summer_steven

It also reminds me of my time in Southern Italy government officials with mob connections tried to exploit me when i lost my passport

Here's a list of the top 100 American surnames. The majority of them are British/Scottish/Welsh: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/century.html

No matter what you think, the British Isles are the ones who populated the country.

And those are exceptions to the norm.

Look at the census of the 100 most common American names, they're either traditional American names or Spanish names from those who immigrated here over the last 50 years. https://www.thoughtco.com/most-common-us-surnames-1422656

Your wrong about their being no traditional American. A traditional United States surname is generally English, Scottish, or Welsh as those were the primary people living in the United States from 1550-1850.

For instance, I remember from History class that there were atleast 3 famous guys from the 1700s named "John Smith"

Ripple, the currency that is being investigated by the SEC ?

>How on earth can you tell if someone is a native citizen from their name?

Why are you playing dumb? He's clearly talking about someone with clearly foreign name, not someone from Canada.

I'm sick of people acting willfully ignorant in their arguments

In the United States, to be considered an accredited investor, one must have a net worth of at least $1,000,000, excluding the value of one's primary residence, or have income at least $200,000 each year for the last two years (or $300,000 combined income if married

> If you buy a lottery ticket, you are getting exactly the odds that were promised to you.

Casinos and the state lotteries do everything they can to convince people they will make profit. Do you think a regular Joe can calculate the expected value of a scratch card? Sure, he knows he has a 1/1,000,000 chance of winning the jackpot and a 1/25 chance of winning $20. He is being misled.

Therefore, since gambling companies are legally allowed to mislead regular people, then there is no reason to protect them from investing and maybe actually making a profit.

>> Why dont we regulate everything like that. Why do we allow people to buy unlimited lottery tickets or gamble everything away in the casino?

> They also carry less risk. Few people who "lose their shirt" say "oh well, I didn't do my diligence."

No they don't. Plenty of people lose their entire life savings in casinos, and plenty of poor people spend money on lottery tickets when they should be spending money on food.

You have not sufficiently explained how gambling is less risky than investing.

So it used to be "only white, male landowners are responsible enough to invest" and now its "only the very richest Americans are responsible enough to invest".

The SEC is blatantly discriminating. Why can't I sign a piece of paper and accept responsibility for myself? I'm a grown man with 200k+ in assets, I don't need the government to protect me.

> Accredited investors requirement is what allows one not to be a subject to Blue Sky laws.

You think its a fair trade to lock 95% of Americans out of the investment market in order to protect the elderly?

New law: accredited investing means passing a 1 week course to obtain an investment license, which must be renewed bianually.

Now we can keep Grandma Suzy safe (because she hasn't passed the class) without locking 95% of Americans out of the investment market.

The point of accredited investing is to lock the middle class out of the market.

If the law was really about "protecting people", then gambling and the lottery would also be illegal.

Also, why can't I sign a paper saying I accept the risk of investing? Why can't I become an accredited investor by passing a class? I can pass a series of classes to become an EMT and be trusted with peoples lives, but no classes are sufficient to educate me about investing in startups.

When you look at how the accredited investor laws are structured, its clearly meant lock the middle class out of the market

Not going to prevent aging as well as people think.

As cells age, the risk for mutations occuring when they divide increases. The reason these cells stop dividing and become senescent is because dividing elderly cells poses a high cancer risk.

I think this may buy the trappings of youth (plump skin, clear eyes, etc) at the cost of a higher risk of cancer.

I thought Zcash was only for Israelis?

Cities compromise 3.5% of the United States land area. They are not taking land away from trees or wildlife..

Cheap plastic toys probably use superior plastic to the PLA plastic of most maker bots though

Haha sounds like your kids will be spending most of their time at their friends house with the "cool" parents

They will only appreciate your dedication to environmentalism when theyre older

Imagine a 60 year old lady with stock in a company that has had its value destroy by anti-monopoly laws...

Imagine how much money flows out of investors' pockets and into the pockets of government insiders and lawyers during a big antitrust lawsuit..

Using government power to forcefully break up a publicly owned company is such a barbaric way of doing things.

Here are some better suggestions: 1. Force government institutions to use alternative search engines 2. Have government institutions nominate a "search engine of the month" and all their employees must use that 3. Subsidize search engine research in the public domain 4. Determine if any search engine patents are blocking innovation, and invalidate those patents 5. Subsidize research into decentralized search engines

Then by your logic, is global regulation superior to Federal regulation?

personally i'd be outraged if my taxes were used to destroy edible food that could be given away to those in need

You CAN break the law if you are okay accepting the punishment.

A good instance is jaywalking: it's a minor offense and police don't really care to enforce it. So people decide to break that law all the time.

A law is a contract. Anyone is free to break the contract if they are willing to accept the consequences.

> Would you excuse the individuals at VW

VW is being fined right now. Does that sound like being excused?

And I do see it differently when a companies transparently refuses to obey a law and accepts a fine vs when a company lies.

> It is kinda surreal that a company obeying the law is headline news.

That is an unreal level of politicking. You can't see any reason why companies might prefer to pay a fine than obey a law?

If you lived in an HOA, and that HOA mandated that all your lawn ornaments must be bright pink by next week, how eager would you be to comply by next week? If the fine for non-compliance was only $1 per year, would you prefer to pay the fine?

I'm trying to illustrate that companies are made up of human beings, not monsters.

My dogs eat only raw meat. Cooked meat can remove important nutrients like vitamin C from the meat that dogs rely on. I also supplement my dogs with 150 mg/day of magnesium glycinate. I shudder when I see these prematurely aging dogs at the park, thanks to neglectful owners only feeding them scraps.

> [I blame the lack of] decades of counter-collectivism propaganda.

How do Eastern European countries fare then? How about China?

Your making the classic mistake of equating the top 10% European countries like Switzerland and Sweden with the entire United States. Midwestern states, Washington state, and New England have cohesion.

Correct your perspective and see that the United States and Europe are fairly equal. Example: Italy has next to no cohesion.

> Here's a conundrum: Cars kill ~30,000 people per year in the USA. Vehicle emissions cause ~58,000 premature deaths. That's a problem. Not bicycles, not E-bikes, not bike sharing programs, not motorcycles, not skateboards, not rollerblades – Cars!

Let's also consider how many lives that fuel-based transportion saves. How many people would die of starvation if you outlawed internal combustion engines? How much would clothes cost? Food? I'll remind you electric engines cannot easily transport 1000-tons of goods across a transcontinental railroad.

> In my mind patents were made to protect inventors and the little guy so that he/she could capitalize on their invention before the market is unleashed. When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

I agree. Patent laws have created for moral reasons instead of practical ones. Let this be a lesson to lawmakers to pass regulation based on facts instead of feelings.

This is almost like a patent on cars that go above 60 MPH. Or a website that takes less than 50 ms to load.

They have a patent on the RESULT of technology. The patent SHOULD be on THEIR VERY SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATION of 1-click checkout, but instead it is on all implementations that result in 1-click checkout.

Patents really are not meant for the internet...