Flatten the Curve. Part 48. Source Here
It's getting crazier day by day now, so are you following the Boy Scout motto?
On this topic, Baden-Powell says: Remember your motto, "Be Prepared." Be prepared for accidents by learning beforehand what you ought to do in the different kinds that are likely to occur. Be prepared to do that thing the moment the accident does occur. In Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell wrote that to Be Prepared means “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.”
Why should you be prepared? Because TPTB have been preparing, that’s why.

June 12, 2014: The Guardian • Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown. Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements Source Here

Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown. It seemed ludicrous back in 2014, didn't it? Inconceivable. Sure some preppers believed it, but they're always getting ready and nothing happened. Doomsday was always right around the corner, and then the next corner, and on and on. Televangelists have probably accused more politicians of being the antichrist than the number of politicians went to Epstein's Island.
But why would they be preparing for mass civil breakdown? Could it be the same reason as why the miltary is preparing for war, droughts and famines brought about by environmental collapse?

February 20, 2020: History Network • Here’s Why These Six Ancient Civilizations Mysteriously Collapsed. From the Maya to Greenland’s Vikings, check out six civilizations that seemingly disappeared without a trace. Source Here

All of these civilizations vanished because of some combination of exhausting their natural resources, drought, plauge, and the little ice age. Sound familiar? Don't tell me that the Rockefeller Foundation and BlackRock became environmentally aware out of a sense of obligation to the planet. They're setting the groundwork for what's coming down the pipe. This isn't about money anymore, this is about control and survival. Throw out the rulebook because the rules no longer apply.
Do you think the surveillance system is for your protection, or the protection of the state? Don't you think that an era of upcoming calamities will severely damage the communication networks, and thus the surveillance system? It might be prudent to consider that Starlink is being established to make the system redundant, so that they never lose track of the precious worker bees before they can be connected to the AI hive mind, right Elon? Neuralink, don't leave home without it.
But let's not forget about the wonderful world of the Internet of Things.

March 15, 2012 • More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them. Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an "Internet of Things" -- that is, wired devices -- at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm. "'Transformational' is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies," Petraeus enthused, "particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft." All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you're a "person of interest" to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the "smart home," you'd be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room's ambiance. "Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters -- all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing," Petraeus said, "the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing." Petraeus allowed that these household spy devices "change our notions of secrecy" and prompt a rethink of "our notions of identity and secrecy." All of which is true -- if convenient for a CIA director. The CIA has a lot of legal restrictions against spying on American citizens. But collecting ambient geolocation data from devices is a grayer area, especially after the 2008 carve-outs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hardware manufacturers, it turns out, store a trove of geolocation data; and some legislators have grown alarmed at how easy it is for the government to track you through your phone or PlayStation. That's not the only data exploit intriguing Petraeus. He's interested in creating new online identities for his undercover spies -- and sweeping away the "digital footprints" of agents who suddenly need to vanish. "Proud parents document the arrival and growth of their future CIA officer in all forms of social media that the world can access for decades to come," Petraeus observed. "Moreover, we have to figure out how to create the digital footprint for new identities for some officers." Source Here
December 19, 2019: New York Times • THE DATA REVIEWED BY TIMES OPINION didn’t come from a telecom or giant tech company, nor did it come from a governmental surveillance operation. It originated from a location data company, one of dozens quietly collecting precise movements using software slipped onto mobile phone apps. You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies — and yet to anyone who has access to this data, your life is an open book. They can see the places you go every moment of the day, whom you meet with or spend the night with, where you pray, whether you visit a methadone clinic, a psychiatrist’s office or a massage parlor. The Times and other news organizations have reported on smartphone tracking in the past. But never with a data set so large. Even still, this file represents just a small slice of what’s collected and sold every day by the location tracking industry — surveillance so omnipresent in our digital lives that it now seems impossible for anyone to avoid. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the powers such always-on surveillance can provide an authoritarian regime like China’s. Within America’s own representative democracy, citizens would surely rise up in outrage if the government attempted to mandate that every person above the age of 12 carry a tracking device that revealed their location 24 hours a day. Yet, in the decade since Apple’s App Store was created, Americans have, app by app, consented to just such a system run by private companies. Now, as the decade ends, tens of millions of Americans, including many children, find themselves carrying spies in their pockets during the day and leaving them beside their beds at night — even though the corporations that control their data are far less accountable than the government would be. Source Here

The IoT should be renamed to IoTT (Internet of Tracking Things), shouldn't it. But we can't have people figure out what's really happening, can we? It's a good thing that quantum computing isn't too close, isn’t it?

April 5, 2018: Global News • (Project Maven) Over 3,000 Google employees have a signed a petition in protest against the company’s involvement with a U.S. Department of Defense artificial intelligence (AI) project that studies imagery and could eventually be used to improve drone strikes in the battlefield. Source Here

December 12, 2019 • Palantir took over Project Maven defense contract after Google backed out. Source Here

December 29, 2020: Input • Palantir exec says its work is on par with the Manhattan Project. Comparing AI to most lethal weapon in human history isn’t comforting. SourceHere

August 14, 2020: Venture: • Google researchers use quantum computing to help improve image classification. Source Here

Hmmm. Maybe Apple will be for the little guy? They have always valued privacy rights, right?

October 2, 2013: Vice News • The hacktivist group Anonymous released a video statement with an accompanying Pastebin document claiming that there are definitive links between AuthenTec, the company that developed the iPhone 5S’s fingerprint scanner, and the US government. Source Here

An apple a day helps the NSA. Or Google. Or Microsoft. Or Amazon. Take your pick from the basket, because dem Apple's are all the same. But at least we have fundamental rights, right?
Foreign agent declaration not required • No mention of foreign agent status is made in the Protect America Act of 2007. Under prior FISA rules, persons targeted for surveillance must have been declared as foreign agents before a FISA warrant would be accorded by the FISC court.
'Quasi-anti-terrorism law' for all-forms of intelligence collection • Vastly marketed by U.S. federal and military agencies as a law to prevent terror attacks, the Protect America Act was actually a law focused on the 'acquisition' of desired intelligence information, of unspecified nature. The sole requirement is geolocation outside the United States at time of Directive invocation; pursuant to Authorization or Order invocation, surveillance Directives can be undertaken towards persons targeted for intelligence information gathering. Implementation of Directives can take place inside the United States or outside the United States. No criminal or terrorism investigation of the person need be in play at time of the Directive. All that need be required is that the target be related to an official desire for intelligence information gathering for actions on part of persons involved in surveillance to be granted full immunity from U.S. criminal or civil procedures, under Section 105B(l) of the Act.
Removal of FISA Strictures from warrant authorization; warrants not required • But the most striking aspect of the Protect America Act was the notation that any information gathering did not comprise electronic surveillance. This wording had the effect of removing FISA-related strictures from Protect America Act 2007-related Directives, serving to remove a number of protections for persons targeted, and requirements for persons working for U.S. intelligence agencies.
The acquisition does not constitute electronic surveillance • The removal of the term electronic surveillance from any Protect America Act Directive implied that the FISC court approval was no longer required, as FISA warrants were no longer required. In the place of a warrant was a certification, made by U.S. intelligence officers, which was copied to the Court. In effect, the FISC became less of a court than a registry of pre-approved certifications.Certifications (in place of FISA warrants) were able to be levied ex post facto, in writing to the Court no more than 72 hours after it was made. The Attorney General was to transmit as soon as possible to the Court a sealed copy of the certification that would remain sealed unless the certification was needed to determine the legality of the acquisition.Source Here
Oh. FISA is basically a rubber stamp. And even if it the stage play wasn't pretending to follow the script, would it matter? Who could actually stop it at this point? The cat's out of the bag and Pandoras Box is open.

Controversial debates arose as the Protect America Act was published. Constitutional lawyers and civil liberties experts expressed concerns that this Act authorized massive, wide-ranging information gathering with no oversight. Whereas it placed much focus on communications, the Act allowed for information gathering of all shapes and forms. The ACLU called it the "Police America Act" – "authorized a massive surveillance dragnet", calling the blank-check oversight provisions "meaningless," and calling them a "phony court review of secret procedures."

So the surveillance state doesn't have checks and balances anymore. The state is preparing for Massive Civil Breakdown. They keep warning us about environmental collapse. Got it? Good. Let's keep on keeping on.

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 created a single new district corporation governing the entire federal territory, called the District of Columbia, thus dissolving the three major political subdivisions of the District (Port of Georgetown, the City of Washington, and Washington County) and their governments. Source Here)

The first big leap in corporate personhood from holding mere property and contract rights to possessing more expansive rights was a claim that the Equal Protection Clause applied to corporations. One of the strangest twists in American constitutional law was the moment that corporations gained personhood under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It occurred in a case called Santa Clara County, and what was odd was that the Supreme Court did not really even decide the matter in the actual opinion. It only appeared in a footnote to the case. What we are likely to have at the conclusion of the Supreme Court term is corporations that are empowered to spend in American elections because of Bellotti and Citizens United; corporations that can make religious objections thanks to Hobby Lobby; and if Jesner turns out as badly as I predict, corporations will be able to aid and abet human rights violations abroad with impunity. Source Here

"Having a corporation would allow people to put property into a collective ownership that could be held with perpetual existence," she says. "So it wouldn't be tied to any one person's lifespan, or subject necessarily to laws regarding inheriting property." Later on, in the United States and elsewhere, the advantages of incorporation were essential to efficient and secure economic development. Unlike partnerships, the corporation continued to exist even if a partner died; there was no unanimity required to do something; shareholders could not be sued individually, only the corporation as a whole, so investors only risked as much as they put into buying shares. Source Here

The way that the Arab Bank may get away with this alleged morally troubling behavior, even though it has a New York branch, is by reasserting the basic argument that was made in Nestle USA and Kiobel II: that the federal Alien Tort Statute was not intended to apply to corporations full stop. Given other cases in this area like Mohamad v. PLO, which held the word “individual” in the Torture Victim Protection Act means a natural person and does not impose any liability against organizations, the Arab Bank’s procorporate argument may well prevail. There are multiple federal Circuit Courts which have shot down the argument that corporations are immune from suit under the Alien Tort Statute. The lone outlier is the Second Circuit, which decided in 2010 that corporations are excused from suit in Kiobel I. This is the case that was appealed to the Supreme Court and became Kiobel II. Jesner v. Arab Bank was litigated in the Second Circuit. One question in Jesner was what exactly did Kiobel II do to Kiobel I. So far in the litigation, Jesner concluded that Kiobel I and its conclusion that corporations can’t be sued in federal court using the Alien Tort Statute remained the controlling law of the Second Circuit.

There's a reason people call lawyers snakes, it's because most of them speak with forked tounges. So the corporation isn't being held liable, but the shareholders can't be held liable either. That's too insane to even be called a Catch 22. We are literally being set up to have no recourse because there isn’t anybody who can be held responsible. Why is that important when I've been talking about the surveillance state?

July 14, 2020: The Intercept • Microsoft’s police surveillance services are often opaque because the company sells little in the way of its own policing products. It instead offers an array of “general purpose” Azure cloud services, such as machine learning and predictive analytics tools like Power BI (business intelligence) and Cognitive Services, which can be used by law enforcement agencies and surveillance vendors to build their own software or solutions. A rich array of Microsoft’s cloud-based offerings is on full display with a concept called “The Connected Officer.” Microsoft situates this concept as part of the Internet of Things, or IoT, in which gadgets are connected to online servers and thus made more useful. “The Connected Officer,” Microsoft has written, will “bring IoT to policing.” With the Internet of Things, physical objects are assigned unique identifiers and transfer data over networks in an automated fashion. If a police officer draws a gun from its holster, for example, a notification can be sent over the network to alert other officers there may be danger. Real Time Crime Centers could then locate the officer on a map and monitor the situation from a command and control center. Source Here

Uhm, I guess it's really is all connected, isn’t it?

