Guys, I have a sincere question and if I’m offbase please feel free to (nicely) tell me. I’ve read through probably 30 pages of this thread in the last couple days and I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around all of this. Those people/transactions of the final months seem to totally be scams where these guys were clearly defrauding victims as they knew their businesses were heading south. The earlier transactions, however, seem to be totally mutually agreed upon transactions where the lender was happy to do so because of the money they made on the points. Everyone clearly knows that the banks don’t intend for credit cards to be used this way (and that you aren’t supposed to sell points).
My question is, do you think that certain attitudes of acceptance toward stealing and cheating non-Jews (ie, I know it’s against the bank rules but those rules of the goyim don’t really apply to us anyway) was also a large contributing factor, in addition to the obvious greed, in this clearly inappropriate behavior? I’ve seen people often post on DDF about how cheating non-Jews is permitted in Halacha, without any regard to whether it’s something that is just Stam not good for them to do. Heck, this attitude is so pervasive in the Hareidi world (don’t worry, I know that the MO world has other huge problems too) that my own kids try to tell me they can badmouth a non-Jew because it’s not Lashon Hara! At which point I nicely explain to them that it affects their neshama to speak like that and mine to hear it.
Again, feel free to express if you think I’m off base here but I just feel like this is the elephant in the room here. Dan always makes very clear that not only wouldn’t he do some swiping scheme to get points but he won’t even sell any points! I don’t see how you address one part without honestly addressing the other.