Copyright © 2021 by Markovas
All rights reserved. Reproduction or distribution of this book and its visual assets, in any kind of electronic or physical way, is prohibited without the permission of the publisher.

Introduction

Through the centuries civilizations have risen, flourished or fallen; economics have formed, boomed or crashed, yet amidst these accomplishments of mankind are the traps laid obscured by malicious intent that usually disregards the well-being of others.

Their tactics change constantly with time, culture and technology but the end goal always remains the same: get as much from people before they educate themselves on the matter and cease to fall for the trap.

When the world was gripped by the hardships of health in those old days of the past, secret potions were ‘brewed’ and great words accompanied the promises of healing no matter how severe the illness might’ve been.

In many occasions God would be used as the almighty explanation of why you should put aside your golden coins, put aside your cattle, put aside whatever you had to give, and by thy sacrifice magic would knock upon your doorstep and offer you the light at the end of the forest.

There are some who believe such even to this day, yet the majority of the educated population wouldn’t be able to fall victim to these entrapments of the past.

Nevertheless, with education, knowledge and many new systems, which exist in our everyday lives, new problems were created which now plague our minds, problems upon which those sleazy oil salesmen pray for us to bite upon.

But you may ask me: how do YOU prevent yourself for falling for those traps?

Those traps will keep evolving and the only way for you to defend yourself from these malicious players is to never stop learning and educating yourself, while creating a personal system that would prevent you from making a hasty decision.

With the haste of the current world we find ourselves in a dilemma which no one else before had existed in, since information slowly crept to the public and the world was pretty still in the days of old.

Due to the difference, now we are required to non-stop educate and refresh our understanding of the world around us, otherwise we can lose track and fall victims to those gaps which others might and will use against us for their own gains.

Of course in order to be able to refresh yourself with vital information and not useless walls of text, first you have to find it in yourself to create systems of filtering the useless streams of knowledge, since trying to remember everything in the ever-changing landscape of your brain is like building a castle out of sand.

Nevertheless, in this guide it is about finding the modern scams that float in our current world, and creating a system of memory and knowledge is something for another time.

It’s time to learn about the newest tricks this industry of ‘opportunities’ and deceit have got to offer.

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Formal Education

But wait, didn’t you just mention in the Introduction that we have to constantly educate ourselves so we— Yes, the best thing you can do is to be updated on current world affairs and technologies, but Formal Education is not the way to do it.

If you’ve already gone through it and you’re a person of earthly experience, it surely was the way to be ahead of everyone else, back then when information was slow and things didn’t exactly develop as fast as today.

Now, education from universities and colleges is outdated and it’s impossible for it to be the frontier of knowledge, since changes in the education are literal turtles.

In simpler terms, the government is an old machine which doesn’t like to change much, and since it’s in control of educational institutions, change just happens rarely.

With the pace of the modern world and the positive explosion of the internet, these places of education are rather obsolete, unless we’re talking about doctors and lawyers, although if someone wants to learn the law they can just do it without stepping neck-deep in debt-hell.

Of course they wouldn’t get a piece of paper stating they can practice it, but this is about learning, about knowing, and when you learn and know, you will not fall victim to empty promises and false shepherds.

Problems with formal education don’t end with what we’ve mentioned, as just the price of it is one huge lie, since it cannot promise to you stability, since you will be its prisoner for around 4 years, and who knows how many more ahead, as you pay off your debts.

In my experience with Formal Education, I never got to learn what I exactly wanted to specialize. The parts that were up to my tastes were outdated and practically useless, and the amount of garbage I had to go through just did not make sense to my head, no matter how much I tried to give it one.

Professors and associate professors would explain the material in complicated ways, or the hours of the lessons would be so long and tiring that it just didn’t make logical sense, since the brain just loses its freshness and focus after the 2^nd hour of the 8-12 hour educational day.

Meanwhile, I could just google the information I required, or watch freely available videos (usually free) made by people who had done their best to simplify the material so it could be understood by anyone.

Also education has turned into a commercial mess, as books have ridiculous prices and teachers push for those books to be bought since they get a cut, so in turn it’s not about you and your development…

It’s about your money. During internships you’re sent to work for no pay (rarely you’d be given peanuts) in a given industry for a set amount of time, while your transport, time and food costs are disregarded and given as ‘your problem’. You’ll be told you’re there to learn valuable skills, but that doesn’t pay the bills.

