would argue that the coin is "due" for a tails, as there was so many heads before.  But coin flipping and slot machines don't work that way.

Gamblers, of course, deny all this. They may gamble at such machines for a period of time and walk away with money on some days, and walk away without money on others.  They remember the days they win, and conveniently forget the days they lose.  If you gamble consistently, however, you'll lose, all the time.

(Note, of course, that cheating is one way to win, but probably not a very good idea when you consider that the casino might have ties to organized crime.  If you count cards at Blackjack, you'll be asked to leave.  Similarly, the idea that you can "figure out" the flat spot on a Roulette wheel will also fail, as the house will change the wheel once you start winning.  That is the ultimate irony of gambling - even if you did have one of these mythical "winning streaks", or if you could find a way to cheat, the casino would usher you out the door before you won too much!).

There are other games where your intelligence, and your interaction with others can help you win. Poker and even blackjack, have some interactive features which make it possible to "beat the house", although blackjack remains mostly a probability game.  In Poker, you can "game" your opponent and bluff them and win.  Thus, in an informal setting with friends or acquaintances, it is possible for a sharp card player to make money at poker.

However, for the sharp poker player, playing poker is anything but a game, and it is not gambling.  As I noted in another article, I had a chance once to meet such a fellow, and it was an education.  He lent me a book about playing poker, and I presumed it would tell me about odds of playing hands, card strategies, and things of that sort.

Surprisingly, the book was mostly about how to rope losers into games and keep them there, how to collect on gambling debts, and generally how to use psychology to make money from the game.  The book suggested getting your opponent drunk - making sure his glass was always full, while you drank watered-down drinks.  Once your opponents starts playing sloppily, encourage him to stay in the game, saying things like, "Well, you could always win it back in the next hand!"  So much for the "friendly" game of cards!

If that is your goal in life, to con others out of their money from poker, then go for it.  However, don't expect to be too popular a guy.  Eventually, folks get wise to your game and stop playing. In the old West, they'd shoot you.  It's not much of a life.

If you play poker with such folks, expect to lose and lose heavily.  They have all the cards (sometimes literally) and you have nothing.  They will play on your fears and greed like a violin, and fleece you for every nickel.  Needless to say, after losing a few times, I dropped out of "Poker Night."  There was no way to beat a card sharp like my friend.  And he was really no friend, as it turned out.

Being an amateur poker player is like being a new car customer.  The new car showroom is a machine designed like the slaughterhouses of old Chicago - designed to fleece the customer for his every last nickel.  Sharp poker players are the same way.  You may think you can outsmart the car salesman or the card shark, but odds are, you can't.  The only way to "win" is not to play in the first place, period.

(Casinos are also designed like slaughterhouses.  One casino in Vegas even had a conveyor belt to haul people off the strip and deep into the bowels of the casino, like cows to the butcher.  Once inside, you are assaulted with a cacophony of noise and lights and cannot even begin to think straight.  Start drinking, and well, you're done for.  Trying to get out of a casino is never easy, which is why fires, such as the MGM Grand, can be so fatal.  Exits are not clearly marked, as they do not want to encourage people to leave.)

Sporting events, such as football games, horse and dog racing, boxing matches, and the like are other areas where the law of probability might be trumped by experience or knowledge. Some racing fanatics claim they can study the racing form and figure out who will win a given race, based on the history of the horses, track condition or the like. The problem with sports betting is that a lot of other people have the same knowledge, and as a result, the odds are always set by what people smarter than you are thinking.

You can learn about the horses, or football players, or whatever, of course.  But such an investment in time and energy is not likely to be rewarded by the payoff.  And gambling of all sorts is a huge time bandit.  One friend of mine, who liked to "play the ponies" spent every waking minute at the track, when he was not at work.  He gambled away a fortune over the years, spending money on nothing other than his apartment, a Cadillac, and his meals and clothes.  He never married or had a family or did anything else. T he horses were his life. But he never made any money at it, despite the dedication of a lifetime to the "sport".

So, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to educate yourself enough to win at sports betting consistently.  And moreover, sometimes these events are rigged or fixed (don't act so surprised).  So even if you know all the odds and know all the horses, you can, and will likely lose most of the time.

Note also that the tracks and bookies are not operating these enterprises for free.  Each gambling enterprise has to take a percentage of the action in order to profit (and profit they do!).  So it is not enough to merely win a majority of the time - you have to win consistently and win big to offset the overhead costs.

Lotteries are, of course, a purely probabilistic game - and one with amazingly long odds.  For a dollar bet, you can potentially win millions. Of course, the odds of being hit by lightning are lower.  As in any form of gambling, playing a lottery ticket once in a while can be entertaining and exciting. But the problem occurs when this excitement turns into excitement addiction or a compulsion.

I've bought a lottery ticket on occasion, as a lark.  What is interesting to observe, is who else buys these tickets.  Most of the purchasers are very poor people, poorly dressed, driving run-down cars.  They look as though they can ill-afford to gamble.  And instead of buying one ticket, as I do, maybe once or twice a year, these folks are playing the lottery every week, or even every day, buying 10 or 20 tickets at a time - of all different types.  $20 a week, invested over time, could be $105,115.96 at retirement.  That's a sure thing - compared to a bunch of losing lottery tickets.

In terms of probability, the lottery is the ultimate sucker's bet, as the odds are long, and the State takes a huge chunk of the money - more than the Casinos.  Scratch games and smaller numbers games (e.g., Keno) have sprung up, which provide more "wins" of smaller pots ($5 to $20, for example).  These games pay off just often enough to encourage more playing.  However, if you keep playing long enough, you end up broke.  Lottery salespeople are encouraged to "pay off" winners of such games with more tickets.  As a result, even if a winner "wins" ten dollars, he usually ends up buying 10 dollars worth of tickets.  Eventually, all he is left with is a fist full of losing tickets and grey scratch-off under his fingernails.

What is sad about the whole gambling industry, is that most of the folks gambling can least afford to squander their money this way. To someone making $20,000 a year, spending even $1000 a year on gambling is a significant percentage of their income.  Gambling serves to keep the poor, poor.

Of course, gamblers have multiple justifications for gambling:

• You get free drinks, meals, and even hotel rooms in Casinos: As the old saying goes, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Any "free" comp'ed drink, meal, or room is more than paid for by your gambling losses.  If you add up what you've spent at the slots or the tables, you've paid for those "free" items many times over.

• Gambling can be an inexpensive, affordable vacation: One friend of mine plays the nickel slots, on the basis that it is a cheap way to gamble.  It is a slow way to go about wasting $20, to be sure.  But over time, you are $20 poorer, and have wasted an hour or more in a dimly-lit, smoke-filled room.

• Gambling losses are tax deductible: Yes, and winnings are taxable.  However, don't count on having too many winnings.  As I noted in other articles, never confuse a tax deduction with making money.  You cannot deduct your way to wealth and prosperity.  It would be better not to have gambling losses at all, than to have a deduction.

• Professional Gamblers can make a living at it: The myth of the professional gambler is far overstated - very few exist.  While it is theoretically possible to make a living at gambling, it is not possible to do so with purely probabilistic games (e.g., slots).  And guess what? You'll never be a "professional gambler," so what's your point?  Of course, it helps if you can change the rules of the game, if you are a "whale" - but you aren't, are you?

