You can already hear the pseudo-theories, justifying the differences for eternity. Blue blooded, of lazy blood, etc. Apply yourselfs and you will win.. adding insult to injury, when you can not win, you must in addition be lazy with only yourself to blame.
It's the people with the guns (and muscles) that have the literal physical power. They could shoot the aristocrats dead if they wanted to.
The aristocrats' "power" is make-believe like the rest of their papers and numbers: The various psychological barriers which dissuade the gun-bearers from ever reaching the "want to" part.
Historically aristocracy was the military class. Nowadays in authoritarian societies it looks like it's mostly matter of time before military takes the lead.
Not so much class or caste, but a dual-state where an elite have a normative or lawless state, and specific or arbitrary others suffer a parallel prerogative or punitive state. This is the essence of corrupt authoritarianism.
Most Americans share a delusion of perpetual glory days like a former star high school football quarterback with the refusal to accept factual reality that their country isn't uniformly excellent and is terrible in many ways including being extremely superficial, corrupt, dangerous, unhealthy, unhappy, paranoid, over-reacting, immature, selfish, unfair, disinformed, and unequal.
More like three. One class where you can do whatever you can pay for, another with a set of annoying but almost reasonable rules and the last one for whom any actions and their mere existence is illegal, but whose presence is very much relied upon to do things.
Not at all. In a caste system a lower caste person will get attacked if he (or especially she) has any success at all. Whether or not what they did was legal or not does not factor into the equation. First priority is that the highest up dalit is lower than the worst drunkard brahmin, even if they have to kill them.
Tulsa once had what was known as Black Wall Street. There were too many successful black men, so 1921 in the whites massacred everybody. They even brought in planes and dropped bombs.
Are we now not at all allowed to reference problems in other societies? We can complain about western society, and complaints from 100 years ago, when even my grandfather wasn't born yet, are valid criticism of America/Europe/... but things that happen today in India, Pakistan, Turkey are off limits?
Would you feel bad if it was actually true? Would it pose even a minor inconvenience for your life if that was exactly the case? What's the problem anyway.
>Mobs of white residents, some of whom had been armed and appointed as deputies by city government officials, attacked black residents and their homes and businesses. The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street.
What part of this paragpraph are you having a hard time with?
Well, I am also having trouble with stating it as a fact, that the reason was they were too wealthy. Might have played a role later, but that is not clear to me from what is stated on wiki:
"The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building.[25] He was arrested and rumors spread that he was to be lynched. Several hundred white residents assembled outside the courthouse, appearing to have the makings of a lynch mob. A group of approximately 50–60 black men, armed with rifles and shotguns, arrived at the jail to support the sheriff and his deputies in defending Rowland from the mob. Having seen the armed black men, some of the whites who had been at the courthouse went home for their own guns. There are conflicting reports about the exact time and nature of the incident, or incidents, that immediately precipitated the massacre.
According to the 2001 Commission, "As the black men were leaving, a white man attempted to disarm a tall, African American World War I veteran. A struggle ensued, and a shot rang out." Then, according to the sheriff, "all hell broke loose."[26] The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men was greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood."
So you take issue with the idea that an out of mob that burned down 35 blocks of a mid sized city was motivated by envy and resentment of the prosperous black community.
Instead, you assert it was a mob that assembled to lynch a young man who was arrested for assault after he stepped on the foot of or grabbed the arm of a white female elevator operator when he tripped in the elevator. I guess they got out of hand when there was resistance to their murdering the kid.
Interesting. I stated zero complaints with the Wikipedia article.
I already specified:
There were too many successful black men
As my concern, because you made up this reason. How does your paste show this as the reason? Why are you ignoring the reasons in the Wikipedia article, which are clearly listed, including a timeline, and just making a reason up?
The sad part is, there is no need to embellish or make up things here. The event was series of excessive, horrible escalations, nothing Wikipedia says indicates it was planned, or that your made up reason was why. There is no need to falsify reasons.
Why are you presenting your imagined reasons as fact?
EDIT: I just don't think people get it.
Stating a presumption as fact, turns in-the-moment into premeditation. It also means something else, which needs to be considered.
By trying to tie this event to "wealthy black men", it seems as if simple, general racism wasn't the cause alone. That somehow, black people had to be wealthy to receive this sort of treatment. Here's another parallel:
"A woman entered a bar and was raped"
vs
"A woman in a short skirt entered a rough bar and was raped"
It adds a layer of "victim blaming". These black men weren't slaughtered because they were black, no, that could never happen! It was instead because they were wealthy, that's why!
By trying to tie this to the fact they were wealthy, you diminish the case over overall racism as a motivator for these sorts of act.
Yes, precisely. The facts, the escalation, what happened, the report, it's all very simple and laid out at wikipedia. So why the need for fabricated reasons?
Your refusal to interact with subtext has me guffawing. I wonder if you even recognize what you're doing.
In the history of revolution, there is never (except in elementary school) all that much weight put on the singular act which instigated the final result. The conditions in place (Jim Crow laws, Southern pride, etc.) lead up to a final moment which our monkey brains like to point to as the cause but in reality there is a simmering cultural froth which could boil over in any number of ways: it just happens that one of the ways is what's described in the Wikipedia article, but it could have started many other ways. All of our understanding about the experience of being Black in the US during that time helps to contextualize the extreme and disproportionate outburst of violence by the White population as racially motivated, serving under an ideology best described as ur-"Great Replacement Theory".
In simpler words, the destruction of Black Wall Street is not without precedent, indeed this was merely one of the more famous and complete examples of destroying the wealth that Black people enjoyed, if only briefly due to the hate of those visiting violence upon them.
But you are doing the same as what you are complaining about.
Racism is a complex phenomenon not limited to the simplistic view "they don't like black people". This representation is doing a disservice when some truly racist people are then justifying their actions and beliefs by saying "I cannot be racist, I'm friend with the garbage man who is black: he is a good black man, is polite to me and stay at his place. So, if I'm not racist, what I'm doing is just legitimate".
In the context of Tulsa, it is difficult to believe that the frustration of racist people seeing black people more successful than them has not contributed to the situation. It seems very natural and logical (and that's even the core of "white supremacy": it clearly states that white people deserve a better position in the social hierarchy than black people: white supremacy framing is all about how some classes are reserved to white people and not black people), and if you are claiming that it is not the case, you are the one with the burden of the proof.
While you have a point on raising that racism should not be reduced to only a class issue, you should have raised that as a precision around the discussion instead of presenting it as if racism has absolutely nothing to do with class and class sentiment.
To take back your parallel, what you do can be seen as:
"A person entered a bar and was raped" (what you say)
vs
"A woman entered a bar and was raped". While nobody here claims that men cannot be raped, there is social phenomenon that create a gender imbalance, and it is important to not reduce the situation to "it has nothing to do with gender and the social norms around it".
In the rest of your comment, you, yourself, are doing a lot of interpretations. The fact that someone noticed that a class factor may have had an impact does not mean that they or all readers will conclude that it is the only way racism can happen (that is a huge stretch: if they know what happened at Tulsa, they very probably know a lot of other cases where the "only due to class" theory does not hold up).
Same for "victim blaming": the fact that they were successful were obviously not used to excuse the massacre or pretend that somehow it was the black people's fault, the context is clearly to condemn the white racist people (and the success of the black people seems to be presented as an obvious additional factor on the racists, as it is obviously unfair to pretend that some people don't have the right to be successful).
I think the first comment was not totally perfect and would have been 100% fine if they would have simply added "class was one of the factor". But I think your reaction has way more problems and does a bigger disservice by reducing racism to a framework that can easily be instrumentalised by real racist people.
At this point insider trading issue has run away so hard I don't see how it can be tamed without revolutionary frameworks. If we look at crypto then I'm not sure we want to live in a world where insider trading is normalized either so we ought to start working on these new frameworks as soon as possible but nobody seems to care.
I’d argue that the level of corruption we’re seeing, not just in the USA but all over the Western world, hasn’t risen to a level that warrants revolutionary action.
> nobody seems to care
And it would seem that the masses tend to agree.
We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
The general population's standard of living HAS gone backwards too fast.
Just look at something like Office Space. Just twenty seven years ago, it was a satire of the indignities and disrespect of work life. Today, the movie's work environment would be incredibly cushy.
> hasn’t risen to a level that warrants revolutionary action.
A certain amount of corruption is normal - as Doctorow pointed out, all complex ecosystems evolve parasites. It's much better to have a democracy with some corruption than a police state that enforces its laws perfectly.
Now, when people realise the current state of their democracy and how it reflects the needs of the people, then they'll start considering bringing out the guillotines.
>We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
There is no we to prevent any revolution occurring once corruption or "mere" wealth distribution unsustainable discrepancy are passing some thresholds, after which it simply will feedbackloop exponentially.
Pauperization that allows some party to have chip exploitable labour too frightened to have strong collective claims is also building the social structure of bloody revolution as masses feel like rushing into brutality is the only viable left option.
Thresholds by themselves dont auto trigger some state change because the state is aware of them too.
The police and intelligence are well paid to keep an eye on all kinds of signals. Unless the situation reaches a point they cant pay the cops any voilence will be shut down fast, because over time they have become quite good at it. Just like we have become good at running gigantic boilers without them exploding. Even poor states are good at it. Because anyone running a farm, factory, depending on banks, telcos, ports, power grid etc are all very dependent on the state to keep the lights on. More efficent they get the more dependent they are on external structures staying in tact to stay afloat.
The world today is a much more complicated place, full of interdependcies(as covid showed us), than what it was when revolutions were seen as the solution to anything.
So Organizing and Voting still remains the easier way to cause change as tempratures rise. Thats the control and feedback mech.
Yes we should just calmly ignore private insurance death panels, propped up by politicians, killing treatable people at scale rather than put the fear in a few thousand rich people physics didn't see fit to spare from eventual biological death anyway (since they love to trot out that argument).
To say nothing of the processed food and automobile industries.
It was slow for 30 years, the last couple of years have been insane.
I'd say that either way the population will not rebel. If the government is smart they'll just pay for the populations Netflix, burgers and beer. It's enough to keep people passive.
> We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
We, today, are better not attempting revolution because revolutions are painful. But we are also on a downward slope which will eventually reach below a threshold where 2 things happen: their* life will be much worse off than any revolution, but also they will no longer be able to mount a revolution.