June 18, 2020: The Guardian • How Target, Google, Bank of America and Microsoft quietly fund police through private donations. More than 25 large corporations in the past three years have contributed funding to private police foundations, new report says. Source Here

Long live the Military Industrial Techno Surveillance State. If you have nothing to hide, than you have nothing to worry about. Really? Are we still believing that line? Cause it's a load of crap. If we have nothing to worry about, then why are they worried enough to be implementing surveillance systems with corresponding units on the ground? Got your attention there, didn't I?

August 19, 2019: Big Think • Though the term "Orwellian" easily applies to such a technology, Michel's illuminating reporting touches something deeper. Numerous American cities have already been surveilled using these god-like cameras, including Gorgon Stare, a camera-enabled drone that can track individuals over a 50-square kilometer radius from 20,000 feet. Here's the real rub: the feature that allows users to pinch and zoom on Instagram is similar to what WAMI allows. Anything within those 50-square kilometers is now under the microscope. If this sounds like some futuristic tech, think again: Derivations of this camera system have been tested in numerous American cities. Say there is a big public protest. With this camera you can follow thousands of protesters back to their homes. Now you have a list of the home addresses of all the people involved in a political movement. If on their way home you witness them committing some crime—breaking a traffic regulation or frequenting a location that is known to be involved in the drug trade—you can use that surveillance data against them to essentially shut them up. That's why we have laws that prevent the use of surveillance technologies because it is human instinct to abuse them. That's why we need controls. Source Here

Want to know more about the Gorgon Stare? Flatten the Curve. Part 12. Source Here
Now, I'm not sure if you remember or know any Greek Mythology, but the Gorgons were three sisters, and one sister had Snakes on her head (she wasn't a lawyer) and she turned people to stone when she looked at them.

MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) is a directed-energy non-lethal weapon designed by WaveBand Corporation in 2003-2004 for temporary personnel incapacitation. The weapon is based on the microwave auditory effect resulting in a strong sound sensation in the human head when it is subject to certain kinds of pulsed/modulated microwave radiation. The developers claimed that through the combination of pulse parameters and pulse power, it is possible to raise the auditory sensation to a “discomfort” level, deterring personnel from entering a protected perimeter or, if necessary, temporarily incapacitating particular individuals. In 2005, Sierra Nevada Corporation acquired WaveBand Corporation.

Ok. Get it? The Gorgon eye in the sky stares at you while the Medusa makes you immobile. Not good, but at least it'll just freeze you in your tracks.

July 6, 2008: Gizmodo • The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the "microwave audio effect" to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads. Short for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, MEDUSA creates the audio effect with short microwave pulses. The pulses create a shockwave inside the skull that's detected by the ears, and basically makes you think you're going balls-to-the-wall batshit insane. Source Here

Uhm. And drive you insane.

July 26, 2008: Gizmodo • The MEDUSA crowd control ray gun we reported on earlier this month sounded like some pretty amazing-and downright scary-technology. Using the microwave auditory effect, the beam, in theory, would have put sounds and voice-like noises in your head, thereby driving you away from the area. Crowd control via voices in your head. Sounds cool. However, it turns out that the beam would actually kill you before any of that happy stuff started taking place, most likely by frying or cooking your brain inside your skull. Can you imagine if this thing made it out into the field? Awkward! Source Here

Annnnnnnndddddd it'll kill you.
Guys, they're prepared. They've been prepared. They're ready. Remember the Doomsday Bunkers? The military moving into Cheyenne Mountain? Deep Underground Military Bunkers? The rapid rolling out of 5G? BITCOIN and UBI so neatly inserted into our minds over the last five years? They've directly told us to have three months of supplies in our homes. 2020 isn't going to be an anomaly? It's the start of the collapse of our natural resources. Take a look on Reddit and all the posts about crazy weather. Cyanobacteria blooms killing dogs and people. Toxic Super Pollution caused by atmospheric inversions killing people. This isn’t normal, this is New Normal. And they know it. They've known it for a while. Let me show you one last thing before I wrap it up.

From the earliest Chinese dynasties to the present, the jade deposits most used were not only those of Khotan in the Western Chinese province of Xinjiang but other parts of China as well, such as Lantian, Shaanxi.

Remember, words matter. Look at Gorgon Stare and Medusa. They don't randomly grab names out of a hat, or pick them because they think it sounds dystopian. They pick words for a reason.

July 7, 2017: The Warzone • There only appears to be one official news story on this exercise at all and it's available on the website of Air Mobility Command’s Eighteenth Air Force, situated at Joint Base Charleston. At the time of writing, a google shows that there were more than a half dozen more copies on other Air Force pages, as well as number of photographs. For some reason, someone appears to have taken these offline or otherwise broken all the links. Using Google to search the Defense Video Imagery Distribution System, which is the main U.S. military's public affairs hub, brings up more broken links. Oh, and unless there's been some sort of mistake, JADE HELM actually stands for the amazingly obtuse Joint Assistance for Deployment Execution Homeland Eradication of Local Militants. A separate web search for this phrase does not turn up any other results. Source Here

Now, using an acronym that indicates training to Eradicate Local Militants seems pretty dumb. It may be used in that manner if environmental collapse triggers riots, but i don't think they would warn everyone ahead of time, do you? So I dug a little bit more.
Joint Assistant for Development and Execution (JADE) is a U.S. military system used for planning the deployment of military forces in crisis situations. The U.S. military developed this automated planning software system in order to expedite the creation of the detailed planning needed to deploy military forces for a military operation. JADE uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology combining user input, a knowledge base of stored plans, and suggestions by the system to provide the ability to develop large-scale and complex plans in minimal time. JADE is a knowledge-based system that uses highly structured information that takes advantage of data hierarchies. An official 2016 document approved for public release titled Human Systems Roadmap Review describes plans to create autonomous weapon systems that analyze social media and make decisions, including the use of lethal force, with minimal human involvement. This type of system is referred to as a Lethal Autonomous Weapon System (LAWS). The name "JADE" comes from the jade green color seen on the island of Oahu in Hawaii where the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) is headquartered.
PACOM? Why isn't that command group responsible for the South China Sea?
Formerly known as United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) since its inception, the command was renamed to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command on 30 May 2018, in recognition of the greater emphasis on South Asia, especially India.
Now doesn't it look like Jade Helm is preparing for an invasion? And possibly insurrection later. Or at the same time? Or riots over WW3? Or food riots? And start thinking about why the laws are starting to exclude corporations? Then think about the mercenaries that are being contracted out by the government.

October 17, 2018: The Carolinan • In 2016, 75 percent of American forces were private contractors. In 2017, Erik Prince, former head of Blackwater, and Stephen Feinberg, head of Dyncorp, discussed plans for contractors completely taking over U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Although ultimately unsuccessful, it remains to be seen if the current administration will change its mind. Contractors are involved in almost every military task, such as intelligence analysis, logistics and training allied soldiers. Contractors are even involved in U.S. special ops missions. This is because contractors are essentially untraceable and unaccountable. Most are born in other countries; only 33 percent are registered U.S. citizens. Private military firms don’t have to report their actions to Congress, unlike the military or intelligence agencies. They also aren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so private citizens and journalists aren’t allowed to access their internal documents. There are also no international laws to regulate private military firms. It’s been proven that many contractors are involved in illegal activities. The larger multinational companies sometimes hire local subcontractors. These contractors sometimes aren’t background-checked. A 2010 investigation by the Senate found that many subcontractors were linked to murders, kidnappings, bribery and anti-coalition activities. Some subcontractors even formed their own unlicensed mercenary groups after coalition forces leave. A 2010 House investigation showed evidence that the Department of Defense had hired local warlords for security services. In 2007, Blackwater contractors massacred 17 civilians. This eventually led Blackwater to being restructured and renamed as Academi. Source Here

Military Exercises. Private Defense Firms. No oversight. And it's all coming soon. Read more at Flatten the Curve. Part 20. Upcoming war and catastrophes. Source Here
Nah. I'm just fear mongering and Doomscrolling again.
Heads up and eyes open. Talk soon.

