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Comment by Pharmakon | Hacker News Reader

That gave me chills, and the phrase, If you’re going to shoot the king, you’d better be goddamned sure you’re going to kill him flashed through my mind. Well, they missed spectacularly, and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.

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You come at the king, you best not miss.

Also, never take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy ;P

I think Omar, Stringer and Machiavelli would have gotten along on some level.

"Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge." -Machiavelli

If you're going to do unto others,do unto them hard enough that they cannot return the favor.

It’s amazing how many people in Trump’s inner circle love quoting mob movies, calling people “rats” and “stoolies” but can’t seem to get down even the basics of being a half-decent criminal. I mean, Roger Stone literally told people to lie to Congress via an email.

One can quote mob movies all day but that doesn’t make them a smart criminal.

I mean, they've lived in an era when being a white collar criminal is basically without legal penalty (as long as you're a white guy). It's really no wonder so many of them are so completely stupid, they would've had nothing to fear if their guy hadn't gotten himself elected.

Said another way, the underprosecution of white-collar crime provides an advantage to career criminals.

Go where the cops ain't.

There is a good reason for this. Real criminals don't aspire to be criminals... they just are, for whatever reason, necessity or lack of certain morals.

People who idolize criminals show an entirely different character defect, one that is in opposition to being productive in any task criminal or otherwise.

I don't even think mobsters tend to be that smart. The most vile humans, most willing to kill their competition first just naturally rise to the top.

Random but sorta relevant: In the video game Morrowind, there's a king who wears the best ring in the game - it provides constant life and stamina regeneration. The only way to take it is to kill him. But you better be prepared to fight a room full of very powerful guards. You better be prepared when you go at him.

Indeed! Even I was quite fascinated by that phrase. I really wonder if AMI folks did any what-if analysis before shooting off those e-mails. At least the best-case and worst-case scenarios if not exploring all possible branches.

I mean come on, you are literally taking on the richest person on earth and didn't even evaluate implications!? Just to belabor the point, he's not only the richest person right now, he's among the top 15[1] wealthiest persons of human civilization. And you are threatening him with, what, a bunch of nudish images and adult text messages!?

> and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.

This had me laughing for a long time!!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...

Edit: Added wikipedia reference.

This feels like they've similarly extorted many people before this and had gotten lazy, forgetting to keep doing that sort of analysis.

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