I've lived through a violent revolution. Not knowing what's happening, not knowing what tomorrow brings, while getting shot at are all terrifying. I can genuinely say that most of what came after was better. A few paid a high price for the several generations that came after to mostly have it better.
I am not advocating revolution, just doing what it takes to change course. Even voting appropriately could do it.
*I say they because it might not happen in our lifetime. But we are selling our kids' futures for our current comfort. They'll be the ones really paying our debt.
> Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
Worker's compensation in real terms has been almost flat for the last 50 years, 50 years which have seen the largest increase in productivity in recorded history by far. I'm surprised this is still not enough to you.
> Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
Well, given that people are behaving more and more violently towards said fat cats I think it's clear we're starting to reach a breaking point and people are caring. It wasn't too long ago that I saw people cheering on LinkedIn when that healthcare CEO got got, so if people are willing to put their professional profiles at risk you have to imagine it's far worse behind closed doors.
Personally I really dislike living in interesting times and greatly prefer advocating against corruption rather than letting things slide until they get a lot worse.
That’s until food and energy price increases become unbearable for the masses. While the first test is already here with gas prices, we’ll have the second test soon in the form of 50% price increases on food in developed Western countries.
In some places, like the Philippines, gas/fuel prices are up 70-100% since the start of the Special Four Day Operation in Iran. It's easy to say "who cares doesn't affect me", which sounds nice. But the Philippines is a major manufacturing hub of stuff that keeps life artificially cheap in the west. The rest of SE Asia is undergoing similar rapid price increases. Thailand, Malaysia, etc make lots of electronic components which will be facing a huge squeeze very soon.
The reason for those price increases is those countries don't have massive fuel stockpiles. The west does have big stockpiles, and they're artificially suppressing the price of fuel by releasing those stockpiles and hoping the special operation is over before their stockpiles run out. Because if prices shoot up now, people will realize just how truly disastrous it all is and actual consequences for various governments may be had, so the only option is to kick the can down the road and hope it somehow resolves itself.
Asia is in a particularly bad situation, because even for countries that do have stockpiles, they get basically all of their oil from Iran, the UAE, east coast of Saudi Arabia, etc. Now they have no oil. America can pretend it's a 4D chess move and now those countries will buy American oil and make their economy great again. But the thing is America isn't selling any additional oil to Asia. But America is 100% dependent on cheap things made in Asia, things that are built with plastic made from middle eastern oil and powered by electricity generated from middle eastern oil and shipped on boats running on middle eastern oil. All these things take months to show any effects to Americans and Europeans, so until then, it's just a game of burying heads in the sand until the situation suddenly explodes.
For a lot of us this perturbation hurts portfolios, tightens the belt, and hurts business investments… But oil and food production are tied together in numerous ways.
We’re looking at fuel shocks, downstream the agricultural, fertilizer, and food shocks are gonna cost untold anguish and many lives. Farmer suicides and famines, as the start of a destabilizing wave.
1) for the second time in my adult life I have to ask aloud how shit Dick Cheney was saying on 60 minutes ca 1993 escaped the notice of the entire US military and its commander in chief
2) the obvious lack of a post-strike plan and confusion about how mountains and waterways work make it hard to pin down how elementary and remedial the eff-ups here really are, so incompetent and indifferent
Very few people feel impacted by that. If you consider bombing Iran was going to happen anyway because distractions are needed, the money made by the whale that consistently predicts the movements of the current administration is a relatively small thing compared to starting a war for no good reason.
One possible solution is to make all trades public and traceable to the person who made the decision and the people who benefit from that.
It can be solved by enforcing the laws already on the books. Insider trading is illegal.
If the laws are not enforced or selectively enforced you live in a nascent fascist state, not a democracy, what you need is a return to the rule of law, not the abolition of it.
I don't think anyone who has been paying attention over the last year could conclude that laws are not being selectively enforced. So I guess the next question is what options provide a realistic way of restoring justice.
Interestingly enough, trading and gambling are things that a blockchain is a pretty good fit for. There is a public ledger and trace of ownership for the trades / lays. And depending on how it is set up, payout is autonomous, as long as no one party controls the network.
It's just that the problem is not the trading or betting side, the problem is the information producing side.
E.g. imagine he placed a bet that Maduro would get shot in is left eye and die.
Same goes for the congress. Them making money is by far a smaller issue compared to the havoc they can cause trying to make a few bucks on their crazy bets.
Did congress do it with classified ops data, or with their voting stuff?
The main difference between the two is that betting on the date of a classified op indirectly reveals classified data that can tip off an adversary and cost lives.
I actually don’t know the details of the specific crimes. Eg if you’re a soldier and you post on Facebook that you’re about to go on a raid to depose a head of state, that’s presumably a secrecy violation you would be punished severely for. The insider trading can be like this too in that you’re improperly using the information you are privy to due to your being an insider. If you’re a congressperson and you tweet that the government is about to do such a raid, I don’t know what the legality of that is – perhaps you have some kind of privilege to reveal these things and any censure must happen politically (eg impeachment, losing elections, etc) rather than legally. I don’t know what the rules for insider trading would then be – legislators are not insiders in the way that soldiers are.
Ignoring the moral argument, it isn’t all that clear to me that this would actually be a crime for a legislator under US securities law. It may be that new laws would be required to be able to punish legislators for this kind of behaviour.
He was charged with "unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.". Supposedly, unlawful use of government confidential information could also be applied to legislative and other people in the government
Between citizens united, gerrymandering, the electoral college, winner take all elections, and voter supression, I don't think we can say that "elections" in America reflect the will of the people.
I like how when people talk about corruption they think about Nancy Pelosi or some other congressman/senator making couple million $ on the stock market over their entire careers due to insider trading. Just last week Trump made a bet of around $1B on the price of oil going down before doing a fake announcement.
I too wonder why "Nancy Pelosi" has become basically synonymous with Congress insider trading when she's not even close to the top of the list among congresspeople.
Sexism will play a role, but a big part of the reason why Pelosi gets so much flak is that she did nothing to stop it when the democrats were in charge, thus directly paving the way to the current shitshow.
I think corruption happens long ago before Trump. I’m thinking more on the inequality of wealth and how a smaller percentage of people takes a bigger share of the wealth since I don’t know when. Trump is in fact the symptom of that corruption and part of the reason people elected him. But he definitely makes it worse especially in his second presidency.
Nowadays super riches run the show and even the illusion of democracy is gone.
Another thought: many political elites are probably waiting and pushing for Trump to fail to take over. It is us who are going to suffer.
> I like how when people talk about corruption they think about Nancy Pelosi or some other congressman/senator making couple million $ on the stock market over their entire careers due to insider trading
So, two things. First, she's made quite a bit more than a few million dollars. Second, she's been an example of being a "suspiciously good trader" for years and years and years. Has anything happened to her? Republicans talk about her and do nothing about it. Democrats say it's a conspiracy theory. The behavior has quite clearly been normalized.
The only reason we know about the trades in Congress is because they're following the law and reporting them. I don't think there is any evidence that members of Congress: 1) have access to classified info like this, and 2) are betting on polymarket.
That's not to say the behavior isn't extremely slimey but they are acting within the law. Your comment doesn't mention the executive branch and the various crypto "ventures" going on, like the Whitehouse dinner for investors of $TRUMP coin of which we have no idea who invested or what they got from it.
When the people feel everyone is corrupt without any evidence then the next step is getting actual corrupt leaders like Trump's government and soldiers like this that feel corruption is standard behavior
Well, the supreme court has already given Trump full immunity for things like this, so they could easily label it a crime and start charging anyone involved they don't like. What you described sounds hilarious and crazy right now, but I fully expect something like this to happen eventually while the US further descends into fascism.
And what I am saying is that the same articles of prosecution as in the soldier's case are applicable for their case too. Not going after them is a choice.
There's plenty of evidence of it happening, if you consider the odds of surges of pre-market trading of oil futures 20 minutes before Trump tweets on Iran happening coincidentally. The actual finding of who's who has to be done by the U.S. law enforcement, who aren't really interested.
There is circumstantial evidence. We need to collate that. But nothing trumps direct evidence. If someone has that I will bend over backwards to find a way to securely connect them with, at the very least, a reporter who can document it so it shows up in an internet search when an empowered staffer starts down this path.
Count 1, 4, and 5 are the crime of committing a crime. Crime 1 is commiting a crime for personal reasons. 4 is commiting a crime over the wire. 5 is commiting a crime using money.
I feel like if you followed the NBA scandal involving Chauncey Billups the wire fraud charge for insider prediction market trading was inevitable.
Damon Jones didn't work for the NBA and basically just told some people the status of an injury to LeBron because he hangs out with him (in exchange for money). His crime I guess is gambling illegally? But wire fraud (I think they even say "creating a fraudulent market") was thrown in there.
Seemed inevitable they were going to start charging prediction market insiders the same way.
Wire fraud is simply the crime of committing a crime over wire. It just always doubles the counts and intensifies the punishment. Same goes for Count 5.
It's interesting they don't think they can get him for leaking classified information. To me that seems like the biggest issue--I mean sure, it's bad he made money on it, but it would have been really bad if he'd gotten someone killed by blabbing to the internet.
did he leak the information, or just speculate on it? is it leaking classified info when pentagon officials order lots of pizza and thus inform the world that a military operation is being planned?
"A military operation is being planned" is very different from "Maduro will be kidnapped in the next x hours".
"Pentagon planning a military operation" is not exactly classified information as it is safe to assume that Pentagon is always planning a military operation.
And literally every other thing they do on the internet.. remember that Strava shit? You have relatively technically unsophisticated people with high level access and not a lot of adult supervision. That seems like a juicy target. I assume there are a lot of well funded and staffed outifts around the world who have noticed the same thing.
> "A military operation is being planned" is very different from "Maduro will be kidnapped in the next x hours".
IIRC, the bet was on "Nicolas Maduro out?":
> If Nicolás Maduro leaves office before February 1, 2026, then the market resolves to Yes.
So the bet wasn't specifically "Nicolas Maduro kidnapped?" or even "Nicolas Maduro out by January 3rd?" And IIRC there was a lot of Trump saber rattling about Venezuela in the days before, hence the creation of the bet. I could absolutely see a plausible way to link these publicly-available pieces of information into a winning bet:
The site that he bought the crypto from to make a bet could trace it back to him, and many, if not all, crypto trading sites have shady ties with some governemnts around the world.
