I know exactly what happened. Because it happened to me.
I trained for years to be a con artist. I told my friends and family that I wanted to be a magician, but that was just a cover for why I was constantly practicing sleight of hand.Â
In junior high and high school, I would shop lift a bunch of candy on my way to school, sell it to kids at the morning break, and use that money to run a crooked poker game at lunch.
Finally, when I was 19 or 20, I felt I was ready, and I picked my first pocket. I was on the bus, bumped a guy as I passed down the aisle, got his wallet, super clean.
In the wallet was several hundred dollars. A huge first score, I had been hoping for a couple twenties. I sat there looking at the, like, 400 bucks, thinking.
That was my rent at the time. We were both on the bus. It was likely his rent too. Lord knows the only reason to carry that much cash on the bus is you’re on your way to pay a bill. We were both on the bus, you know? That’s not someone I was comfortable stealing from.
I tapped him on the shoulder and told him “hey i think you dropped this” and gave it back to him with all the money still in it. It was the first and last time I ever picked a pocket.
Picking a rich person’s pocket is a loosing game. They probably have credit cards and not cash, those credit cards probably have the best anti-theft measures their bank can provide, and you probably can’t get close enough to those people to pick their pockets unless you’re already rich yourself.
The people who’s pockets you can reliably pick are the people around you. The people who are also on the bus, who are in this same shitty situation with you.
As wealth inequality becomes more drastic picking pockets has very clearly become “stealing from other poor people” and it’s not satisfying. I want to steal from Google and Apple and Fox and Facebook and General Mills and Hershey and Tesla. Not the person next to me.
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