With self-education I personally learned and implemented fictional and non-fictional writing, computer hardware, setting up surveillance and anti-fire systems, copy editing, SEO, storytelling, website design, marketing and so on.

Did it take me 4 years of each subject plus an insane amount of money, stress and exasperation? Did I waste hours and hours on end studying for something I didn’t even need? Did I get practical results which made me move forward, while protecting me from the false prophets of the modern world?

Oh, most certainly self-education was the best thing I could do for myself and those around me.

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Career

You have to find a good job and settle down until you reach your pension. This slogan has been a plague without mercy to everyone who has been its victim.

I don’t wish to downgrade those who have chosen the life of employees, since that life is simple and shouldn’t be seen in a negative shade.

But please don’t live in the delusion that you aren’t replaceable, especially if you’re not making the company fiercely dependent on you.

If you’re just its cog, doing a job anyone else from the market outside can do can prove catastrophic, and your ‘career’ can fall apart at any moment in any month, week or day.

All it takes is for you to get older, become more of a liability, become less productive, and the company will sooner or later replace you with a younger and more capable person, unless you’ve made your position irreplaceable.

For many of the employees out there I know that their fates are always uncertain, and with the current outbreak in our world which froze the economy of every country, many of you definitely understand what I mean.

The rise of artificial intelligence, automation, robots and new professions, many jobs will be lost and many new will be created.

Your ‘career’ won’t be something you should look up to, as the only thing of importance to your future would be to always be ahead of the curve and try to do better, so you wouldn’t be left out and abandoned by the corporate giants which only care about profits, profits and profits.

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Pension

As someone who has understood the value of money and how it binds the world together, I have still yet to figure why societies have agreed to the ludicrous concept of Pensions. You give a part of your income to the government, so when you get 65 or 70, depending on the country, you’d get a set number of money every month, money which you gave, money which you deposited to the vaults of your government.

And yet you can only get it if you have worked enough years, if you have reached the threshold… I ask you this, if you had the choice to put this money aside by just saving it, or give it to the government, which would you rather do?

Now, can you tell me what’s the damn difference between the two actions?!

If I’m going to use the government as a bank which keeps my money safe, then why cannot I withdraw that money at any time whenever I choose to?

If this concept of Pension was so important and craved by all, why not just put all our money into the social tax so we could get it paid back in full, plus interest as to protect us from inflation, when we reach that certain threshold of work years? Even in that kind of impossible shape it still doesn’t make sense.

You’ll ask me now, how would you then live when you reach those years of age? Where will the income come from? It is pretty simple, instead of throwing your money away, save it and create your own independent ‘pension’ which you can withdraw from whenever you want. That way no matter what happens you will be covered for as long as you have the funds.

Let us be honest, you’d have way more options and freedom than that of waiting for your next payment so you could buy yourself another loaf of bread.

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Lottery

Search ‘Tourettes Guy Burried Alive’ where Danny wins the lottery and pretty much falls into the bottomless pit of what you can see on that bizarre video. I personally don’t think it’s funny, tho Danny isn’t helping things by being who he is, and I could say that it just brings out laughs even so.

Winning the lottery is impossible, even with whatever kind of luck immeasurable by mathematics. Search for MrBeast’s ‘I Spent $1,000,000 On Lottery Tickets and WON’ to see an example of the fact that you always lose when you play the lottery. Spoiler alert, he did not win as the clickbait title says.

My personal experience with the lottery, as I’ve had a side gig for a short while, is that I’d see many people register their pre-filled numbers of ‘luck’, only to mostly fail or get some of their money back. For instance they’d give 3 dollars and in turn were given back 1 dollar, since that 1 dollar was their lucky ‘loot’.

In what kind of world we live to accept such business as normal where you give me 3 dollars and I give you 1 in return, and you accept that as fair?

Worst of all was when an elderly lady would come and scrub away many tickets, since there were these fancy big tickets which you’d scrub the hidden numbers into view with a coin, and she’d just pay insane amounts of money only to pretty much get obliterated by this awful system of broken hopes and addictive mechanics.

If you’re going to play the dice, remember that the house always wins and you will be left the sucker in the grand scheme, so instead of looking for instant bags of money derived from luck, put your eyes towards profits that can be made with skill, work and dedication, since those are the proven ways of one’s success and not those advertised on golden posters in the metro, buses and billboards.