Originally posted by ankarlie :
https://steemit.com/eos/@ankarlie/newdex-creates-a-one-stop-service-for-users-fa5ab781031d5est
Newdex is a new kind of Decentralized Exchange that is able to provide unprecedented user experience of decentralized trading, which is only possible with highly scalable blockchain technology. The previous generation decentralized exchanges are not able to do this due to blockchain technological limitations their DEX are based on. The Newdex team chose to build on top of one of the most scalable blockchains known in the industry, EOS and has been continuously improving its DEX adding features after features to bring more value into its ecosystem.
On-chain Execution
It has become the world’s leading decentralized exchange that features on-chain matching and settlement) through the utilization of smart contracts. In simple words, all trading activities done on the exchange are triggered and recorded in the EOS high-performance blockchain achieving a whole new level of trust without the wait and associated cost seen in previous blockchain generations. This makes fast and high-frequency trading not only possible but feasible due to the EOS’ unique transactionless design and resource allocations. More importantly, data in the DEX are transparent and immutable.
Non-Custodial Trading
It also features non-custodial trading where users never lose custody of their digital assets, not until the moment the conditions of their trades are met and thereby executed. By doing so the exchange does not attract unwanted attention from hackers looking for their next crypto honeypot to exploit. Since wallets used in Newdex are non-custodial wallets there will never be a point where users can be restricted from access of their own digital assets. Unlike centralized exchanges, Newdex does not ask for the custodianship of tokens. While there are some feature in Newdex that requires locking up of some assets, unlocking them are within the power of users and does not require access to Newdex website.
Zero Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
Additionally, deposits and withdrawals in Newdex are instant and users will never be charged with fees. This allows frictionless trading within its platform and presents a quick way of having access to all available digital assets in the non-custodial wallet that has been linked. Once wallets are linked all cryptocurrencies contained in the wallet will immediately be detected by Newdex for immediate trading. This is a more efficient and cost-effective way of having access to digital assets. CEX requires users to send each of the assets one by one which is not only cumbersome but also costly as users have to spent transfer fees or resources to send them.
Private Keys not required
As an additional layer of security, Newdex decentralized bourse will never ask for the private keys of its users. Instead, users can log in using the widest range of wallets available for EOS, EOS sidechains, and TRON. This is one of the most striking features of Newdex as it essentially supports almost all types of login options for all supported platforms. Desktop wallets, Chrome extension wallets, and mobile wallets can be used to login to its DEX without having to ask the users to reveal their private keys. This highlights Newdex’s emphasis on security, privacy, and ease of use.
Pervasive
Newdex has become the quintessential DEX in EOS space becoming the go-to listing partner of many EOS-based projects and has been supported by virtually every wallet service provider that supports EOS. This demonstrates the market penetration of Newdex and the reputation it has gained throughout its existence. Its presence and market influence is the direct result of providing the first truly global decentralized exchange based on EOS and continuously building on its brand by providing high quality, relevant and timely products, and services.
Newdex Platform Ecological Token (NDX)
Newdex issued its own utility token dubbed as the Newdex platform Ecological Token (NDX). Its primary purpose is to serve as the platform’s primary currency for services its offers. These include VIP membership Fee, repurchase and destruction, staking concessions, Token airdrops, advertising bidding, independent listing and more. It is currently listed in Newdex with pairs of NDX/EOS and NDX/USDT. Recently it has been used to rewards those who opted to undergo identity verification for OTC services of the Newdex Platform.
Newdex Free CPU trades for VIP members
Newdex has been built on top of one of the most scalable and feature-filled blockchains in the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. To elevate the trading experience of its users further, Newdex is giving its users limited Free CPU placing order in trades depending on their VIP levels. The CPU-free placing order time as shown below:
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This would allow its traders to execute trades without having to worry on having enough CPU-time EOS resources.
Multilingual
Newdex is designed to be a frictionless and borderless decentralized exchange, as such, it offers multilingual support to cover all the most active crypto trading jurisdiction in the world. Currently, it supports English, Korean, Chinese and Chinese tranditional. It is expected that more languages will be supported in the future as Newdex expands to new markets.
Simple yet Power User Interface (UI)
One of the first things users will notice about Newdex is its simple yet powerful user interface (UI) that enables them to gain access to all important features easily and conveniently. Its design is clean and purposeful without excess information clottering the screen enabling users to concentrate on what they are doing. The additional features of the DEX are carefully tucked away but easily accessible through the many non-intrusive menus buttons smartly positioned for optimal use. Hidden behind this elegant UI is a new breed of decentralized exchange that truly raises the bar of excellence in Decentralized Finance (DEFI) particularly the DEX sector.
Multi-Chain Trading
The recent support for TRON reveals its openness and intent of supporting other high-performance public blockchains to achieve multi-chain trading. This opens up unlimited opportunities for growth for Newdex not only in terms of partnerships with other blockchain projects but also in terms of user base as each of these projects typically has its own supporters and believers. The willingness of the Newdex Team to work in both EOS and TRON platform demonstrates their flexibility and agility to react to current market conditions in a meaningful and timely fashion.
Excellent Tech support
To give the very best tech support to its users, Newdex has hired the services of Zendesk, a software company that is headquartered in San Francisco and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The support page is very well organized and response times are top-notch. Nothing less is be expected from a professional tech support team. The same company is also used by many well-established blockchain-based companies who want professional-level services for its tech support.
Highly ranked among dApps Trading Platforms
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It comes to no surprise that Newdex has consistently ranked on top of dApps data services providers, such as the Dappradar, in terms of the trading volume. This makes them the top EOS-based DEX in the space. This is just a confirmation of what we already knew about Newdex and about its team who tirelessly seek out new innovative products and services with the purpose of bringing to the crypto trading community the very best of what DEX trading has to offer. But wait there is more! Its newest innovation is explained in the next section where it tries to marry traditional and blockchain-based fintech together.
How to Join the Newdex OTC marketplace?
Regulatory compliance requires the Newdex team to ask its users to accomplish KYC and AML procedures before they can avail of the OTC services. Prospective users are required to declare their identity, contact information and to submit proof to validate the information submitted. Once this information has been approved users can start using the OTC market.
While the Newdex team values the privacy of its customers they also acknowledge the need for such procedures for the safety of its users since the service entails interaction with government-issued assets (fiat) as well as to be able to resolve disputes when the need arises. Currently, the platform only offers Renminbi or the Chinese Yuan CNY for fiat purchases and has expressed the intention to expand to other fiat options in the near future.
NDX Rewards For OTC Participants
As a way to celebrate the launch of their OTC services and to rewards participants who undergo KYC procedures the Newdex Team have initiated the Newdex OTC NDX Rewards Program. Users who will participate in Identity Verification Procedures will receive NDX. The program started November 25, 2019, and will end at 9:00 am Decemver 16, 2019 (UTC).
There are two activities where users can join and they are allowed to join both so long as they qualify. Rewards are limited and will be distributed based on a first come first serve basis. Since the rewards program is sponsored by Newdex, their final interpretation of the results of the rewards program are final and cannot be reconsidered.
The first activity (Activity 1) is the real name verification. The total rewards for this activity is 2,500 NDX
Activity Rules： During the activity, users who log in to Newdex and complete the real name verification on the OTC fiat trading page can claim NDX reward:
Reward 500 NDX via completing the primary verification (3,000 openings).
Reward 2,000 NDX via completing the intermediate verification (3,000 openings).
The second activity (Activity 2) is the fiat trading which has a total reward of 2,200 NDX
Activity Rules： During the activity, users who log in to Newdex and complete EOS or USDT trading on the OTC fiat trading page can claim NDX reward:
One time reward of 200 NDX for a single order ≥ 50 EOS/150 USDT
One time reward of 2,000 NDX for a single order ≥ 500 EOS/1500 USDT
Newdex’s One-Stop Service
Newdex has proven once again why it is the leading high-performance decentralized exchange in the space as follows:
Providing scalable decentralized exchange trading
Instant and Secure
Non-custodial
On-Chain matching and Settlement
Transparent and Immutable
No Deposits and Withdrawals Fees
Top-rated trading dApps
Highest trading volumes
Most supported DEX by top wallet service providers
Offering the widest range of EOS-based tokens including EOS Native Tokens and EOS Sidechains
Multichain Trading
Added Support to Tron-based Tokens
Plans to support other high-performance blockchains
Providing innovative opportunities for its users
Newpool multichain staking pool
Widest range of EOS-based Stablecoins offering
OTC trading desk for fiat trading
The list goes on......
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Let's Connect!!!

Hello, I was listening to Against the Rules, the podcast by the author of the Big Short, Michael Lewis. In the episode “The Magic Shoebox” he discusses how high frequency traders can front run orders if they are allowed a small advantage in how fast they get the information. To quote Wikipedia:
“For example, suppose a broker receives a market order from a customer to buy a large block—say, 400,000 shares—of some stock, but before placing the order for the customer, the broker buys 20,000 shares of the same stock for his own account at $100 per share, then afterward places the customer's order for 400,000 shares, driving the price up to $102 per share and allowing the broker to immediately sell his shares for, say, $101.75, generating a significant profit of $35,000 in just a short time. This $35,000 is likely to be just a part of the additional cost to the customer's purchase caused by the broker's self-dealing.”
While front running is illegal if the information is not public, in the podcast Mr. Lewis discusses how high frequency traders can set up computers next to the exchange to gain a 4 millisecond advantage in knowing about orders. As such they can put in their orders before a large brokerage and make small profits off each trade, ie increasing the effective cost for buyers.
My question is: do the bitcoin exchanges, such as Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. have high frequency traders doing the same thing? My understanding is that for the large stock exchanges such as Nasdaq and New York Stock exchange, only the IEX uses technology that renders high frequency trading ineffective.

Bitcoin Core is run by Blockstream and Chaincode.
Blockstream is funded by AXA and Mastercard.

According to a 2011 paper by Vitali et al., AXA was the second most powerful transnational corporation

Chaincode has the same co-founders as the High Frequency Trading firm on Wall Street called Hudson River Trading.

According to the Wall Street Journal, it is responsible for about 5% of all stock trading in the United States.

Bitcoin Core IS run by the Financial Elite.

fintech #trading #algotrading #quantitative #quant #quants #forex #cryptos #bitcoin

High-Frequency Trading and Crypto Dark Pools: How Do They Work?About High-Frequency Trading in Crypto According to Wikipedia, high-frequency trading, or HFT, is a type of algorithmic trading characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools.
To put into more day-to-day language, high-frequency trading refers to the usage of specific software that allows traders to make thousands of high-speed trades in a fully automated and efficient way.
This technique of trading has grown alongside the Internet that allowed more and more investors, institutions, and hedge funds to take part. Since cryptocurrencies are a very hot topic these days, high-frequency trading is now starting to appeal more and more to crypto investors from all over the globe. High-Frequency Trading on the Coinbase Source: MediumAbout Crypto Dark Pools The concept of dark pools is not exactly new, as they emerg.....
Continue reading at: https://coindoo.com/high-frequency-trading-and-crypto-dark-pools-how-do-they-work/

First of all, who started Chaincode Labs?
From their own website:

Alex Morcos was one of the early pioneers of automated trading and co-founded Hudson River Trading in 2002, where he spent 10 years working to make markets more efficient and improve market structure. He discovered his passion for Bitcoin in 2012, and in 2014 he co-founded Chaincode with Suhas. He has enjoyed contributing to Bitcoin Core and learning about the exciting nascent field of cryptocurrency ever since.

Also

Suhas Daftuar co-founded Hudson River Trading LLC in 2002, where he spent over a decade developing HRT into a global trading firm and helping to shape the complex policy debates surrounding technology in financial markets. In 2014, Suhas co-founded Chaincode Labs with Alex to create a place for engineers and scientists to support the development of decentralized digital currencies and further our collective understanding of how such technologies can work.

What does Hudson River Trading do?

Hudson River Trading LLC (HRT) is a multi-asset class quantitative trading firm, and more specifically a high-frequency trading (HFT) firm, based in New York City and founded in 2002. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is responsible for about 5% of all stock trading in the United States.

What is HFT?

Specifically, it is the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to rapidly trade securities. HFT uses proprietary trading strategies carried out by computers to move in and out of positions in seconds or fractions of a second.

Why is this a problem?

A substantial body of research argues that HFT and electronic trading pose new types of challenges to the financial system. Algorithmic and high-frequency traders were both found to have contributed to volatility in the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, when high-frequency liquidity providers rapidly withdrew from the market. Several European countries have proposed curtailing or banning HFT due to concerns about volatility.

I encourage everyone to go to the Wiki page on HFT, and do their own research. There is a lot more on this subject than I have the time for. (Market manipulation, Spoofing, Quote stuffing, etc.) What you will find is that these firms are often investigated by regulators, and are often given small fines, but rarely is anyone thrown in jail for manipulating financial markets like this.
Also notice how it says European countries have proposed banning it, but not the US. This is because the regulators are likely in bed with the same companies that they are supposed to be regulating. This is evidenced by the revolving door of former government regulators being hired by the same companies they were regulating, and in some cases going back to work for the government after.
This may be why Matt Corallo went to the SEC. He also works for Chaincode! Again, from their own website:

Matt Corallo is a long-time Bitcoin developer who has been contributing to Bitcoin Core since 2011. Matt helped co-found Blockstream where he co-authored the Sidechains whitepaper and implemented the Elements Sidechain. Matt also built and maintains the Bitcoin FIBRE project, the latest generation of low-latency Bitcoin block relay.

As always, do your own due diligence. Look around for yourself. Who benefits? Follow the money, and you will find out.

Recently, Overstock CEO discussed the use of a blockchain for high-speed trading.

Angel agrees that a cryptosecurity could close certain market loopholes. But he also questions whether it would suit the high-speed world of Wall Street trading. “There’s some latency in settling a bitcoin trade. It can take anywhere from several seconds to hours to get a transactions completed,” he says. “In a world where people want to trade quickly, putting that kind of a delay into the system could make it a non-starter."

Today's block time and confirmation time is 60 seconds.
My Idea is: Transform the block time from 60 seconds to 1 second.
This change would solve problems like instant confirmation to exchanges, miners getting more rewards, high frequency trading, and more.
Instant confirmation to exchanges. Today, a 3 confirmations are necessary to the coins to get into mintpal for instance. Those 3 confirmations would take 3~4 minutes. With a 1 second block, the time would be as good as 5 seconds or less.
Miners would get rewards 60x more often, although 60x smaller. Today, every 60 seconds block gives a rewar of 62.5k dogecoins. With a 1 second block, each block would give 1041,66666666 dogecoins, which is 60th of 62.5k.
In a world that needs faster and faster technologies, we would attack the problem of super fast confirmation speeds that next years would bring. Problems like high-frequency real stock market trading and systems like dogeparty to use the blockchain as a programable language.
Devs, please take a look at this and consider the possibility.
Thank you. Captain out.

This is an open thread to discuss items of interest. I may also use it to drop thoughts as they occur to me as well -- something of a replacement of my former "tab closure" posts, as ... well, it seems tabs are simply running away from me. Consider this an experiment that's been mulling for some time.
If you've got a question, observation, link, or anything else, feel free to post it, with a thought to the lair rules -- like house rules, but larrier.
An evolving conversation....

Kafka as Epistemist

From "The Kafkaesque Process of Cancer Diagnosis", the concept applied here to cancer diagnosis, and in Kafka's The Trial to a process of judgement, strikes me as profoundly epistemological:

The patient continued, “You understand that the many tests and the elusive information of the recent weeks remind me of Franz Kafka's words in his famous work Der Prozess, meaning both trial and process.” “The verdict does not come suddenly, proceedings continue until a verdict is reached gradually.”

I am looking for tools to make sense of HTML DOMs

Probably in Python, though other general scripting, or possibly, compiled languages, might work. Javascript is another possibility, with a few extant tools employing this.
The primary goal is to extract document metadata (title, author, publisher, date, URL), and include the body of a document whilst excluding, or at the very least marking as secondary the ancillary bits. The though occurs that frequency / similarity analysis of the constant bits might help.
The extant tools of Readability's parser (it's survived the fall of the service), Pocket, Instapaper, Outline, etc., may be useful.
Inquiries elsewhere have also brought up Pilgrim, a project of the Knight Foundation (as Outline may also be), which isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but it's interesting in its own right.

