Innocents and wide boys

Citation

Evans, S. (2015), "Innocents and wide boys", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 28 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2015-1994

Innocents and wide boys

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 28, Issue 4

What makes a deal worthwhile? So much of our quotidian as well as special choices are about getting the balance of what we know and need to know just right. If you miss important information, including not being aware of some imminent event, you could end up regretting your choice. That lustrous new coat of paint on the glorious period sports car you always wanted may hide rust typical of the brand in that period. A bargain price for a boatload of rarely available perishables may arise just before new quarantine regulations block all such imports and leave you with an unsellable mess. Are you buying petrol at the best price? Will your next computer’s technology be outmoded two weeks after you buy it? Are you studying the right degree?

Advantages accrue to those with greatest knowledge and opportunity to act. A sense of adventure helps too. On the other hand, there is also point at which extra knowledge is just pointless. Who whispered something about the law of diminishing returns? If you wait to know everything, chances are the caravan will have moved on without you. There is no such thing as perfect knowledge.

Somewhere in between these moments of desire and hesitation, the wide boys are waiting, the ones who stitch together hustles and get out quickly enough not to be caught. They prey on the innocents and gullible, and maybe the greedy and ignorant too. Hollywood loves their stories, especially when the protagonists play Robin Hood and take from the nasty rich, but that is not the norm in real life. James Surowiecki (2014) writes of such movies in the USA and also of how, in “the nineteenth century, the line between crook and businessman was fuzzy”. He says, “It seems that con artists, for all their vices, represent many of the virtues that Americans aspire to. Con artists are independent and typically self-made […] They succeed or fail based on their wits” (p. 21). It is an article worth following up for what else he has to say about selling a dream.

The whole notion of the con man/woman is predicated on being able to isolate the victim and the time of the operation. This is so that they can rely on limits to knowledge and, critically, awareness of the scheme. Charles Ponzi’s well-known fraudulent investment plan was always doomed to collapse since it paid unaffordable “profits” out of the latest investors’ contributions. Had his victims known from the beginning how it worked, they would never have committed their money but while they were unaware, Ponzi could skim off millions. It points to another issue about intriguing boundaries of knowledge.

The capitalist system often treats discrete areas of operation as functioning independently from each other, with economics “modelling the flow and distribution of resources within a system” and “within very limited timeframes” (Willis 2014). These are human systems, able to be modified when new knowledge is acquired or new rules are made, and liable to be overtaken in relatively short periods. Ponzi schemes are briefly stable but require continuous growth, for instance. While they still pop up, they are less common. Ecological systems, on the other hand, are vulnerable to the economics of markets at both local and global levels, and the impacts they suffer are longer lasting. They are reactive but even where resilient they are slow to adjust. Damage tends to be enduring. I mention this partly because it is an increasingly vital focus of study, not just for significant degradation caused by unwitting human development but also for that which is caused by industrialists willing to promote negligent projects that externalize such costs.

I wish I knew more, but only the “right” more. I don’t have time or the inclination to simply cram my brain with everything. Somewhere between the differences in people’s knowledge, we have to operate on trusting others and trusting fate. My good intentions may expose me to your opportunistic tendencies, or vice versa, but I hope not. It all makes for potentially fascinating stories of the kind that have travelled down the centuries. Wrong choices make for the best narratives but do you want to make them in real life?

In this issue, Larissa von Alberti-Alhtaybat and Khaldoon Al-Htaybat offer a scripted series of moments presented via invented dialogue between a teacher and students in a Cost Accounting course during Jordan’s recent tumultuous period. The place of profit and, indeed, mention of a Ponzi style scheme, both feature in their tale that plays out against a backdrop of political unrest and violence.

Your own creative contributions can be submitted via ScholarOne, and your e-mail correspondence is always welcome, of course, at: mailto:steve.evans@flinders.edu.au..

Steve Evans- Literary Editor

Acknowledgements

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights Section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ. Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=aaaj

References

Surowiecki, J. (2014), “Do the hustle”, The New Yorker, 13 January, p. 21.

Willis, P. (2014), “Ponzi’s ecology”, RiAus Australia’s Science’s Channel, available at: http://riaus.org.au/articles/ponzis-ecology/ (accessed 11 November 2014).