7 ms·

Thief? He strictly followed the terms of a contract by people who were very clear that "code is law" and who did not want institutions were the result is decid

by n8n3k 9y ago

Thief? He strictly followed the terms of a contract by people who were very clear that "code is law" and who did not want institutions were the result is decided by human judgement.

foepys 9y ago
It's always been like this. Be smug and aggressive when it goes right and cry for help when something goes wrong. The housing crisis was the same. Claim you got the thing that makes everybody rich and when everything went inevitably downhill, ask the "enemy" aka the regulator/government/police to bail you out.
- confluence 9y ago
  Everyone's a hero until the bullets start flying.
- yangchi 9y ago
  It's been long time since I read Too Big To Fail, so what I recall could be wrong, but i don't think your statement about the 2008 bailout is entirely true if that book wasn't a lie. Almost the majority of Wall Street refused the bailout money. Paulson almost force them. The bailout money eventually made a profit ($15B). One could argue that the return rate was low (0.6% annualized), but still, this is far different from what most people have believed till this day: i.e., US gov just gave taxpayer's money away to the banks to cover their ass. Paulson also almost managed to save Lehman Brothers until British Gov said no to Barclay's role in the plan. (Wall Street banks would acquire LB's "good assets" while Barclay would buy their toxic ones as its gateway to become a more influential player in US market.). But even Lehman didn't reach out to Pualson to get itself saved. It's the other way around: Paulson was trying many ways to save Lehman because he knew when Lehman went down, market would panic and then even those banks in good shape would be affected.
  - caoilte 9y ago
    The British make very convenient scapegoats and were responsible for a great deal of the Financial Crisis, but not the collapse of the Lehmans deal http://www.reuters.com/article/barclays-lehman-idUSLDE62B25820100312 http://www.reuters.com/article/barclays-lehman-idUSLDE62B258... You can't trust anything in Too Big To Fail, unfortunately. Shame, it reads really well.
  - Retric 9y ago
    US has debt which costs more than 0.6% annualized so no even by the most optimistic analysis, it was a direct net loss. It depends on how you calculate it but, actual costs where over 50 billion net loss. But, it was really important for politicians to point to it as a 'success' so there is more than a little creative accounting going on.
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    Lehman didn't assist with the LTCM bailout, like all the other big brokerages did. That's why they were chosen to be sacrificed to scare Congress. Every official source that explains the 2008 crisis is full of lies. The big banks all engaged in massive fraud and the bailout was the cover up.
  - djjfjirjr 9y ago
    AIG anyone? Try again, you are truly ignorant or a shill.
- hiram112 9y ago
  You're 100% right. Same idea with the guys getting rich of off of patents in the pharma industry (e.g. EpiPen). Nothing these forms are doing is technically illegal. But the reason some of these guys are gonna be crucified is the arrogance and lack of public contrition. They really need to take a page from the banking execs of 2008 who cried no-fault all the way to the bank.
supernumerary 9y ago
Can we do an experiment and use 'she' for anonymous players in these stories? Would be kinda cool. The article uses 'he' throughout, and only acknowledges the possibility of it being either/or/group in the final paragraphs.
- des429 9y ago
  Why
- plainOldText 9y ago
  What's wrong with he? I think one can choose one or the other, and the author chose he. There's also the alternative of using he/she every time, but I think that would just be annoying.
  - rdubz 9y ago
    Attempting to expand on context that I think the parent left implicit: - Women are underrepresented — in STEM fields at large and in the cryptocurrency space in particular — relative to a fairer world with less sexism, outmoded notions of gender roles, etc. - This underrepresentation self-perpetuates partly because well-meaning men in these fields don't realize it's happening: it always feels better to believe a happier story about the world being more fair, and such men have less data about what keeps women out than they would have in a fairer world where women were more present to tell their stories. - Erring on the side of feminine or gender-neutral pronouns — against this backdrop of under-representation — is a lightweight way to signal basic awareness of these issues and avoid the appearance of reinforcing them or believing they should be reinforced. As such, it informs my general model about the writer's thoughtfulness/sensitivity, which has some bearing on how compelling I find their argument to be. It also bears noting that while I can mostly shrug and move on if a writer is implying apathy (or worse) about this issue, it is a more acute and even threatening signal for some women whose careers/lives have been damaged by these playing fields' having never been level, and it is morally fraught to participate in and benefit from discussions/community/resources that are effectively/unfairly off-limits to under-represented groups. tl;dr: - default-masculine-pronouns are not neutral, - we've all been tacitly made to think that they are, - some work to counter that makes sense, and - it's good to push conversations/awareness about them because the default perpetuates them.
apozem 9y ago
Building a financial system without some level of flexibility and human judgment seems like an awful idea. Forgive the lengthy story, but this tale courtesy of Matt Levine is perfect for this [1]: > The California electric grid operator built a set of rules for generating, distributing and paying for electricity. Those rules were dumb and bad. If you read them carefully and greedily, you could get paid silly amounts of money for generating electricity, not because the electricity was worth that much but because you found a way to exploit the rules. JPMorgan read the rules carefully and greedily, and exploited the rules. It did this openly and honestly, in ways that were ridiculous but explicitly allowed by the rules. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fined it $410 million for doing this, and JPMorgan meekly paid up. What JPMorgan did was explicitly allowed by the rules, but that doesn't mean that it was allowed. Just because rules are dumb and you are smart, that doesn't always mean that you get to take advantage of them... > The U.S. legal system has built up a pleasantly redundant system of safeguards so that investors usually get more or less what they expect. If you invest in a U.S. public company, you are in a sense signing up for a certificate of incorporation and bylaws, which are written in lawyerly language. But you also get a prospectus that explains the terms of your investment in relatively (relatively!) plain English. Also the terms of that investment -- how you vote, what duties the company owes you, what rights you have, etc. -- tend to be constrained by federal securities law, state law, stock exchange listing requirements, underwriter due diligence, public policy, custom and tradition. Even if you invest in a company whose bylaws say that the board of directors can sacrifice you to a demon on the first full moon of a leap year, it's unlikely that that term would be enforced. There is only so much leeway to depart from the standard terms. > If you invest your Ether in a smart contract, you'd better be sure that the contract says (and does) what you think it says (and does). The contract is the thing itself, and the only thing that counts; explanations and expectations might be helpful but carry no weight. It is a world of bright lines and sharp edges; you can see why it would appeal to libertarians and techno-utopians, but it might be a bit unforgiving for a wider range of investors. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchai...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
slewis 9y ago
I'm glad the hard fork happened, because it makes clear and public that there is no "coding around" the possibility of human oversight. Better for that to happen early than late IMO. And people sure still seem to be onboard.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  It doesn't make that clear at all. It just makes clear that the Ethereum community is committed to profiteering rather than decentralization.
  - BenjiWiebe 9y ago
    I call it decentralization when a huge number of people must agree so the unethical taking of the money is reversed.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      You're describing democracy, not decentralization. Democracy is rule centralized in the majority.
nebabyte 9y ago
A bank robber isn't considered a "thief" for violating the laws of physics, either. What's your point? Code is law. The community decided/realized the "law" as written wasn't the one they wanted, so they created a fork that captured both the letter and spirit of the "law" rather than the letter of some other one they didn't want. I don't get the holy wars over this, other than the fact that some people are obviously very motivated to pump their empty shell coin in the hopes that it beats the leading ETH one. "Code is law" and "laws are imposed upon humans against their collective will" lead to two very different things.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  The point is that Ethereum's selling point was smart contracts, so by definition you can't steal from a contract.

