It rarely pays off
Posted on June 29, 2009 by Tom
Bernie Madoff got sentenced today to 150 years in jail for probably on of the biggest fraud schemes in financial history. After years of scamming investors, it was a financial crisis that brought it all to the surface. It’s also the same week where a lot of kids get their final report card. Where a few among them face the fact that lying to your parents doesn’t pay of in the long run.
It always starts very innocent. Just one grade, to make them both happy, so you can go to that party, no worries,… It’s so small, who’ll notice? But how small it may be, it’ll never go away and the treshold to take it one step further will keep moving away. It’s a basic snowball effect, the handful of snow you started with is a long way from the ball that’s steaming down the hill.
We don’t have to become saints. Sure, it would make life easy, but boring as hell. Give me a few sins to enjoy, just for the fun of it. Nobody is more holier than the pope, so we don’t have to try. If we only stop and think for a few seconds from the moment that little voice inside our head says something. Think about how we started, how we got to that decision and if the risks are worth it. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but if you don’t even try to convince yourself of your choice, how can you convince someone else later, down the road?
Especially these days, where customers, even friends and family are more important than you can imagine, why risk so much for so little? We all know what can go wrong, the worst case scenario. If you’d know for sure that it would become true, would you still go ahead with your plans? If Madoff would know that his scheme would be exposed, would he go on with it or would he stop? We think (hope) we’re getting away with it, but we rarely do.
