It seems there is nothing like greed … but this is a special case of greed … greed fueled by Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance — A situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. This leads to a feeling of mental discomfort causing an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. … I know this deal will cause a financial catastrophe for that person but they probably would go bankrupt anyway because of their own bad decisions.

When a person is the most vulnerable they can be more easily sold the proverbial “bill of goods” to fix their problem that nets the most profit for the seller. It is easier to close the deal when they are vulnerable. It is easier to maximize the price.

Cognitive Dissonance starts to come into play from the people that are looking to maximize their gain using a special target market … the vulnerable. The seller, it seems in these cases, can set aside their empathy and their greed drives their actions. It is not all humans that lack empathy but it does seem like a minority can prey on large numbers when they are vulnerable.

If you take profit out of the picture that Umair describes many people would feel some level of empathy.

Ahhh … humans … how the f*ck did we end up here?