But from the perspective of the US DoJ the right people got killed (assuming of course they've determined the operation was legal according to their own rules, e.g. US law). The issue here is this guy telegraphed operational plans to the entire world which could have gotten (from the DoJ's perspective) the wrong people killed.
Maybe I'm making an incorrect assumption, but I assumed the information was already classified. He was betting on an outcome of a planned military operation based on his knowledge of those plans. My assumption is that information is super closely guarded, and likely classified at a high level. Telegraphing your invasion plans is generally not something you do unless you want disaster, right?
“Our Office will continue to hold accountable those who misuse confidential or classified information in a way that undermines and exploits our national security.”
But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?
Unless the prosecution can prove that the trades meaningfully moved the market prices, it's probably going to be really hard to use the term "leaking".
I can't shake the feeling that there may be political reasons to not even attempt that angle. What legal precedent would it set if a judge actually ruled on that and the prosecution won? Which entities within the government would be financially inconvenienced?
So in prediction markets I've heard a lot of times people will collaborate in order to make certain predictions pay off higher sums by having more people put money on a certain bet.
Is it true with these markets the more people bet on a specific day and time, the value will increase more, increasing the overall payout? If that is true, I wonder if they're looking at anybody else helping place the bets or a group of people trying to wager a higher amount of money to increase the return?
It's a bit more nuanced than that, because we're not talking about outright market manipulation. Absent any other information, the market makers always assume that they might be trading against a better informed counterparty - so absent any other signal, the prices at which executions happen are themselves a signal.
Think about it: you have N market makers offering both sides of the trade with a spread between them. When there is no other meaningful activity, the best prices are more or less stable. Now someone comes in and buys one side of the trade. Each marker maker will, individually, make the same two decisions:
1. "If you bought at that price, I should raise my price and charge you more"
2. "Since you bought at that price, I must assume you have more information and I should get out the way to avoid an expensive mistake"
The magnitude of the decisions made depends on various factors, but as a short-hand the size of the made trades in respect to the overall liquidity available near the midpoint directs how strongly the market makers react. A tiny trickle of insignificant trades does not move the price in any meaningful way (unless the sizes are so small that the execution commission starts to make a difference). A sustained directional flood of trades will cause the midpoint (and volume) to move to the direction where the market makers can sell at higher prices and avoid accumulating any further losses.
Well yes. Someone has the other side of the bet, and it’s not 1:1 long:short. That’s how folks could hypothetically hire somebody to kill me, by putting $5M on “floam will survive the month” - if I’m not killed conspirators get their money back, with interest. But if I am verifiably dead, whoever knew in advance a hit man will kill me, that man gets paid.
The government is very big. They can have multiple priorities. The Dept of Justice does not provide medical care, education, or anything else you listed -- they prosecute crimes. And using classified military plans for personal gain while potentially putting fellow soldiers at risk seems like a crime that is worth prosecuting.
God money's not looking for the cure
God money's not concerned about the sick among the pure
God money, let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised
God money's not one to choose
No, you can't take it
No, you can't take it
No, you can't take that away from me
It seems like it would be highly demoralizing to US soldiers that they are prosecuted for betting on the outcomes of the battles they are risking their lives for but those insider trading commanding them aren't.
I just couldn't, in good conscience, keep bombing childrens schools under such demoralising conditions.
On the flip side: who if not me and my precision guided munitions, will protect America (and freedom) from the clear and present danger of 8 year old iranian girls.
"America will bomb you and 15 years later make a movie about how sad the soldiers are based on autobiographies of completely unrepentant sadists" remains true for another decade.
Imagine doing an easy tour in your air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office and then getting blown to bits by a ballistic missile because no one bothered to tell you about the war that was being initiated which would cause such missiles in retaliation. Yeah, that's demoralizing too.
I would offer a small correction to your point: Instead of "ballistic missile", I would substitute "Shahed-type drones". It is much easier to detect (and shoot down) a ballistic missile than a Shahed-type drone.
I don't think this is true at all? A ballistic missile is way harder and more expensive to shutdown (they are flying at Mach 5-10 while you can outrun that type of drone with a mid tier car on the freeway)
Shahed is very primitive in general and not hard to shot down but because its extremely cheap it can be used to overwhelm any type of air defenses. Wasting $4 million to destroy a $50k drone doesn't scale at all.
> Imagine doing an easy tour in your air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office and then getting blown to bits by a ballistic missile because no one bothered to tell you about the war that was being initiated which would cause such missiles in retaliation.
The purpose of my response wasn't about cost effectiveness; rather, it was about the lethality of a ballistic missile vs Shahed-type drone.
A ballistic missile is easily detected by a network of outer space satellites owned and operated by the US Space Force. Whether or not you can defend against it is a different question. There is sufficient time from the detected of ballistic missile launch to move to a hardened underground bunker. All US bases in the Middle East will have these. Soldiers will regularly train for incoming ballistic missile attacks and when/how to move to underground bunkers. As a result, it is very unlikely that soldiers in an "air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office" would be killed by an incoming ballistic missile.
On the other hand, a Shahed-type drone (similar to a cruise missile) is much harder to detect because they fly very low and difficult to catch on rader until close to base. As a result, soldiers on base will have much less time to move to underground bunkers.
If you are in Kuwait you will find yourself under rockets whether you knew in advance or not
I think the worse aspect is if the news of an attack being leaked to the defender and you are being blown to bits as their ballistic missiles are not decimated in their preemptive strike.
They referred to soldiers that were killed by the start of the war. They thought the situation is normal, war was started without them knowing, got killed.
I mean, surely everyone in the middle east knew a war was on the horizon. Obviously not the exact plan or day, but it wasn't a secret that usa was gearing up for a war.
I imagine they were pissed. I dont think anyone likes being in the middle of a war. Nonetheless in the weeks leading up it was clear USA was moving massive amounts of naval assets into the region. It was on the news 24/7. I'm sure everyone in the military would have been able to read the tea leaves that something was going down soonish, even if they didn't know precisely what or when.
> It seems like it would be highly demoralizing to US soldiers that they are prosecuted for betting on the outcomes of the battles they are risking their lives for but those insider trading commanding them aren't.
Why? The enlisted military has never had any issue with similar double standards in the past. George 'AWOL' Bush handily swept the military vote, as did Donald 'Bone Spurs' Trump.
Likewise, veterans routinely and overwhelmingly vote for people who cut veteran support and benefits, over people who don't.
If they think those people are fit to lead them, who are we to tell them they aren't?
They are just ordinary gambling unless you allow insider trading and manipulation, because that’s the only way the market can acquire and represent novel useful information.
But if you allow those things, you run into a host of well-documented problems which are the reason why those things are forbidden in other markets.
As it stands, prediction markets seem like a tech-aligned rebranding of age-old rigged gambling products.
> They are just ordinary gambling unless you allow insider trading and manipulation, because that’s the only way the market can acquire and represent novel useful information.
Representing only public information without agenda is useful in itself. Words are cheap, and which words you get to see and which words you don't get to see is according to some non-truth incentive. Prediction markets say "you get to make money if you know what the truth actually is". Media says "you get to make money if you entertain people".
It's unfortunate there's also significant negative side effects to financialized prediction markets. I'm more favorable to non-financial prediction markets like Manifold, which say "you get to have social status if you know what the truth is". Seems as though that's the right balance, although you could see how such non-financial prediction markets can be more easily defeated by dedicated non-truth actors if it became prominent in the public conversation.
In theory no, because it provides financial incentive to perform a comprehensive analysis of available data or conduct thorough investigations. In practice, yep.
The original point is to use crowd wisdom. Crowds seem better than single individuals to predict outcomes of certain types of events.
I think this is visible in sports betting markets. Unless all games are rigged, games outcomes are fairly random events, and betting markets are pretty good at assessing the probabilities of a team winning. Same thing happens in finance. Option markets are really good at assessing the probabilities of asset movements.
The thing though is that these markets are only good in predicting recurring events like game results or financial asset movements. They are good _overall_, as in, if you take 100,000 sport games, the bettings odds are going to be overall in line with what actually happens.
Hence some people deduced that crowds with skin in the game were wise in predicting random stuff. And what happened then is that some of them thought this kind of predictive power could apply to any kind of event, and then predictive markets were created, with the idea that crowds could magically come up with odds for anything, and that would be fairly correct. But what works for recurring events don't hold for single events like Maduro's capture or the end of the Iran war. So the odds in these market is only the result of influence and insider information.
The result is that the odds are generally completely off, unless there is insider information. That's kind of what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. The bets there were on loans defaulting. These events are rare enough that it's impossible to assess their probability easily. And so banks relied on rating agencies (influence), to price the odds of these events happening. Rating agencies were wrong on a lot of these bets, meaning all the bets were placed at very very wrong prices, resulting in the crisis we saw.
The weird outcome of it all, is that those prediction markets have become insider information detectors. That's how they caught the guy. Whoever is winning big on these markets is necessarily cheating.
But I guess the main takeaway for me is that society is in such a state that a lot of people actually bet big on these things. Probably a combination of being fed dreams of fortune since childhood and the american dream not delivering. It's all very sad.
Solving insider trading is fundamentally impossible due to the burden of proof.
However I am convinced that forcing people to keep their shares for even just one week would stabilize the markets enough to make insider trading much more obvious (and easier to prosecute). It would also force a shift on perspectives more on the long run, instead of focusing on immediate speculation.
This was a prediction market, not a proper market trade, and I am glad I live in a country where that is outlawed. This is untaxed, unregulated gambling.
Are prediction markets regulated? Is this about breaking the laws regarding prediction markets or is this about leaking classified information? I skimmed but not sure still.
Someone more cynical can say that this is about protecting Thiel’s investment(if people think it’s rigged may stop playing) or making sure that only big G makes money with classified information.
unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
So what law is broken exactly? Will an engineer with classified information on F-35 use that for fixing his car be also prosecuted? I guess no, so is this about leaking the Maduro operation?
Insider trading and outcome manipulation seems to be the norm on unregulated markets anyway. Whats the crime?
By the letter of the law the guy fixing his car should be prosecuted, but like nobody is going to know and it’s not going to happen. In this case it’s pretty obvious the law was broken.
Kalshi is regulated and trading in this way on Kalshi is explicitly illegal. PolyMarket does not operate under US laws and I don't know if the same insider trading rules are a separate violation on top of just participating.
