Prairie Fires (the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame) goes into detail about how common it was the railroads fucked over the regular folks during westward expansion.
Hi J, I'm the guy who talked briefly with you in the Jefferson school parking lot about 6 weeks ago. You should look at Peter Andreas' book *smuggler Nation* a history of the US through crime. Not scams, but certainly adjacent.
i just quoted your post to plug my podcast but have you read about this guy? one of my favorite crazy ones from pre antitrust days https://meandermaine.com/tale/the-ice-king/
he had a monopoly on ice in nyc pre refrigeration, then when refrigeration made that business obsolete he used all of the infrastructure he built to haul the ice to control shipping lanes on the hudson, then he did a bunch of bank fraud and jp morgan had to bail him out
Speaking of war profiteers, it took me way too long to figure out that Daddy Warbucks in "Little Orphan Annie" was called that because of war profiteering
the actual argument i suppose — beyond a claim about scamming being a constituent part of the american identity — is that scams and frauds went hand in hand with state and institution building, entwined as both were in speculative capitalism
There is a very real argument to be made that George Washington was only a revolutionary in the first place because he wanted to sell off scam land investments that he didn't actually possess, and had been specifically told he was not allowed to own.
I think a lot about how the building out of the railroad system was essentially a classic speculative bubble that ultimately left most of its participants ruined or bought out by the tiny number of remaining trusts and monopolists and how that's basically what we've done with the Internet so far
the Melville novel "The Confidence-Man" is really good on this point and emphasizes the fact that *confidence* in something--some sort of more positive future--was key to it working
Ive been... just casually considering this as a defense of Tammany Hall... scam and frauds went hand in hand with institution and community building. Am i outta line?
Thread compression made me think for about 10sec you had decided to attempt a real estate scam (which I have learned is apparently a hallowed tradition)
great reply ... I will give you another history tid bit but you don't need to read anything unless ya want to. Tom Paine gave up on the revolution and the founders, died a drunk pauper because he was so disgusted by the lack of true equality that was being promised
I would also just add that protection from scams and frauds, in other words, the assumption of certain forms of risk, was an important part of the development of the state but of corporations as well. See:
I was genuinely baffled and incredibly concerned that there are apparently real doctors who practice who are doctors of ‘osteopathy’ which is not science or actual real medicine where I live
Yeah, I know they study some mainstream medicine but what about the scam stuff
The funny thing is people were REGULARLY wiped out back then. Speculation regularly blew up the economy, and the boom and bust cycle was especially vicious. Being a country of farmers lessened the blow, then industrialization happened.
I remember learning, in the @yourewrongabout.bsky.social Donner Party ep, that scamming was foundational to their plight; an outpost's owners looking for business lied about it being on a safe route through the Utah desert (it delayed the party a month & left them stranded in the Sierras in winter)
You cannot separate the arrogance from the land speculation scamming. The Founding Fathers that speculated in land and objectively scammed, also had an ingrained view that they were entitled because of their superiority. They did not see it as scamming, but as good for all involved.
That is pretty much the history of where I live in Oregon since it became part of the US. Even locally there's almost no awareness of how it still shapes our political fights and institutions.
Old and busted: give Congress members railroad stock worth $0, get Congress to confiscate land and give it to your railroad, both you and Congress get rich
New hotness: give Congress cryptocurrency worth $0, get Congress to invest US Treasury money into crypto, both you and Congress get rich
I definitely see it as a constant real estate scam, with plenty of other types, as well.
The property being sold to you is always the scarcest and best, so you better get in now or you're a loser.
I took a history seminar on that exact topic and it's a GREAT way to explain America. Revival/fringe/cult religious movements, counterfeit money and central banking, tech innovation and photography hoaxes, urbanization fears, how Wall Street started as illegal gambling, it's all there!
Yep. I read a book about the first great awakening a few years back and was like "oh, ok, so we've just been doing the televangelist craze of the '80s for longer than we've even been a country".
I am sure you are flooded with thoughts and responses but one reason I hope I get to read this book: I was in a great seminar course in college that was entirely about PT Barnum, with the thesis being he was the Most American. Fits with your concept!
I know it’s everywhere in American history, but this article by Rick Perlstein is an important puzzle piece in the story of why it was the Republican Party in particular that got hollowed out before Trump https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
Closely intertwined with the idea of "the Frontier"--which was active as late as my childhood in the 1960s. The idea being that the U.S. provided unlimited opportunity because there was always new undeveloped land and that gave us an expansive and generous character. (Obviously that has problems)
I'm inclined to be a little more romantic about it, that something about an environment of new mythologies plays on the imaginations of scammers and the scammed. Dreams of golden streets and all that.
Charles Dickens is sort of the anti-de Toqueville here, embarking on a tour of the US after losing all his money to speculators and writing the angriest travelogue
There is a 'state of courts and parties'-esque argument to be made that predatory land speculation (particularly as directed outwards by homesteading militias) was a key factor that enabled the US to expand and become powerful without much institution building.
Scams and frauds were huge parts of colonial life in general. You'd have people leave England under false pretenses all the time. Great way to lose all of your life savings.
I would read this book if you wrote it.
Also please write on Argentina's entrance into the world as a place to put money in
Worth the double emphasis here that this particular scam started under Abe Lincoln, so the crooked scammy Republicans were right there in the very first Republican Administration, and getting in where the crooked scammy Dems before them had been there (yes, yes party shift but still).
Genuinely few things make me feel more patriotic than a particular interesting scam, like it can't just be fleecing old ladies it has to be something like this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tino_De_Angelis
Who scammed the federal government five billion times and died in his bed at nearly a hundred
I've been on archaeological excavations of a railroad work camp that was associated with a scam railroad. Also worked a site associated with a scammer who fleeced Ulysses S. Grant when he was a quartermaster in the Army. Grant's entire career is just one scam after another.