• Gambling can be fun, exciting and enjoyable: This is, of course, a subjective argument.  I found Vegas to be depressing, dirty, and full of runaways and hookers (often the same people).  It was exploitation of the human condition on an industrial scale.  The buildings were gaudy, tacky, and cheaply built.  Fun?  If you like spending hours in noisy, smoke-filled rooms wasting your estate away, then perhaps so.

• Poker can be a fun way to while away the time: Marathon poker sessions in a smoke-filled room are the stuff of novels and movies.  In reality, spending hours sitting in a chair, drinking and smoking is about the worse thing for your physical health.  While Brad Pitt may play a poker player in the movies, the reality of the hard-core player is not the washboard abs and muscular physique.  Poker is the ultimate sedentary lifestyle game.

So what can you do to protect yourself from gambling? Here are some suggestions:

• Don't fall for the myth of gambling as romantic or classy: If someone tries to hawk gambling to you as "fun" and "exciting", tell them the real truth.  If people stop believing the myth, they may be less inclined to get sucked into gambling.  Avoid people who talk up gambling, or at least let them know in no uncertain terms you are against it.  I let my friends know that I think gambling is for fools.  If they are offended, too bad.   But perhaps it may, over time, sink in. Set an example as a role model.

• Just don't go: If a friend recommends a Casino vacation, Casino cruise, or a trip to a local Casino, find some excuse not to go.  Once you are aboard a Casino cruise, for example, you are basically trapped on board, with no place to go.  Most of such ships have no other actives to pass the time - not even a means of going outside and enjoying the ocean!  Many are nearly windowless.  Casinos themselves are windowless mazes of darkened rooms with flashing lights and noise, designed to trigger base emotions in your brain.  You cannot fight back in such stacked scenarios, so just don't go into the trap.

• Limit your spending: This can be as difficult as advising an alcoholic to limit their drinking.   Casinos all have ATM machines now, and even banking facilities to allow "gamers" to access their savings while at a Casino.  I went into a Casino once, saying I would spend $20 on the slots and see what it was all about. $50 later, I finally realized that the whole setup was designed to make me want to gamble.  If you do go, take only some cash you want to spend, and leave your credit cards and ATM cards behind.  If you are not tempted to spend it, you might not.

But the best advice about gambling is to leave the risk-taking for other areas of your life. It never ceases to amaze me that people who will gamble at loser's games like slot machines (where you almost never win) will be very conservative with their personal investment and purchasing choices (where a little education and savvy can make you a winner most of the time).  A chronic gambler will drop thousands of dollars in a slot machine, but not invest in the Stock Market on the grounds it is "too risky".

Go Figure!

(Edited April 18, 2012)

(Edited February 21, 2014)

(Updated December 2020)

Understanding Auto Insurance

Auto insurance comprises a number of different components, of which one is collision insurance.  Understanding these components and what you are paying for them is important.

Automobile Insurance can be very confusing - and expensive. Coverage is broken down into a number of categories, including liability, medical, collision, comprehensive, and uninsured motorists insurance.

Note that required coverages vary from State to State.  Most Agents, when preparing a price quote, automatically add on coverages that you may not need.  Scrutinize your policy carefully - it may turn out you are paying double for basic coverage, with add-ons that are pricey and provide little in real coverage for you or your vehicle.

1. Liability Insurance is the big ticket. If you smash into someone and they sue you, you don't want to be bankrupted by such an accident.  (Of course, if you are poor, you have no assets to protect, so buying additional coverage often makes no sense).  The best bet in this category is to get a standard rate of coverage (e.g., $300,000/$100,000) and then buy additional liability in an "umbrella" policy  if you need it.  Not only is it cheaper in terms dollars spent for coverage, it covers all sorts of different types of liability.

2. Medical Coverage is often overpriced and covers little. In one policy I had, the agent automatically added $10,000 of medical coverage for $150 in premium (six months). This is not a lot of coverage for quite a lot of money. If you already have health insurance, chances are, this medical policy will cover little more than your deductible. I cancelled this coverage, as it seemed like a lot of money for not a lot of payout.

3. Collision Insurance, like the name implies, will cover the cost of collision repairs if your car is damaged in an accident. If you have a loan on your car or lease your car, you are usually required to have this, with a $500 deductible. You can save a lot on collision by going to a higher deductible ($1000) which eliminates frivolous claims.  But check with your lender first to see if this is permissible.

Some folks would say "Well, then that doesn't pay for a minor collision!" And this sort of comment illustrates the two views of insurance, and why insurance is so expensive these days. Some people view insurance as a Chinese take-out menu, looking at the claims possible and then saying "I'll have one of these and these and these". They want an accident or other claim event to be like an all-expenses-included spa vacation holiday. Others, like myself, look at insurance as a safety net, for emergencies only, to HELP cover the cost of disasters. If you take the latter approach, you'll spend a lot less on insurance.

3. Comprehensive Insurance, like collision, covers damage to the vehicle from other sources, such as hail damage, or a tree limb falling on the car. Again, if you have a loan or a lease, you are required to have this coverage, usually with a $500 deductible. If not, you can raise your deductible to $1000 and save a lot of money.  Again, check with your lender, if any, to see if this is permissible.

At some point, of course, Collision and Comp don't make much sense, no matter how good condition your car is in. One mistake many folks make is in assuming that because their car is worth (to them) thousands of dollars, that the insurance company will pay out that amount. Most car insurance companies only pay out "book value" such as the KBB, NADA, or Edmunds values for a car. So, even if you installed a $5000 sound system in your car, your insurance company will not pay for it, unless it was declared as part of the policy.

For example, Jim buys an old Honda Civic. He takes it to a professional "tuner" and has $20,000 of work done on the car, including ground effects, suspension, engine mods, a big fiberglass wing, and a cool custom paint job. He re-does the interior in suede and puts in over $5000 in audio and video equipment. The car catches fire and burns to a crisp. His insurance company offers him a check for $5000, the "book value" of a used Honda Civic. Jim is outraged!

The problem is, Jim insured the car as a plain old Honda Civic, which is worth $5000. The insurance company assumed that is what they were insuring, and he paid a premium based on the base value of the car - not all the "mods" he added. You can't blame the insurance company for not paying off on a risk they did not assume.

Jim's experience illustrates why "mods" are not worthwhile. Chances are, even if he disclosed these "mods" to his insurance company, they would not insure him, as such modifications are worth far less in resale value than the cost of installation. So taking Jim's business is a sucker's bet - Jim would be motivated to torch his own car, once he realized the resale value was far less than the amount "invested".

If the premiums on Collision and Comp are more than 1/10th the BOOK value of the car, it is time to drop collision and comp, in my opinion.  For example, I have a 1995 Ford F-150. Since I have taken care of this truck, it looks like the day it was made. No rust, no scratches, no dents. Unfortunately, the "book" value on this truck is about $3500 on a good day. No matter how much I could plead and beg with the insurance company, they would argue (correctly) that I could buy a similar vehicle for $3500 all day long. So minus the $1000 deductible, $2500 is all they would pay out, period, and that is only fair.