On nuclear power and safety

There's an article making the rounds, poorly argued, IMO, extolling nuclear energy. I've been heartened by the critical response it's triggered at Hacker News, including my own contribution, previously submitted at G+ on Joerg Fliege's thread, drawing comparisons to the Banqiao Dam disaster of 1975. In part:

Proponents of nuclear power assume that we can assess risks with tails not of the decade or so of Banqiao, but of 100, 1,000, 1 million years. Utterly outside the scope of any human institutions, or of the human species itself.
Our models of risks and of costs fail us....
The problems with nuclear power are massive, long-tailed, systemic and potentially existential. The same cannot be said of a wind farm or solar array. There is no significant 10,000 year threat from wind power, or solar power. We're not risking 30 - 60 km exclusion zones, on an unplanned basis, of which we've created at least four in the half-decade of significant nuclear energy applications: Hanford, Washington, Three Mile Island, Pennsyvania, Chernobyl, Ukraine, and Fukushima, Japan. And this is with a global plant of some 450 operating nuclear power plants as of 2017....
If the total experience has been, say, 500 reactors, over 50 years, or 25,000 reactor-years of experience, and we've experienced at least four major disasters, then our failure rate is 0.016%.
The global share of nuclear power generation in 2012 was about 10%.[4] Which means that without allowing for increased electrical consumption within existing or extending to developing nations, the plant count would have to increase tenfold.
Holding the reactor-year failure rate constant would mean 80 core meltdowns per century. Reducing that to the present rate of four meltdowns/century would require reducing the failure rate to 0.0008%. That's five nines, if anyone's counting.
Five nines on a process involving weather, politics, business, social upheaval, terrorism, sabotage, individual psychology, group psychology, climate, communications, response, preparedness....

"8 Lessons from 20 years of Hype Cycles"

A look at the Gartner Hype Cycle, and lessons derived therefrom:

1. We're terrible at making predictions. Especially about the future.
2. An alarming number of technology trends are flashes in the pan.
3. Lots of technologies just die. Period.
4. The technical insight is often correct, but the implementation isn't there
5. We've been working on a few core technical problems for decades
6. Some technologies keep receding into the future
7. Lots of technologies make progress when no-one is looking
8. Many major technologies flew under the Hype Cycle radar

Michael Mullany, "8 Lessons from 20 Years of Hype Cycles".

David Gerard at the Financial Times on Bitcoin and Blockchain

David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, interviewed by Izabella Kaminska about Bitcoin, /Buttcoin, and Tulips, among other topics. There's a bunch of great information in this podcast, of which I'll highlight two items in particular.
I've been reflecting a great deal on information, truth, and that boundary between information and belief, most principally trust. Gerard nails the value proposition of trust, and a problem with the Free All the Things trope of decentralisation:

Decentralisation is the paramount feature in bitcoin, but it turns out that that's a bad idea that's really, really expensive, because it turns out that a tiny bit of trust saves you a fortune.
"Decentralised" isn't a useful buzzword in a lot of ways, because it turns out that you want to be a part of society.

He also points at the invalidity of market capitalisation as a concept. It's an arithmetically inexpensive value to obtain (multiply total quantity by present price), but, especially in the thin markets typical of Bitcoin, it is essentially a fantasy value with no real meaning. From a conversation at The Other Place:

[C]rypto "market cap" is a meaningless number. Even on Bitcoin, the most popular one, about 100 BTC will clear the order book on any exchange. Crypto "market cap" is not a number you could realise, it's not how much money went into it, it's not anything useful. If you want to compare cryptos by interest, you'd need to measure daily trading volumes, which is a harder number to gather, and market cap doesn't turn out to be a good proxy for it. So billions of dollars in free money weren't actually just created - instead it's millions of tokens that may or may not be tradeable for ordinary bitcoins or for cash, if you don't go very fast at all.

This evokes my own explorations of cost, price, and value, and what exactly they mean.
One analogy that Gerard, Alex Kudlick, and I are leaning toward is that of electric circuits. Price is analogous to pressure, or potential (voltage). Volume would be current. This raises the question of what resistance, capacitance, and impedance would have as analogues....
FT: Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain with David Gerard (Soundcloud: 65 minutes). Highly recommended.
And you'll find Gerard on Reddit as dgerard.

Yonatan Zunger on the evolution of U.S. "court costs"

In "The history of “court costs”", Zunger writes of "a system that [you might think] has gone out of control, a mechanism that started with a good purpose that got eaten by corruption and incompetence. But you would be wrong."

In the post-Civil War South, a system came up when plantations, factories, or mines needed workers. It was based on that clever little exception in the 13th Amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Note that it doesn’t say what kind of crime you have to be convicted of.

The short of it: slavery is not illegal in the United States, just somewhat regulated.
My own main commentary ... probably worth posting in its own right, is that whilst Zunger raises excellent points about the intentionality of this system and its antecedents to Nazi Germany's concentration camps, the fact is that none of these phenomena are particularly American, nor particularly new. This isn't to excuse the United States of its guilt.
Rather: these behaviours, systems, and dynamics seem to be deeply rooted. Whether they're merely cultural (the examples I've given are all from cultural antecedants or siblings to US tradition), part of human behavioral psychology, or deeper even than that, this is not simply a matter of bad laws and bad people. Rather: It is a case of such rules and dynamics actively succeeding and crowding out alternatives.
There are two good discussions at The Other Place from the original Tootstorm and from the Medium essay.

When your political opponents are made of money ...

In politics, a growing problem is the dominance of interests who apparently have nothing but money to throw at problems
Utilising this fact in judo fashion, the thought occurs that that one possible response is to create a vast wall of problems for which they find it necessary to throw money at.
The less ease with which to discern between actual problems and fantasmic simaculra of problems, so much the better.
Have fun storming the castle!

Bill Browder: "It turned out that in Putin's Russia, there are no good guys."

At NPR: "Businessman Paints Terrifying And Complex Picture Of Putin's Russia:

In what one senator called one of the Senate Judiciary Committee's "most important" hearings, [William] Browder, a wealthy businessman-turned-activist-turned Putin-adversary shed a chilling new light on a Russian system of government that operates ruthlessly in the shadows — as Browder described it for lawmakers: a "kleptocracy" sustained by corruption, blackmail, torture and murder with Putin at its center.
"Effectively the moment that you enter into their world," Browder told senators investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, "you become theirs."

Oh, and "Russian adoptions" are one of the dog whistles for the Magnitsky Act, legislation passed in the U.S. in 2012, named after Browder's now-murdered Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitski, imposing sanctions on human-rights violators.
Also the topic of a certain July, 2016 meeting featuring Donald Trump, Jr., and senior members of the Trump campaign, of recent memory.

The distinction isn't "online vs. offline" but "direct vs. mediated"

Articles and books on the impacts of digital and mobile media are a dime a dozen, and may be as laughable, or prophetic, as previous gerimiads on new media. "Has the Smartphone Destroyed a Generation" is fairly typical of the genre, if better than most.
Reading it, a thought recurs to me: the distinction isn't of online vs. offline, but or even screen time, but of mediated vs. direct experience.
Media mediates. It is literally that which is between the observer and the observed. And with increasingly smart media, those exchanges are very directly mediated, interposed, by third (and fourth, and fifth, and ...) parties.
This has multiple effects, a few:

• Direct is present, mediated is (often) remote.
• Direct is strongly causaul and deterministics, mediated is fuzzy, indistinct, and often capricious, failing in unanticipated, or inconsistent, ways.
• Direct is filtered by location, mediated is filtered by selection -- your's or another's.
• Direct is attentive, mediated is amplified.

I'd argue there are degrees of mediation as well. Analogue devices such as the telephone are less mediated than digital feeds such as Facebook or YouTube.
And this isn't the first period to have such experiences. I have frequent cause to point out that intellectual, academic, and creative experiences were very often epistolary, exchanges of letters. Though generally with less rapidity than today's 'round-the-world-in-a-second emails.
But that whole "online" and "cyberspace" distinction? Lose it.

The etymology of "data" ... peculiarly uninformative

I'm rather the fan of looking at etymologies of words. They often reveal interesting origins, connections, or evolutions. The etymology of data would be a peculiar exception:

1640s, classical plural of datum, from Latin datum "(thing) given," neuter past participle of dare "to give" (from PIE root *do- "to give"). Meaning "transmittable and storable computer information" first recorded 1946. Data processing is from 1954.

By way of definitions:

a collection of facts, observations, or other information related to a particular question or problem; as, the historical data show that the budget deficit is only a small factor in determining interest rates.

Which raises the question of whether data is the collection of facts, or the symbolic or other representation of those facts.
Arising as discovered that there is a philosophy of data and I've encountered its philosopher, Brian Ballsun-Stanton (via Mastodon).

Amathia: Unteachably stupid

There are a few concepts on the harm or danger of stupidity. In "One Crucial Word", Massimo Pigliucci explores the Greek term Amathia:

Amathia. It is often translated as “ignorance,” as in the following two famous quotes from Socrates:
“Wisdom alone, is the good for man, ignorance the only evil” (Euthydemus 281d)
“There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance” (in Diogenes Laertius, II.31)
But just as in the case of other ancient Greek words (like “eudaimonia,” about which I will write later this week) the common translation hardly does the job, and indeed often leads people to misunderstand the concept and quickly dismiss it as “obviously” false, or even incoherent....

Very much worth reading. Via /Philosophy and Paul Beard.

I've made good on a year-old threat and opened up Miranda's Knitting and Tea House

Enjoy! Welcome to the Tea House: Knitting. Tea. Discussion. Intelligence. Sunshine. "We Do Things Different"^tm .
This is a sibling subreddit, with more open submissions, though still in a controlled manner. More at the notice.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on stupidity vs. evil

From The Other Place: Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous....

Read through to the source for the full quote.
I've dug a bit deeper into the backstory. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a contemporary and friend of Reinhold Neibur, of "Serenity Prayer" fame. He served in the Abwehr, the Nazi intelligence service, during WWII, headed by Wilhelm Canaris. Bonhoeffer and Caneris were executed by the Nazi regime on 9 April, 1945, only three weeks before the fall of Berlin and Hitler's own death. And it turns out that the Abwehr, centre of relatively unfiltered information during the regime, was an active centre of resistance to it, from within.
Bonhoeffer was one of eight children. A brother, and the husbands of two of his sisters, were also executed by the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer's twin sister Sabine survived until 1999.
Strongly related to the previous item on amathia, and observations from Hanah Arendt.

The Edge Question, 2017

"What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known?" I find The Edge to be a bit hit-or-miss, and there are some misses here. But there's a heck of a lot of hits on topics that have been floating through my brain-space, and a few names I've been following as well. David Christian ("Big History"), confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, networks, information pathology, ... Daily Nous has a promising list as well. I've got the essays lined up to ... hopefully, read. And this note as a reminder to do that.

John Stuart Mill: A Few Words on Non-Intervention

By way of Wikipedia:

There seems to be no little need that the whole doctrine of non-interference with foreign nations should be reconsidered, if it can be said to have as yet been considered as a really moral question at all... To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in any other respect. But there assuredly are cases in which it is allowable to go to war, without having been ourselves attacked, or threatened with attack; and it is very important that nations should make up their minds in time, as to what these cases are... To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error...

Oil is other people's money

I was thinking through the history of the Indiana natural gas boom -- oh, yeah, what Indiana gas boom, you ask? This Indiana gas boom, lasting from about 1884 to 1903. Basically, people realised you could stick a pipe in the ground and burn what came out. Which people did. As free-standing, natural-wonder flambeaux -- flaming torches, visible for miles around. After all, such a God-given abundance would surely last forever, right?
The field burned out, literally, in two decades.
But why waste that resource? I'm thinking of a typical Analyst's Matrix, describing spending your own, vs. other people's money. Let's do that in a table:

	Your money	Someone else's money
Your use	High quality / Low cost	High quality / Cost irrelevant
Somebody else's use	Quality irrelevant / Low cost	Quality irrelevant / Cost irrelevant

When it comes to natural gas, or oil, or coal, the majority of the cost, that is, its initial formation is not borne by you. Only the extraction cost is. That un-borne fraction is effectively other people's money. You care about the quality of the use (its use value), but not the full formation cost.
Oil, coal, and gas, are other people's money.
The legacy of the Indiana boom lives on in a few ways. Ball Glass Company originally formed in the state to take advantage of cheap gas for glass blowing, as did numerous other manufacturing concerns. They eventually shifted to coal. And you'll find the word flambeau turning up in place-names and the odd company name to. Relics to other people's money.