Sure, but in some you’re explicitly predicting the time someone gets black bagged, or an invasion happens - or you’re predicting next months oil price, which may be a defacto proxy, but has less moral hazard if you’re a random special ops guy.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
I was under the impression that insider influence was the point of these systems? Want something to happen? Bet a lot of money that it won't, pulling the market forces towards the action you want.
It goes from "taking out a hit" to "betting that someone will live to next Thursday". It's such an obvious outcome of these systems that I was operating on the assumption that it was the actual point.
So maybe the thing this guy did wrong was to be so face-palmingly pants-on-head obvious about it that they had to shut it down?
Which is also horrifying if you think about it for more than a second.
"Want something to happen? Bet a lot of money that it won't" goes both ways. "Want to make money and have power over missile systems? Bet, and then make something happen."
“Super markets trade money for food. An obvious outcome is that someone without money will shoot the employees to steal food. Therefore the purpose of supermarkets is to facilitate murder”
Less so "supermarkets" specifically and moreso "capitalism" and the answers to your conclusion is obviously, yes.
This is why welfare systems exist. Because otherwise the system will push people to crime, especially so in our current implementation of Capitalism where it is possible to become unemployed/unemployable through no fault of one's own.
Nabbing the little guy for show, very much like Henry Hill taking one for Paulie and the gang. The same gang that robbed the Lufthansa vault at JFK Airport, stealing six million dollars in cash and jewelry.
When the history of this administration is written, provided that history itself has not been completely rewritten a la "1984," Goodfellas will be required reading/watching.
And the highly profitable daily mood-induced oil price bets will just be forgotten.
Wilhoit's Law:
Wilhoit's law.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
This might burst some bubbles but this is absolutely a little guy because anything below a field grade officer (or the CSM sidekick below brigade) is a little guy and a battalion is actually quite low on the food chain.
Yes, there are some hard working NCOs and junior Os out there that make shit happen, but they are not the decision makers and make for great fall guys when shit hits the fan.
He may be a little guy but that doesn't mean that he's a fall guy. The Special Forces at Fort Bragg are a law unto themselves. I've just finished reading The Fort Bragg Cartel and the things some of those guys have been up to, and the leniency of both their commanding officers and the local civilian police toward them, are shocking. Drug smuggling, murder, theft of arms, coming back from deployment with tens of thousands of dollars taped to their persons...not to mention the war crimes.
I read this as "why are they going after a soldier who made $30k when they could be going after guys who made seven figures off of expertly timed trades on going to war with Iran"
Pursuing this case doesn’t mean they’re excluding other cases. If you read the article this case was very clear because he made amateur moves and didn’t conceal his identity at all.
This was an easy nab. All leaks should be pursued regardless of who did it.
Zero chance? What odds are you offering, because this bet looks very appealing?
I am guessing that you would not actually go all-in against a penny, and I’m curious to know what implied probability you actually offer. I will see your bet amount as an expression of your confidence level. If you say that you don’t bet, I’ll take that as an indication that you have no confidence, and believe the probability to be something above 50%
Master sergeant is a respectable rank (first of senior NCO) but it’s not exactly a high ranking position. Speaking from AF experience, you’ll have a couple of them or higher in a 50 person squadron, and levels like group/wing command they’re oftentimes among the lowest ranking person in the room.
This is absolutely a low level soldier getting dragged.
According to Google Gemini, there are over 16,000 master sergeants. Might as well be some random, especially when it's literally the president himself, cabinet members, congress, and other cronies directly doing the same and even worse things.
As other comments said, this wasn’t exactly a “little guy” in rank.
He also made it all very obvious and traceable for them through the email addresses he used. From the report it doesn’t appear that he made any effort to conceal his identity or hide his tracks until afterward, by which time it was too late.
I don’t know why people are trying to defend this guy. We should be upset when anyone tries to use confidential information for personal gain. It’s also a security risk if anyone is incentivized to place bets based on confidential info.
I know you’re trying to make a separate point about Congress, but it’s silly to try to turn this into a class warfare thing. Congress didn’t even have this information at the time.
I haven't seen anyone defend his conduct, but it is natural to discuss his political clout because of this line on TFA:
> Today’s announcement makes clear no one is above the law
What others are saying, IIUC, is that no reasonable person believes an enlisted soldier (even a senior one) is above the law and that in fact there is a history of them being used as fall guys or scapegoats for people who do enjoy protection on the basis of their social class or government position.
Without this specific statement from the FBI director, then it would be "soldier gets caught doing bad thing" and the other part would be off topic. But the article itself introduces the idea of class and impunity.
> don’t know why people are trying to defend this guy
It’s a hot take. It’s also a one off. You don’t have to strategize building the case law to then enable further investigations and prosecutions, a process which takes year and is beyond the internet’s attention span. (Silver lining: these takes are also mostly meaningless. Gears will grind on.)
Because the path to Rule of Law is not deleting/refusing to enforce all laws.
Rule of Law means no one is above the law. In practice this is an aspiration (in the U.S. and everywhere else) but giving up on that isn’t going to make the world better.
When the history of this administration is written
I often think about how much we can trust history 20-30 years from now. It is hard to trust history from hundreds of years ago, either because it was written by victors or because there just isn't enough material in the first place. I suppose we have the opposite problem now (and in the future) - too much noise and junk, whole bunch of it generated by AI slop - where does one even start?
For everyone saying this isn't some little guy... compared to the administration which is engaging in the same thing, it's a little guy designed to be a distraction.
Oh, and let’s not forget the politicians like Pelosi, the Clintons and many other top Democratic Party politicians, repeatedly engaged in insider trading of stocks, often times using classified information, for multi million dollars profits. Almost never investigated. Practically never convicted.
Everything about this statement is completely wrong.
False, conspiratorial, dogmatic, juvenile.
The arrest and indictment of someone for betting on Polymarket - which has not yet been tested in court - is going to give huge attention and precedence to the likely illegal activities of some of Polymarket shenanigans coming out of the white house.
Edit: if this was political, it would be pushed in the other direction. This is the NY DOJ doing their jobs.
I don't think this is going to be Hacker News fascinating discourse, but the current USA administration is so openly, brazenly, continuously, gleefully corrupt; continuously fire people with ethics and competence and bring in the in-group of equally corrupt ; and have continuously been rewarded for that behaviour; that I feel the OP is merely observationally factual.
The current Executive is 'brazenly criminal', yes, but there is nothing much 'factual; about the OP's comment.
None of this remotely has to do with 'Conservatism', it's certainly not ideological, and it's likely not political either.
This indictment is going to cause a massive headache for White House as they have likely been involved in 'insider trading'.
This is actually regular Justice, finally seeing some movement, to cynically characterize it as otherwise, totally against common sense (aka it's bad for the WH) is just unsound. I think it demonstrates the kind of bubble a lot of people live in, which is maybe understandable in the current climate, where horrible behaviours have gone unpunished. But still. This is the story of a state doj doing their job.
It's by the Southern District of NY and the case will get national attention.
This is a hugely negative thing for the Administration, as District Attorneys, SEC staff, etc. are going to be actively seeking how this could parlay into investigations and indictments of the people in the White House making Polymarket and other speculative bets just before government actions.
There are 100's lawyers reading that right now getting inspired on how they can take action to turn their investigative powers onto whoever those actors are aka family members or associates of those in the White House / Cabinet.
An investigation could be done at the State Level, away from the control of the DoJ, and, if it yields evidence, it wouldn't have to even make it's way through the courts in order to be political destructive.
The suggestion by the OP this has anything to do with ideology or the ruling power throwing one under the bus is ridiculous. Note that the ruling regime isn't above such a thing, but that's not what is happening here because it definitely does not serve their interests - it's the total opposite.
This could turn into a political nightmare that crashes the party.
Edit: if we want to be 'hopefully cynical' - recognize that this could absolutely be the vector that takes the man down, or even many of them. Imagine how many WH, Cabinet Members, family members could get investigated for this and under purvue of state investigators where the investigation can't get shut down.
Wilholt's essay is a nice one. But it amounts to defining the opposition in a way that's easy to tear apart followed by tearing it apart. It's a cute trick but isn't much of a basis for serious discussion.
Watch: Wilholt's essay consists of exactly and only one indefensible, rhetorical sleight of hand. Consequently, no one can honestly defend it. Attempts to do so are undeserving of serious scrutiny.
After tearing down a strawman, he claims high ground:
> The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
But you'll get a fair bit of support for Wilholt's so-called anti-conservative principle from a fair number of prominent conservative thinkers.
The modern US conservative party really does seem to believe only in that one principle and nothing else. They will pardon actual sex traffickers like Andrew Tate and worse as long as they're on their side. They will defend any action at all by Trump, no matter how vile or illegal or stupid or wrong. It's not a sleight of hand if its true.
Go read a few months worth of the National Review.
Many prominent conservative thinkers are not particularly big fans of Trump. They like portions of his initiatives and policies but not him as a standard bearer, because he does dumb, ill-principled stuff at odds with conservatism.
Peggy Noonan of the WSJ can't write two sentences without letting you know how much she disdains Trump, e.g.
A few annecdotal voices dont change reality; american conservatism is poisoned, and must be rejected by all sane/moral humans for multiple generations.
I guess I should clarify it to the modern US conservative party. I know there are a few dissenters even there, but 95% of them vote the way he wants and of course we could have impeached Trump and many cabinet officials long ago if they voted that way. They unquestionably enable this administration. I think its fair to say they represent the conservatives broadly, certainly they are the people the nations conservative citizens elected and continue to support.
I made a similar argument and was downvoted. Yeah, the well-connected pay a fine when caught. This guy's mistake was not knowing he did not belong to that club. He amounted to no more than a fall guy.
There seems to be a pattern that if someone who was not pre-selected by some elites ends up making their own money (I.e. real 'self-made') they are swiftly attacked by the system. On the other hand, look at Nancy Pelosi; she didn't get into any trouble.
Are people allowed to be self-made anymore?
For me personally, after years of planning and hard work, I once managed to secure myself about $40k of passive income from a blockchain in crypto; this lasted a few years but eventually the founders suspiciously abandoned the entire tech stack (for no reason) and switched to Ethereum; this destroyed the opportunity for me; literally lost that stream entirely. Now, recently, I was able to re-establish a passive income stream of about $10k per year from a non-crypto source; this is from an opportunity I took over 10 years ago... I'm worried about that being taken away somehow.
Authority-wise, a MSG in the army isn't exactly a little guy either. That's quite a senior role. In their battalion they likely head either operations, intelligence or supply.