Collision and Comprehensive insurance for that truck would run about $250 a year. Not a lot of money, but about 1/10th the value of the vehicle. Since most folks get into an accident about every 11 years (on average), statistics would argue that paying for Collision and Comprehensive insurance on this truck is not a good bet.

And that's all insurance is, a bet. It is a form of legalized gambling. You are betting that you are a horrible driver and will wreck cars all the time. The insurance company is betting that you are a good driver and will never file a claim. The lower the deductible and the higher the coverage, the better this bet is for you - and the higher the cost of the bet (lower odds). If you are a sharp gambler, you'll take the bet with the longer odds and the lower buy-in.

Most car owners obsess over their collision coverage, wrongly thinking that damage to the shiny objects parked in their driveway represents their largest exposure.  However, where their real exposure is, is in a wrongful death suit or a personal injury suit.  If your $20,000 car was totaled and you had no coverage, you could easily recover from such a setback. On the other hand, if you are sued for a million dollars, it would wipe you out, take everything you own, force you into bankruptcy, and destroy your credit rating. Where is the real risk?

4. Umbrella Liability Coverage on top of basic liability is the most important coverage you can get. Coverage for damages to vehicles is trivial compared to that exposure.  A better bet than buying additional liability is to ask about a separate "umbrella" policy that will cover you for all sorts of liabilities - up to $1 million or $2 million for only a couple of hundred dollars a year.

5. Rental Car Coverage: There are a number of other "junk" coverages usually added on by most Agents, without your authorization. If your Agent does this, change agents or companies, as the Agent is acting in their interest, not yours. Rental car insurance is one such coverage. This coverage provides a rental car in the event your car is damaged and needs to be repaired under the collision policy. The Agent will tell you it costs only pennies per day, but in reality, the odds of your collecting on this are slim. Again, a major accident should not be viewed as a trip to a day spa, with all expenses included. Based on an average 11-years between claims, you end up paying a premium for this coverage. If you have a second car, chances are, you might not even need this coverage at all.

6. Car Rental Coverage: Note that this coverage is different Rental Car Coverage above!  In the past, many car insurance policies would cover you if you rented a car - both from a liability standpoint and a collision/comp standpoint. Paying extra for liability or collision coverage at the rental car counter was deemed a waste of money. But today, many insurance companies are not automatically offering to cover the costs of car repairs to rental cars. Some may cover from a liability standpoint, and some may not even cover this. An umbrella liability policy may cover you in this regard. It pays to ASK your agent whether your policy covers these items before accepting or declining this coverage at the rental car counter.  Some credit cards offer to cover rental car collision if you book with their card. Again, though, it pays to check out the details. If you bring back a dented car to Hertz, you may be delayed for hours filling out paperwork and miss your flight - and repairs may be charged to your credit card and you may have to wait months for reimbursement.

7. Towing Insurance is another possible junk coverage. If you belong to AAA (recommended) you may already be covered. Again, the Agent will sell this to you on the basis that it costs "pennies per day" but in fact, it is rather expensive roadside assistance. I have been a member of AAA, and addition to getting free maps and trip routing, they paid for towing in an accident I was in 3 years ago, no questions asked. When the tow truck driver arrived, at night, in the rain, AAA was one of the few options he was willing to accept - no questions asked, no ifs, ands, or buts, and no payment needed in advance.

8 Uninsured Motorists Insurance (UMI) is a puzzle to many, including myself. What exactly does this cover? Why do I need it? Do I need it? How much do I need?  (UPDATE:  See THIS POSTING for more information about Uninsured Motorists Insurance).

Massachusetts Bay Ins. Co. v. Allstate Indem. Co. v. Joyner, 736 So.2d 877 (Mississippi Supreme Court--July 20, 2000) illustrates one example of where Uninsured Motorists Insurance is applied. On September 19, 1996, on an interstate outside Jackson, Mississippi, two cars were traveling in the left lane. A black sport utility vehicle (SUV) was passing them on the right and found its path blocked by a slow-moving truck. Rather than braking, the SUV swerved to the left. In the left lane, Evelyn Joiner swerved farther left in response to avoid a collision with the SUV, entered the median of the highway, lost control, flipped, and was killed. The other car in the left lane witnessed the tragedy as the black SUV continued speeding on into the night, never to be apprehended. After Joyner's death, her husband sought uninsured motorist benefits from Allstate (which provided $30,000 in such coverage) and Massachusetts Bay (which had uninsured motorist limits of $200,000).

The theory of uninsured motorist coverage is that it provides the coverage that would have been available had the policyholder been able to bring a tort claim against an insured driver. To the extent that the tortfeasor driver is uninsured or under-insured, the innocent driver may recover up to applicable policy limits from its uninsured or under-insured motorist coverage.

So, uninsured motorists insurance is an opportunity to sue your own insurance company. Such claims are ripe for fraud, which is one reason I think the premiums are so high (almost as high as regular liability insurance). One could stage an accident with an uninsured "friend" and then claim pain and suffering quite easily. Or one could claim that their car was "sideswiped" on the street by another motorist, when in fact you hit somebody.

As the example above illustrates, such insurance might be useful in a situation where you want to sue someone for wrongful death, but they are uninsured. The question I would have in this particular scenario, is whether $30,000 or even $200,000 really makes much of a difference to the husband after the death of his wife.  In the greater scheme of things, this hardly covers burial expenses, much less the emotional or financial loss.  Any amount of money really does not make one whole.

States are split as to whether a "hit and run" driver constitutes an uninsured motorist or merely an unknown motorist, the latter not being covered by uninsured motorist insurance in some States. Some States require that a "hit and run" driver actually HIT your car in order to collect (driving off the road to avoid an errant driver is considered your fault, not his).

So what WOULD this insurance cover? And is it worthwhile? From what I can ascertain, the "nightmare scenario" of the Uninsured Motorist would be that of an uninsured motorist hitting you can causing debilitating injuries for you and/or your passengers, to the point where you required extensive medical care and/or rehabilitation. If you have to take a year off from work to learn how to walk again, you might be devastated financially.  However, $25,000 of uninsured motorists insurance isn't going to do much for you, is it?

Your personal health insurance would cover a lot of those expenses, however. So the Uninsured Motorists Insurance would only kick in to cover deductibles and co-payments. In addition, it is not clear that Uninsured Motorists Insurance would cover lost wages and "pain and suffering." If it did, chances are you'd have to sue your insurance company to obtain the money, as they would dispute large payout amounts.

I am not convinced that a lot of coverage is necessary. One problem with all types of insurance is that if people think they are entitled to a payout, they will milk that payout for all it is worth - that is the nature of human beings. So if someone hits your car, of course you might claim pain and suffering and all sorts of things - and even hire a lawyer to sue them for damages. But if the same injuries occurred to you as the result of your own negligence, you might be more motivated to move on with life.

And as I noted earlier, I am not certain in what scenarios a wrongful death suit makes anyone whole. If you already have life insurance, then your spouse and children will be taken care of. In the case illustrated above, even if the surviving spouse win $230,000, how much of that went into lawyer's fees? And how did that money fix anything?

UMI is little more than the insurance company agreeing to be a defendant in a lawsuit filed by you, where the "bad actor" may be unknown, uninsured, or under-insured. One can readily appreciate why premiums for this coverage are so high.