Limitations on Free Speech -- revisiting "shouting 'No Fire!' in a theatre that is in fact on fire"

The dynamics since the American Fascists riots in Charlottesville, VA, and the ACLU reconsidering its position on free speech reminds me that I had started, quite uncomfortably, revisiting my own views on this about three years ago. "Shouting "No Fire" in a Warming World as a Clear and Present Danger" was my thinking at the time.
Further developments -- Charlie Hebdo attacks, "punching vs. punching down", questions over revisionist history, the amazingly good two-part YouTube set by Contrapoints: "Does the Left Hate Free Speech? (Part 1)" (video: 16:53) and "Does the Left Hate Free Speech? (Part 2)" (video: 17:46) (I'm surprised I hadn't already mentioned it), various research (Jill Gordon, "John Stuart Mill and 'The Marketplace of Ideas'" and Jill Lepore (Kansas City Public Library lecture) both address parts of this. Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance". Many, many discussions, mostly on G+.
The history of free expression / free speech itself is interesting and surprising, particularly the role between Protestant and Catholic factions -- the latter being seen much the same way as Fascists are today, as constitutionally opposed to tolerance, and therefore not subject to the benefits of free speech themselves.

Jeff Schmidt on salaried professionals and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives

Disciplined Minds by physicist Jeff Schmidt has been in my files for a while. Per Unwelcomed Guests Wiki:

This book explains the social agenda of the process of professional training. Disciplined Minds shows how it is used to promote orthodoxy by detecting and weeding out dissident candidates and by exerting pressure on the rest to obey their instructors and abandon personal agendas such as social reform -- so that they, in turn, can perpetuate the system by squeezing the life out of the next generation.

This ... is strikingly similar to the critique of John Stuart Mill of England's educational systems in the 1860s. Hans Jensen addresses this in "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution" (available via Sci-Hub).
Several prior Reddit mentions.

So no, Sonos! Palindromic boycott of privacy-skewering IoT ToS change

Wireless, cloud-connected speaker manufacturer Sonos have retroactively changed terms of service and required existing product owners monitoring subjects accept the new terms or the devices will cease to function.
And this, boys and girls, is why you don't buy Sonos products, ever.
(Or any Internet of Things that Spy On You devices.)
Palindrome courtesey Sakari Maaranen.

Alexander Hamilton Church and cost accounting: Capital-Labour analysis

Alexander Hamilton Church (28 May 1866 – 11 February 1936) was an English efficiency engineer, accountant and writer on accountancy and management, known for his seminal work of management and cost accounting. In particular, it was his work which expanded the concept of factors of production from just labour to include capital and other inputs.
Among his works, Production factors in cost accounting and works management (1910), from whose introduction:

From the earliest days of manufacturing there has grown up a custom of considering labor as the main and only direct item in production, and of expressing all other expenditure in more or less vague percentages of wage cost. The fact is, however, that labor, while always important, tends to become less important relatively to other items as the progress of organized manufacture develops and the use of specialized and expensive mechanical equipment increases. Very few concerns have come to grief by ignoring labor costs, but many have passed into the hands of receivers by ignoring the relative imiportance of the other factors of production.

On social media and online tools as "optional": Facebook required for AirBnB

Via The Guardian, "I didn’t have enough Facebook friends to prove to Airbnb I was real":
At the other end of the Airbnb helpline in Colorado, “Casey” sounded incredulous. “You have how many Facebook friends?” she drawled. “Er … about 50,” I replied. Long pause. “Well, you don’t have enough for us to verify you. You’d need at least 100.”
“But”, I squeaked, “I post every now and again … I’m on Facebook most days to check on my friends and relations.” This, however, was not enough to convince Airbnb I existed. And, as I didn’t exist, I could not book a room.
Keep this in mind next time someone declares "nobody forces you to use Facebook". Despite the many other refutations of this trope, we can now respond unequivocally: "AirBnB do".

Milestones: the 900 club

Just to memorialise this, and to bury the item as I close out this thread: the Dreddit has crossed the 900 subscriber threshold for the first time. Thanks to all, again, I will strive to be worth your time. It's interesting how much I prefer not to note such things, and yet do in fact note them. The days of teetering just on the edge in particular.

Previously:

• Open thread, July 2017

One last thing ...

Do you like what you're reading here? Would you like to see a broader discussion? Do you think there are ideas which should be shared more broadly?
The Lair isn't a numbers game, my real goal is quality -- reaching, and hopefully interacting with, an intelligent online community. Something which I've found, in several decades of online interactions, difficult to achieve.
But there's something which works surprisingly well: word of mouth. Shares, by others, to appropriate venues, have generated the best interactions. I do some of that, but I could use your help as well.
So: if you see something that strikes you as particularly cogent (or, perhaps, insipid), please share it. To another subreddit. To Twitter or Facebook or G+. To the small-but-high-quality Metafilter. To your blogging circle, or a mailing list. If you work in technology, or policy, or economics, there as well.
Thanks, Morbius.