This isn't joe schlub making side bets here. This is a senior late-career enlisted in an extremely sensitive position violating all of their trust and authority to cash out big.
That MSG works for a Captain or a Lieutenant. If said MSG is good, there might be a future of advising a commanding officer on uniforms and length of grass at increasingly higher echelons. The rank is not newsworthy.
There are a lot of (rightly) critical comments here about the imbalance between prosecutions of high-ups taking bets and the grunts (in this case though, a senior-ranking soldier).
But it seems to me that the closer to the frontline you go, the betrayal is even worse; if the story is true, then these are his friends and comrades he is endangering for financial gain - its not just an abstract risk argued away by simple high-level corruption.
People with a lot of money have certainly been making bets (plenty of recent news items on that), but I think the point being raised by others is that it's suspicious that only the lower orders have so far apparently been pursued.
People act like the pervasiveness of insider trading in Congress is an indisputable fact, when there have been only a few trades with suspicious timing, which is similar to what you would expect statistically from 535 wealthier people trading with no insider information. The only case where I feel like insider trading is likely was Richard Burr's sales before COVID.
Maybe. I'm not actually that invested in people voting. But that doesn't negate the hypocrisy of complaining when you're, through inaction, endorsing the status quo.
There have been multiple times where the final vote count was the difference of a handful of votes.
No one is guilting anyone to vote and some will say that neither party represents what they want and that sucks. But ultimately there has to be one side that even if you don't overall like them you would still rather they get elected.
So vote for who you think might be best. And if they have policies you don't agree then contact your representative and say "I voted for you but do not want xyz policy". The more who speak up the better.
I'm not American. And surprise: regardless of your reasons you get judged by the government you put in power, since foreign policy is how the rest of us experience your choices.
And your choices are evidently you're completely okay with the current situation as well.
Its valid to say a lot of things. But it doesn't escape you from having to own those choices.
You are what you'll accept, and you looked at the choices given and said "I'm okay with either one".
Because the consequences of whatever mutual dissatisfaction you had still means one of them gained power and implemented their agenda anyway. And you were okay with that.
You don't get to not make a decision and then pretend you aren't culpable for your inaction.
the other person was talking about not making a decision, so you've transposed an idea not mentioned at all onto my comment
good luck out there
what to remember: the goal of the parties are to win friends and influence people, it's a weird meme that you aren't doing that and neither is the other party. time to re-evaluate the communication style yeah? proselytizing isn't working
The idea that nobody in American politics is trying to win friends nor influence people is indeed a very weird meme! As you say, that implies there's a big lane of persuasion that isn't being filled for some reason, even though everyone who's heard of Dale Carnegie knows it ought to be.
Have you considered the possibility that the meme might be false? That would explain neatly why it's so weird.
It’s arguable that opening the doors for greedy soldiers to do a little insider trading and inadvertently expose the illegal covert violent raid that they’re party to might be one of the few positive outcomes in a society gamified by Polymarket
I thought prodiction markets benefit from insider knowledge. Isn't the whole point that insiders make bets, thereby surfacing knowledge and allowing for more accurate forecasts? So wouldn't we want more military service members making bets? In this case, any potential military target of the US would really want this insider info.
> So wouldn't we want more military service members making bets
Who is the "we" in this sentence?
Yes, insider knowledge makes the prediction market more accurate (albeit at the cost of being less "fair"). However US government doesn't want prediction markets to accurately predict the timing of their secret military operations. Hence the arrest.
I think the problem is similar to insider sports betting, which is that once someone has made a bet, they will try to influence policy decisions in order to profit from that bet.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
Although, it would be amusing to create a sports league where the athletes are expressly permitted to wager on the outcome of their games.
I think the problem is similar to insider sports betting, which is that once someone has made a bet, they will try to influence policy decisions in order to profit from that bet.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
This isn’t actually the case. Congress members and their employees have been banned from insider trading since the 2012 STOCK Act. That’s why they do it through family members now
Does polymarket have trial markets? Maybe 12% chance of being a mistrial - oh wait just shot up to 99%; new user called the_judge88 just bet $100K on that?
He screwed himself by taking steps to show how much of an amateur he was, by trying to delete his polymarket account and change the email address on his crypto exchange account
He should have just cashed out and donated 20% of it to Mar-a-Lago saying exactly what he did and a thank you. It's a little too low for a club membership but since the President's family is a shareholder of Polymarket I think it would have been seen as attracting liquidity
AG would have been instructed to stamp out the investigation, no charges would have been filed
His op-sec probably wasn't sufficient to hide his gains via multiple small bets, no-log VPN, and cycling through Monnero both ways. The next prediction market to directly use Monero and no-log will be untraceable.
Nice. I'm against polymarket allowing bets on war precisely because of this. But I think we can all agree that perpetrators hold more liability than the platforms, they are the true cuplrits of warcrimes/treason.
So crypto fraud gets deprioritized, with cases like the one against Nader Al-Naji dropped entirely, while Trump and his family profit massively from crypto and corruption themselves.
Yet prediction market fraud is made an enforcement priority, except to say that nobody close to Trump's own cabinet will be prosecuted - the little guys will be made an example of to make it seem like those at the top are taking the moral high-ground. "Every accusation is a confession."
The more surprising thing is that the common invasion soldier also benefits financially. So far we only knew that the oligarch system that is currently controlling the USA, also benefits massively - the stock market changes with regards to Iran showed this already, but also see the more recent comments made in regards not just to the orange king himself, but his family dynasty and their involvement; in particular orange king jr. is involved a LOT here, also with regards to that mentioned soldier (see the companies that were involved, crypto-stuff and so forth). This reminds me a bit of Epstein, in a way - so far the US justice system claims that only two people (the dead Epstain and his wife) organised all those naughty parties. Well, that is logistically simply impossible, aside from the question how they had all that money. How deep do these networks used by the superrich go? You have more and more victims who claimed not only to have been underage, but also service-sold to other rich people. Why are these latter people not in court? How corrupt is that system? Evidently we now know that these invasion soldiers also bet on their own invasions - I guess when they claim "we are doing work for Good" here they mean this with regards to their own pockets.
Just as Smedley D. Butler once stated, many many years ago: "War is a racket"
so they catched this guy,
yet pelosi and 300 others ate making millions every month, and nothing..
really
people who has woken up, there is no words for this,
yet the 80% are still asleep
What was his rank? What was his job? What was his clearance? How did he have access?
The canadians have the info. He was special forces. He was enlisted (not an officer). He was involved, or at least privy to, the planning of the Venezuela thing.
Feds waited no time to drop the indictment and make arrest. 3 months is lightning fast for a white collar crime. Wall St. ppl who commit insider trading pay a fine and admit no wrongdoing, discouraging the profits, and only after many years and trades have passed. Goes to show how elites play by a different set of rules. His mistake was not knowing he was not in that club. Have no idea why this was downvoted. I see so many other people who make this argument about privileged elites and always get upvoted.
In desperate times in the age of AI, one needs to grift in order to survive. This soldier was just doing that to maybe...enrich themselves like the politicians also breaking insider trading laws?
This is why no-one at the top institutions, politicians (Pelosi), presidents (Trump) and everyone else in proximity gets arrested or charged for insider trading in all forms. It doesn't apply to them.
This is a reminder that the rule makers are allowed to grift and break their own rules, but will arrest you for copying them or doing the same thing because this soldier was not part of their club.
He wasn't invited to their private insider group chat. So this solider was arrested and charged instead.
lol no SEC lawsuit or civil complaint: strait to the indictment and arrest. Goes to show how elites are truly a privileged class. They get to admit "no guilt" and forfeit profits, avoiding prosecution. Have no idea why this was downvoted. I see so many other people who make this argument about privileged elites and always get upvoted. I never have the right opinion on anything.
The suspect didn't trade securities. SEC doesn't have jurisdiction. The curiosity–to me as a layman–is that this is being prosecuted by the DoJ versus under the UCMJ.
"Van Dyke was indicted on charges that included unlawful use of confidential information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, and wire fraud."
Polymarket isn't doing anything about it. It's the US government because obviously while I suppose this info made a more accurate "prediction" it also yk, leaked confidential state military secrets which is something the government can prosecute. They're not being prosecuted for insider trading on Polymarket
Insider bets distort the probabilities, creating a conflict of interest and causing market manipulation. We don't let athletes bet on their own games, because some will deliberately lose. They will do this when the odds are good and they will make more money. So you don't get accurate predictions, because the more probable something is, the better the odds and the more money to be made by someone manipulating the odds.
End result is you place bets against things you want to happen. eg. USA invading Iran. If you win the bet, you make money. If you lose the bet, you still win because the USA invaded Iran. And maybe that happened because people in power took your bet and influenced the odds in their favor. A fully deniable market for bribes. Same reason you can't bet on unnatural death, because it crowdsources assassination.
So had this not involved presumed military secrets, it would have been legal? So it was the classified info that made it a crime, and then the insider trading aspect was later tacked on? It's crazy how the government adds so many charges. This guy is screwed.
That's part of the Chesterton's Fence nature of why these markets are bad. We know insider trading is a bad thing for the stock market, so it's policed. These markets, being a post-regulation internet free for all, aren't.
It's rather obviously illegal to leak classified intel by taking public actions based off of it... that's practically the meaning of the word "classified".
That’s hilarious … so he’s arrested and put on trial and all the senate and congress are doing the exact same and free? lol
Only aristocrats can play that game. The soldier is being punished for doing something not allowed for his class status.
This is how a caste system works. People is not judged based on their actions but their relationship to power.
You're almost right, but "class" and "caste" are not synonyms and cannot be used interchangeably.
Well, as social mobility between classes becomes increasingly difficult, they become more and more like castes...
You can already hear the pseudo-theories, justifying the differences for eternity. Blue blooded, of lazy blood, etc. Apply yourselfs and you will win.. adding insult to injury, when you can not win, you must in addition be lazy with only yourself to blame.
OP is right. Status games take many shapes, distinct castes is one special shape.
Sounds like people’s lot in life is becoming hereditary. Caste can be used.
> their relationship to power
The word "power" is so ironic in human cultures:
It's the people with the guns (and muscles) that have the literal physical power. They could shoot the aristocrats dead if they wanted to.
The aristocrats' "power" is make-believe like the rest of their papers and numbers: The various psychological barriers which dissuade the gun-bearers from ever reaching the "want to" part.
Historically aristocracy was the military class. Nowadays in authoritarian societies it looks like it's mostly matter of time before military takes the lead.