Most umbrella liability policies require $300,000/$100,000 coverage on liability in order to obtain umbrella coverage. But they require NO UMI to get the umbrella policy. From my perspective, buying an umbrella policy is probably a better deal than UMI, and if you have to parse your insurance dollars, cutting back on UMI and buying an umbrella policy is probably a better bet.

Is there a grave risk of uninsured motorists? It would seem to be declining. In many States, such as Georgia and New York (my two homes) if your insurance lapses on your car, you are fined on a daily basis for lack of coverage.

In other States, like California, which borders Mexico, uninsured motorists have been a big problem, but a problem that is declining. The following table, from the California Motor Vehicle Bureau, illustrates how the percentage of uninsured motorists has been declining:

Year Registered Vehicles Insured Vehicles Rate of Uninsured Motorists Number * % Change ** Number % Change ** 1995 20,197,092 14,164,574 29.87% 1996 20,323,829 0.6% 14,620,180 3.2% 28.06% 1997 20,727,274 2.0% 16,557,565 13.3% 20.12% 1998 21,043,560 1.5% 17,604,603 6.3% 16.34% 1999 21,593,468 2.6% 18,512,755 5.2% 14.27% 2000 22,266,982 3.1% 19,107,564 3.2% 14.19% 2001 22,793,631 2.4% 19,806,658 3.7% 13.10% 2002 23,331,631 2.4% 20,003,536 1.0% 14.26% 2003 23,987,027 2.8% 20,550,067 2.7% 14.33% 2004 24,672,633 5.7% 21,113,403 5.5% 14.43% * Based on DMV Currently Registered Vehicles by ZIP codes interpolated to July 1 for the given year. The number of Registered Vehicles includes an estimated number of vehicles that are unregistered. ** Percentage change from the previous year.

Thus, even in high-risk California, the percentage of uninsured motorists is declining. The alarming statistics of a decade ago (routinely batted about by Agents) have dropped in half.

Again, Insurance Agents will regale you with horror stories as to how so-and-so was hit by an uninsured motorist and left crippled in a wheelchair. However, making a financial decision based on anecdotal data is hardly sound.

UMI was nearly 1/3 of my overall insurance bill, at the $300,000/$100,000 level of coverage. Rather than drop the coverage entirely, I lowered it to the lowest level available ($50,000/$25,000) with the highest deductible ($1000). This is, of course, a risk-taking exercise. With risks, go rewards. But also risks.

UPDATE:  I decided to drop UMI entirely, as having paltry $50,000/$25,000 coverage seemed kind of silly.  If I have a debilitating accident (in a wheelchair) from an uninsured motorist, 50 grand ain't gonna cut it.  You can buy a lot of UMI coverage to cover such catastrophic possibilities, but the cost is prohibitive.  I decided to take a calculated risk and get rid of this coverage.  I live on an island where the speed limit is 35 mph.  Hopefully, if I do get in an uninsured motorist accident, it will be a small one.  In the mean time, I can bank the difference.

By dropping collision and comp, medical coverage and UMI, and declining rental car, towing, and other "junk" coverages, I was able to drop my car policy to less than $50 a month for three cars.  I have an umbrella liability policy on top of this, which covers all liability for my home, car, etc. to $2 million.  This represents a lot of coverage for very little money, and also covers very real liabilities that could bankrupt me.

Many others will spend far more on covering things like collision and towing, and neglect or avoid paying for more than minimum liability.   If you have any assets at all, such coverage, I believe, is short-sighted.

Also, as I noted in another posting, Uninsured Motorists Insurance is popular with Tort Lawyers, who want to "stack" such coverage to obtain greater returns for their clients (and of course, themselves!).   Your lawyer will be happy you have uninsured motorists insurance.   Whether you are happy paying the premiums, is another matter.

UPDATE October 2014:  A relative recently died after an auto accident.  She was not wearing a seatbelt and hit her head on the windshield.  The other driver was uninsured.   She also had several major health problems at an advanced age.  She was fine after the accident, and then died suddenly (blood clot?).  Her uninsured motorists insurance paid out $100,000 to her estate, which divided nine ways means another $11,000 for her heirs.   While this is a nice (small) windfall for the heirs, does it really make anyone whole?   Was it worthwhile for her to pay for such coverage?   Bear in mind that had she survived, her collision insurance would have covered the car, and her health insurance would have covered her medical expenses.  Granted, she could have sued her own insurance company for "pain and suffering" and collected on the UM policy.   But is suing yourself such a swell idea?

For me, the costs don't seem outweighed by the benefits.

What decision you make is your own decision to make. Figure out what you are spending on each form of coverage and what risks and possible liabilities are involved, and then make a sound decision.  For me, I would rather put money in the bank and have that as a certainty, than to pay a lot of money for coverage of "what if" possibilities, which pay off only rarely.  It is called risk-taking, but not everyone is well suited to it.

Modern Day Slavery, or Debt Slavery

Consumer debt can be a form of slavery!

When I discuss Modern Day Slavery, or Debt Slavery, some people freak out, or even say such talk is racist, or some such nonsense. In reality, Slavery has existed for millennia. In the old days of Leviticus and such, slaves were not necessarily Black, but merely folks, who, for one reason or another, found themselves indentured. Typically, invading armies would enslave foes, usually people they deemed to be of lesser intelligence and value.

It was only until the 18th Century that Slavery became associated as a Black-only thing. But the roots remained the same - a view by the slave-masters that they were superior to the enslaved.  And even then, the enslavement of Africans was a follow-on to the practice of indentured servitude, which was promulgated in the New World.  Once the settlers in the New World ran out of indentured servants, taking Africans as slaves seemed like a natural next step.  Debt-slavery conditioned people to accept actual slavery - which is troubling, given the conditions in the world today.

Even today, slavery exists in the world, albeit in a much smaller scale. Oppressed people are coerced into slave-like conditions. The traffic in human misery continues, as women are forced into prostitution, or the poor are kept as virtual hostages as housekeepers and servants in some countries - sometimes even in the US!

But that is not what I am talking about here. While those types of modern-day slavery exist and are deplorable, they are not as common as what might be called Debt Slavery - the de facto condition of servitude that many in this country (and others) find themselves in as the result of economic conditions and consumer debt.  While Debt Slavery is certainly not on the level of the traffic in human flesh, it can be debilitating and devastating to its victims. And since it is far, far more widespread, one could argue that Debt Slavery is a greater harm overall.

The conundrum of Debt Slavery is that most victims willing fall into it, through their own actions and by yielding to easily-offered temptation. And like traditional slavery, it disproportionally affects minorities, the poor, and the less educated. However, even white, middle-class folks can end up selling their souls to "the man".


What is Debt Slavery?

In England in the 1700's, one could literally fall into a real form of Debt Slavery. If one failed to pay the bills and went bankrupt, not only would you lose all your worldly possessions, one could be forced into the workhouse or jail (debtor's prison) until the debt was considered "paid" or a prison sentence served. Like in antebellum slavery, children were often separated from their parents (as in Dickens' Oliver Twist) and literally sold.

