Fern_Blossom

You mean exactly what VW did and everyone has seemingly forgotten already?

Yea... I remember when April Fools was actually funny. Like the wifi setup that ran through your toilets. That gave me a giggle back in the day. The PR stunt was to do a funny, absurd joke. Now it's just a marketing testing bed.

Damn clouds need to get off my lawn.

Must be their first rodeo for a lot of other folks from what I can tell. Ain't my first. You can't trust shit coming up. The more, "controversial" the more, "it was just a prank bro". Happens every year.

Am I the only one that smells April Fools because the whole VW thing seemed so legit just the other day?

No... just me? K...

Okay, but you're overly exaggerating "the elites" to some mythic pedestal. They're human. And here's the fun part, you would do the exact same thing they're doing if it was you sitting in their throne. I mean, if whataboutism is alright to play, the honest truth is, you're not angry at the elites. You're angry that you're not apart of their club. You don't win a 100m dash because you lack value in fast twitch muscle fibers and stamina, you don't win economics because you lack value in opportunity capitalization. The smell of these arguments is just a pile of, "because I'm not standing on the podium, we need to end all races". You, just like everyone else, wants to call the shots. 99% of political discussions amount to, "Everyone else has it wrong. If I were supreme ruler, I would make everything correct instantly." Maybe, just maybe, if you stop for a second... maybe economics, government and the infrastructure systems that run our lives are really complicated. Not only can a handful of people really not control it well, maybe a handful of people actually don't. But that line of thinking makes it harder to point fingers at the mythical, "them". Instead, you have to turn to the mirror and go, "Where did I fuck up?" No one wants that. They want to blame Satan, not themselves. Opps, I meant elites, not Satan... well...

I'm a huge fan of WSB. Especially because they amount to, "Oh, did the wrong people manipulate the market?" What I don't understand is how anyone confused this as socialism or communism at work. This was straight up capitalism at play. The hand of the market made a move. No rules changed for this to happen. People decided to actually play the game instead of cry. What do you know, the uncontested champions aren't that good at playing the game. Maybe there's room for a good ol' fashion capitalistic shake up. It just took a bunch of apes to go, "Hey, maybe we should stop watching our wife's boyfriend do the dirty and read up on how the markets work. Then we should work together to play the game as the rules are instead of whine like babies." Paraphrasing obviously.

I just don't understand this desperate need to burn a system when you don't even bother to learn how it works properly. And I'm not talking about youtube cartoons. I swear, if you ask someone, "Oh, how did you learn C?" "I watched a few 10 min youtube videos about it. I'm an expert now." You rightfully would be smacked in the face with a flounder... or salmon... or some other big fish. But for some reason, 30 min of youtube makes you an expert in economics, finance and politics. Oh, and I know that's the case because you throw around "elite" like it means anything. Falls under the "them" term like lizard men conspiracy whacks spout on about. Those of us actually trying to break into those ranks through legit business means call them "old money"... or "rich cunts". You probably can figure out which I prefer.

First, I'd like to really understand why people say crypto "escapes inflation". The only argument has been the artificial scarcity mechanisms built in the currency. Scarcity is a seasoning to the concept of value, not the main course. I don't know of anyone in economics in the last 100 years that has ever pushed forward the idea that scarcity is all you need to create value... except for Youtube economic cartoons.

"Fiat currency" isn't backed by violence. It's backed by production in goods and/or services. You can see this easily play out in command-control economies. The resource rich, like Venezuela back in the day, was a prosperous country for a few years. Gov controlled oil meant that's how they made money. When the price of a barrel of oil is high, they just pump that oil, increasing the need of the international community to purchase their currency, bringing up the value. When their oil wasn't needed due to diversification of supply and the drop in price, no one "wants" said currency since the country had nothing anyone wanted. Thus, the value goes down and you have hyperinflation due to high economic specialization. All the military equipment they bought and posturing, which led to a hilarious wannabe propaganda-scare video, during the good years didn't amount to shit. You really think if Bitcoin magically became the almighty currency, war would disappear? I'm serious when I say this, quit watching Sesame Street and other children's shows. Be an adult. Read a history book. No good change will come from praying to unicorns.

