Every day, terribly destructive crimes -- torture, treason, sedition, embezzlement, Grand Theft Economy -- go unpunished. We rail against them, but no action is taken. The powerful, evil criminals walk free.
While we're distracted by these huge crimes, millions of smaller crimes happen every day, on a scale that boggles the mind. We are victims of these crimes, and so are all of our friends, but we accept them as the price of existing in the 21st century.
What crimes? The list is longer than I can quickly write here:
--Millions of spam E-mails, selling illegal or non-existent products or drawing us to fraudsters' Web sites that distribute...
--Malicious software, designed to steal our personal information or extort us into buying fake security programs to 'fix' our computers after the malware deliberately breaks them.
--Tons of paper mail, written and styled to deceive the recipient, trying to con us into paying for products, services and warranties we will never receive.
--Billions of telemarketers, many completely fraudulent, claiming to represent "Account Services" for our credit cards, sell "Warranty Registration" for our automobiles, and collect "charitable" donations that never reach the charities.
--Mortgage refinancing fraud, which helped drive us into this recession and now offers to 'help' us lower our payments.
Sure, we are warned about these crimes, but little or nothing is done to stop them.
These are more than just "quality of life" issues. They represent the tip of a huge iceberg: crime pays. The scammers who steal our credit card numbers, our retirement account passwords, and our very identities are rarely if ever caught and punished. They don't even need to operate from another country: the police won't even reach across state lines, or make more than a token effort, to investigate fraud.
Here's an exercise (in futility) for you, dear readers:
Next time you hear from an obvious scammer -- someone offers to lower your interest rate, tells you your car warranty is about to expire, or puts adware on your computer -- pick up your phone and call 911. Tell whoever answers that someone just tried to defraud you, or sabotaged your computer, and you want them tracked down and arrested.
Guess what will happen? Less than nothing. Not only will you be told that nothing can be done... you will also be criticized for calling 911 when there's no emergency.
This is an emergency, folks. We live in a world where our families can be robbed blind, our financial lives ended and picked clean, and nothing will happen to the thieves who do it.
We live in a world where Visa and Mastercard knowingly transmit millions of dollars per hour to criminals, happily collect two or three percent of each transaction, and rarely if ever terminate the thieves' merchant accounts or refund money to the victims.
We live in a nation where telemarketers can call thousands of people per day, lie to them, and remain in business and untouched for years.
I wish I had more to offer here than an angry rant, but I don't know what we can do about it.