What Was Ponzi's Problem?

        I have spent the past several days trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with Charles Ponzi. At last, I believe I have developed a working hypothesis. Ponzi, in my admittedly not-even-a-little-bit-professional opinion, did not understand the concept of delayed gratification. 

        This man worked ten times harder at the concept of getting rich quick than the amount of effort that would have been required to just go to college, get a degree, and start working a respectable job. His turnaround for both sky-high levels of success and crashing, crushing failure were all remarkably fast. He spent less than a year – only around eight months – as an influential financial mind before his own hubris and the fundamentally-unsustainable nature of his scheme collapsed around his ears. That’s the most dramatic example, but Ponzi’s lack of ability to use even a tiny degree of patience and self-control is also evidenced by every step in his process to get to that point. He consistently gambled away his money and spent every cent of his family’s inheritance on the lifestyle he thought he deserved. From getting arrested again mere days after his release from prison for an unrelated crime to squandering all the money he’d been given for a new life in America, he routinely made bad choices without seeming to believe that consequences would happen to someone like him. 

        He was undeniably generous, but it was to an absurd degree that consistently backfired on him. He used his rent money to take his friends to nice restaurants. He donated the literal skin off his back to someone he had never met before without taking into account any of the natural consequences of his actions, such as recovery time. He was obviously impulsive in many ways. At first, though, this would appear to clash with the fact that he was able to set up such a seamless scheme that worked so well and stole so much money. 

I think all of it comes down to a lack of self-discipline. Ponzi didn’t want to do things the ‘right way’ because he thought he was above taking the usual route to success. Instead, he wanted to be special and unique even though he repeatedly showed he lacked the restraint to get there. 

        His consistent belief that things would work themselves out persisted through a complete lack of evidence to support his optimism and an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary. He died in poverty and obscurity, but his name and caricature reputation have stamped his mark on the cultural consciousness. 

        It’s remarkable to me that someone so obviously charismatic and good with other people could have such a deep lack of self-awareness, but Ponzi has always been a man of contrasts. Ponzi was a generous thief, a con man who believed in his own con, and above all, a man who spent his entire life looking for a shortcut to riches and fame instead of investing a few years of hard work into a well-trodden path to success.