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Comment by fein | Hacker News Reader

Seniors had the fortunate, and unfortunate now, opportunity to grow up in a considerably more high trust society than we currently live in. I've seen multiple elderly fall for this same style of scam - in some cases it is due to aging and not having all of the mental faculties that were once available, but in many other cases it's because these people lived most of their lives when you weren't conditioned to assume everyone is lying to you until proven otherwise.

In some ways I envy them for living in a time period where immediate distrust wasn't the status quo.

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Seniors had the fortunate, and unfortunate now, opportunity to grow up in a considerably more high trust society than we currently live in.

I question that. “Swamp land in Florida” has been a thing since before this retiree was born. Sales of similarly useless land in Arizona. Look up “California City” for another example. Cemetery plots, hmm, I’m sure I’ve missed others. Let’s not get started on car dealers.

I don’t recall a time, and I’m confident my parents will say the same thing, where one didn’t distrust a salesperson by default.

Timeshare scams far predate widespread adoption of the Internet by about two decades, and scamming was far from uncommon before that. Hucksters and charlatans have always been about us, but the level of sophistication today is higher because the tools available are more numerous and it's easier to target multitudes vs. single individuals.

Ponzi schemes are literally named for a guy from the 1920s. He did it through the post office, no internet required.

The concept of scamming wasn't invented on the internet. People have been getting conned ever since money was a thing (and probably well before that).

The aluminum siding scams in the 50's and 60's were so popular, Hollywood made a movie out of it called Tin Men.

Why is that? What changed? Can anything be done to restore the honor?

> Comparing the two scenarios, we found that about half of the observed decline in US social trust may stem from: i) ever more unemployment experiences, ii) ever less confidence in political institutions, and iii) a slight but systematic decrease in satisfaction with income.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X2...

I would also wager it has to do with increasing social and economic stratification and decreasing homogeneity.

I'm not sure it was like that. Back then they had scams. Postal scams, work-at-home scams, beauty product scams, etc.

One possible different might be the internet. Allowing scammers access to so many people makes it easier to fish. There was probably an increase in scamming after the mainstream use of the telephone.

> Why is that? What changed?

There is more opportunity for scams.

You didn't have ~20% of the population being old and feeble and rich until relatively recently.

In 2000, <10% of the population was seniors. It's been going up rapidly since then, and the growth rate won't slow until around 2030.

After 2030, it'll take another 30 years for the rate to increase ~7%. It only took about the last 10 years for it to go up ~10%.

Not to mention, in 2000, seniors didn't have the type of housing equity they have now (in REAL terms).

Plus it is much easier to cast a giant net these days.

The government post Great Depression and New Deal was a much stronger regulator as well. They would regularly go after scammers and schemes. That is far less true these days since "regulation" is now a swear word to many people.

They had no term limits, a well whipped supermajority, and an immense amount of political capital. Nowadays, Presidents are term-limited, majorities are transient and fickle, and political capital is diffuse and quickly spent.

I have a bridge to sell you ...

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