>> Congress was supposed to generally be weak and deadlocked unless an overwhelming majority of people wanted something.
> The overwhelming majority of people do want a lot of things.
While the language is close these aren’t the same. Specifically the parent is saying that people need to want the same thing. Claiming that people want lots of things with no consideration of what they are or even how the things are done falls far short of the goal.
> the fact that the Senate gives Wyoming and Vermont the same power as California and Texas prevents that.
Have you considered that our founding documents/government was structured this way on purpose? It was a major incentive for encouraging small states such as Wyoming to join the union. Without this mechanism for giving smaller states an equal influence relative to other states many would not have joined the union.
> Have you considered that our founding documents/government was structured this way on purpose?
The senate was modeled on the house of lords and the expectation was that the country would be mostly ruled by the representatives in the lower house, with the senate handling special things like impeachment.
The senate disproportionately representing smaller states was a compromise necessary to get smaller states to ratify the constitution. Wyoming and Texas didn't exist. Senate rules that turn it into the place were legislation goes to die (like the filibuster) are rules created by the senate to give itself more power.
The Senate was always supposed to be part of passing laws. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Senate would only handle special things. That's what the House of Lords does, but the roles are not supposed to be the same.
We might do well to consolidate some of the smaller and sparse states from time to time. Otherwise they may sell their souls for any kind of edge over the more populous ones.
Actually you haven’t been able to play WoW in China for a ~year. But that’s largely irrelevant to your point.
More specifically Blizzard is able to bring their product to everywhere else in the world. The fact that they choose to “work” with a local partner in China to get access to that market reads more to me like a government run racket / forced rent seeking than anything else.
> approach China with realistic deals are allowed to operate there
On a more hyperbolic note, I’m sure many people in the past paid off mobsters for the privilege of doing business in certain areas with the rationale they were being “realistic”.
To that end if the US wants to start treating Chinese backed companies a similar way (laws that distort the market) I’m not surprised. China has no moral high ground here. Or more simply your point cuts both ways.
Today WoW is unavailable in China. The linked article indicates a return to China which AFAIK is not live yet. My statement is true, and the lack of WoW in China for at least a time period will always be true. But as previously mentioned this point isn’t that important. I just found it amusing that the example you used for a company behaving well in China wasn’t even in China at the time.
> the lack of WoW in China for at least a time period
That's a more fair claim, but both goes without saying (because it's what we're talking about) and is still misleading, because and I'll quote the wowhead-
"World of Warcraft has always been popular in China"
Anyone familiar knows WoW has been available in China for many years (they even have a Blizzard China HQ) and Blizzard has been working with with NetEase for years to service that market.
That's true for a lot of other companies, everything from McDonalds to Ford. It's just social media companies whining.
> just found it amusing that the example you used
Intentionally so but could have easily mentioned GM, Microsoft, Boeing, Nike, KFC, Coke, Procter & Gamble, Intel, or Starbucks with their 7000 stores in China alone. Are you seriously claiming that American companies can't operate there? Do basic research and stop watching the news - some of you really can't be helped.
> That's a more fair claim, but both goes without saying (because it's what we're talking about) and is still misleading
Calling the truth misleading feels pretty 1984 to me but ignoring that for a moment. The truth is that Netease & Blizzard had some sort of disagreement resulting in all Blizzard games being yanked from China. It didn’t matter that Blizzard had a HQ there (which netease live-streamed the destruction of 1) or that they had nearly 2 decades of history of the “good” behavior you mention. At the end of the day Blizzard was forced out as soon as the partnership with the local Chinese company ended. Or in keeping with my hyperbolic scenario as soon as the local “mobsters” stopped getting their cut.
> That's true for a lot of other companies, everything from McDonalds to Ford. It's just social media companies whining.
> Do basic research and stop watching the news
Well let’s see using the first company you listed as an example McDonald’s is a minority partner in their China business 2.
“Last month, the U.S.-based burger maker cut a deal to repurchase the 28% stake in its China business Carlyle Group took in 2017, giving it a 48% share…. One advantage for McDonald’s: its majority partner in the China business, CITIC, provides top-level political cover, … Having a very powerful Chinese state-owned conglomerate as a partner means they are not going to be at the forefront of the geopolitical situation; that is quite important," Yu said.”
> Are you seriously claiming that American companies can't operate there?
That is straw-man & no I’m not.
I suppose at a high level my point is a) Blizzard was allowed there because they paid via the Joint Venutre not because of any “moral” behavior and b) China requires Joint Ventures or other similar arrangements for companies to get access to the China market. For one reason or another China views this as being in China’s best interest. Ok so be it but one shouldn’t be surprised that eventually another country would enact similar laws that it believes are in its own best interest. It just so happens that America is first with Tik Tok being the concern that forced the issue. So now the “reasonable”/legal deal for Tik Tok (& soon others I expect) will be different. As I said before there is no moral high ground here, just basic game theory.
