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Comment by plugin-baby | Hacker News Reader

Maybe read advice on how to deal with a friend or family member joining a cult. AFAIU, don’t criticise the hobby, and try to maintain contact, so that when he wants out he still has a friend.

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Well, speaking of a cult, we have NFT.NYC in a few days here in my city. It has many corporate industry sponsors, takes over the largest hotel in Times Square for three days, and many of the billboards. Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement. And many people from all over the world will be coming to have fun with NFTs and try out new things.

I guess Bitcoin can be considered a cult, too. HODL became a religion since 2013, after it became obvious Bitcoin wouldn’t be “an electronic peer-to-peer cash system” and the “store of value” aspect of money was the only one left.

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement

I think there's a level of money laundering involved.

I imagine it is the same with Bitcoin as well, and also highly overpriced art, and casino gambling, and investments in startups, etc.

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement

Scientology probably puts NFT-bro-ism to shame with its level of industry involvement... It's just usually less in your face about the cult part.

I thought about mentioning scientology for comparison, to say I don’t remember Scientology taking over Times Square with a lot of industry participants… but then again I am not part of that world so for all I know they could have a huge convention in Vegas every year, with megachurches AND some sort of new books / auditing companies etc.

They don't need to do conventions, they have an entire town in Florida.

Also the Moonies owning a bunch of stuff, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church#Businesses, including UPI and the Washington Times.

MLM is also a corporate sponsored cult and puts on ostentatious events. One commonality is how they tell you to remove negative influence, ie skeptical and concerned friends and family, as they hold you back from achieving success.

What about stuff like

Tony Robbins (self-help)

Landmark Forum (self-help MLM)

Billy Graham (Christian revival)

Joel Osteen (prosperity gospel)

etc.

They seem to help a lot of people with just mindset stuff

Joel Osteen is great at helping people give him money in return for absolutely nothing.

If you have to pay to learn something, it's a grift.

There's carve outs for technical fields, for people who are willing to pay a premium for speed, or personalized learning, or putative 'networking' of course.

So college is a grift probably. Overpriced scarcity with education most people can get from the library for a buck fifty (to quote Good Will Hunting) or on the Internet these days. But enough people are still told to go to college and so much of it is subsidized by the government that it remains an institution that faces little market competition. And getting into an “ivy league” school is so prestigious that even super-millionaire celebrities with great networks feel they have to bribe admins so their kids can go.

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/college-a...

And public school is just a day care center to keep kids out of trouble so both their parents can work for corporations 10 hours a day. We’ve essentially created a prison environment for kids, and instead of fixing issues in it, we overdiagnose them with ADHD for fidgeting and prescribe amphetamines. Even Paul Graham noted these things: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Also banks are a grift, for many people. The “American Dream” was co-opted where you are sold the idea now of “owning” a home, but to do so you “rent” money issued by a bank, and then work 30 years to pay it back with a lot of interest. The government has to print more money eventually or people will work harder and harder and default. Money printing is actually what frees people up from having to slave for corporations as much (as we can clearly see happened after 2020 with the great labor exodus).

Figuring out for yourself why college and Landmark Forum aren't the same grift is a useful life skill.

They were replying to the comment:

  If you have to pay to learn something, it's a grift

Your response applies equally to it.

Seemingly that statement is just not logically true (just need to find one counter example)

Perhaps corrected by saying: _sometimes_ it's a grift, or _often_ a grift, or IMO it is a grift.

Those things are bad too.

> Cults don’t usually have that level of industry involvement.

Sure they do[1][2][3].

Mixing business and faith is critical to cult recruitment: industry allows the cult to establish "legitimate" footholds and develop stable income sources using the cheap (and often free) labor of its believers. This should ring a bell.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

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