Robin Hood vs Robbin' Tha Hood: The Lost Art of the Ethical Hustler

so this post has essentially been born from the title. at this moment i have no idea what i am going to write, but i have been thinking about the title for a few days and i know that it will inspire me.
so what exactly is a hustler. the most common definition seems to be that it is someone who makes money by doing some thing illegal, be that selling drugs, pimping hoes, ripping people off in their store by fixing the scales, scalping tickets, selling bootleg CDs, or something else of that nature. now all of these activities have a highly negative connotation, at least in our (american) culture. it seems that people think that doing something that is agaisnt the law is wrong. this is where i start to diverge from the populace. the fact that some activity is prohibited by the law does not mean anything to me in terms of determining its rightness or wrongness, its moral value, if you will. that is not to say that i think that selling crack and pimping hoes is right, because those activities do score negatively on my goodness scale. i think that more than legality, how it affects people should be more important. for example, selling bootleg CDs. i dont think that it is especially despicalble (and i dont think most people want bootleggers jailed or anything like that.) the truth is that it really doesnt hurt anyone, the recording artist and the record label will make a little less money (the label loosing more than the artest, who gets robbed in a more wrong way [in my opinion i suppose (i dont have any stats on this)] by the record label than by bootleggers) but at the point where bootlegging amounts to any significant quantity the artist is more than conforably wealthy, so the lost money does not traslate into physical suffering, as the loss of the bootlegging might result to the bootlegger and his family. he should get another job you say, one thats legal. well that is a point, but the fact is that good (as in ones that support you and your family, but dont enslave you) jobs are few and far between, and i think that the exitment of the hustle make up for the risks.
a distinction i think i should make is the difference between selling weed and selling crack. it is very important to look at who is getting hurt in these cases. in most cases weed sold in the northeastern united states is grown in canada or locally by voluntary growers who are doing very well for themselves, and while at times it is retailed by organized criminals, i think the vast majority are small time dealers (not to deny the fact that there are some big timers making money on big deals, these guys carry guns and would not be afraid to kill someone.) people who smoke weed are not going to die, their lives are not going to be ruined, they are not going to lose everything. this is not true int he case of crack. cocaine is produced mostly (if not entirely) in south america, by farmers who are often compelled to grow coca. despite the astronomical prices that cocaine gets in the united states, these growers live meager lives, barely better, if at all, than any other peasant farmer in latin america, plus the risk of being at the mercy of drug lords, the DEA and corrupt governments. in america, cocaine and crack are moved almost exclusively by gangs and organized crime, and it is almost always surrounded by violence. the user of crack or even cocaine is taking a SERIOUS risk on their lives, guaranteedly shortening them, if not losing them during consumption. the point is, when you sell crack you're almost directly leading to peoples lives getting ruined, both in the US and abroad, whereas if your selling weed, your usually supporting nonviolent resistance to the man (joke), usually the worse case scenario is a decrease in productivity of the users, and no serious damage, not to mention the medical and psychological benefits (yes i think there are benefits in some cases, not all, or even most, but some). you are essentially doing no more harm than the local liquor store.
essentially the reason that im writing this entry is because i think that husteling is not necessarily wrong and i think that there should be a code of conduct that guides the actions of any respectable hustler. although i think stealing is wrong for example, i think that there is an ethical way to go about it. stealing brings upon negative karma, but some kinds of stealing affect you much more negatively than others. for example i think it is wrong to steal from people that will feel the loss. mugging somone, pickpocketing, and other such personal assualts i find to be despicable because you are directly hurting another human being. another case altogether is that of stealing from a department store for example, or a credit card company. i think that it is much better to steal from someone like that. when you steal from a supermarket no one gets hurt. the employees have no stake in the profits the store turns, in fact i think they are being hustled even worse in a way, because they have to work so many hours to etch out such a meager living. and this is despite the fact that the company is making a killing. they make such a killing in fact that they wont even feel the loss. it is also better to steal from necessity than from cleptomania.
i think an example of morally defensable husteling is ticket scalping for example. in this case no one gets hurt. the ticket sellers still get the money they asked for, and the ticket scalpers take a risk. if the event doesnt sell out the scalpers will have to sell the tickets at a loss, if at all. when they do make money, its not that they are robbing the buyer, in most cases they could have got the ticket at face value if they had been more alert, but since there is a high demand, they should not object to paying a higher price.
i think that part of the husteling code should be to give back some of the money that is made. for example, if you make a killing scalping tickets, then you should take a few and give them to your friends or something, or better yet give them to someone you dont know. i think this goes along with the notion of flow. i was always told that when the river flows it nourishes, but when it stagnates it poisons. if you try to hoard things it will poison you. if you are successful at the time, be generous with people who are not, because there will come a time when the tables will be turned and you will be glad to recieve a helping hand. this is actually a manifestation of the law of karma. thats why i always stand up on the bus, because when the day comes that i am very tired and want to sit down, i have faith that there will be a place for me to sit. perhaps a random analogy, but i was riding the bus today, sooo.
my mother always told me, when you're doing something wrong, do it right. i think that if you are going to participate in illegal activities, they require an even higher level of integrity in order to be successful. the only way for things not to deteriorate for violence is for all parties to be very upfront and honest. this is true in life in general, but especially in the case of the underground.
i think that in the end it comes down to this: pimp the system, not the people. it is better to scalp tickets than sell crack; bootleg cds than mugg people; commit credit card fraud than rob a house.

i also want to say that i think that alot of 'legal' money making schemes seem like a more despicable hustle than some of the illegal ones. shit like enron for example, or the way that the government feeds the peoples money into their favorite corporations. that seems like the most despicable kind of hustle to me. not only do they directly hurt people (the people jyped by unethical spending, and the people paying for the spending) but they hurt them by the millions. i also think its wrong for a CEO to make so much money when someone working in this company might make minimum wage, and i bet that broke cat works alot harder, in terms of hours, sweat, and tears, too. i should also note that husteling isnt free money either. selling bootleg dvds for example is a GRIND. i see all these african imigrants here who work all day for, at best, 150 euros. and they are constantly getting all their merchandise taken by the cops.


life is good here in spain. ive been working at my moms friends house, landscaping odly enough. not all that exiting, which is why i havnt really written about it, and it takes a good amount of time, which is why i havnt written about much else.
peace my friends.

im not sure how this came out. i wrote it over a few days so it might seem a bit disconnected, and maybe i forgot some things i wanted to say. it was an idea. i hope you like it.