by n8n3k 9y ago

Thief? He strictly followed the terms of a contract by people who were very clear that "code is law" and who did not want institutions were the result is decided by human judgement.

foepys 9y ago

It's always been like this. Be smug and aggressive when it goes right and cry for help when something goes wrong. The housing crisis was the same. Claim you got the thing that makes everybody rich and when everything went inevitably downhill, ask the "enemy" aka the regulator/government/police to bail you out.

confluence 9y ago
Everyone's a hero until the bullets start flying.
yangchi 9y ago
It's been long time since I read Too Big To Fail, so what I recall could be wrong, but i don't think your statement about the 2008 bailout is entirely true if that book wasn't a lie. Almost the majority of Wall Street refused the bailout money. Paulson almost force them. The bailout money eventually made a profit ($15B). One could argue that the return rate was low (0.6% annualized), but still, this is far different from what most people have believed till this day: i.e., US gov just gave taxpayer's money away to the banks to cover their ass. Paulson also almost managed to save Lehman Brothers until British Gov said no to Barclay's role in the plan. (Wall Street banks would acquire LB's "good assets" while Barclay would buy their toxic ones as its gateway to become a more influential player in US market.). But even Lehman didn't reach out to Pualson to get itself saved. It's the other way around: Paulson was trying many ways to save Lehman because he knew when Lehman went down, market would panic and then even those banks in good shape would be affected.
- caoilte 9y ago
  The British make very convenient scapegoats and were responsible for a great deal of the Financial Crisis, but not the collapse of the Lehmans deal http://www.reuters.com/article/barclays-lehman-idUSLDE62B25820100312 http://www.reuters.com/article/barclays-lehman-idUSLDE62B258... You can't trust anything in Too Big To Fail, unfortunately. Shame, it reads really well.
- Retric 9y ago
  US has debt which costs more than 0.6% annualized so no even by the most optimistic analysis, it was a direct net loss. It depends on how you calculate it but, actual costs where over 50 billion net loss. But, it was really important for politicians to point to it as a 'success' so there is more than a little creative accounting going on.
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  Lehman didn't assist with the LTCM bailout, like all the other big brokerages did. That's why they were chosen to be sacrificed to scare Congress. Every official source that explains the 2008 crisis is full of lies. The big banks all engaged in massive fraud and the bailout was the cover up.
- djjfjirjr 9y ago
  AIG anyone? Try again, you are truly ignorant or a shill.
hiram112 9y ago
You're 100% right. Same idea with the guys getting rich of off of patents in the pharma industry (e.g. EpiPen). Nothing these forms are doing is technically illegal. But the reason some of these guys are gonna be crucified is the arrogance and lack of public contrition. They really need to take a page from the banking execs of 2008 who cried no-fault all the way to the bank.