Stay away from dices in whatever forms they might be (video game loot crates, casinos and so on), since you are not in control over the fate of the odds, unless you’ve mathematically proven to yourself that you can beat them.

Instant gratification is an effect that governs most animals, especially our old predecessors from whom we’ve evolved. Deep down in all of us resides a monkey which demands to get what it wants right now, and the promises of wealth and success are something it easily gets tricked into following with closed eyes, ears and musings.

But you mustn’t allow the monkey to steer the ship, as great storms and murky waters grow tirelessly in the distance of the unknown, with which only your rationality can clash for finding protection and safety in your final decisions.

The lottery is a tax on the poor.

The gambling industry is an artificial method of collecting free money with a rigged system.

Why do you think casinos will kick you out if you try to count the cards in blackjack? Did you know it’s not illegal, just against the establishment’s rules?

It’s obvious why they’d kick you, because the reality is no longer aligned to their rigged algorithm, but to your own skill, which will pull cash out of their greedy and deep pockets.

Just stay away and forget about rolling a dice no matter the bet, no matter how different a new system or concept might seem.

The house always wins. You on the other hand are the loser if you play by their rules.

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Stock Market

When I was less educated on the stock market all I could find or hear was about the successful stories of how people would become millionaires and that I can become just like them.

What I couldn’t understand is why that would even happen, since how the world works is that you can’t just put money in and get 10 times your returns, since that 10 times multiplier has to come out of someone else’s pocket.

Apparently tho that is true and can definitely happen, but usually it’s as similar as playing the Lottery.

In truth you can’t predict where the Stock Market is heading, and you can check out the Wolf of Wall Street as an example of empty promises about great rewards which destroyed the savings of a bulk of Americans.

Day trading is another illusion people are steered at, but there’s something called automation, which are computers that execute flash trades in the instant it takes you to blink. Do you think you’ve got the abilities to compete against such beasts of logic and persistence?

The only place worth investing is in the long run, especially if you believe a company would surely be big in the future, but if you’re hunting for instant gains then it’s very likely you’d end up like the now-famous WallStreetBets ‘degenerates’ from Reddit who are playing the Stock Market like a casino.

Curiously you might’ve heard about the GameStop shenanigans where the little guy stood against the rich with the slogan ‘We like the stock’ which you should search for, specifically the song.

Apparently the big players were shorting stocks on the brick and mortar company GameStop but the, as they call themselves, degenerates decided to outplay the rich and teach them a lesson on greed.

This massive shorting was pretty much suffocating the company and was in no way ethical, so the losses of the rich weren’t taken with any kind of compassion, especially with the maneuvers of trying to limit trading during the scenario of profits.

Buy low, sell high is the concept that governs success, but how do you know when it’s low and when it’s high enough?

Let’s not fool ourselves by saying this is different than the lottery or casinos, simply because where exactly is the skill based at, since you again are playing by the rules of those who’re hosting the platforms of trade, the exchange of goods, whether real or fictional.

The Stock Market is a tax by the rich.

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Cryptocurrencies

During the Gold rush back in the days, it wasn’t the miners who made the bucks but those who sold the shovels and nugget buckets.

Now with the new crypto gold, being Bitcoin, the OG of crypto, and Ethereum its sidekick, the shovels and nugget buckets are mining rigs, internet and electricity.

You might have some idea of how it all works, but let me summarize as simply as possible: miners provide their computing power to sustain the network and provide transactions between people, hence, receiving rewards for the successful transactions they’ve computed through the network.

Bitcoin is a public ledger that has all transactions public to anyone to see, while miners must constantly update its state, share and compare their public ledgers with other miners so the blockchain can always be correct and in order.

Anonymity isn’t something that can be easily achieved, unless you understand fully how to cover your traces, which only experienced people can do. Good thing about Bitcoin is that it’s not something the government can easily take away from you, unless they get you to give it to them.

Problem here is the volatility of the coin and the constant swings of its price. In no way is this crypto stable and it’s rather tricky buying things with it, unless you convert it to money.

Yet many preach how crypto is the future and that you should quickly enter the it.

But without understanding how it all works, the safety procedures that would keep your digital wallet safe and all other kinds of tiny details in regards to platforms that sell the coin, fees and the concept of supply and demand, you should definitely not play with your money in this new and unregulated market.

