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"The way you rob customers is by dressing up something cheap and worthless to look desirable. The way you rob taxpayers is by constantly challenging them to defend their patriotism and their religion." -- Jane Smiley, 2005-11-22 (thanks to twistedchick for linking to it first)

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There are 8 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

That doesn't even make sense. Is this something that only works in an American politics context? I thought the generally accepted method of robbing taxpayers was to ram through hugely unpopular legislation or programs over the vocal protests of the citizenry, usually without allowing them ample time to assess the impact or make public commentary. (Yes, I'm lookin' at you and your damn NAFTA pact, Brian Baloney, and you and your electricity privatisation plan, Mike Harris -- remember that teachers' strike?)

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I think the quote is explaining how to distract the taxpayers while doing the things you mention.

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This quote squicks me a bit. I don't consider patriotism and religion to be worthless things.

Correcting it to

The way you rob people is by dressing up something that is already freely available and found everywhere. You market it by dictating a scenario and implying that "If you look around, you'll see that the old one you have isn't good enough anymore".

Using this method, you rob customers by applying it to consumer goods like food, clothing, and perfume. In order to rob tax-payers, you just question their patriotism and religion.

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Again, I think this only works in the context of American politics. When Canadian politicians want to do something particularly egregious, they don't appeal to patriotism (whatever that is in the Canadian paradigm -- two Canadians, three opinions on the subject) or religion (which religion?), they just go right the hell ahead and do it, and distractions be damned. It's really quite arrogant. OTOH, it's not as blatantly dishonest, either.

Then again, we don't have the same kind of patriotism culture or religious culture as in the US. So, where those two motivators are absent or hugely lessened, the political motivations change...

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It's not that patriotism or religion is worthless; it's that people can be manipulated by goading them into defending and justifying those things, challenging them to "prove" that their patriotism or faith is up to snuff.

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I agree with that.

I don't see how is that is anything like "dressing up something that is cheap and worthless to looking desirable".

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#blink# It's not. "To fool customers you use that trick; to fool voters you use this trick instead." I didn't see it as a comparison on the "these things are cheap and worthless" level. I saw it as a comparison on the "both of these techniques are ways of tricking people" level.

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That I might buy too if the quote said "voters" instead of "taxpayers", and "trick" instead of "rob". Taxpayers don't necessarily vote, and tricking people isn't necessarily about taking their money.

In this case, the people questioning people's religious devotion aren't the ones receiving the treasury checks.

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