There is a myth that white collar crime is an elevated type of crime. That it’s sophisticated. Smart. For people who can hack computers and use calculus to pull off a heist, invisibly in plain sight.
Not like your run-of-the-mill criminal who breaks into your retail center and steals a shipment of cigarette boxes, wearing a face mask and gloves. No, no, white collar crime is respectable. Or at the very least, more difficult.
This, of course, isn’t true. It’s a myth born of born of action movies and crime novels. We create a protagonist (or antagonist?!), make him family man in one domain, an embezzler in the other – and voila – we have ourselves a fun moral quandary.
We want to have this moral confusion because it means that we are redeemable (I’ve written about this before here and here), but this has nothing to do with redemption. This has to do with seeing reality. And the reality is crime is not sexy, smart, or sophisticated.
White collar thieves are the same type of petty criminal as the person robbing the liquor store, only they wear a suit and don a crew cut so it’s confusing because we expect people in suits with professional haircuts to be more sophisticated.
They’re not. They’re just people. Fallible, flawed, and lazy. Most crime, is lazy. It’s cheap. And it is trashy.
That our culture continues to pedestal quick wins, coercion, blackmail, and petty theft but use sexy words like heist, scheme, negotiation, clever, conniving, persuasive, or even bandit – and then paint some moral quandary over bad behavior – is doing us no favors. It is causing us to be confused over something that isn’t confusing.
Someone cheating customers is a scumbag. Someone who lies is a liar. Someone who uses blackmail, intimidation, and threats is a coward. Brands and businesses that participate in deceitful practices, but make out with lots of money, are no less criminal than a pick pocket.
There is nothing intelligent about being a cheat.
There is nothing noble about being a criminal.
There is nothing respectable about lying. To customers, to spouses, to yourself.
I wish we’d stop calling this behavior interesting, and call it what it is: trash.