boldninja
All welcome @breitwoman (Kathleen) and @rawzeee (Ross) from Tezos.com - today they will answer any of your questions regarding their upcoming project
breitwoman By way of introduction, I am Kathleen Breitman, the CEO of the company which created Tezos. I am tag teaming this with @rawzeee, who works for the Swiss Foundation which will be responsible for running the crowdsale later this month. Ross will handle crowdsale-specific questions.
rawzeee Hello! Greetings from Zug!
jamiec79 :wave:
breitwoman Very jealous of Ross right now, Zug is gorgeous
techbytes Welcome.
rawzeee I saw a man playing an alphorn in front of UBS today. Most Swiss thing I could've imagined possible.
arkvader Greetings from far far away....
tranzer Hi Tezos! I have 1st question, by the looks of it Tezos will be in OCaml right? Why did you decide on OCaml? Are there any advantages over other languages?
mike Hi Kathleen and Ross, good to see you.
moobox hello Tezos people
breitwoman @tranzer great question. we wrote the protocol in OCaml. It was a confluence of a few things... Pragmatically, we found a great team with an emphasis on OCaml based in France and Arthur (CTO) is a French national so it was possible to work with them pretty seamlessly. On the technical side, OCaml is a great PL for writing code that can later be formally verified. Security and consistency of execution are two principles we tried to optimize for and OCaml lends itself well to those goals. See also section 1.4: https://tezos.com/static/papers/position_paper.pdf (edited)
dr10 hello tezos
breitwoman howdy all!
dr10 How would you shortly & easy-to-understand sum-up the advantages of TEZOS to magazines and non-crypto people?
tranzer What consensus system will you use? Like PoS or some hybrid? Will there be any rewards for signing blocks?
breitwoman My TL;DR runs on two talking points -- Tezos is a new blockchain that aims to create a robust governance model by allowing token-holders to come to consensus on protocol upgrades but also preserve rules over time by using mathematical proofs. Unlike previous blockchains, it can deploy upgrades to the network in an elegant and seamless way.
@tranzer we have our own POS algo. We have nominal inflation in the protocol to incentivize participation.
dr10 So in easy words, Tezos is built to easily adapt to any technic innovations?
breitwoman @dr10 yes, it was borne out of the first alt coin craze when everyone deployed a new token to instantiate even the most marginal improvement
dr10 okay
breitwoman Tezos wants to preserve network effects while keeping pace with innovation
dr10 Your whitepaper has very tech-heavy language. So I'd like to ask questions that are stupid and simple. :smile: What are the three crypto-currencies that are most similar to yours and yet why is Tezos different?
breitwoman Yeah, the position paper is more accessible
dr10 yeah i've read them all
breitwoman 1. Decred. Though they don't push automatic upgrades and they can't introspect on the protocol. 2. Dash. Though they also don't push automatic upgrades, can't introspect, and I think their funding model is a little backwards. 3. Ethereum has a lot of similar technical goals but no formal, on-chain governance model. We made our protocol with a bigger emphasis on formal verification and security.
someonesomeone Hi guys!
dr10 thank you! and hi someone :smile:
In your position paper you state "Tezos truly aims to be the last cryptocurrency." No matter what innovations other protocols produce, it will be possible for Tezos stakeholders to adopt these innovations" - Can Tezos implement any future innovations within its code? Wether its a new programming code, artificial intelligence or implementing big data of anything?
i wondered about that
i am a no-coder so I dont grasp everything
tranzer How much do you aim to raise in your ICO will there be any minimum or maximum? Will it be normal proportional auction or fixed price per token?
breitwoman @dr10 obviously limitations to anything that a blockchain can do... it can't solve poverty or hunger, but we made the code with a very modular design that allows for a lot of flexibility
someonesomeone @breitwoman do you plan on doing a smartbridge with Ark? Or any other partnerships with them? :wink:
dr10 yeah but I am wondering about future innovations like artificial intelligence, if that can somehow be implemented.
breitwoman @smartbridge good question. I like Ark but I'm not familiar enough with what they're up to... open to all sorts of things though!
dr10 My theory is that these future innovations will be interconnected by cryptocurrency
breitwoman @dr10 So, our CTO is a bona fide expert in AI and he doesn't think there are a lot of synergies with AI and blockchains
dr10 What is block target time? What is transaction speed? How many confirmations are needed? Couldnt see that / find that... maybe I oversaw :smile:
breitwoman but we'll keep our eyes peeled
dr10 okay
someonesomeone @breitwoman cool. Ark is doing a great job from what I can gather and I am pretty sure that I will also invest into your ICO, since your project also looks very interesting
breitwoman @dr10 I think that's all referenced in the white paper, which was recently updated!
soporificprose Can you answer Tanzer... I have same questions.
breitwoman That's a good question for @rawzeee
dr10 okay, maybe I oversaw. I have read them all. no problem
In your Whitepaper you state "Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptonote, etc. can all be represented within Tezos by implementing the proper interface to the network layer." Does this mean you try to interconnect all those cryptocurrencies? (edited)
breitwoman @dr10 we're targeting 1 minute between blocks. We haven't set a blocksize yet, but we'll her on the side of caution at first. It's better to raise the blocksize through the amendment mechanism once we are confident in the network's throughput.
jakethepanda Will users be able to issue asset tokens and build on top of Tezos?
breitwoman @dr10 no, that's more like Cosmos... a different but cool project
dr10 ark is doing that too
:smile:
rawzeee There is no minimum or maximum, though if only a few million were raised stakeholders would be asked whether or not they wanted to offer another TGE (Token Generation Event) to newcomers. Fixed price of 1 BTC to 5000 XTZ (tezzies), plus a descending bonus from 20% to 0% in 5% intervals every 400 BTC blocks. The entire TGE lasts 2000 BTC blocks. tranzer How much do you aim to raise in your ICO will there be any minimum or maximum? Will it be normal proportional auction or fixed price per token? Posted in #trading_altcoinsToday at 7:12 PM
dr10 I didnt find on that one, or didnt look too deep. What are the references of you and your team members? On what projects did you work before?
breitwoman @jakethepanda yes, they will but we think it's a better idea to propose those features that you'd find in an appcoin as a first class citizen
rawzeee Yes, was typing the answer up! It's posted now. soporificprose Can you answer Tanzer... I have same questions. Posted in #trading_altcoinsToday at 7:15 PM
breitwoman @dr10 I'm a pretty open book... I've worked in finance at a hedge fund and a VC, then in consulting... Arthur worked in high frequency trading for many years at places like Goldman and Morgan. Our developers are very academic
dachshund what type of role/influence do your initial investors (polychain, etc) have in the overall governance of the network, if any
dr10 What is the Payment for ICO? Paying in ETH or BTC or any other and how much will one Token cost?
breitwoman Technically, none. We sold a nominal amount of tokens to a large group of people. They have the same status as any other participant but got a slight discount over the crowdsale price for tying up their capital for several months.
techbytes that include Tim Draper?
breitwoman I solicit their advice a lot though... it's a really savvy bunch and I was a one-woman band on the operational side.
raolin Hey Kathleen - has your team given anymore thought to the post ICO mission? Roadmap? Additional team expansion?
soporificprose Are they restricted from selling for a certain length of time?
breitwoman no
@raolin check out our outline at the end of our presentation https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/Tezos_Overview.pdf
tranzer How much was sold to those pre-ico funders?
breitwoman All in here guys: https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/Tezos_Overview.pdf 612k at an avg 31% discount
rawzeee I listed the BTC ratio above. It's 1 BTC for 5000 XTZ (tezzies) plus a bonus or lack thereof based upon time periods. If you choose to use fiat Bitcoin Suisse AG who is administering the TGE (check their rates and your jurisdiction) they will peg it to BTC. Ether is pegged to BTC and will be accepted at the median (from Poloniex, Kraken, and GDAX) of the last three trade prices utilizing the ETH/BTC pair before the timestamp of the Ethereum block at the time of contribution. It’ll be offered on a best-effort basis and for convenience. If you want certainty contribute with Bitcoin. Otherwise you accept the risk that the exchange rate you'll get may not be precisely what you see on the screen at the moment of your contribution. You may also use other coins via ShapeShift. (edited)
dr10 you will hit poloniex, kraken and gdax?
when?
rawzeee That is referring to the peg of ETH to BTC.
all XTZ are pegged to the BTC price for the TGE.
dr10 ah ok
rawzeee I'm an acronym storm over here!
dr10 Is there already some plan or future business relationship with merchants, exchanges or anything that Tezos could be used as a payment method? Anything you want to share already?
dachshund What were your considerations when deciding to make the ICO un-capped? Any concerns regarding the impact there could be on the price once this starts trading (i.e. no price discovery)
breitwoman @dr10 we've been talking to two exchanges for several months. I'm pretty confident Tezos won't have trouble on that front. I have two partnerships in the works that I'm excited about but shouldn't discuss yet.
soporificprose Curious whether pre-ICO investors paid with BTC or fiat?
breitwoman @dachshund it's primarily about fairness and distribution.
ryano Are you familiar with BOScoin? They once were also using ocaml not sure if they stuck with that. Any comments on the benefits relative to each other
breitwoman @soporificprose fiat
dr10 Can everyone that holds a Tezos token vote on a proposal? Do they have to pay or temporaily lock in the Tokens? How does it work? It sounds like everyone can vote directly, right?
ryano Also i thought Tezos was using delegate proof of stake is this no longer or never was the case ?
breitwoman @ryano that's news to me. I have not gotten a straight answer from them on any technical questions
rawzeee The reasoning for the uncapped TGE here is that the platform is almost entirely done (not an ICO for a white paper) and it is desired that a robust network is built rather than a few fast fingers buying up the entire TGE in minutes or hours. This is particularly important given how governance will work on Tezos.
breitwoman @ryano we are using delegated proof of stake, @dr10 that means you can delegate your responsibilities to someone else if you don't want to be an active participant
dr10 I see
What is the Prediction Market about that you want to implement regarding "Futarchy"? I didnt get that right away
mike Tezos form of DPoS looks very similar to proxy voting, like Liquid Democracy.
breitwoman @mike yes, it is
good catch
soporificprose So their 30% discount was based on the price of BTC at that point? That would make it a much bigger actual discount yo current BTC to 5,000 TZE
breitwoman @soporificprose pardon? no, it was all denominated in dollars
the sale is denominated in BTC
mike I want to add that to Ark at some point as well.
dr10 What is the practical advantage to decentralized, atomated upgrades - compared to lets say Litecoin's Segwit Process?
breitwoman @dr10 yeah I'd read this piece from Robin Hanson first http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html ... but basically you'd run a predicition market with a prompt like "What do you think would be the best feature for Tezos" with many choices and whatever gets the popular vote would be implemented.
dr10 And this predicting/voting will happen inside the wallet?
mike ryano has some very interesting ideas on ranked voting. Have you looked into ways to combine ranked with proxy voting?
breitwoman @dr10 we think defaults matter. upgrading protocols is cumbersome in existing blockchain implementations and it causes stasis
tranzer Is wallet and whole network already developed (since you said platform is ready) ?
sibars @rawzeee Sorry newbie question: Can you please explain in details how the TGE will work on day one?... I download the wallet fist, send you my BTC and then you send me the Tezzies?
breitwoman @mike not closely. we think our first implementation, a straight vanilla two phased vote, is too simplistic. I'd like to discuss more sophisticated mechanisms if you've thought them through!
I know Arthur loves him some futarchy but I'm not as big of a fan
mike that would be a great discussion, look forward to exploring voting systems with you. we plan to try them on bridged chains which can be run as experiments.
breitwoman @mike that's awesome
dr10 xD
Tezos focusses also on faster smart contracts as I understood, right?
breitwoman @dr10 more secure, not necessarily faster
dr10 okay
breitwoman our smart contract language, Michelson, was created with formal verification in mind
mike That named after the Michelson of Michelson-Morley Interferometer? (edited)
dr10 And it uses ZeroCash as privacy mechanism? Or the whitepaper only compared to it and you use something different? I couldnt identify that
breitwoman @mike you got it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_A._Michelson Wikipedia Albert A. Michelson Albert Abraham Michelson (surname pronunciation anglicized as "Michael-son", December 19, 1852 – May 9, 1931) was an American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in sciences. (177kB)
dachshund is there something similar to "gas" in tezos that controls for computation of each program, or how do you get around that?
rawzeee @sibars No worries at all. There is a dedicated TGE site (register for updates at www.tezos.com). It'll guide you through the process. You'll generate a paper wallet (easy click through) with seed words. You can save it to a drive and/or print it (probably most secure). You'll verify your wallet number and password you created to generate it, then make your purchase to your wallet #. You can then verify it and make sure it's reflected in the wallet. It'll be simple and easy with a nice interface.
breitwoman @dr10 not yet but Zooko is an advisor and we have spoken about integration. we are more interested in STARKs, the next gen of zero-knowledge
dr10 I see
breitwoman @dachshund yes, we have the concept of gas as well
dr10 I guess you already answered that:
In your Whitepaper you say: Crypto-currencies suffer from the same fate as smartphones which are incompatible with one another; they derive their value from a network effect, or the number of users who have given it value. - ARK will connect all Crypto-currencies by SMARTBRIDGING. Can you imagine working with ARK Smartbridge in your protocol aswell?
yeah you did :smile:
sibars @rawzeee Thanks :)
dr10 More secure Smart Contracts, automatic upgrades in a DPoS model. Any other main focusses or any other attributes you want to innovate or improve compared to other cryptos?
tranzer So will Tezos offer assets on their blockchain like ethereum?
breitwoman @dr10 well, I think that covers the main talking
@tranzer we can, but we think it's more powerful to integrate at the protocol level
dachshund how has traction been within the developer community? I imagine there isn't a limitless pool of developers with the required technical expertise, so you must be expecting to take away from other networks?
mike This is a good overview as well, for those who haven't seen it, https://tezos.com/static/papers/Tezos_Overview.pdf (edited)
geops This all sounds great. The only thing that bothers me is the 1min block time. That seems like a step back compared to modern blockchains. Any goals to improve that?
breitwoman @dachshund we have a very powerful core team. we think our choice of programming language was a good magnet and filter effects. we haven't sourced from other blockchain communities
@geops yeah, that's all pretty flexible
tranzer What is your budgeting plan if you get like 20m how long will that be for? 5 years? More?
geops If you look at integrating with ARK smartbridge tech, you'll sure get lots of investors from here :slightly_smiling_face:
breitwoman @tranzer we go over this a bit in our recent presentation: https://tezos.com/static/papers/Tezos_Overview.pdf
check out the second to last page
tranzer Yeah I'd like to see that as well geops, @fixcrypt is amazing developer from what I have seen so far
breitwoman @geops yeah, totally something we should explore. we're a small team so any partnerships or serious integration have been tabled for later
But I like the idea of ARK and I like what I've seen... so very open to this!
tranzer Must say I like what I'm hearing here will definately invest a few btc
dr10 yes me too
geops definitely good ideas
breitwoman Cool, glad to hear it!
dr10 I think the future of blockchains will be in partnerships too
tranzer dr10 I think so as well that is why I invested in ARK in first place too much competiting and too little cooperation (in other projects) (edited)
rawzeee Hooray! Happy y'all may participate in the TGE.
geops maybe you guys should sit down with @mike and @fixcrypt and discuss possible future collaborations. (edited)
mike Yes, I like the vision laid out by Andreas Antonopolis of many thousands or more of specialized tokens and chains for different applications.
tranzer OK so last question from me that 20% bonus will be for entire 400 first BTC blocks when you start?
jacob breitwoman: Quadratic voting might work for Tezos (http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/) ERIC POSNER Quadratic voting Glen Weyl has uploaded a new version of his paper, Quadratic Voting (written with Steven Lalley), to SSRN, which now includes the completed proofs. Quadratic voting is the most important idea for l… Dec 30th, 2014 at 3:57 PM
breitwoman good question for @rawzeee
rawzeee @tranzer yes, indeed!
breitwoman @jacob yes, that's something we've considered
mike Glad to see you have Johann Gevers on board, is he active with the foundation?
breitwoman we didn't want to be prescriptive with v1, so we made it very easy to understand
rawzeee So there is about two days to get that bonus. Then 15% for the same period and so on.
breitwoman @mike yes, he's the director. and he's awesome. total mensch and very philosophically committed to our project
rawzeee I actually had a meeting with Johann today in Zug.
mike Really like Monetas, glad to see there doing well, and the creation of the Zug crypto environment is fantastic.
breitwoman @mike we went through a lot of ups and downs while developing Tezos. basically nobody cared about us for a while, until the DAO basically. Johann always encouraged us to keep going.
yeah, the crypto valley is a brilliant concept
rawzeee It's pretty magical.
tranzer You living there?
breitwoman @tranzer I'm US-based
rawzeee I'm just here for awhile. Also US-based.
nikandro Hi all, sorry if this has already been discussed, but have you spoken with any exchanges about adding Tezos?
breitwoman @nikandro yes, but it's a pretty convoluted process
one nice thing about tezos is that exchanges can act as delegates, which creates great incentives
nikandro Do you expect to have any clarity on that prior to the ICO?
tranzer How can exchanges act as delegates?
breitwoman not sufficient to make an announcement but it's really not something I worry about
techbytes really. Than perhaps Poloniex will add tezos. :slightly_smiling_face:
breitwoman @tranzer you can assign your validation to an exchange's address
nikandro While im interested in developing more than anything, I also understand that trading is a good tool for price discovery, which is critical.
ryano You shouldn't have any trouble getting on an exchange and would be a low priority area to spend your energy while in development
breitwoman they have to volunteer of course @nikandro of course, completely agree. Arthur was a market maker on Wall Street for 10 years
he thinks about this... a lot
@ryano that's what I've heard but people like to be assured that the token will have a marketplace, which is reasonable
It does take a lot of energy and I've been lagging on that front
Security and legal concerns were priority #1, we can iterate and grow the team pretty rapidly after the sale
Having the Foundation build out and assume responsibilities for promoting the protocol will be much better than my one woman band :slightly_smiling_face:
mike I'd expect Bittrex no problem.
jakethepanda First alt-coin you bought?
mike mastercoin
nikandro Sorry to push the matter, but does this mean there will be no marketplace for Tezos after the ICO?
breitwoman @nikandro apparently there will be a futures market running
mike they can't announce if they did - exchanges have NDAs disallowing coins from announcing, leaving it up to the exchanges.
djselery lol, even if they had an exchange lined up right now they probly couldnt talk about it
nikandro @djselery , right, and I'm not asking for specifics, just wondering if implementation is in the pipeline.
breitwoman @nikandro it is
insofar as we have had many conversations/back and forth and its been very positive
I can't say much else other than it's a cumbersome process
nikandro Okay, thanks @breitwoman
jakethepanda I'm sure Tezos will be on an exchange. I don't think that's even an issue.
nikandro @jakethepanda I agree, I was just inquiring about the timeline and I think @breitwoman cleared that up. Many thanks.
jakethepanda @breitwoman Pizza or Sushi?
breitwoman @jakethepanda that's relative to location. In NY, I prefer pizza. Everywhere else, sushi :slightly_smiling_face:
rawzeee ^{^} good answer.
jakethepanda Tesla or Mercedes?
mward So @breitwoman 5000 TEZOS = 1 btc?
and 20% discount for firat 400 btc raised
dachshund will you be growing the team in NY, is mostly based in europe?
nikandro For sure! In brooklyn, I do the dollar slice ride. Bike around to each vendor that sells dollar slices. yay, pizza!
breitwoman To drive? Mercedes. Tesla's still don't have the handle I like :slightly_smiling_face:
@dachshund they're based in Europe, primarily but I don't have any plans to leave the US
sibars by the way, who designed the Tezos logo?
rawzeee @mward no. 400 is the BTC blocks mined for the first bonus period; it's a time thing. But the ratio you've cited is correct. And then the bonus rate decreases by 5% every 400 blocks until 2000 BTC blocks are mined. (edited)
breitwoman It's a character we found by looking through some libraries. I think it's a TZ symbol from a language that uses that combination often
mward @rawzeee when will it start?
rawzeee Though not a discount. It's a bonus.
May 22nd at 6am UTC.
mward thank you
breitwoman Hey guys, I have to hop on a call in a little. 2 more questions and I'll have to wrap this up!
moobox I don't have a question but i wish your group bon chance or however the French say .
tranzer So little women in here stay a little longer :sob:
ryano Thanks for hanging out and answering questions!
jakethepanda Thanks @breitwoman
http://slack.tezos.com/
breitwoman @moobox vielen dank
@tranzer haha, I'll be back!
moobox salutes like Benny Hill
rawzeee The subreddit is where a lot of discussion happens too: https://reddit.com/tezos reddit tezos.com • tezos reddit: the front page of the internet
techbytes Great AMA session. Thanks for stopping by and answering all the questions. Good luck on the project and I look forward to investing.
breitwoman @ryano thanks for having me! and the very cordial convo
boldninja @breitwoman thank you for taking the time for this AMA - I was just lurking, but all what I would ask was answered. I wish you all the best with ICO and I hope ARK and Tezos cooperate in the future.
breitwoman Thanks guys! Yeah, feel free to bolster our Reddit
mward Aurrevoir!
dr10 thank you very much :smile:
rawzeee Yes, thanks much everyone! So long!
breitwoman @boldninja great to hear it!
@dr10 thanks for the solid qs, really appreciate it
dr10 np :smile:
mike Thanks for stopping by, both of you, and taking the time to chat with us.
look forward to participating in Tezos.