supernumerary 9y ago

Can we do an experiment and use 'she' for anonymous players in these stories? Would be kinda cool. The article uses 'he' throughout, and only acknowledges the possibility of it being either/or/group in the final paragraphs.

des429 9y ago
Why
plainOldText 9y ago
What's wrong with he? I think one can choose one or the other, and the author chose he. There's also the alternative of using he/she every time, but I think that would just be annoying.
- rdubz 9y ago
  Attempting to expand on context that I think the parent left implicit: - Women are underrepresented — in STEM fields at large and in the cryptocurrency space in particular — relative to a fairer world with less sexism, outmoded notions of gender roles, etc. - This underrepresentation self-perpetuates partly because well-meaning men in these fields don't realize it's happening: it always feels better to believe a happier story about the world being more fair, and such men have less data about what keeps women out than they would have in a fairer world where women were more present to tell their stories. - Erring on the side of feminine or gender-neutral pronouns — against this backdrop of under-representation — is a lightweight way to signal basic awareness of these issues and avoid the appearance of reinforcing them or believing they should be reinforced. As such, it informs my general model about the writer's thoughtfulness/sensitivity, which has some bearing on how compelling I find their argument to be. It also bears noting that while I can mostly shrug and move on if a writer is implying apathy (or worse) about this issue, it is a more acute and even threatening signal for some women whose careers/lives have been damaged by these playing fields' having never been level, and it is morally fraught to participate in and benefit from discussions/community/resources that are effectively/unfairly off-limits to under-represented groups. tl;dr: - default-masculine-pronouns are not neutral, - we've all been tacitly made to think that they are, - some work to counter that makes sense, and - it's good to push conversations/awareness about them because the default perpetuates them.

apozem 9y ago

Building a financial system without some level of flexibility and human judgment seems like an awful idea. Forgive the lengthy story, but this tale courtesy of Matt Levine is perfect for this [1]: > The California electric grid operator built a set of rules for generating, distributing and paying for electricity. Those rules were dumb and bad. If you read them carefully and greedily, you could get paid silly amounts of money for generating electricity, not because the electricity was worth that much but because you found a way to exploit the rules. JPMorgan read the rules carefully and greedily, and exploited the rules. It did this openly and honestly, in ways that were ridiculous but explicitly allowed by the rules. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fined it $410 million for doing this, and JPMorgan meekly paid up. What JPMorgan did was explicitly allowed by the rules, but that doesn't mean that it was allowed. Just because rules are dumb and you are smart, that doesn't always mean that you get to take advantage of them... > The U.S. legal system has built up a pleasantly redundant system of safeguards so that investors usually get more or less what they expect. If you invest in a U.S. public company, you are in a sense signing up for a certificate of incorporation and bylaws, which are written in lawyerly language. But you also get a prospectus that explains the terms of your investment in relatively (relatively!) plain English. Also the terms of that investment -- how you vote, what duties the company owes you, what rights you have, etc. -- tend to be constrained by federal securities law, state law, stock exchange listing requirements, underwriter due diligence, public policy, custom and tradition. Even if you invest in a company whose bylaws say that the board of directors can sacrifice you to a demon on the first full moon of a leap year, it's unlikely that that term would be enforced. There is only so much leeway to depart from the standard terms. > If you invest your Ether in a smart contract, you'd better be sure that the contract says (and does) what you think it says (and does). The contract is the thing itself, and the only thing that counts; explanations and expectations might be helpful but carry no weight. It is a world of bright lines and sharp edges; you can see why it would appeal to libertarians and techno-utopians, but it might be a bit unforgiving for a wider range of investors. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchai...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

slewis 9y ago

I'm glad the hard fork happened, because it makes clear and public that there is no "coding around" the possibility of human oversight. Better for that to happen early than late IMO. And people sure still seem to be onboard.

kerkeslager 9y ago
It doesn't make that clear at all. It just makes clear that the Ethereum community is committed to profiteering rather than decentralization.
- BenjiWiebe 9y ago
  I call it decentralization when a huge number of people must agree so the unethical taking of the money is reversed.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    You're describing democracy, not decentralization. Democracy is rule centralized in the majority.

nebabyte 9y ago

A bank robber isn't considered a "thief" for violating the laws of physics, either. What's your point? Code is law. The community decided/realized the "law" as written wasn't the one they wanted, so they created a fork that captured both the letter and spirit of the "law" rather than the letter of some other one they didn't want. I don't get the holy wars over this, other than the fact that some people are obviously very motivated to pump their empty shell coin in the hopes that it beats the leading ETH one. "Code is law" and "laws are imposed upon humans against their collective will" lead to two very different things.

MichaelGG 9y ago
The point is that Ethereum's selling point was smart contracts, so by definition you can't steal from a contract.