Working the System

I read this article on people racking up frequent flyer miles for free. Basically, they used their credit cards to purchase $1 coins from the US mint, which ships them for free. They then deposit the coins in the bank and use the money to pay the credit card bill. People were buying more than $10k at a time. Result: Just for the effort of placing the order & depositing the coins in the bank, they were getting thousands of free mileage points.

Aren't we all looking for ways to work the system? And I'm sure many of us would say it was wrong. It's just following the letter of the law, not the spirit of it. Or, well, it feels wrong...but then again, don't we try to find our own advantages?

I think the question shouldn't be whether it's "right" or "wrong", because these terms are entirely subjective constructs. One person may say white lies are right, but another, wrong. That's all about how we're trained and how we view the world. So, perhaps a better question is "How is it impacting others? Who's benefiting? Who's losing out?" I certainly don't mean this in relation to legality. If it's illegal, that's pretty much it. But what if it's not illegal? It might be out of the scope of laws, or a loophole, such as these people found. That's the point I'd say we should look at the impact of our actions.

So then, what impact did this have on others? Well, mainly, they were getting points they could use for things like free flights and upgrades. Who's that impacting? Definitely the airlines. Sure, we think that a big corporation could probably afford that one or two free flights. But then again, couldn't stores afford to lose those one or two items that weren't paid for?

I've realized that in our age of big business, it gets hard to see how our actions are affecting others. No longer does stealing some candy from the corner store feel like robbing our uncle. It's not even the same as stealing a few apples from the richest man's yard. It's just taking some intangible number, called points, from a faceless mob of a corporation.