Hi all,
I'm new to this whole Bitcoin thing, but I'm noticing a few trends that cause me some concern. One involves the community's treatment of Bitcoin, and the other, recent market trends.

• Paranoia: I've seen a few major posts expressing a fear that governments will purposefully tank Bitcoin. I don't think that's well-founded, for the primary reason that governments have no history of wrecking novel financial instruments. If you're looking for proof, good God, how about the last four years? Regulators can't even control swaps, how could they destroy them??
  
• Vigorous sales offset with microtransactions: take this example from earlier today. Those of you who've watched it for more than a day might know better, but is this trend a common one? And has it occurred with as much frequency in the past, as it is now?
  

If this is a newly widespread practice, there's cause for concern. In traditional ForEx and commodities trading, federal law forbids practices designed to convey the appearance of value without the fact thereof. One of them is "churning," another is called a "wash sale," but both refer to the same thing -- repetitive, inconsequential transactions designed to crate the appearance of high volume and liquidity. Both of those lure more investors, who buy the commodities at an artificial price, benefiting the churners who know better.
Churning is illegal, and was extremely common in early commodities markets. As a market without a set, respected, mark-to-market exchange, Bitcoin is essentially a primitive commodities market, and one that's even MORE vulnerable to churning due to the delay lag that artificial sales create in the market. The limited supply of the commodity causes even further problems, and exposes the market to the risk of cornering, and "squeezing." Remember, you don't have to have close to 100% of the supply to "corner" a market and dictate prices. You just have to have a respectable amount. The copper market, for example, was "cornered" in the last decade by someone with under 10% of the world's supply.
You should be aware of these risks before you buy. And because of these risks, you need to confront, or acknowledge, the biggest threat to Bitcoin as a stable currency: small and large funds who will see Bitcoin as a chance for a quick buck, and use the relative lawlessness to bust out their old, 19th-century tricks for fleecing uninformed customers.
That is all. Back to watching the ticker.
Sidenote: that said, I'd still love to get in on Bitcoin, with a nominal sum, but everything I see is so creepy (BitInstant) or requires banks that curiously don't exist near me. If you have tips, I'd love to hear it.
Source: former commodities litigator
Edit: link for the copper-cornering scheme

And what has Germany provided the US in the last 30 years?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Captian_Cocksmith - Created on 07/23/18 00:19:43 UTC - permalink}

The low interest rates are a response to the expansion of credit. This sets off the inflationary boom which ends as money begins being priced to actual conditions. Optimistic investments 'above' the actual conditions suffer when the credit expansion ends or even inflects.

^{Comment removed from /AskEconomics - sh0t - Created on 07/23/18 00:30:26 UTC - permalink}

You can easily google that information. Starting point: critical military bases.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - nutmeggerking - Created on 07/23/18 00:41:39 UTC - permalink}

I like Steve Keen's take on this and his modeling of monetary flows:
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/11/05/solving-the-paradox-of-monetary-profits-2/
A recent Business Insider article put the blame on monopsony, which I also agree with.

^{Comment removed from /AskEconomics - sh0t - Created on 07/23/18 00:57:40 UTC - permalink}

Critical military bases to protect Germany.. that's not helping USA..

^{Comment removed from /Economics - 162lake - Created on 07/23/18 01:07:08 UTC - permalink}

You do realise that Ramstein Airbase is where your critically wounded soldiers get their emergency care right?
Also, you also realise that Germany hosts your drones communication operating in the mid east?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - tat310879 - Created on 07/23/18 01:21:39 UTC - permalink}

So.. Germany has provided a base to fly USA drones. Your right, my bad USA can pay for 90% of Europe protection, tax our products, buy 70% gas from Russia and 50% oil from Russia while we protect them. Makes sense to me now. Thanks for the clarification.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - 162lake - Created on 07/23/18 01:25:56 UTC - permalink}

The main gun for literally every main battle tank we've used in the last 30 years.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - kegman83 - Created on 07/23/18 01:26:48 UTC - permalink}

Firstly, US is paying for no one's protection. What the Nato treaty entails is that each nation pledges to spend 2%of their budget to defence. It is like everyone bring a plate of food to a potluck. You are not spending a single dime into Nato.
Also, do note that no one told you to go full retard buy getting 11 aircraft carriers, and spend trillions invading Afghanistan or Iraq. That is on you, not them.
Finally, Germany, France and Europe in general could well protect themselves from Russia should they choose. They have the know how, the tech, the money and the population as well. Russia is weaker than Germany, not the other way round. Germany have plenty of allies even if you pull out.
You should really use your brain and stop watching Fox news once in a whilem

^{Comment removed from /Economics - tat310879 - Created on 07/23/18 01:33:11 UTC - permalink}

How did Russia take Ukraine so easy? Because Russia controls their gas and oil supply. They shut off their supply, a week before they walked right across the boarder. Ohh guess what, Russia controls 50% of Germany oil, and 70% of their gas. I wonder where this is headed. France can't defend themselves, they can't even defend the streets of Paris because of the Muslim grooming gangs. And lastly how many countries paid 2%?
I strongly suggest you read your history books, before insulting others it is not justifying your point of view. God bless.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - 162lake - Created on 07/23/18 01:49:41 UTC - permalink}

Are you seriously comparing Western Europe with Ukraine? Really? Are you that desperate in your argument?
France can't defend themselves? Really? What about their nukes? How stupid can you get?
Grooming gangs? Really? In that case i say the US is also weak because you can't even protect your kids from getting massacred yearly. Kindergarten kids being shot wantonly and there is shit all you idios can do about it. You cant even go to a concert in Vegas without being shot at. How about that?
Also, Germany is not as dependent of Russian gas supplies as they could easily ship them in from the mid East or Canada if need be. You heard about this thing called super LNG ships, right?
Then again, Fox watching Trumptards like you wouldn't even comprehend my arguments. You are really that stupid.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - tat310879 - Created on 07/23/18 01:57:25 UTC - permalink}

Don't bother talking to that guy his whole post history is full The Danald bs and fake moon landing stuff

^{Comment removed from /Economics - johannthegoatman - Created on 07/23/18 02:00:43 UTC - permalink}

The stupidity and ignorance of some Americans are just breath taking.
France can't defend themselves? That really took the cake. If they have a vague idea that France has a UN Security Council seat they probably thought they were there because they could cook well or something.
Stupid is stupid does.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - tat310879 - Created on 07/23/18 02:06:37 UTC - permalink}

Billions and billions and billions of dollars of foreign direct investment in the US.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - lolexecs - Created on 07/23/18 02:18:21 UTC - permalink}

This is why the rest of the world think Americans are fucking retards...

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Rec1umWrecker - Created on 07/23/18 02:23:06 UTC - permalink}

Which they are going to keep selling us....
This isn't complicated people. The tariffs are just to make a point... you trade fair with us, you trade freely with us, we'll do the same for you.
Trump is NOT WRONG that non-tariff barriers against our products put us at an unfair disadvantage.
Comparative advantage and free trade are great, you people... so let's put those ideas into actual fair practice.
The point of raising tariffs isn't to have more tariffs forever... it's just to actually shake things up and get broad international reductions in tariffs... which is what will happen.
2 years from now, the US will have lower tariffs on imports overall than it did 2 years ago... and it will be thanks to Donald Trump being willing to flex our muscles and get the rest of the world to respect us and reciprocally lower their own trade barriers to fair levels.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Nanarayana - Created on 07/23/18 02:24:42 UTC - permalink}

some Americans

People, not Americans. France has Jean-Marie Le Pen too you know.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - RE5TE - Created on 07/23/18 02:25:23 UTC - permalink}

Gilead is nearly bankrupting states with their cure for hepC
Medicine is a special breed since the vast majority comes from public dollars and then through lobbied monopolies that we grant to companies they can charge through the sky

^{Comment removed from /AskEconomics - datareinidearaus - Created on 07/23/18 02:25:44 UTC - permalink}

Are you like literally seriously defending Amerikkka right now? :(

^{Comment removed from /Economics - EternalPropagation - Created on 07/23/18 03:04:28 UTC - permalink}

Propaganda

^{Comment removed from /Economics - AFlyingMexican5 - Created on 07/23/18 03:39:35 UTC - permalink}

Bad troll is bad.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - anothercleaverbeaver - Created on 07/23/18 03:40:43 UTC - permalink}

Logic is useless without empiricism, isn't it? Seems to me that there is only best method to seeking truth, and that is the inductive method.
Does the following hold as analogous to your argument?
There are a certain number of birds in flight at this very instant on Earth.
It is improbable that we possess the means to measure the number of birds in flight at any instant with absolute accuracy.
Therefore we cannot develop a useful hypothesis regarding the number of birds.
If this is the logic of your argument that empiricism cannot provide useful and testable hypotheses for economic matters, then I dont believe you have a very solid argument.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - _Lazarus_ - Created on 07/23/18 03:56:36 UTC - permalink}

Are you like literally implying that countries who export their goods to America are propagandized to complain when America imposes tariffs?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - EternalPropagation - Created on 07/23/18 05:21:19 UTC - permalink}