Not so much class or caste, but a dual-state where an elite have a normative or lawless state, and specific or arbitrary others suffer a parallel prerogative or punitive state. This is the essence of corrupt authoritarianism.
Most Americans share a delusion of perpetual glory days like a former star high school football quarterback with the refusal to accept factual reality that their country isn't uniformly excellent and is terrible in many ways including being extremely superficial, corrupt, dangerous, unhealthy, unhappy, paranoid, over-reacting, immature, selfish, unfair, disinformed, and unequal.
More like three. One class where you can do whatever you can pay for, another with a set of annoying but almost reasonable rules and the last one for whom any actions and their mere existence is illegal, but whose presence is very much relied upon to do things.
> This is how a caste system works.
Not at all. In a caste system a lower caste person will get attacked if he (or especially she) has any success at all. Whether or not what they did was legal or not does not factor into the equation. First priority is that the highest up dalit is lower than the worst drunkard brahmin, even if they have to kill them.
Tulsa once had what was known as Black Wall Street. There were too many successful black men, so 1921 in the whites massacred everybody. They even brought in planes and dropped bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
Are we now not at all allowed to reference problems in other societies? We can complain about western society, and complaints from 100 years ago, when even my grandfather wasn't born yet, are valid criticism of America/Europe/... but things that happen today in India, Pakistan, Turkey are off limits?
There were too many successful black men
That's absolutely not what Wikipedia says. There was indeed a horrible massacre, but why do you feel the need to falsify the reasons?
Would you feel bad if it was actually true? Would it pose even a minor inconvenience for your life if that was exactly the case? What's the problem anyway.
The broader theme of antagonism to Black success motivating the thoroughness of the destruction is a common observation about Tulsa.
>Mobs of white residents, some of whom had been armed and appointed as deputies by city government officials, attacked black residents and their homes and businesses. The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street.
What part of this paragpraph are you having a hard time with?
Well, I am also having trouble with stating it as a fact, that the reason was they were too wealthy. Might have played a role later, but that is not clear to me from what is stated on wiki:
"The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building.[25] He was arrested and rumors spread that he was to be lynched. Several hundred white residents assembled outside the courthouse, appearing to have the makings of a lynch mob. A group of approximately 50–60 black men, armed with rifles and shotguns, arrived at the jail to support the sheriff and his deputies in defending Rowland from the mob. Having seen the armed black men, some of the whites who had been at the courthouse went home for their own guns. There are conflicting reports about the exact time and nature of the incident, or incidents, that immediately precipitated the massacre.
According to the 2001 Commission, "As the black men were leaving, a white man attempted to disarm a tall, African American World War I veteran. A struggle ensued, and a shot rang out." Then, according to the sheriff, "all hell broke loose."[26] The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men was greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood."
So you take issue with the idea that an out of mob that burned down 35 blocks of a mid sized city was motivated by envy and resentment of the prosperous black community.
Instead, you assert it was a mob that assembled to lynch a young man who was arrested for assault after he stepped on the foot of or grabbed the arm of a white female elevator operator when he tripped in the elevator. I guess they got out of hand when there was resistance to their murdering the kid.
Why is that distinction so important to you?
Interesting. I stated zero complaints with the Wikipedia article.
I already specified:
There were too many successful black men
As my concern, because you made up this reason. How does your paste show this as the reason? Why are you ignoring the reasons in the Wikipedia article, which are clearly listed, including a timeline, and just making a reason up?
The sad part is, there is no need to embellish or make up things here. The event was series of excessive, horrible escalations, nothing Wikipedia says indicates it was planned, or that your made up reason was why. There is no need to falsify reasons.
Why are you presenting your imagined reasons as fact?
EDIT: I just don't think people get it.
Stating a presumption as fact, turns in-the-moment into premeditation. It also means something else, which needs to be considered.
By trying to tie this event to "wealthy black men", it seems as if simple, general racism wasn't the cause alone. That somehow, black people had to be wealthy to receive this sort of treatment. Here's another parallel:
"A woman entered a bar and was raped"
vs
"A woman in a short skirt entered a rough bar and was raped"
It adds a layer of "victim blaming". These black men weren't slaughtered because they were black, no, that could never happen! It was instead because they were wealthy, that's why!
By trying to tie this to the fact they were wealthy, you diminish the case over overall racism as a motivator for these sorts of act.
[delayed]
It's... pretty simple.
Yes, precisely. The facts, the escalation, what happened, the report, it's all very simple and laid out at wikipedia. So why the need for fabricated reasons?
It is very simple.
Your refusal to interact with subtext has me guffawing. I wonder if you even recognize what you're doing.
In the history of revolution, there is never (except in elementary school) all that much weight put on the singular act which instigated the final result. The conditions in place (Jim Crow laws, Southern pride, etc.) lead up to a final moment which our monkey brains like to point to as the cause but in reality there is a simmering cultural froth which could boil over in any number of ways: it just happens that one of the ways is what's described in the Wikipedia article, but it could have started many other ways. All of our understanding about the experience of being Black in the US during that time helps to contextualize the extreme and disproportionate outburst of violence by the White population as racially motivated, serving under an ideology best described as ur-"Great Replacement Theory".
In simpler words, the destruction of Black Wall Street is not without precedent, indeed this was merely one of the more famous and complete examples of destroying the wealth that Black people enjoyed, if only briefly due to the hate of those visiting violence upon them.
You really read a single wikipedia article and think you understand what happened and why? Impressive levels of dunning-kruger on display.
Go read a book about it, and then if you still want to, you can tell us why this interpretation is wrong.
But you are doing the same as what you are complaining about.
Racism is a complex phenomenon not limited to the simplistic view "they don't like black people". This representation is doing a disservice when some truly racist people are then justifying their actions and beliefs by saying "I cannot be racist, I'm friend with the garbage man who is black: he is a good black man, is polite to me and stay at his place. So, if I'm not racist, what I'm doing is just legitimate".
In the context of Tulsa, it is difficult to believe that the frustration of racist people seeing black people more successful than them has not contributed to the situation. It seems very natural and logical (and that's even the core of "white supremacy": it clearly states that white people deserve a better position in the social hierarchy than black people: white supremacy framing is all about how some classes are reserved to white people and not black people), and if you are claiming that it is not the case, you are the one with the burden of the proof.
While you have a point on raising that racism should not be reduced to only a class issue, you should have raised that as a precision around the discussion instead of presenting it as if racism has absolutely nothing to do with class and class sentiment.
To take back your parallel, what you do can be seen as: "A person entered a bar and was raped" (what you say) vs "A woman entered a bar and was raped". While nobody here claims that men cannot be raped, there is social phenomenon that create a gender imbalance, and it is important to not reduce the situation to "it has nothing to do with gender and the social norms around it".
In the rest of your comment, you, yourself, are doing a lot of interpretations. The fact that someone noticed that a class factor may have had an impact does not mean that they or all readers will conclude that it is the only way racism can happen (that is a huge stretch: if they know what happened at Tulsa, they very probably know a lot of other cases where the "only due to class" theory does not hold up). Same for "victim blaming": the fact that they were successful were obviously not used to excuse the massacre or pretend that somehow it was the black people's fault, the context is clearly to condemn the white racist people (and the success of the black people seems to be presented as an obvious additional factor on the racists, as it is obviously unfair to pretend that some people don't have the right to be successful).
I think the first comment was not totally perfect and would have been 100% fine if they would have simply added "class was one of the factor". But I think your reaction has way more problems and does a bigger disservice by reducing racism to a framework that can easily be instrumentalised by real racist people.
That's the urban myth, yes.
Well documented historical events aren’t urban myths.
At this point insider trading issue has run away so hard I don't see how it can be tamed without revolutionary frameworks. If we look at crypto then I'm not sure we want to live in a world where insider trading is normalized either so we ought to start working on these new frameworks as soon as possible but nobody seems to care.
Just ban gambling. That solves good part of it.
Then ENFORCE EXISTING LAWS. That solves good part of it.
Talking about any other solutions will have to wait for govt that's not crooked. It doesn't need revolution, it needs to not have criminals at helm
> without revolutionary frameworks
I’d argue that the level of corruption we’re seeing, not just in the USA but all over the Western world, hasn’t risen to a level that warrants revolutionary action.
> nobody seems to care
And it would seem that the masses tend to agree.
We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
The general population's standard of living HAS gone backwards too fast.
Just look at something like Office Space. Just twenty seven years ago, it was a satire of the indignities and disrespect of work life. Today, the movie's work environment would be incredibly cushy.
> hasn’t risen to a level that warrants revolutionary action.
A certain amount of corruption is normal - as Doctorow pointed out, all complex ecosystems evolve parasites. It's much better to have a democracy with some corruption than a police state that enforces its laws perfectly.
Now, when people realise the current state of their democracy and how it reflects the needs of the people, then they'll start considering bringing out the guillotines.
>We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
There is no we to prevent any revolution occurring once corruption or "mere" wealth distribution unsustainable discrepancy are passing some thresholds, after which it simply will feedbackloop exponentially.
Pauperization that allows some party to have chip exploitable labour too frightened to have strong collective claims is also building the social structure of bloody revolution as masses feel like rushing into brutality is the only viable left option.
Thresholds by themselves dont auto trigger some state change because the state is aware of them too.
The police and intelligence are well paid to keep an eye on all kinds of signals. Unless the situation reaches a point they cant pay the cops any voilence will be shut down fast, because over time they have become quite good at it. Just like we have become good at running gigantic boilers without them exploding. Even poor states are good at it. Because anyone running a farm, factory, depending on banks, telcos, ports, power grid etc are all very dependent on the state to keep the lights on. More efficent they get the more dependent they are on external structures staying in tact to stay afloat.
The world today is a much more complicated place, full of interdependcies(as covid showed us), than what it was when revolutions were seen as the solution to anything.
So Organizing and Voting still remains the easier way to cause change as tempratures rise. Thats the control and feedback mech.
Except that organizing and voting doesn't actually accomplish anything.
Sad that you have given up
Sad that you want a return to the Reign of Terror.
What's your alternative? The present situation is intollerable and even a bad solution is better than no solution.
Yes we should just calmly ignore private insurance death panels, propped up by politicians, killing treatable people at scale rather than put the fear in a few thousand rich people physics didn't see fit to spare from eventual biological death anyway (since they love to trot out that argument).
To say nothing of the processed food and automobile industries.
