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Paper Title

-- By JustinChung - 27 Feb 2009

Topic- Leff’s idea about examining the roles created in making deals is both essential and difficult to apply to the problem of evaluating whether your own actions are a “swindle or a sale”.

In the excerpts from Swindling and Selling that we read, Leff approaches the question of what should be classified as a “swindle” and a “sale” by examining how different sales techniques allow buyers and sellers to fill sociological needs and roles. Although the ultimate conclusion seems to be that the distinction is illusionary, the process is still effective in exploring the motivations behind the deals. Applying this analysis to oneself would be useful in attempting to answer one of the themes of this class, “How does one go about determining what it is that they want to do with their life?”

Subsection A- A personal judgment of the value of your actions is vital to being satisfied with your life.

A few people pointed out during the discussion of Robinson’s Metamorphosis that Robinson isn’t particularly happy. Despite his adherence to his principles and his comfort in his niche, Robinson seems both to loathe the system that he works in so artfully and to have resigned himself to believing that this is the best that he can do within its confines. His dependence on the niche that he has carved out can be seen as a devotion to a type of deal where he is a semi-monopolist provider of the ability to solve legal problems. Thus, he is most comfortable working in situations where he perceives his buyers as needing him more than he needs them, a tendency that is reflected in his somewhat self-righteous demeanor. Robinson abides by his principle in order to keep himself in this position and while this helps to make him an effective lawyer, his frequent diatribes on the injustice of the system itself indicate that this technique ignores an aspect of his self that wishes to deal with those injustices. This is not to say that seeking out situations where you are the monopolist seller, or indeed exclusively using any type of relationship, is bad in and of itself- merely that Robinson’s method is not entirely successful for him. Whether you call it justice, or guilt, or just personal preference, each individual will have a different set of relational archetypes that they feel most fulfilled in utilizing. Discerning your own predilections should help to shed light on how to avoid the dissatisfaction that plagues Robinson.

Subsection B- Bias and an inability to comprehend one’s true motivations for undertaking any action make pursuing a concrete judgment difficult.

A problem arises here when putting these ideas towards a practical use. Leff’s examples mostly approach deals and relationships from the viewpoint of an objective observer, the aim being to determine the nature of the deal based on what the parties are trying to get out of the relationship. However, it is not a given that either a buyer or seller would be most satisfied with a legitimate sale rather than the swindle. In fact, the psychological analysis that Leff proffers implies that one of the most attractive aspects of a deal is the feeling that you are coming out on top of the other party- a sentiment that is not exclusive to either the deal or the swindle. As a result, an impartial categorization of the deal doesn’t provide much information as to whether you should seek out this type of relationship. The socio-psychological method’s most revealing idea, that the gulf between a swindle and a scam is non-existent, is limiting because this revelation admits that the method is unable to give a positive evaluation of the deal. It is illuminating in explaining why events occur, but says little about whether they ought to. You essentially have to wait for the deal’s aftermath in order to say if its occurrence was a good thing. This is further complicated by the fact that the outcome is not necessarily determined by the path that any one person chooses. Social interactions are so interrelated and interdependent that their results are variable enough to make looking at them a poor measure of whether the actions that caused them were “correct”. In the end, understanding how you got to a certain point doesn’t say much about where you should go next.

Section C- Awareness of this problem is nevertheless helpful because a definitive answer isn’t necessary to inspire and effectuate change.

The real value in Leff’s ideas lies not in explaining what occurred, but in revealing more of the influential factors than are usually considered. Trite as it may sound, awareness of these factors can raise the level of self-awareness and prompt more frequent and knowledgeable self-evaluation. Even if I don’t have an answer as to whether the play that I am following is “good” or “bad”, just the awareness that I do not exercise as great a deal of control of my actions as I normally believe is cause to stop and scrutinize the action. One benefit to doing this more often is to help one realize that there is more than one path to take. No matter if your current course is good or bad, pausing and examining how you got there at least means that you can choose whether to continue.

My biggest problem with Leff’s approach is that it leaves me somewhat fearful: I don’t feel that it can give me an affirmative yes or no as to whether I’ve done the right thing in the past and it doesn’t offer much guidance for what to do in the future. It may be this lack of certainty that helps to explain my inherent resistance to those ideas. On the other hand, it is a somewhat liberating concept because it implies that there is no single right road to take. If nothing else, it imparts the possibility that future decisions can be better inform- which is an outcome that doesn’t seem to have any negatives.

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