No, that's not analogous. The analogous argument for economics would be: Hey I think I've figured out how to estimate the numbers of birds in the sky, and now I'm going to use that estimate to control their movement.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - d00ns - Created on 07/23/18 05:27:36 UTC - permalink}

No. The Republicans base is ignorant and gets their news is propaganda.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - AFlyingMexican5 - Created on 07/23/18 05:29:30 UTC - permalink}

Okay good. For a second I thought you were saying European tariffs on American goods were bad or something.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - EternalPropagation - Created on 07/23/18 06:20:29 UTC - permalink}

Even in our quantitative economic studies we are basic it mostly on the fact that certain factors won't change - ceteris paribus (all things being constant).
Economics is boiled down to how humans organise our scarce resources. Humans do not always act logically; economys are complex and multi layered not every factor can be mapped; and we our cultures all impact how how individual economies work.
Simply put any quantitative research in macroeconomics is really just a theory that might work if we exclude 60% of all unpredictable factors and try to calculate for the 40%. It works sometimes but classical economics works best because we accept we cant make predictions and policies so lets just not try and hope the market organises itself.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - unstopablex5 - Created on 07/23/18 07:16:12 UTC - permalink}

Yes, I understand that there are many factors. It is exactly the same in any other scientific discipline. There are no such things as exact values in chemistry or physics, there are only accepted values. And, there are situations where the traditional math breaks down. PV=NRT starts to break down if gases start to act not ideal like at high temperatures or if their collisions become elastic. But still, PV=NRT or c=wavelength x frequency are still useful models of what the relationships are between different things are.
I must say that I being a little harsh on the person that I was responding to previously. I am aware that there are Austrians that are perfectly happy to incorporate quantitative studies into their analyses, and that they call themselves Austrians to simply that their work has caused them to favor free markets and small government. I don't really have an issue with these people.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Man-of-Sex - Created on 07/23/18 07:55:11 UTC - permalink}

I’m going here in a week! Very excited

^{Comment removed from /Economics - onemanragecage - Created on 07/23/18 08:08:16 UTC - permalink}

“We devised an alternative to austerity, focusing on higher growth..."
and more debt ;)

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Bitcoin_21 - Created on 07/23/18 08:24:22 UTC - permalink}

before you upvote this guy's comment, just bear in mind he's a conservative and believer in alternative facts

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Strong__Belwas - Created on 07/23/18 08:26:53 UTC - permalink}

Try and get the simple demand-supply wage-employment graph out of your head. Stop thinking of them as a trade-off, in reality they don't act against each other.

^{Comment removed from /AskEconomics - wraggy44 - Created on 07/23/18 08:38:35 UTC - permalink}

It'd be interesting to see counterpoints to his statements instead of discrediting him through political beliefs and unclever expressions like "alternative facts".

^{Comment removed from /Economics - kairos - Created on 07/23/18 08:42:47 UTC - permalink}

why?
if i say "as an american, i think this story is made up and trump is the greatest" you probably wanna know my political affiliations, that i'm not some guy with special insight as a member of that nation, i'm just politically-motivated to lie on reddit.
that's all

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Strong__Belwas - Created on 07/23/18 08:44:40 UTC - permalink}

Because your economical/political ideologies don't make you right or wrong.
If you say "as an american, i think this story is made up and trump is the greatest", but back your arguments up with credible data/sources, then your contribution adds to the discussion.
If the sources are rubbish, then you point out the flaws in OPs sources and go on from there.
This is why comments asking for sources are pretty useful, because people who are full of shit tend to not be able to provide them or just link to rubbish (the odd blog post or something).

^{Comment removed from /Economics - kairos - Created on 07/23/18 09:15:17 UTC - permalink}

where are the facts of the person i'm replying to
the thing is, you are making my point for me. people will just blindly believe the guy. they ought to know what his biases are.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Strong__Belwas - Created on 07/23/18 09:17:42 UTC - permalink}

You are assuming that I'm defending him, when I'm not. All I'm saying is that attacking his political beliefs doesn't make him wrong.
By labeling him as a conservative, all you're doing is leading people who have the same bias as him to believe him and people who lean the other way will not believe what he's saying.
In the meantime, (I think) most people here are smart enough to not take "being portuguese" as an authority on all things Portugal and expect some sort of source for his claims.
I will read (but, depending on the arguments, probably not respond) to any replies to this, as I think I've made my point clear enough and don't think there's much to be added to this discussion.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - kairos - Created on 07/23/18 09:29:50 UTC - permalink}

They’re not smart enough because they believed him and upvoted him even tho he provided no evidence
Why are you singling me out for this is all I’m wondering. Guy makes a claim and doesn’t support it. I say “don’t believe everything you read on Reddit, this guy is politically biased and hasn’t offered evidence”
Seems like you should be directing your posts to that islamophobic bigot

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Strong__Belwas - Created on 07/23/18 09:50:48 UTC - permalink}

Time to short Portugal

^{Comment removed from /Economics - mancala33 - Created on 07/23/18 10:05:21 UTC - permalink}

sshhhhh.... nobody wants to hear that here.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - ThisOriented - Created on 07/23/18 10:09:34 UTC - permalink}

You lost the discussion. Nowhere in these comments did he mention Islam. He mentioned his government has a history of misusing statistics to cover the truth.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - GodsGoodGrace - Created on 07/23/18 10:18:01 UTC - permalink}

I will never get used to this new two-sentence headline structure.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - externality - Created on 07/23/18 13:36:22 UTC - permalink}

This is all Trumps fault!

^{Comment removed from /Economics - kinypornaccount - Created on 07/23/18 14:39:41 UTC - permalink}

that roar is the sound of money rushing into the accounts of the 1%

^{Comment removed from /Economics - sighbourbon - Created on 07/23/18 14:44:36 UTC - permalink}

It's like you are trying to start /neoliberal2

^{Comment removed from /badeconomics - qchisq - Created on 07/23/18 16:22:14 UTC - permalink}

Is this even worth an R1: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/20/trump-were-playing-with-the-banks-money-on-markets-gain-since-el.html?__twitter_impression=true

^{Comment removed from /badeconomics - Araraguy - Created on 07/23/18 16:33:46 UTC - permalink}

I will give it to you, I only shared my personal bias, it's quite frustrating to me to see opinions/articles saying how well Portugal is doing, it's enabling bad politics here.
And I'm not a conservative, I'm a minarchist/libertarian and yes I've criticized Islam (not Muslims), if that makes me a bigot, I don't know why, people criticize Christianity all the time and never heard anyone be called a bigot or cristianiphobic for it...

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Autosleep - Created on 07/23/18 17:00:22 UTC - permalink}

"Lock the can down the road" socialism.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Mynameisfatsoshady - Created on 07/23/18 17:00:36 UTC - permalink}

And the really sad part is there’s more wealth now than ever before. The older generation is fucking it up for the younger generation. This is the ultimate travesty.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Xerkzeez - Created on 07/23/18 19:42:25 UTC - permalink}

Thank you GOP and Baby Boomers for selling us the ultimate scam of trickle down economics and low corporate taxes.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - LemonHarangue - Created on 07/23/18 20:36:32 UTC - permalink}

Yeah, well, if you could convince younger people to vote during every election then maybe the politicians would pay attention to their concerns. As it stands now, young voters can't be counted on.
Old people vote. All. The. Time.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - KillYourTV - Created on 07/23/18 20:37:51 UTC - permalink}

Yes

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Throwaway989972 - Created on 07/23/18 20:38:36 UTC - permalink}

This is a non-substantive comment. This sub is meant for economic theory discussion, not normative conjecture.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - jackshiels - Created on 07/23/18 20:50:34 UTC - permalink}

Trickle-down economics has never been an economic theory. It is a label given to supply-side stimulus by left-wing critics and a common talking point by economically ignorant users on this site.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - jackshiels - Created on 07/23/18 20:51:33 UTC - permalink}

Now, I'm just curious, but does this have to do with the civil responsibility instilled in the greatest generation (oldest voters probably) or is it because of the age? Like will baby boomers vote as much as the greatest generation when they are aging into their mid-60s/70s?
Tldr do you vote more because you're retired or bc of the civil duty instilled your generation?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - WritersofRohan17 - Created on 07/23/18 20:51:48 UTC - permalink}

you will not find it in textbooks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
There's about thirty sources listed here that say you're wrong

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Plopplopthrown - Created on 07/23/18 21:01:10 UTC - permalink}

https://www.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/630wf1/how_the_federal_reserve_is_robbing_us_blind/
Are conspiracy things off limits?

^{Comment removed from /badeconomics - DHallahan - Created on 07/23/18 21:03:31 UTC - permalink}

Once again, with feeling: it is not taught in economic textbooks.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - jackshiels - Created on 07/23/18 21:04:16 UTC - permalink}

They've slowly come to learn that politics actually matter.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - FunAndGamesNStuff - Created on 07/23/18 21:06:43 UTC - permalink}

Probably a bit of everything. Also more life experience which includes decades of local to federal politicians passing bills that you disagree with.
I'm only in my 30s and have watched myself and peers go from only really "caring" about presidential or governor elections to voting to even in every local election.
I really don't think it's a pride thing but more that people begin to realize more and more that they must vote to try to keep the things they want the same or to change things they dislike and voting is the easiest way to do it.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - garlicdeath - Created on 07/23/18 21:08:02 UTC - permalink}

My dad just bought a new 350k yacht, while I struggle to meet my mortgage payments. He retired when he was 45, and expects me to be able to do the same...

^{Comment removed from /Economics - aesu - Created on 07/23/18 21:09:26 UTC - permalink}

It’s supposed to be a criticism, reflecting what actually ends up happening with such policies instead of using the nice terms created by their proponents. Not being the word supply-side economists would like to use doesn’t make it invalid.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - BossaNova1423 - Created on 07/23/18 21:15:26 UTC - permalink}

Why would I study macroeconomics, when it lacks even the predictive power of meteorology?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - wockyman - Created on 07/23/18 21:33:38 UTC - permalink}

My answer won't be liked, but I'll say it anyway. It's because civic education was purposefully altered, diluted, and largely removed from the school system... and it was done on purpose for exactly this reason.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - arminiusreturns - Created on 07/23/18 22:39:20 UTC - permalink}

Yeah, young people have among the lowest voter turnout rate. If they voted at the rate of people (especially white men) over 50 a lot of the state legislatures and Congress would look different than it does today.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - A7-23 - Created on 07/23/18 22:41:52 UTC - permalink}

A-men. Why should I have to take Advanced Placement Government class to get knowledge that all kids should get outright?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - Bonzoso - Created on 07/23/18 22:43:54 UTC - permalink}

What's wrong with low corporate taxes? It's just coming out of company growth, market cap, and potential wages. I see no reason at all to even have corporate taxes.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - radwimp - Created on 07/23/18 22:50:39 UTC - permalink}

Why would you hang out in /economics if you don't care about economics?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - way2lazy2care - Created on 07/23/18 22:52:53 UTC - permalink}

at least in my HS there was a required civics/government class for your senior year. AP Gov theoretically just aims the material at the test. In practice, this just means the best teachers teach AP Gov.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - eetsumkaus - Created on 07/23/18 23:02:53 UTC - permalink}

Election day should be a national holiday.

This would mostly help government, finance, and other white collar professions.
Retail, healthcare, restaurants, etc. are working on all other federal holidays. What will make election day any different?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - raiderato - Created on 07/23/18 23:05:05 UTC - permalink}

They shouldn't.

^{Comment removed from /Economics - raiderato - Created on 07/23/18 23:05:53 UTC - permalink}

To be honest, I’m in my late 20s, went to college without the help of family/friends, worked hard to pay it off, have found a job in my field without too many obstacles, am about 70% of the way towards putting a downpayment on a house.
15/20 of my friends are doing just as well.
My sisters are doing just as well.
What the fuck is everyone talking about when they cry about opportunity in 2018?

^{Comment removed from /Economics - justin_truedoee - Created on 07/23/18 23:09:03 UTC - permalink}