You really need to read up on your history.
So a slow decline is OK?
Nah, life would be better if a cleptocrat couldn’t find his way into power.
It was slow for 30 years, the last couple of years have been insane.
I'd say that either way the population will not rebel. If the government is smart they'll just pay for the populations Netflix, burgers and beer. It's enough to keep people passive.
Slow?
> We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
We, today, are better not attempting revolution because revolutions are painful. But we are also on a downward slope which will eventually reach below a threshold where 2 things happen: their* life will be much worse off than any revolution, but also they will no longer be able to mount a revolution.
I've lived through a violent revolution. Not knowing what's happening, not knowing what tomorrow brings, while getting shot at are all terrifying. I can genuinely say that most of what came after was better. A few paid a high price for the several generations that came after to mostly have it better.
I am not advocating revolution, just doing what it takes to change course. Even voting appropriately could do it.
*I say they because it might not happen in our lifetime. But we are selling our kids' futures for our current comfort. They'll be the ones really paying our debt.
> Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
Worker's compensation in real terms has been almost flat for the last 50 years, 50 years which have seen the largest increase in productivity in recorded history by far. I'm surprised this is still not enough to you.
I think they meant revolutionary as in new and novel
> Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
Well, given that people are behaving more and more violently towards said fat cats I think it's clear we're starting to reach a breaking point and people are caring. It wasn't too long ago that I saw people cheering on LinkedIn when that healthcare CEO got got, so if people are willing to put their professional profiles at risk you have to imagine it's far worse behind closed doors.
Personally I really dislike living in interesting times and greatly prefer advocating against corruption rather than letting things slide until they get a lot worse.
That’s until food and energy price increases become unbearable for the masses. While the first test is already here with gas prices, we’ll have the second test soon in the form of 50% price increases on food in developed Western countries.
Where is the evidence that petrol prices are unbearable, by the metric you’re proposing.
In some places, like the Philippines, gas/fuel prices are up 70-100% since the start of the Special Four Day Operation in Iran. It's easy to say "who cares doesn't affect me", which sounds nice. But the Philippines is a major manufacturing hub of stuff that keeps life artificially cheap in the west. The rest of SE Asia is undergoing similar rapid price increases. Thailand, Malaysia, etc make lots of electronic components which will be facing a huge squeeze very soon.
The reason for those price increases is those countries don't have massive fuel stockpiles. The west does have big stockpiles, and they're artificially suppressing the price of fuel by releasing those stockpiles and hoping the special operation is over before their stockpiles run out. Because if prices shoot up now, people will realize just how truly disastrous it all is and actual consequences for various governments may be had, so the only option is to kick the can down the road and hope it somehow resolves itself.
Asia is in a particularly bad situation, because even for countries that do have stockpiles, they get basically all of their oil from Iran, the UAE, east coast of Saudi Arabia, etc. Now they have no oil. America can pretend it's a 4D chess move and now those countries will buy American oil and make their economy great again. But the thing is America isn't selling any additional oil to Asia. But America is 100% dependent on cheap things made in Asia, things that are built with plastic made from middle eastern oil and powered by electricity generated from middle eastern oil and shipped on boats running on middle eastern oil. All these things take months to show any effects to Americans and Europeans, so until then, it's just a game of burying heads in the sand until the situation suddenly explodes.
For a lot of us this perturbation hurts portfolios, tightens the belt, and hurts business investments… But oil and food production are tied together in numerous ways.
We’re looking at fuel shocks, downstream the agricultural, fertilizer, and food shocks are gonna cost untold anguish and many lives. Farmer suicides and famines, as the start of a destabilizing wave.
1) for the second time in my adult life I have to ask aloud how shit Dick Cheney was saying on 60 minutes ca 1993 escaped the notice of the entire US military and its commander in chief
2) the obvious lack of a post-strike plan and confusion about how mountains and waterways work make it hard to pin down how elementary and remedial the eff-ups here really are, so incompetent and indifferent
How is inside training outside of US s thing? Please give dpurces
> but nobody seems to care.
Very few people feel impacted by that. If you consider bombing Iran was going to happen anyway because distractions are needed, the money made by the whale that consistently predicts the movements of the current administration is a relatively small thing compared to starting a war for no good reason.
One possible solution is to make all trades public and traceable to the person who made the decision and the people who benefit from that.
It can be solved by enforcing the laws already on the books. Insider trading is illegal.
If the laws are not enforced or selectively enforced you live in a nascent fascist state, not a democracy, what you need is a return to the rule of law, not the abolition of it.
I don't think anyone who has been paying attention over the last year could conclude that laws are not being selectively enforced. So I guess the next question is what options provide a realistic way of restoring justice.
Interestingly enough, trading and gambling are things that a blockchain is a pretty good fit for. There is a public ledger and trace of ownership for the trades / lays. And depending on how it is set up, payout is autonomous, as long as no one party controls the network.
Speculation has historically been solved by a workers vanguard party.
You're wrong.
It's just that the problem is not the trading or betting side, the problem is the information producing side.
E.g. imagine he placed a bet that Maduro would get shot in is left eye and die.
Same goes for the congress. Them making money is by far a smaller issue compared to the havoc they can cause trying to make a few bucks on their crazy bets.
Did congress do it with classified ops data, or with their voting stuff?
The main difference between the two is that betting on the date of a classified op indirectly reveals classified data that can tip off an adversary and cost lives.
Is there a specific case of someone in congress disclosing classified information by betting on it that we can link to?
I actually don’t know the details of the specific crimes. Eg if you’re a soldier and you post on Facebook that you’re about to go on a raid to depose a head of state, that’s presumably a secrecy violation you would be punished severely for. The insider trading can be like this too in that you’re improperly using the information you are privy to due to your being an insider. If you’re a congressperson and you tweet that the government is about to do such a raid, I don’t know what the legality of that is – perhaps you have some kind of privilege to reveal these things and any censure must happen politically (eg impeachment, losing elections, etc) rather than legally. I don’t know what the rules for insider trading would then be – legislators are not insiders in the way that soldiers are.
Ignoring the moral argument, it isn’t all that clear to me that this would actually be a crime for a legislator under US securities law. It may be that new laws would be required to be able to punish legislators for this kind of behaviour.
He was charged with "unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.". Supposedly, unlawful use of government confidential information could also be applied to legislative and other people in the government
> senate and congress
Senate and congress are both elected. Their re-election is effectively jury nullification.
The people do not care about the crimes.
Between citizens united, gerrymandering, the electoral college, winner take all elections, and voter supression, I don't think we can say that "elections" in America reflect the will of the people.
I like how when people talk about corruption they think about Nancy Pelosi or some other congressman/senator making couple million $ on the stock market over their entire careers due to insider trading. Just last week Trump made a bet of around $1B on the price of oil going down before doing a fake announcement.
I too wonder why "Nancy Pelosi" has become basically synonymous with Congress insider trading when she's not even close to the top of the list among congresspeople.
You really need to wonder?
The 10 best performing historical congress people stocks are all republican,a ll men, all funded by lobbys like heritage foundation...
But the face of insider trading becomes a democrat and a woman
Its sooo diffcult to guess why it happened
> But the face of insider trading becomes a democrat and a woman
It’s hardly her face. After so much plastic surgery, it’s arguable it’s not even her own anymore.
Sexism will play a role, but a big part of the reason why Pelosi gets so much flak is that she did nothing to stop it when the democrats were in charge, thus directly paving the way to the current shitshow.
I think corruption happens long ago before Trump. I’m thinking more on the inequality of wealth and how a smaller percentage of people takes a bigger share of the wealth since I don’t know when. Trump is in fact the symptom of that corruption and part of the reason people elected him. But he definitely makes it worse especially in his second presidency.
Nowadays super riches run the show and even the illusion of democracy is gone.
Another thought: many political elites are probably waiting and pushing for Trump to fail to take over. It is us who are going to suffer.
> I like how when people talk about corruption they think about Nancy Pelosi or some other congressman/senator making couple million $ on the stock market over their entire careers due to insider trading
So, two things. First, she's made quite a bit more than a few million dollars. Second, she's been an example of being a "suspiciously good trader" for years and years and years. Has anything happened to her? Republicans talk about her and do nothing about it. Democrats say it's a conspiracy theory. The behavior has quite clearly been normalized.
Nancy pelosi’s net worth is around a quarter billion dollars, most of it attributable to insider trading.
Already known to the classic Roman people:
"Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" [1]
[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_licet_Iovi,_non_licet_bov...
It's not legal for him, but it is for them.
That’s not it.
It’s that there isn’t an Attorney General who would dare attempt raise a case against the hand that feeds them.
In theory the separation of powers should prevent this.
What does separation of powers mean when both houses, the president, and the Supreme Court are controlled by the same party?
At the moment the US is just Big Poland (PiS era).
Yes, the military have fewer rights than civilians. That's a feature.
Which specific senate and congress members made Polymarket bets on the Maduro raid? Oh, none of them? So it's not "the exact same", then, is it?
Not in their own names, at least.
The only reason we know about the trades in Congress is because they're following the law and reporting them. I don't think there is any evidence that members of Congress: 1) have access to classified info like this, and 2) are betting on polymarket.
That's not to say the behavior isn't extremely slimey but they are acting within the law. Your comment doesn't mention the executive branch and the various crypto "ventures" going on, like the Whitehouse dinner for investors of $TRUMP coin of which we have no idea who invested or what they got from it.
Any evidence of that?
Think about it. He's stealing from the US military. The politicians are stealing from you. Who's laughing now?
Palpatine: I am the senate!
Some, and probably very few.
When the people feel everyone is corrupt without any evidence then the next step is getting actual corrupt leaders like Trump's government and soldiers like this that feel corruption is standard behavior
Its a big club and you ain't in it.
Yes. This is Trump signaling that insider trading is for actual insiders only.
Since this is relevant to many HN comments, copy-pasted the charges from the pdf indictment in the linked page:
Count 1 - Unlawful Use of Confidential Government Information for Personal Gain
Count 2 - Theft of Nonpublic Government Information
Count 3 - Commodities Fraud
Count 4 - Wire Fraud
Count 5 - Engaging in a Monetary Transaction in Property Derived from Specified Unlawful Activity
> Count 5 - Engaging in a Monetary Transaction in Property Derived from Specified Unlawful Activity
For a moment there I read this as the unlawful activity was Maduro's arrest, and someone made money on that fact.
Maduro's kidnapping was unlawful.