On average, less than 1% of a country's population is active law enforcement in the western world. It's just a hair over 1% in the US according to Bureau of Labor numbers and that includes all the admin/support/not-arresting LE as well. Y'all need to quit looking underneath your beds and checking your closest for the blue boogey man. They do a whole hell of a lot more than just "protect the banks". That's what G4S does with their tactical muffin tops. At that, here's a good example of the difference between what a police officer can do and what a sheriff deputy can do: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/06/06/137002727... This happens more often than you think throughout the country. We don't hear about it because banks and other financial institutions swiftly put gag clauses in settlements. Banks do a fantastic job of teaching you how you can't use the justice system in your favor when in reality, you have more power than you imagine. Stop watching them youtube videos and go to the local library to learn more about local laws and procedures.

Contest ownership... yea, still a problem with Bitcoin. Just look up "Bitcoin stolen" in your search engine of choice and there's article, after article, after article of theft and a cold day in hell's chance of retrieving it. There's nothing special there on that front. It's a preferred means of trade for the black market for a good reason.

On one level, I don't care about the crypto ponzi scheme being played out. Let it happen. Madoff tricked a whole hell of a lot of people for around 20 years. Good. What ruffles my feathers, pushing a political agenda because you want to be rich in monopoly money, then use it to buy ice cream. Then throwing a fit because the cashier won't accept it. Yea, the amount of excess CO2 created by crypto mining is a valid and big problem. It's another industrial sized country on the world grid because of it. You act like this is some magic cure for "the poors", to help distribute wealth and other fantasies. Because there's a magic mechanism for a rich cat in USD to not do the same in BTC? The same way they garnered wealth in USD, GBP, JPY or EUR will do the same thing in any other new currency, making the point to the "revolution" null and void. Oh wait, Musk already started that. What's that, they found a good way for a loophole in being able to issue refunds in USD or BTC according to how they see fit depending which is cheaper? Yea, that sweet sweet "for the people" currency not going into the hands of the, what is he now, 3rd richest? 2nd richest? But I guess that makes him a fellow poor too since he's not 1st. Great step forward for that great reset. Let me tell ya'.

Humans have been lying for personal gain for only a short amount of time. I guess yea, we should all just decide that lying is bad. That's a novel idea.

>What they did was absolutely reprehensible,

Okay, this is a bit much. I know you came to realize all the car companies were doing it, so relatively speaking, it evens out when it comes to image. But this concept of hating a company over false marketing, it's a "and cows moo" moment. All big companies lie about their performances and benefits. Every. Single. One. Who would have guessed people would lie to make money... what a revelation. It's extremely naïve to feel hurt by a company trying to gain the edge over another by lying. That's some weird identity tying consumerism right there.

It was already an old joke when George Carlin did his stand up bit on marketing terms bs and that was some 20 years ago. It's time to grow up. No company is immune from this attitude either. Tech is fraught with it too. WeWork, Theranos are the nice examples. But remember, before it became publicly okay to rag on them, there were folks pointing out the bullshit. Folks who weren't believed because they were so negative about "wanting to change the world". Any time a company tries to play the, "We're making the world a better place" card, whether environmental, social, whatever, it's safe to assume bullshit is afoot. Plays out all the time.

Once the article got into the fact it's not a political or ideological issue, I got the entire angle. It probably should have gotten to that point sooner, but I get the idea of the article. The boat is simply stuck. That's it. Nothing more. In an era of micro aggressions, politically charged everything and extreme sensitivities, this is the first world event in a long time that is just simple without being loaded... the boat is stuck. It's stupid how refreshing and novel that is.

You can't refuse legal tender as a business in the US. If you suspect counterfeit bills, you need proof (the marker or it lacks some security feature like watermark or strip) and then you're supposed to call the police immediately about it. You can refuse the sale in general... but that's a tricky one left to someone else to answer.

No, it's policy in every single chain store to do bill checks on 50s and 100s, regardless of what you look like. Those are the most common counterfeit denominations. Quite a few places do 20s as well. When I worked at an office supply store, the store manager checked our tills at the end of the day, if bills 20 or above didn't have a marker on them, I got in trouble.