India is famous for its Great Indian Rope Trick. It typically involves three steps.
Step 1: A magician uncoils a thick rope that rises in the air like a snake. It soon stands erect without any support, as if it is a pole.
Step 2: Then the magician makes his assistant climb the rope, who quickly reaches to the top of the rope.
Step 3: Suddenly, the rope loses its stiffness and collapses back on the ground, while the assistant at the top disappears.
You are surely dumbfounded but delighted watching this extremely interesting trick. Since this is for fun, it is fine.
But, it is NOT fine, when a similar trick is conjured to make your money vanish... while all the time making you feel happy about it.
The three steps in the Great Indian Vanishing Money Trick are as under:
Step 1: Flipkart ya Amazon pe khareed...
Step 2: OLX ya Quikr pe bech de...
Step 3: Go back to Step 1
Did you see how your money has disappeared? If fact, the beauty of the trick is that you don't even realize you have lost money.
Before I explain the trick, do you know where your money has gone?
Well, this is simple. Just look around for businesses that are making mega profits; people who have become multi-millionaires; and companies that are constantly creating billion-dollar schemes... and you will have your answer.
Coming to the secret behind disappearance of your money — it is all pure psychology and playing with your emotions.
They first make you buy using the oldest trick in the book i.e. discounts. Backed by huge marketing budgets and jazzy advertisements, they make you believe that you are getting an excellent bargain. Given that despite huge price cuts they are making immense profits, clearly proves that the MRP is deliberately fixed way above the normal levels. This creates an illusion of a rebate where none actually exists.
Banks too join the party by spicing up these deals with financial enticements. EMIs, cashback schemes, credit card reward points, zero interest rates and many such "deceptively" lucrative plans are laid as a trap for you.
But, by selling you once, they cannot make super-normal profits and earn super-normal salaries. So how to tempt you into buying again and again and again?
By making you feel outdated and old fashioned. You are bombarded with new designs, new models, new schemes, new this, new that and sometimes only a new packaging. However, if you scratch the surface, you will find nothing new about them... just a small tinkering here and there and lots of re-branding.
And to remove that guilt feeling of overspending and splurging, they appear to help you to dispose off your "not-so-old" stuff (which they sold you with huge fanfare just a few months back). Since you get some money back in the process, you feel great about it. This is mere fantasy as all they have done is to create a market place where they make you buy and sell among yourselves. An unbeatable idea indeed.
It would require immense will-power and self-confidence not to succumb to this "Flipkart ya Amazon pe khareed... OLX ya Quikr pe bech de..." mantra.
Hope you are able to protect your money (and sanity) from this tsunami of consumerism.
[Important: I am all for profits and consumerism. The problem is when it becomes excessive; when it wrecks our peace of mind; when it destroys our environment; when it threatens our very existence... physically and mentally. Think about it!]
Step 1: A magician uncoils a thick rope that rises in the air like a snake. It soon stands erect without any support, as if it is a pole.
Step 2: Then the magician makes his assistant climb the rope, who quickly reaches to the top of the rope.
Step 3: Suddenly, the rope loses its stiffness and collapses back on the ground, while the assistant at the top disappears.
You are surely dumbfounded but delighted watching this extremely interesting trick. Since this is for fun, it is fine.
But, it is NOT fine, when a similar trick is conjured to make your money vanish... while all the time making you feel happy about it.
The three steps in the Great Indian Vanishing Money Trick are as under:
Step 1: Flipkart ya Amazon pe khareed...
Step 2: OLX ya Quikr pe bech de...
Step 3: Go back to Step 1
Did you see how your money has disappeared? If fact, the beauty of the trick is that you don't even realize you have lost money.
Before I explain the trick, do you know where your money has gone?
Well, this is simple. Just look around for businesses that are making mega profits; people who have become multi-millionaires; and companies that are constantly creating billion-dollar schemes... and you will have your answer.
 |
| Secret of how the money flows from your pocket to theirs and makes them rich. |
Coming to the secret behind disappearance of your money — it is all pure psychology and playing with your emotions.
They first make you buy using the oldest trick in the book i.e. discounts. Backed by huge marketing budgets and jazzy advertisements, they make you believe that you are getting an excellent bargain. Given that despite huge price cuts they are making immense profits, clearly proves that the MRP is deliberately fixed way above the normal levels. This creates an illusion of a rebate where none actually exists.
Banks too join the party by spicing up these deals with financial enticements. EMIs, cashback schemes, credit card reward points, zero interest rates and many such "deceptively" lucrative plans are laid as a trap for you.
But, by selling you once, they cannot make super-normal profits and earn super-normal salaries. So how to tempt you into buying again and again and again?
By making you feel outdated and old fashioned. You are bombarded with new designs, new models, new schemes, new this, new that and sometimes only a new packaging. However, if you scratch the surface, you will find nothing new about them... just a small tinkering here and there and lots of re-branding.
And to remove that guilt feeling of overspending and splurging, they appear to help you to dispose off your "not-so-old" stuff (which they sold you with huge fanfare just a few months back). Since you get some money back in the process, you feel great about it. This is mere fantasy as all they have done is to create a market place where they make you buy and sell among yourselves. An unbeatable idea indeed.
It would require immense will-power and self-confidence not to succumb to this "Flipkart ya Amazon pe khareed... OLX ya Quikr pe bech de..." mantra.
Hope you are able to protect your money (and sanity) from this tsunami of consumerism.
[Important: I am all for profits and consumerism. The problem is when it becomes excessive; when it wrecks our peace of mind; when it destroys our environment; when it threatens our very existence... physically and mentally. Think about it!]
