The desire to get rich is as old as the world

I watched The Wolf of Wall Street a few days ago. Bulgarian free TV channels show old and dumb movies, but this one was interesting and I don't know why I haven't seen it before. Maybe because I always thought it was more serious and I had never been interested in the topics of stock markets, stocks and investments before. So I probably thought it would be pretty boring for me.

But what does "serious" mean? The stock market is one of humanity's greatest fabrications, one of the things the aliens mock us for sure, as I like to say.
No logic, no rules, just speculation. "Even Warren Buffett can't tell you what the stock price will be tomorrow," says one of the characters. But how will he say, when prices change with a snap of the fingers, an irrelevant tweet or a thrown bottle. (And the big problem in my opinion is that Bitcoin is affected by the same non-rules and this means that there is really no salvation and hope for humanity).

But one thing struck me, and it was somewhere at the end of the movie, the words of the main character: Do you want to get rich, do you want financial independence, not to wonder how you're going to make it through the month... and things like that. It was like listening to every single investment mentor nowadays or broker, investment intermediary. And there are so many of them at the moment... in Bulgaria. Because only now is this business flooding the country.

The film recreates events from the late 80s and early 90s in America. And these things are blooming in Bulgaria right now. I'm not saying they've come now, but there's a boom now, and as I've told you before, well-known and unknown financial gurus and lecturers are racing to create academies, write books and offer courses "to get rich" and "to become financially independent". Maybe because in Bulgaria everything comes 50 years late, as I told you before. And also, life is getting worse here. The trend has always been this way and there has been no progress over the years. And when conditions are bad and more and more people are poor, the field of action of these lecturers and gurus increases.
Just a golden opportunity for the businessmen who have smelled the new business opportunity and are trying in every way to convince the poor people, because all this is aimed at the poor people, the rich don't need these things, they can't be intimidated by someone that they will lose their money by keeping it in the bank. They make enough anyway. And in this golden environment some people with kind faces and "honest" blue eyes appear before you and tell you "my mission is to make you rich". You remember those courses, the academy and the lecturer I told you about a while ago.

But only now I understand why some banks still refuse to make transfers to investment applications with the explanation that they are risky. Well, they make no problem for money transfers to betting sites and online casinos, but that's another topic. Even the bank employees themselves do not stop offering their clients with promises of profits when investing in certain "low-risk" investment funds. This is also another topic. I never caught on to this and later I found out that quite a few people have lost their money or at least some of it because these funds are just bad investments. But the bank employees, in the role of investment brokers, have collected their commission and that is what it is really about - the commissions taken by the brokers and also, the money that a person will pay to be convinced by some guru that he has to give his money to someone who will get commissions for it.
Again actions and businesses in symbiosis, mutually beneficial. The only person at risk here, and likely to lose something, or at the very least, certainly not reach the heights he was promised, is this common man who is being targeted in this whole scheme.

(And while I'm writing this, I accidentally open the most spammy network LinkedIn and come across a post by this same guru with the honest blue eyes, who congratulates the people that Bulgaria has been designated by the World Bank as a high-income country. 😂 And that was it, even the small remaining faith in this man is no longer there, and I understand that everything I heard from him in the lectures were just lies. After he really believes this "news" or rather wants to impose it as true for some of his personal business purposes.)

Getting things sold to you this way isn't that hard. Traders don't even need an education. The Wolf of Wall Street even reminded me a lot of a figure who is currently being commented on in the public space because he suddenly entered politics in the last election. And I've been reading a lot about him in recent months because he's a pretty big fraud in the investment and financial circles. I'm also curious about him because I personally know two people who work for him and neither they nor he is particularly intelligent. He's just clever. And his employers were desperate when he hired them. This is also a very successful strategy of an employer to make his employees loyal and faithful.

But let's get back to sales. And why not the academies - because this person also has a number of academies. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to do all this. It is enough to have watched two films on the subject and read two motivational books. Because that's how things feel. They feel somehow repeated. Like everything that happens in Bulgaria, several decades late, copied from somewhere else, where it already happened a long time ago.

Thinking about it, one could even predict the future history of the country as it comes belatedly from somewhere else. But still, we may not be quite aware of exactly where it will come from. What exactly is this "elsewhere".
It's interesting to watch a movie that was made more than 10 years ago and notice some contemporary repetitions in current life of parts of it, strategies, tactics, actions, mindsets maybe.
It's so pathetic. And at the same time, people fall into this trap every day, victims of eloquent tricksters, financial fraudsters who sell dreams, unrealizable dreams of a better life in the poorest country in the EU.

Because the desire to get rich is as old as the world. Taking advantage of this desire - too.

And immediately I was able to find photos in my phone of a poor setting (I thought I didn't have any anymore). This is located in Ravda, on the coast again, where modern buildings clash with the squalor of a fishing village. And don't be surprised by the inscription in Russian (picture number 5). I think that Bulgarians suffer deeply from Stockholm syndrome.

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|