> some of you really can't be helped
While this is probably not over the line. It’s best to try and refrain from personal attacks or anything approaching it. We just happen to have differing opinions on this topic and that’s ok. In fact we may learn something by discussing, otherwise what’s the point of commenting?
The problem with this theory is that it wasn’t just Robinhood. There were literally like a dozen or so firms that halted buying. Some of which were well known long established firms (Merrill, etrade).
These firms should have had no problem continuing allowing purchasing.
> These firms should have had no problem continuing allowing purchasing.
Their costs increased 50x overnight - so they definitely should have had problems. DTC required a few percent collateral, and then overnight required 100% collateral on $GME. No business (well, fidelity and a few others weathered it) is able to increase short term liquidity 50x overnight.
He said they’d used their credit lines, just that there wasn’t enough of a liquidity problem to affect the rest of the business. And then they got another $1B the next day.
The article discusses this- excess buys and market volatility lead to increased capital requirements by clearing houses, so it wasn't necessarily specific to robinhood.
When powerful people need to bend the rules, they don't do it outright. They find cover. And if there's any discretion in how much liquidity clearinghouses require, that's what they'll modify.
You'll see similar things when influence is sold. Speakers are given huge fees for basic speeches and then they know what they should do. Nothing is spelled out, because that would be dumb.
Are you saying that influence either isn't sold or is spelled out in explicit terms when it is? Why do pharm reps take medical residents out to expensive dinners in nice parts of town (pre-covid), are they just nice people?
Giving someone a nice dinner isn’t giving them a lot of money, though. You get influence by not paying people enough that they can leave, but making it seem like you might in the future.
And yes, most marketing spending is pointless, and that’s just another kind of marketing.
They halted buy on stocks(no margin) on Interactive Brokers which powers most of the retail apps in Europe. I think the other brokers did the same. If you listen to this guy it's pretty clear he'a protecting the hedge funds.
Yeah, better let the retailers loose..not market manipulation, just driving the stock to the right price where both the broker and the hedge wins. I wouldn't call this a free market.
Is your underlying theory that with no intervention the stock would have no choice but to go to the moon?
Seems pretty bogus to me, there's still liquidity (so that's nothing like VW squeeze, where 75% of the market was cornered by porsche and 20% was held by a german state, leaving only 5% available for shorts to rebuy). Also current shorts were likely made at a much higher level.
And GME could do like AMC and AAL and issue more stock (why wouldn't they, it's like free money).
>> Is your underlying theory that with no intervention the stock would have no choice but to go to the moon?
If the retailers hold the line they will squeeze the shorters. They already did it but the bulk of the juice is still there. VW is not the only example. Tesla is a more recent one. Of course GME could issue new stock. Many executives liquidated/sold their positions. AMC already issued new stock. These are different issues.
Restrict the buying of any given stock(i.e Tesla), halt it intermitently and then announce that you are banning it because it's too volatile and speculative.
What's the expected result? I could bet its goes down and that's the whole point I'm making: the brokers and hedge fund managers collude to the drive the price down. They decided what the stock is worth or better said what the price should be at the expense of the buy side/retail investors. This is a predatory environment not a free market. Imagine if the brokers would suddenly liquidate the hedge funds shorts due the volatility.
> If the retailers hold the line they will squeeze the shorters.
As long as there's liquidity (and it seems like there is, the entire float is trading every day), sure some short position might give up because they lost their bet (assuming they're not hedged anyway), but there's always going to be someone else shorting at a higher and higher level, and in the end the shorts will inevitably win.
Even without any trading halt, it would end up like all pump and dump, with a few winners (those who dump or short at the top).
And in any case there's probably only a handful of hedge funds playing (and some will lose, other will win), and those being neutral in it (eg market makers) will win as well with all the trades.
Griffin may have apologized but has since rescinded that apology and subsequently published the image again. And as of this writing it’s been up for 2 months.
Why do you do clean installs? I've been moving the same MacOS image since 2006. Four machines, without any issues using whatever MacOS provides at the time.
Do you have a good way of discovering these keys / syncing them with the UI? I like to do the same thing but sometimes change a setting in the UI and don’t know what to update in my script without diffing the entire prefs directory before and after the change.
are you mathiasbynens? If so, thank you. I've been using that script as a reference for my own clean install script. Not sure where else I could have found the information, seems like Apple themselves are against documenting it and have in fact deprecated some of the settings in later macOS versions.
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