Reforms brought about in part by stories like Dickens' have made bankruptcy less harsh. We no longer throw debtors into prison or take them to the workhouse. However, even a lavish prison is still a prison, and many folks in modern America find themselves in perpetual debt. If real slavery were legalized tomorrow, within a few years, a staggering proportion of Americans would end up as slaves, all because of the inability to control spending. People would literally sell themselves into bondage, all for a wall-screen TeeVee.

Debt Slavery might be defined as a condition of perpetual debt, which in turn forces a person to perpetually work in order to pay off this perpetual debt. It is a condition in which a large percentage of a person's labor (one third or more) is devoted to servicing debt - most of which is payment of interest on debt. A person in Debt Slavery never gets ahead, since as soon as one debt is paid off, another is incurred. A person in Debt Slavery never owns anything, they only owe.

And while reforms since Dickens' time have made the poorhouse and the debtor's prison things of the past, recent "reforms" to bankruptcy laws have made it nearly impossible to get out from some debts, particularly student loan debts.  The old days, where debts were "wiped clean" are largely past.  And as a result, we have created a nation of perpetual debtors, who are forever trying to "work out" their past debts, never to get ahead.


How Do People Become Debt Slaves?

One of the most puzzling thing about Debt Slavery is that most, if not all, people who fall victim to this condition willingly sign up for it. In exchange for shiny consumer goods (cars, boats, televisions, clothes, etc.) they sign their lives away, so that they can have it all "now" rather than later. Often this means paying two, three, or four times as much for an article than its actual retail price.

So, for example, a person buys a brand new car, signing up for three or four years of car payments. With interest, they easily pay 1-1/2 times the retail price of the car. Compared to the same car purchased used, they pay double the value of the car. Throw in the added cost of collision insurance over the life of the loan, and (for young people in particular) they can end up paying four or five times the value of the car.

They signed up for this to satisfy the need of the ego to have something new and shiny - and because of weakness - the inability to say "no" to a persuasive salesman. It also is a result of ignorance, or lack of experience or training. Car salesmen and dealers are not going to point out the economic folly of such a transaction. And yet the victim sees all his peers doing the same thing, so he thinks, "This must be an OK deal, right?" Wrong, of course.

Once the process starts, it worsens. Paying too much for one item, like a car, leaves the victim with less money to spend on other essentials, such as car maintenance. When the car is finally "paid for" (or even before) it is in such bad shape that the victim goes back to the dealer to "trade in" - often on onerous terms. Since the car may be worth less than the balance of the loan, sometimes the "negative equity" is folded into a new loan. As the creditworthiness of a Debt Slave is always suspect, and the balance on the loan exceeds the value of the new car, the terms of the loan (interest rate) are staggering.

But the debt slave, seeing only a monthly payment and a shiny new car, signs the papers and kids themselves they are "ahead" of their neighbor who owns and older, paid-for car.

The car scenario is only one major example, and an example of how debt can snowball out of control. Granted, most people don't end up being scammed as badly as in my example above. But that example is based on the real-world experiences of a friend of mine, so I can say that it does happen.


How Do People Remain Debt Slaves?

Once people get into Debt Slavery, it is very, very difficult to get out. Institutions cater to the Debt Slave and continually entice them to staying in its grasp. Once a credit rating is shot, only the worst sort of financing is available to the Debt Slave - interest rates of 20-30% or more.

Catering to the "I have to have it NOW" mentality, enterprises such as Rent-To-Own furniture and appliances sell consumer goods to the Debt Slave for 2-3 times their real market value. A recent trend and extension of this concept is the Rent-To-Own Rims (car wheels) that enslave their victims in exchange for what is literally bright shiny and cheaply made trinkets. The Manhattan Indians were tricked in a similar manner, swapping the Island of Manhattan for $24 worth of beads and trinkets. In the cities today, young men do the same thing for cheap Korean-made "bling" rims.

Of course, once the process starts, the Debt Slave is short of money. Financing companies fill in the gap by providing payday loans, often at interest rates of 300% or more. Each payday loan is folded over into another loan, and never paid off. Tom Wolfe wrote about this practice back in the 1930's in Look Homeward Angel, in which an unscrupulous local lawyer would loan $20 to the poor, having them pay it back in $1 weekly installments perpetually - to cover only the interest. Once trapped like this, the victims never paid the loan back. In over 70 years, not much has changed.

Pawn Shops, Car Title Loan shops, and other enterprises separate the Debt Slave from the meager consumer goods that they have managed to pay off. For pennies on the dollar, they sell off what little they have in exchange for getting money NOW.

Even if the Debt Slave manages to get ahead somewhat in payments, or gets a raise or promotion, they often fall back into slavery by buying yet another new car or purchase.

Credit Cards merit special mention. Credit Card companies have been very aggressive in recruiting new customers, oftentimes customers they know cannot pay off large debts. They offer large credit lines, knowing that the victims will indulge themselves with purchases of food, clothing, and other consumer items. Once they reach their limit, they will be charged over-limit fees and the like. Since the Debt Slave cannot manage their finances, they may pay a card late, which in turn jacks the interest rates to 20-30% or more, making paying off the debt nearly impossible.

And the Credit Card companies have successfully lobbied to pass new laws limiting a debtor's rights in bankruptcy. The one weapon that debtors had in the past has been severely blunted.


Why Do People Remain Debt Slaves?

Peer Pressure is one reason many people remain in Debt Slavery. By this I do not mean the type of pressure to conform faced by high school students. Rather, I mean the tendency of human beings to judge their own actions by the actions of others. If a suburbanite sees that his neighbor is in debt, but has a new car and other desirable consumer goods, then he/she thinks that such indebtedness is a "normal" part of modern life.

Unfortunately, we, as humans, tend to judge our actions this way - by what our peers are doing. And this negative tendency can explain some of the most egregious human behavior. If all your neighbors join the Nazi party, then it certainly doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Germans were not being particularly evil, they were just being particularly human. The scary lesson here is that any behavior can be adopted on a mass-scale, once people view it as a "norm".

Or take cigarette smoking - and the campaigns against it. When everyone smoked, the idea of lighting dozens of small, hand-held fires in an aircraft surrounded by aviation fuel seemed "normal". Today, the "norm" is to be anti-smoking, so smokers can be ostracized. Homophobia worked the same way. Today, homosexuality is accepted as part of the "norm", but in the not-too-distant past, it was not. What is viewed as a "norm" in society can change, and change very rapidly.

For this reason, the Debt Slavery industry does not want to change what is perceived as normative. Here in Georgia, for example, laws were passed outlawing payday loans. The payday loan industry has fought this, arguing that they are a legitimate business, and that in certain instances, people need such loans to get by - and that the government should not interfere in what is, essentially, a private transaction. Usury laws and the like were also repealed on similar grounds.

The Debt Industry advertises heavily. You probably know the catch-phrases and jingles of most major credit card companies ("What's in YOUR wallet?"). Payday loan places, Rent-to-Own furniture stores, and the like, all heavily advertise on Radio and TeeVee. Unscrupulous home refinancing deals also advertise heavily, offering the Debt Slave a "way out" - but one paved with toxic ARMS, junk fees, and loan points.

