[wpietri]

A historian, Walter McDougall, author of the excellent "Let the Sea Make a Noise", was planning to write a history of America around the duality of the word "hustle", which can mean both "energetic, go get 'em attitude" and "scam". In America we are very accepting of anti-social or exploitative behavior as long as somebody's getting rich.

I also think a lot about the term "puffery", which in American law is when companies make false claims about a product, but in a fashion where everybody is assumed to know that they're lying, which makes it ok: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

It really says something to me that we supposedly have such a deep expectation of commercial lies that it's acceptable. I think in a healthier country someone would say, "Wait, what if they just didn't lie?"

[jhdhjdkjdhcfnj]

it's a way to exhert maximum control with minimal effort (in this case, talking about flow of capital)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_(sociology)