It surely is a fascinating new frontier, but there’s too many promises which are overblown. I know it sounds insane when you see that you could’ve bought 2 bitcoins at the price of $70 and today it’d be worth $80 000, but do consider that back then it was useless and distrusted. It seemed like just another snake oil scheme.

Crypto survived the global pandemic and fought against governments and banks, surviving everything the world would throw at it, so in my eyes it proved to have resilience which doesn’t make it some imaginary snake oil.

But to the ways of attaining it, there’s just too much room for mistakes.

The ‘what if’ doesn’t matter, so don’t live in the past and enter the present.

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Religion

You thought religion was exempt from the list of deceit, the list of lies that can get to you and your pockets? This is one of the oldest systems which’s aim was to control the population and bring order to the chaos of tribes or countries of mixed ethnicity.

You might believe in God and whatnot, but this isn’t a debate about the existence of such. Modern religion has been infested with sophisticated manipulation which promises you purpose and health, while cashing in on the vast droves of revenue.

The way your prejudice would allow you to fall victim to this is by not using critical thinking and accepting that someone knows or speaks the word of God, an entity you cannot challenge to exist or not exist.

Here you can be pressured into that belief simply because of the volume of others who ‘see’ the path and say you’re in the right direction. This is called peer pressure.

If you’re low in life and need something to motivate you, to push you forward and see purpose once again, religion is one of the ways that can ‘save’ you for some time until your pockets have been ransacked and you realize the emptiness of the scam that had been played upon you.

There’s a big difference between the charlatans and the big religions like Christianity, but the church also pushes for donations, especially when the priest would come to sing after someone has been deceased.

I’m not sure how that’s exactly in line with the religion and those dead, but who am I to judge God’s plan.

There should be a distinction to the religions which try to do good in this world and those who greedily harvest wealth or use the power to put people under their yoke through extremism and violence.

Let your curiosity roam so you can see and learn more about the world, and maybe you’ll even find your place in the groups of those who seek to make the world a better place in these religious establishments, but always be vigilant about hidden motives and obfuscated greed.

If they try to make you feel guilty or use threats of hell and justice just because you didn’t want to buy a candle or donate to the cause, it’s already a huge red flag for those bad intentions.

Good people ask, but they never cross the line of demanding or threatening. In most occurrences, good people don’t even ask, as deep down they respect your decisions (so long as they’re not negatively impacting others) and wish to do you no discomfort.

Don’t give away your authority, especially to something that cannot even be proven. The chance to remove your world of doubt for a bit does pose a great delight to your decisions, but in the end it might just be a band-aid.

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Entrepreneurship

One of the rising problems of the modern world is the amount of opportunities and information it drowns us in. In many ways this gives us the courage and self-esteem to believe we can be our own boss and that the world is our oyster.

There’ve been magnificent stories about how incredible inventions have risen out of simple backyard garages, or businesses had been found in college dormitories, yet in all this romanticized ‘fiction’ we lack the knowledge about the insane numbers of failures of people who had attempted the same.

Of course you’re not going to get the stories about failed entrepreneurs because it just won’t sell well and will trigger your defenses that protect you from misleading ideas.

I’m not against entrepreneurship, but what I’m against is fairy tales a specific industry is selling left and right.

First of all you must understand that being your own boss requires an immense amount of knowledge, time, experience and courage. You cannot put both your feet in the shallow waters and enter the unknown ocean just because someone, on the Internet, on a ‘free’ seminar in an expensive hotel or on the TV, told you so.

Search for ‘The Contrepreneur Formula Exposed’ by Mike Winnet.

These people who sell courses for stupid amounts of money, usually ending with the number 97 and with a heavy flash discount are outright scams that pray upon those who want to make a change in their lives.

Nobody goes around offering people opportunities and success if they were successful in the way they portrayed themselves to be. Their success comes from your ignorance of buying what they actually sell you.

If someone had a business or a way of making money, and then one day decided to sell the secrets to that business to the open world, the amount of competition would diminish the profits and that business would either barely scrape by or would just go bankrupt.

If someone tells you they want to make you rich, and they want you to pay them to do that, then you should know you are being deceived, since if they truly wanted to help you why would they want your hard-earned income from your hands?