Based on my experience working in consumer credit law, I think the stock market is going to take a noticeable hit long term thanks to legalized online gambling, as people move to betting on sports instead of day trading
Richard White is 'way ahead of you😺
"these tycoons...were, however, not that smart. Many were clever enough at soliciting money and not repaying debts. The shrewdest of them were masters at controlling and manipulating information."
My book on bank notes and shinplasters in the early republic has so many amazing frauds and scams, such as the Bank of America in a remote part of Indiana that consisted of a potato barrel covering a sack with $5000 in coins. It was supposedly capitalized with $500,000 when it issued bank notes.
If you write it, I will absolutely read it! There needs to be more written about the sketchier corners of American history, because it turns out those are often load-bearing structures.
That'll be a long, long book, methinks.
Old friend Andrew Odlyzko has written much on the persistence of bubbles and scams: there's plenty to pick from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Odlyzko
I want to write a local history book (I live in Alabama) and just talk about the Mississippi Land Bubble and Yazoo Fraud as openers. The word millionaire was coined to describe the amount of money French speculators were making (and losing) in nonexistent Mississippi land bubbles.
i have a crank-adjacent argument that contemporary china and late 1800s america are basically the same society. a rising world power with a newly big economy, a society built entirely on a pyramid of scams that is "civilizing" its western regions by genocide of the native peoples
The Maurer book is a classic and absolutely essential reading, but isn't there a difference between what it covers--a history of the kind of grift that preys on individuals from outside of society--and what JB is talking about, which is the scamming of the public by those who represent society?
In the spirit of the season, it is worth mentioning that in "A Christmas Carol," Dickens refers to something being worthless by calling it a "a mere United States Security," because US states at the time routinely issued bonds and then defaulted. The British were not amused.
I once taught an undergrad English class called “Literary Scandals and Controversies” all about famous plagiarism and rare book forgery cases as well as Oxfordianism etc, and it was one of my favorite syllabi
My favorite in this genre is "Fantasyland" by Kurt Andersen, which boils American history down to religious cults and get-rich-quick schemes. But I think there's plenty of material for more books on the topic.
You could include one of my favorites: Georgia’s Yazoo Land Fraud episode. It has corruption, land theft, king cotton and possibly the root of Georgians’ distrust of the federal government which has been passed down from
one generation to the next. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/yazoo-land-fraud/
@dsquareddigest.bsky.social "Lying for Money" is not specifically US focused, but has some and v. strong on analysis. Ranging further afield, Ian Klaus Forging Capitalism and The Book of Swindles (Late Ming) also great (latter via either @beijingpalmer.bsky.social or @bokane.org or both).
"The Mirror Makers" is a history of the advertising industry, but since the modern advertising industry was born out of patent medicines, I'd say the first couple of chapters are an invaluable early history of American scam capitalism
The Longest Con by @joeconason.bsky.social does a pretty good job starting in the 50s w Roy Cohn The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism https://a.co/d/2cxREba
Oh I'd read that in a heartbeat. My nomination: the vaudeville huckster who tried to scam the US military into buying bogus munitions during WWII. Who needs an Oppenheimer bio-pic when you have this guy?
I would read a 'scams and frauds: The American Way' book in a hot second. I'd listen to an audiobook over the course of a few weeks in the car; I don't drive all that much. :)
Go for it. I did a version of this only with San Francisco history told through murders (with some scams & frauds thrown in). https://www.murdersthatmadeus.com/
Just added "The Murders that Made Us" to my audible library (And 🙄 to the reader whose review complained that it was "limited to the San Francisco Bay area" when it says so right on the cover 🙄)
I would read the hell out of this. And lurid coverage of financial crime would be a key part of any left-leaning information ecosystem that can match up to what the right has built.
Comments
Florida
https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Land-Bubble-Land-Grabbing-ebook/dp/B007139E4M/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691010342/socializing-capital
Yeah, I know they study some mainstream medicine but what about the scam stuff
New hotness: give Congress cryptocurrency worth $0, get Congress to invest US Treasury money into crypto, both you and Congress get rich
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2810/2810-h/2810-h.htm#link2HCH0001
The property being sold to you is always the scarcest and best, so you better get in now or you're a loser.
So that entwinement would have been fully expected.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1213/1213-h/1213-h.htm
I would read this book if you wrote it.
Also please write on Argentina's entrance into the world as a place to put money in
Who scammed the federal government five billion times and died in his bed at nearly a hundred
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_MacGregor
"these tycoons...were, however, not that smart. Many were clever enough at soliciting money and not repaying debts. The shrewdest of them were masters at controlling and manipulating information."
In audiobook format too please!
I have a deep fascination with these types of ppl/figures lol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Salad_Oil_Swindle
https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/bunk
https://www.lastpodcastnetwork.com/fraudsters
Old friend Andrew Odlyzko has written much on the persistence of bubbles and scams: there's plenty to pick from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Odlyzko
https://www.amazon.com/Bunk-Hoaxes-Plagiarists-Phonies-Post-Facts/dp/1555978169
https://a.co/d/1qOQ5eJ
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/139581/the-mark-inside-by-amy-reading/
Gonna just re-read The Match King, I guess.
one generation to the next.
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/yazoo-land-fraud/
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183077/fraud?srsltid=AfmBOorrvJ9Txs6T9bW6x9vcYK4ga-d-XULC4kZ2vLV9oW3A_fVf6AzE
I want to say "when Amway was illegal" was the height of the non-scam era, but I'm not even sure about that ...