For many people, however, the TeeVee is the source of their normative cues. Most Americans watch 6-8 hours a day, believe it or not. They wake up to the TeeVee, watch it at a restaurant during lunch, turn it on after work, and shut it off before they go to bed. The TeeVee is the ultimate propaganda machine, and if you keep watching it, you will end up brainwashed, no matter what. The best thing to do, is turn it off entirely.

So long as Debt Slavery can be viewed as a "norm," it will continue. The best thing you can do is stop taking your normative cues from television and your dimwitted neighbors, and learn to think for yourself.

One interesting aspect of Debt Slavery is that on many blogsites and other discussion boards, you will see postings from people who actually defend bad financial decisions that lead to Debt Slavery.  While some of these postings are no doubt shilling from the debt industry, others appear to be from genuine individuals who want to self-justify their own bad behavior, by convincing themselves that leasing a brand new car every three years or running up debt on an "   airline miles"   card really isn't such a bad thing after all.


So Why is Debt Slavery a Bad Thing?

Some might argue that Debt Slavery affects only its victims. And by being in debt, the victims of Debt Slavery have a motivation to go to work every day, and thus it encourages productivity from the masses. Debt Slavery results in a massive transfer of wealth from the people in our society who can afford it least, to a small minority of people and institutions who need it least.

But just as secondhand smoke affects non-smokers, Debt Slavery harms society as a whole, not just its immediate victims. Debt Slavery creates a permanent underclass in our society, an underclass that feels it has been lied to and taken advantage of. The Debt Slave tends to believe, with good reason, that the system is fixed and the game is rigged - that there is no legitimate way to win.

And with " reforms"  in bankruptcy laws, the debt industry has been emboldened to lend money more and more to people they know in advance cannot pay it back.  They count on "workouts" and other means of getting their money back, plus copious interest payments.  By the time most Debt Slaves think about bankruptcy, they have paid for their credit card purchases at least twice over, with interest charges.  Any workout money is a pure bonus for the debt industry.  Compare this to the old days, when banks and credit card companies were reluctant to loan money to people they knew would default - as there was a real risk of not being paid back!

Creating a permanent disgruntled underclass degrades our entire society, not just the underclass it affects. Once a person comes to believe, either from personal experience or by watching the experiences of others, that they cannot get ahead legitimately, then criminal activity seems all the more legitimate. The next time you are robbed or your car stolen, ask yourself if the motivation of the robber or thief was pure laziness or merely a sound economic decision based on the perceived choices available to them.

The wealthy have far more to lose by creating a permanent underclass than does the underclass itself.


How do You Avoid Debt Slavery?

The key here is to redefine your normative cues. This can be difficult in a city or suburb, or even in the country (Many a farmer has gone bankrupt buying the latest and largest tractor, just because his neighbor has one). Bucking the norm will open you up to ridicule and abuse. But life at the center of the herd is never the richest. Most of the grazing grass at the center of the heard has been eaten down, trampled and pooped upon. The edge of the herd is dangerous, to be sure, but that's where the prime grazing is.

If you buy a secondhand car and then keep it for 10 years, you can be sure that a shallow neighbor will rib you about having an "old car". This is to be expected, particularly if the neighbor has a shiny new car and a string of car payments (or worse, lease payments). You are challenging their norm, and it scares them. They want to reassure themselves that being in debt is good, and that you are the one who is wrong.

In other cultures, it may be different cues. In Gay communities in major cities, many young men bankrupt themselves trying to appease a mythical "norm" which involves spending enormous amounts of money (all on credit) on clothes, bars, and oftentimes, drugs. Those who challenge such norms will be ridiculed for not having "stylish" clothes and $200 haircuts.

The list goes on and on. Regardless of whether you live on a 1,000 acre farm, an Army barracks, a tract home, or a school dorm, you will be pressured to get involved in many forms of self-destructive economic behavior. It takes strength and resolve to fight these trends and have your own ideas - and follow through with them. Once you have that resolve the rest is easy.

The procedural techniques of what you need to do to get out of debt and stay out of debt are well-known and obvious, and can be summed up in one simple statement: spend less than you make. That is not the hard part. Like a diet, the hard part is willpower.

It is also a good idea to understand the politics of Debt Slavery. Payday loan operators spend a lot of money supporting candidates who want preserve their line of work. Credit Card companies pay lobbyists millions of dollars to get Congressmen to pass laws in their favor. If you vote for such politicians based on their position on "social issues," for example, but fail to recognize the real dangers to yourself and society, then it is you, not the slave-masters, who are to blame.

Debt Slavery is deadly serious, and nothing to take lightly.  And anyone can fall victim to it, without thinking.  If you follow the herd and take your cues from the television, chances are you are on your way to becoming a debt slave, if you are not already one.

They're BAITING you!

Are you being BAITED?

At home, at work, in life, there are folks out there who want to bait you - to get you all worked up and aggravated or get you to think emotionally, in order to take advantage you one way or another. In some instances, people will bait you just to get you upset, so they can then mock you. It goes on from nearly the moment you are born until you die. People are just swell!

The idea is simple. Folks, if they think rationally, will make rational decisions. Rational decisions rarely result in large profits for anyone. However, if you can get someone to think emotionally, you can rob them blind. It is a game as old as the hills.

The emotions they play upon are basic:

• greed
• envy
• jealousy
• vanity
• anger

Who does this? How does this work? And how can you tell if you've been baited?

The scenarios are endless, but here are a few examples which might answer these questions.

People who are baiting you are not only commercial interests (salesmen, companies, etc.) but also your friends, co-workers, employers, and even your own government. They also include the television, particularly the evening news. The basic goal is to get you all riled up so you can't think straight.


1. The Car Dealer - An Obvious Example

For example, take the car salesman. Cars are sold on emotions, not on rational thinking. If people bought cars rationally, they'd all be rather bland looking and bought through the fleet sales office. What sells cars is emotion. If a car looks "sexy" - or more importantly makes YOU look sexy, you are more likely to buy it. In our society, status is tightly tied up with what make, model, and year car you drive. Most folks buy new cars in order to keep up the appearances of what they perceive to be their status and station in life. With all of this in the background, the car salesman has an easy time of it.

Going to a dealer to buy a car is one of the worst experiences in life. Since most people do it maybe a dozen times in a lifetime, it is not something we become skilled at. So right off the bat, you are at an experience disadvantage. Salesmen start by playing up to the emotions you are already pandering to - how the car will enhance your status. One common trick of salesmen is to say "hey, I'll put temp tags on it now, and you can drive it home and show it off to your friends!" The idea being that you are so caught up in impressing people you hardly know that you will forgo negotiating price and terms on the deal. Many do just that.

The other common tactic is the wear-down. Most folks report that a simple sales transaction with a car dealer can take 3, 4, or even 5 hours or more - for no apparent reason. By keeping you hostage in the showroom, the salesman can wear you down. After you've spent an hour or more there, you feel committed, as you don't want to lose the time you've "invested" in the process by starting over somewhere else. In addition, after a few hours, your blood sugar level goes low, and you become dehydrated. You may feel dizzy and lightheaded. You want to leave, and you'll do anything to finish the process, even accepting terms that you would not normally find acceptable.

