You have seen the news already that a lot of people were scammed by Aman Futures. P12 billion pesos worth of money were all taken by a single or group of persons. These people, who are just mere janitors or drivers have duped educated people of their hard earned money.
How did pyramiding start anyway?
Okay now I will explain this in my own words. I did not consult Wikipedia here, just based on my own words and personal experience.
It maybe started during the early days of Christianity, and the inception of taxes. Just imagine, things that we have for free like land, housing, water, food, just living your life, you must pay to someone. And who is that you might ask? - The Government. That government can be a King, a religious sect (priests, bishops), your dictator, whatever. You are paying them to be accepted in a society. And that money is supposed to be 'helping' everyone around you. Build infrastructures, improving security, blah blah.
But it is not accomplished properly. There are still crime, there is still food shortage, bridges are not built quickly, where is the money that you have paid for? There seems to be no auditing. No transparency where have your money has gone.
The only time that your taxes work for you is through wars. Where the government builds military equipment.
After the war, there were a lot of poor people who were affected by it. And some bastard (he or she is also poor) thought of an idea on how to get rich easily, and that will succeed with the help of an investor. That person is a good speaker, where he or she can entice people to invest on whatever they have, clothes, jewelry, farm animals, and they will replace it with something less. I don't know, it can be a small portion of special bread, or just entry to a foreign land (which is not sure if they would reach it). This has continued until the person who enticed the people and its investor leaves in the blink of an eye taking the hard earned money or assets of the poor hapless people.
Now same thing goes on, and this time using money. Money is given and you're expecting to get something big in return.
Call it greediness - yes. But this happens when there is poor people around. And since 70% of citizens in the Philippines are poor, they succumb to this scams proliferated by greedy people as well.
If everyone has been informed and been well off - good career with good pay, secure environment, less stress on the environment, who will be able to invest on this kind of scam? That is why majority of the victims are from Visayas and Mindanao, I will be frank here, these areas in the Philippines are forgotten by the government. Only powerful bureaucrats and tribes are taking charge. Only few people are victimized in Luzon.
I was a victim also. And sadly, the person can your trusted colleague, a friend, or a classmate (relatives are excluded, as it is your relative anyway). Anyone right now can be a scammer or will you dupe you of your hard earned money.
So that is it. Let us charge this to experience and move on. Failures like this can bring success afterwards.