If someone wants you to make a hasty decision, bombarding you with promises that jump over the moon, then that as well is a red flag that you’re being deceived.

People want to take your money, and that’s nothing new to this modern world, and it’s fair when you give your money for something which gives you back value in the expected and advertised guidelines.

Usually overblown promises are just that: overblown in meaningless air. They are a good way to advertise products and generate hype, but in no way are they genuine or have the advertised value.

For you to be able to defend yourself and your wallet from hungry hyenas who care only about profits than giving you value, then you should employ critical thinking in your everyday life.

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Pyramid Schemes

You might’ve had experience with this one, since these type of schemes have been around for some time now, but they keep shedding their skin and twisting the theater as to try to always lure you in.

The scheme is always the same: there’s someone on top who provides the concept to people below them, while harvesting returns from sales or conversions they’ve made, depending on the type of commerce.

Problem with pyramids comes forth when those people create their own networks of people who do exactly the same work, while generating profits for those above and losing their own money and time in between.

In these schemes those who win are the founding entities, and never those at the bottom. If this has been going for a long time and is advertised as the golden apple, it’s already too late.

But even if it might not be too late, it’s best to turn around and never affiliate yourself in such deceptive practices.

You should ask yourself if the person or company you’re dealing with is legit. Check how they handle themselves, especially if they dodge important questions in regards to payouts. Check what you’d be exactly selling and how the whole system they’re trying to get you into works.

One of the biggest warning signs is when they’d tell you, ‘You gonna make so much money!’ which is false. You need to make sure this company is selling something and that you aren’t the customer, while being told you’re the broker.

Check to see if they’re using copyrighted material that doesn’t belong to them. Anything that’s illegal, even a little bit is a big sign that they’re out of the official spotlight of governments and industries.

Ask many questions in regards to what they’re offering you and how exactly it’ll achieve their insane promise. If they tell you that you’re not seeing the big picture or other deceptive dodges, it’s high time to walk away without a shadow of doubt.

If you’re to do business by taking on a stock of product and selling it (becoming a broker for a product without directly working for that company), make sure you’re not paying for the product, as it’d only make sense for you to receive a commission from each sale without the requirement to have bought each product in the first place.

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Defending Yourself

Be critical of everything. I don’t mean you should be negative to new ideas, concepts or offers. What being critical means is that you always challenge new ideas, new offers or whatever is coming your way to the extent that you never jump the band wagon without doing proper research and asking yourself questions like:

‘Do I need this?’

‘Am I being tricked?’

‘Do I fully understand this?’

‘What will I get out of this?’

‘What do they get out of this?’

‘Do I accept the losses if this goes wrong?’

Every time you feel pressured to do something, whether it’s online where you see limited-time offers or discounts of quantities of a product, ask yourself if that’s not just a marketing trick or if it’s even worth spending your money at such a company employing such deceit towards its consumers.

When something is just too good to be true, it usually is, since this is exactly what was mentioned as the over-the-moon promise which you should pretty much stay away from.

When someone aggressively (usually this means they have lots of energy and want to show you how much this really means for you as an opportunity) tries to show you the way, telling you how you’re missing out and that they feel obligated to help you succeed in your life by getting you out of the system, or whatever the hell they’d promise, then trouble is behind the corner.

I need you to understand, they’re not doing this because of how much you’d lose if you decline, but because of how much they would lose for failing to get you to ‘dance’ for them with your wallet.

Don’t think just specific type of people or small companies do this, big corporations also employ deceitful tactics, and in my experience, my phone provider would outright lie to me about my contract and that I was missing out so much on the one-of-a-time offer of changing to a ‘better’ plan, while also saying that my current one was going to be closed, something that to this day hasn’t happened.

Funny thing was they wouldn’t even give me a phone number I could use to phone them directly back, as if they were trying to anonymize themselves to who exactly they were so the company would not be liable for their purposefully deceitful practices.

Always read the contracts you sign and never leave things to blind trust, since nowadays people can take from you not just your money, but your private information that can be sold on the market.

Why do you think you get random calls on your phone number as well as messages, or spam on your email? It’s called database leaks and it’s pretty wild.

Hopefully this small guide has given you insights into an updated world, and as time flows these issues will have morphed into different colors, different titles and descriptions…

But always remember, use critical thinking and allow yourself to stew on the information, while also researching if what you have is fact or a lie.

Take care and always be vigilant!