The only way to avoid this trap is not to step in it. You can't win at the car dealer game, period. Just as you can't win at a casino. Thinking you can outsmart a salesman is folly. In one month, he completes more car transactions that you will in a lifetime. Who has experience on his side? Yet many people, men in particular, like to boast about how they "put one over" on a car salesman, when in fact it was they who were had.

Buying services, online sales, and the like are helpful tools in that game. But the best deal of all is a well-researched low mileage used car. A car than is one to two years old and has 12,000 to 24,000 miles on it can be had for 20% less (or even far less) than the cost of a similar new car - when bought from an individual, not a used car salesman. No matter how good a haggler you are, you can't get a deal like that at a car dealer.


2. Employment Games

But that is merely an obvious form of baiting - in a sales transaction. Employment is another area where people use baiting - often subconsciously (or not) to get ahead of their fellow employees. For some people working in a company, the ultimate goal is to get ahead - no matter how trivial the advancement is, or what the cost involved is, to the company or your fellow employees. Many companies inadvertently (or intentionally) foster an atmosphere of competitiveness among their employees, which may be very destructive to productivity.

For example, Joe Green wants to work his way up the corporate ladder at Acme Corp. The first step is to become department head. But there are other, more highly skilled employees with more seniority above him. His first goal is to get these people out of the way. Joe targets Sam Brown first. He takes Sam to lunch and tells him stories about what an awful place Acme is. Sam never realized that simple Acme Corp. was a cesspool of vice and corruption! Joe keeps hammering the point home over time. Stopping in Sam's office time and again to engage in hour-long bitch sessions about how crummy Acme is. The employees are being taken advantage of, of course, and management is inept and corrupt. The rival Apex Company is a much better place to work, he says. They have a profit-sharing plan!

It doesn't take too long before Sam becomes depressed in his work, as he spends hours every day with Joe, bitching about how bad Acme is. Of course, Joe manages to casually report to his superiors how Sam is bitching about Acme, and Joe also tells other co-workers about Sam's unhappiness. Before too long, Sam is sending a resume to Apex Company, and if Joe's plan works, Sam leaves Acme before too long, and Joe advances another notch. Sam fell for Joe's baiting in a big way.

Of course, if Sam didn't get the hint the first time, Joe has other tricks up his sleeve. For example, Joe calls a headhunter and gives him Sam's name as a potentially disgruntled employee. Now that Joe has worn Sam down with the negative talk about Acme, when the headhunter calls, he'll have easier pickings.

There are other tricks as well. Joe can suggest to Sam that he take on an unpopular and unprofitable project, which, when it fails, will be blamed on Sam. Or Joe can encourage Sam's discontent in front of others, and then show Sam's bosses that Sam is being "disloyal" to the company. There are many techniques.

Are there really people as evil as Joe in the world? Yes. There are some folks who will stab their Grandmother if it meant a $10 a week raise and a corner office. But the Joe's of the world also do these nefarious things very subconsciously. If confronted with their tactics, they will deny they are doing anything intentionally, and in their minds they are telling the truth. Human behavior is a very complex thing, and many of us (most of us? all of us?) do things without thinking of what our real motivations are.

How do you avoid Joe? Well, don't play his game. If he wants to stop in your office for an hour and bitch about work or co-workers or bosses, tell him you have an important project that needs to get done (don't be surprised if he suggests you blow it off). Just say no to Joe, and that means no lunches, no chat sessions, and certainly do not rise to his bait by bitching about work or your bosses. If you get a call from a headhunter, ask them where they got your contact information. Someone had to give it to them - they don't just randomly dial people.

Even if you do hate your job and think your boss is a jerk, there is little to be gained, amend that, NOTHING to be gained, by bitching about it at work. If you really feel that your job is wrong for you, research and find a new one - non-emotionally and rationally. Don't be baited into it by an employee like Joe.


3. TeeVee (and Radio) Games

As I noted in my "Kill Your Television!" article, TeeVee has degenerated into little more than a continual baiting game. They want to get you all riled up so you continue to watch. It is highly addictive.

Haters are an even a better audience than lovers!

In Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts" there is a line that illustrates how this works. The station manager is reading the latest A.C. Nielsen ratings and says :

"50% of listeners LOVE Howard Stern and listen for an average of 1.5 hours. Reason given? They want to hear what he'll say next!"

"50% of listeners HATE Howard Stern and listen for an average of 2.5 hours. Reason given? They want to hear what he'll say next!"

Whether this survey was actually true, it illustrates the twisted genius of Stern and other "shock jock" and talk show hosts, as well as television programmers. Their goal is to get you to listen or watch, so they can sell you, like a pimp sells a whore, to advertisers.

Pleasant music and subdued announcers do not generate an emotional response from listeners. But shocking material gets people to "stay tuned" and listen for yet more outrages.

TeeVee works on the same principle. The 11:00 news starts advertising around 8PM every evening with 5-second "teasers" that are ambiguous and alarming. "A hurricane in the forecast? Stay tuned for news at 11!" Of course in the same time it took them to "tease" you about this, they could have said "no hurricanes in the forecast" or "a hurricane IS forecast". But that doesn't insure someone will watch later on. This sort of teaser is insulting to your intelligence, frankly.

TeeVee shows work on the same principle. They titillate with sex and "controversy" to get you to watch. Fox started this trend with "Married: with Children" and the other networks quickly followed suit. Today, most sitcoms and dramas on TeeVee are about who is sleeping with who. And every year, a new swearword is added to the list of "acceptable" television dialogue, usually on the premise that "people actually talk that way in real life."

If you stop watching TeeVee for a year or so, going back to it is like trying to take up smoking again. You wonder what you ever saw in it - or what others saw in it. While the shows are barely 22 minutes long, they seem to drag on for hours. The latest baiting trend is "reality" shows, which of course, are all scripted. What do they script? Fights. They go on for weeks with juicy and gossipy arguments and tiffs between the contestants - as if these people even know each other or care. But apparently there is something in human nature that likes to hear about such stuff - a somewhat evil and sad part of human nature at that.

Again, the only way to avoid the baiting of TeeVee is to just stop watching it. Spending hours every day sitting and staring at a screen is not a constructive use of your time, and hardly engaging your brain. Once you stop thinking, the brain atrophies and doing things like buying a new SUV sound good (after you've seen countless ads). So you go to the dealer and get baited some more. Controlling TeeVee watching is akin to trying to control a crack habit. You might kid yourself it is under control, but deep down you know you have a problem. After 30-40 years of this, you'll look back at your life as one long sitcom and wonder what the heck happened.

And bear in mind the average American watches 4.6 hours of this junk a day. Not only is it a bad influence on your brain, it is the ultimate time bandit!


4. Is Your Government is Baiting You? Of course they are!

One of the most common forms of baiting is from your own Government and in particular, politicians. You don't get elected these days (or any days) by being quietly competent. You have to be against something or tell the electorate that dire things will happen if they do not vote for you!

Republicans have been using the baiting game for decades. So-called "social issues" such as Abortion, Gay Marriage, Gun Control, Prayer in School, Creationism, and the like are used to get fundamentalist Christians to the polls. The last thing the Republicans want, of course, is for these issues to actually go away. If they did, who would vote for a bunch of crooks?

So after nearly 20 years of Republican rule under Reagan and two Bushes, Abortion still remains legal. The last thing they want to do is actually overturn Roe v. Wade - it would be bad for business!

