Black Cat Blog

Thoughts, Stories, and Ideas

Category: Opinion

Political opinions and thoughts

  • Scammers

    I have written posts on Linked In about signs that you are about to be scammed. I’ve written the same posts on Nextdoor. Well wouldn’t you know it? Today I got scammed and it hurt badly. I lost $50 via Apple Pay on a moving scam. Here is the entire story:

    I reached out to somebody on TrashNothing. This person is not the scammer. Anyhow, she was offering a king bedroom set in beautiful condition. I was planning on getting it for my fiancée. In a sweet way she complained about me taking up so much space in our queen. But I love her so much that I started looking. And sure enough this came up.

    Today one mover flaked out completely. So I tried reaching out to somebody else and they ended up taking my money. I’m not into victim blaming but this one was my fault. He wanted me to pay half up front via Apple Pay on a telephone number other than what he contacted me on. That should have been the red flag that ended it.

    Sadly, I was desperate to get this bedroom set for the absolute love of my life. Desperation and emotion clouded my better judgement and I fell hook, line, and sinker for it. Well, once bitten, twice shy. I will only deal in cash now and only when the job is completed.

    I went to ApplePay with a tone of contrition in the hopes of getting my $50 back. Once the money is sent, there’s no going back. I felt sick to my stomach when I realized that loss represents 4 hours of work. I get paid $17 an hour. 1 hour of work with tax deductions works out to be roughly $12.75 per hour.

    Scammers are parasites and predators. They seek out innocent and trusting targets and exploit them. Scammers should face consequences similar to sex offenders. They should be required to register on a database and I do not say this lightly because I am generally anti-government but this is where the government and I agree. Don’t hurt your fellow class members. Don’t exploit the vulnerable, and furthermore, never exploit children.

  • The War on Drugs

    I have said time and again that the war on drugs has nothing to do with public health or safety. Perhaps it once was but it’s not now. As with most laws nowadays, you have to see who stands to benefit from the law.

    The war is a cash cow for rehabilitation hospitals and private mental health facilities so big healthcare rakes in the dollars. The war benefits private corrections companies. Even law enforcement make extra money from overtime and special assignments.

    The drug cartels themselves are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of these laws. Cartel leadership did not become as successful as they are by not having good business acumen. I am certain they accept a relatively small amount of product loss as the cost of doing business. Keeping drugs illegal means a higher street price and they know they would loose billions should laws change.

    I have no proof of this but I believe that the cartels donate to politicians hell bent on keeping drugs illegal. They may donate through shell corporations and borderline illegal money moving enterprises.

    Furthermore I believe that by maintaining the drug war, we are actually undermining safety. Violent crime would probably drop as a result of drug legalization. Drug legalization and treatment would go a long way towards making America safer and more secure.

    In conclusion, it’s time to admit that the drug war, much like alcohol prohibition, is a failure. We’re better off legalizing drugs. I forgot to mention one added benefit: the drugs would actually be safer because they don’t need to be produced secret. They can be manufactured using cleaner processes.

  • The Future Of Work

    Is the future of work going to be work on a 1099 contractual basis? The reason I ask is I am seeing a steady trend towards this kind of work. I am not necessarily against it either. In fact, I would be absolutely for it if universal healthcare could be made available. All of the big corporations and the wealthy would stand to benefit from this and so would the working class. It creates entrepreneurial freedom and working freedom.

    I am a actually a proponent of this style of working because it means more flexibility for life’s events that pop up. Although it is not without its warts because I could see the potential for abuse here, especially if work turned into a reverse auction where it is only offered to someone at the lowest price. I could also see abuse if people are charged to sign up for a gig site. There would need to be some controls put into place.

    The benefits are real and tangible though for people on both businesses and individuals if proper controls are put into place to prevent the moneyed class from outright exploitation. The freedom it would provide the working class would be wonderful. After all, we really don’t need to work 40 hours to get work accomplished. This is an anachronistic hold over from pre-technology times. Let’s all work less and enjoy life more.

  • My Changing Attitude Towards AI

    I no longer see AI has something to be loathed and feared. I’m starting to seeing a real value proposition in the tool. The technology has the potential to democratize entrepreneurship. It makes things like web development more accessible to people with limited startup funds. It helps the budding entrepreneur to get their businesses off the ground.

    But let us not overhype the technology because it is no panacea for all of the problems startups face. Much like a wrench or a screwdriver, it is a tool and an imperfect one at that. Use AI to help you learn and to help fill some knowledge gaps. AI is also not an excuse to turn critical thinking off. It’s been my experience that the better small businesses owners continue to think critically, i.e they need to be able to discern when AI is just plain incorrect.

    I’m not ashamed to admit that I used AI to design a logo for my business. I’m currently using it to build WordPress and WooCommerce themes since I’m not a software engineer and I don’t have $5,000 dollars to drop to make this happen.

    I won’t use AI to design legal contracts, or for that matter anything to do with legal matters at all. This is best left to a human attorney. Similarly, medicine is left to professional humans as well.