The National Rifle Association had this problem recently. They have had such a success pushing through their agenda that very little remained to be done. How do you get people to send in their dues and vote Republican if their guns are not in peril? Their solution was to go abroad - they would use gun laws in Canada, Australia, and Europe as examples of "what could happen" in the USA if we weren't careful. Playing on John Birch paranoia, they argued that United Nations "laws" would preempt the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and force us to give up our guns!

Silly nonsense? You bet. The UN has no power at all, particularly when we have a veto seat on the security council. But people believe it, and they send in their dues, buy the DVD's with these paranoid theories, and vote for crooks who would not otherwise get elected dogcatcher without these baiting games.

Lest you think I am being partisan, Democrats play the same game, albeit with a different set of rules. If you vote Republican, women will go back to having back-alley abortions! Right? Well, no, actually not. More than half of all births today are out-of-wedlock. There is little or no social stigma attached to an "illegitimate" birth. The incentive to have a dangerous abortion if it were outlawed is quite overstated. And the risk that abortion will be outlawed throughout the USA is also overstated.

The Democratic playing card is "going back". If you vote Republican, we'll "go back" to the days before affirmative action, before the civil rights act, to Jim Crow, and eventually, slavery will be legalized! This is of course, a ridiculous argument, but they make it all the time. Even mere discussion of the merits of affirmative action are called racist. And traditionally, it has worked in getting out the vote, particularly in minority neighborhoods.

And once elected, our elected leaders bait us all the time to push through projects of dubious merit. The war in Iraq? The economic bailout? Those are just a couple of recent things sold to us on emotional, not rational, terms.

How do you avoid being baited politically? For starters, avoid listening to political pundits, talk show hosts, and the like. Most of these use emotional arguments for what should be rational public policy decisions. Every issue has two sides to it, try to figure out what the other side wants, and why. It may not change your mind, but it will help you understand what is going on. You may find that both sides of an issue are being baited and used.

And most of all, don't be a single-issue or "issues" voter. If someone can snag your vote based on one position on one issue, they have you. Most elected officials do not have control over these issues anyway (which is why Reagan and the Bushes could not outlaw abortion during their terms). Electing your local mayor based on his position on abortion makes no sense - particularly when he has been accused of looting the town treasury.


5. Are your Friends (and family) Baiting You? They Might Be!

The idea that your friends might try to manipulate or bait you seems odd at first. After all, these are your friends, right? People you love and trust, right? But in any group of people, be it a bridge club, a family, or a clique at school, there is a constant competition, which is usually operating far below the levels of conscious behavior. Usually.

As sad as it may sound, people curry favor with one another. People want to be loved, to be popular. And there is a nasty tendency, in any group, to scapegoat others. In many families, this behavior is all too common. Sibling rivalry is a well-known term. Siblings vie to see who can curry favor with the group, and often this means ostracizing one or more members of the family. The situation is often fluid and dynamic, as one member becomes popular, while another is in emotional exile.

Among groups of friends, similar things happen. People turn on one another with a vengeance. Someone who is popular one day is reviled the next, usually because they were popular, which encourages jealousy.

There is an old saying that goes like this: "Intelligent people talk about ideas. Mediocre people talk about things. Dumb people talk about other people." In our society, we are encouraged to be dumb people. "People" magazine and the like are some of the most popular forms of press. "Entertainment News" trumps real news on a regular basis. Reality TeeVee and the like focuses on arguments and disputes and scandals revolving around people. So it is little wonder that most folks today take their social cues from these sources and turn their personal lives into pathetic mirrors of celebrity news.

It is hard, very hard, not to get sucked into this sort of thing. The warning sides are obvious. When you are with a group of people, and the discussion degenerates into a bitch festival about the one person missing, you know you are headed for trouble. The problem with this behavior is that after an hour-long bitch session about Suzie, the next time you see her, it will be....awkward.

And the next time the group is assembled, well, how awkward is it that you all know the horrible things you've said about Suzie and here you all are in her presence? And of course, you'll have to ask yourself this pertinent question: If they say this nasty stuff about Suzie when she isn't around, what are they saying about YOU? Answer: The same sort of stuff.

If interaction with your friends and family is degenerating into baiting like this, it is a sure sign you are spending too much time together. Groups, Cliques, and Families, tend to ostracize outsiders as a means of reinforcing group cohesiveness. However, this "blackballing" of others can make things uncomfortable and difficult later on - and make yourself miserable as well.

The best thing to do is to reduce contacts with folks in a group when it reaches this point. When you see each other less, you will have other, more important things to discuss when you do meet. If the bitch fest starts, you can try to change the subject, but it rarely works, I have found.

And sometimes, you just have to let your membership in such groups lapse. Your own mental health is more important than group membership, and if a group brings you down with their constant harping on others, it is not good for your psyche. Besides, if you leave the group, you give them a new topic for discussion - and a new target for their vitriol. So in effect, you are doing them a favor.


6. Please Hold for the Next Available Operator - is the Telephone Baiting You?

Customer service is another area prime for baiting. We've all spent hours on musical hold, trying to get a refund for a item that was defective, or a charge on our account that was not legit. The systems companies use to handle complaints are very well crafted to get customers to give up on their complaints and go away.

Long hold times and frustrating telephone operators can get you riled up - get you angry. You call and are transferred, and then put on hold, transferred again, and again. Each time, you have to explain your life's story to some clerk or "supervisor" (usually another clerk) in a call center. No one is very helpful, because they are trained not to be. And eventually, you get upset. And that is what they want you to do. If they can get YOU to be angry and unreasonable, then it is easier for them to paint themselves as the ones who are calm and collected. And if they can get you to spend an hour on the phone, chances are, they can get you angry pretty easily.

The best solution to this problem is to write down what it is you want and mail a letter to the company involved. It may not provide instant gratification, but it creates a better paper-trail for you later on, should something like this escalate into a legal matter. Gather together all your documents, write down a statement of facts, and most importantly, set forth what you feel is a reasonable resolution to the problem.

Many folks, being baited by telephone call centers, fail to get their documentation in order. If you don't have the paperwork, they can claim they never heard of you. And if you don't have your complaint in writing, they can claim you never complained.

Offering a reasonable solution is also important. I have read many angry letters to consumer complaint hot-lines in the past, with consumers who want unreasonable solutions to their problems. One fellow's RV breaks down on a trip. Not only does he want free repairs, but he wants his towing covered, the cost of the campsite reservation, a three-night stay in a hotel, including room service meals, and $5000 on top of that for the "aggravation."  The best he could hope for is a free repair.

Put it in writing. Write down the facts. Assemble supporting documents. Ask for a reasonable solution to the problem. And if there is no reasonable solution to the problem, then just move on with life. There is little or no point in "filing a complaint" if it does nothing to compensate you for your losses. Sometimes the best you can do is move on and take your business elsewhere.

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All of these examples above are based on my own experience, as well as the experiences of others I know. Chances are, you've been baited in the past, just as I have been baited. As humans, we cannot help making a knee-jerk reaction to certain emotional stimuli. However, if you can recognize when you are being baited, it is a good first step. Avoiding baiting situations can improve your life from both a financial and emotional standpoint.