Most kidnappings are...
Well, the supreme court has already given Trump full immunity for things like this, so they could easily label it a crime and start charging anyone involved they don't like. What you described sounds hilarious and crazy right now, but I fully expect something like this to happen eventually while the US further descends into fascism.
Huh that’s interesting. The sycophants in DC seem to be able to do everything listed here with no repercussions.
> sycophants in DC
Who? Because if you have evidence of military secrets being leaked through prediction markets, we actually need that journalistic record maintained.
I don't think the parent mentioned military secrets in particular? But the insider trading is already well documented e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cge0grppe3po
Pretty sure Count 1 through 5 above cover insider trading by administration officials too.
The problem is "insider trading" has a definition and acting based on knowledge of government secrets isn't what it is.
And what I am saying is that the same articles of prosecution as in the soldier's case are applicable for their case too. Not going after them is a choice.
IANAL but what you state seems to literally fall under the STOCK Act of 2012. It is one kind of insider trading.
> the insider trading
The suspect hasn't been charged with insider trading. (OP said those "in DC seem to be able to do everything listed.")
> The suspect hasn't been charged with insider trading.
I think that was the point GP was making.
I don't know who, but there are a lot of news articles about high volume oil trading activities shortly before publicly military action.
There's plenty of evidence of it happening, if you consider the odds of surges of pre-market trading of oil futures 20 minutes before Trump tweets on Iran happening coincidentally. The actual finding of who's who has to be done by the U.S. law enforcement, who aren't really interested.
> plenty of evidence of it happening
There is circumstantial evidence. We need to collate that. But nothing trumps direct evidence. If someone has that I will bend over backwards to find a way to securely connect them with, at the very least, a reporter who can document it so it shows up in an internet search when an empowered staffer starts down this path.
You don’t think the Trump admin leaked any secrets at all? No chats on signal? Nothing like that?
Hey hey now - the occasional $200? $250? fine is devastating enough on our selfless, dedicated, public servants!
Count 3, how is this a commodity?
Count 1, 4, and 5 are the crime of committing a crime. Crime 1 is commiting a crime for personal reasons. 4 is commiting a crime over the wire. 5 is commiting a crime using money.
The only real crime is Count 2: Theft of info.
I feel like if you followed the NBA scandal involving Chauncey Billups the wire fraud charge for insider prediction market trading was inevitable.
Damon Jones didn't work for the NBA and basically just told some people the status of an injury to LeBron because he hangs out with him (in exchange for money). His crime I guess is gambling illegally? But wire fraud (I think they even say "creating a fraudulent market") was thrown in there.
Seemed inevitable they were going to start charging prediction market insiders the same way.
> Count 4 - Wire Fraud
I almost always see this charge. Seems too strong as law
Wire fraud is simply the crime of committing a crime over wire. It just always doubles the counts and intensifies the punishment. Same goes for Count 5.
Wire fraud turns a state case into a federal case.
Why would this be civilian versus the business of a JAG?
It's interesting they don't think they can get him for leaking classified information. To me that seems like the biggest issue--I mean sure, it's bad he made money on it, but it would have been really bad if he'd gotten someone killed by blabbing to the internet.
did he leak the information, or just speculate on it? is it leaking classified info when pentagon officials order lots of pizza and thus inform the world that a military operation is being planned?
"A military operation is being planned" is very different from "Maduro will be kidnapped in the next x hours".
"Pentagon planning a military operation" is not exactly classified information as it is safe to assume that Pentagon is always planning a military operation.
Yes, it seems in this case an adversary who was paying attention could have learned something very, very valuable.
Yes. Especially if the casino (or "prediction market") has access to the identities of players via id verification, fingerprinting, or other means.
You mean any non crypto payment system? :)
Going to guess that anyone in the U.S. military has their crypto wallet aggresively profiled by various spy agencies.
And literally every other thing they do on the internet.. remember that Strava shit? You have relatively technically unsophisticated people with high level access and not a lot of adult supervision. That seems like a juicy target. I assume there are a lot of well funded and staffed outifts around the world who have noticed the same thing.
> "A military operation is being planned" is very different from "Maduro will be kidnapped in the next x hours".
IIRC, the bet was on "Nicolas Maduro out?":
> If Nicolás Maduro leaves office before February 1, 2026, then the market resolves to Yes.
So the bet wasn't specifically "Nicolas Maduro kidnapped?" or even "Nicolas Maduro out by January 3rd?" And IIRC there was a lot of Trump saber rattling about Venezuela in the days before, hence the creation of the bet. I could absolutely see a plausible way to link these publicly-available pieces of information into a winning bet:
* Trump talking tough about Venezuela
* Spike in DC pizza activity on January 2nd
The site that he bought the crypto from to make a bet could trace it back to him, and many, if not all, crypto trading sites have shady ties with some governemnts around the world.
Well, a lot of people got killed this way, too.
But from the perspective of the US DoJ the right people got killed (assuming of course they've determined the operation was legal according to their own rules, e.g. US law). The issue here is this guy telegraphed operational plans to the entire world which could have gotten (from the DoJ's perspective) the wrong people killed.
If that happened, could they retroactively classify it?
Maybe I'm making an incorrect assumption, but I assumed the information was already classified. He was betting on an outcome of a planned military operation based on his knowledge of those plans. My assumption is that information is super closely guarded, and likely classified at a high level. Telegraphing your invasion plans is generally not something you do unless you want disaster, right?
Yeah the DoJ proclaims,
“Our Office will continue to hold accountable those who misuse confidential or classified information in a way that undermines and exploits our national security.”
But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?
Unless the prosecution can prove that the trades meaningfully moved the market prices, it's probably going to be really hard to use the term "leaking".
I can't shake the feeling that there may be political reasons to not even attempt that angle. What legal precedent would it set if a judge actually ruled on that and the prosecution won? Which entities within the government would be financially inconvenienced?
So in prediction markets I've heard a lot of times people will collaborate in order to make certain predictions pay off higher sums by having more people put money on a certain bet.
Is it true with these markets the more people bet on a specific day and time, the value will increase more, increasing the overall payout? If that is true, I wonder if they're looking at anybody else helping place the bets or a group of people trying to wager a higher amount of money to increase the return?
It's a bit more nuanced than that, because we're not talking about outright market manipulation. Absent any other information, the market makers always assume that they might be trading against a better informed counterparty - so absent any other signal, the prices at which executions happen are themselves a signal.
Think about it: you have N market makers offering both sides of the trade with a spread between them. When there is no other meaningful activity, the best prices are more or less stable. Now someone comes in and buys one side of the trade. Each marker maker will, individually, make the same two decisions:
The magnitude of the decisions made depends on various factors, but as a short-hand the size of the made trades in respect to the overall liquidity available near the midpoint directs how strongly the market makers react. A tiny trickle of insignificant trades does not move the price in any meaningful way (unless the sizes are so small that the execution commission starts to make a difference). A sustained directional flood of trades will cause the midpoint (and volume) to move to the direction where the market makers can sell at higher prices and avoid accumulating any further losses.Well yes. Someone has the other side of the bet, and it’s not 1:1 long:short. That’s how folks could hypothetically hire somebody to kill me, by putting $5M on “floam will survive the month” - if I’m not killed conspirators get their money back, with interest. But if I am verifiably dead, whoever knew in advance a hit man will kill me, that man gets paid.
It seems strange, but that must be why I'm not a lawyer :p
You’re just seeing, clearly, the priorities of the US.
Is it helping sick citizens? No. Is it feeding the hungry? No. Free education, housing the un housed or protecting the environment? No, no , no.
To be perfectly clear, it’s not giving vets the benefits they deserve or keeping soldiers safe either.
Money. The priority is money.
Getting it. And making sure those that don’t have it don’t get it.
The government is very big. They can have multiple priorities. The Dept of Justice does not provide medical care, education, or anything else you listed -- they prosecute crimes. And using classified military plans for personal gain while potentially putting fellow soldiers at risk seems like a crime that is worth prosecuting.
God money's not looking for the cure God money's not concerned about the sick among the pure God money, let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised God money's not one to choose No, you can't take it No, you can't take it No, you can't take that away from me
It seems like it would be highly demoralizing to US soldiers that they are prosecuted for betting on the outcomes of the battles they are risking their lives for but those insider trading commanding them aren't.
I just couldn't, in good conscience, keep bombing childrens schools under such demoralising conditions.
On the flip side: who if not me and my precision guided munitions, will protect America (and freedom) from the clear and present danger of 8 year old iranian girls.
truly so sad how the troops must feel
"America will bomb you and 15 years later make a movie about how sad the soldiers are based on autobiographies of completely unrepentant sadists" remains true for another decade.
I wonder who the american sniper of iran will be
Imagine doing an easy tour in your air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office and then getting blown to bits by a ballistic missile because no one bothered to tell you about the war that was being initiated which would cause such missiles in retaliation. Yeah, that's demoralizing too.
There will be derivative contracts of prediction markets to predict if an insider is indicted for betting on a specific prediction.
And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if an insider in the prosecutor's office bet on that contract.
And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if a special prosecutor will prosecute the other prosecutor.
And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if an insider in the special prosecutor's office bet on the other contract.
(additional derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god).
> additional derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god
We already know that Jesus will come back in an election year
> derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god
We already bet on the weather.
Which is totally up the gods — or a hairdryer:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/hairdryer-or-l...
I would offer a small correction to your point: Instead of "ballistic missile", I would substitute "Shahed-type drones". It is much easier to detect (and shoot down) a ballistic missile than a Shahed-type drone.
I don't think this is true at all? A ballistic missile is way harder and more expensive to shutdown (they are flying at Mach 5-10 while you can outrun that type of drone with a mid tier car on the freeway)
Shahed is very primitive in general and not hard to shot down but because its extremely cheap it can be used to overwhelm any type of air defenses. Wasting $4 million to destroy a $50k drone doesn't scale at all.
The OP wrote:
The purpose of my response wasn't about cost effectiveness; rather, it was about the lethality of a ballistic missile vs Shahed-type drone.A ballistic missile is easily detected by a network of outer space satellites owned and operated by the US Space Force. Whether or not you can defend against it is a different question. There is sufficient time from the detected of ballistic missile launch to move to a hardened underground bunker. All US bases in the Middle East will have these. Soldiers will regularly train for incoming ballistic missile attacks and when/how to move to underground bunkers. As a result, it is very unlikely that soldiers in an "air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office" would be killed by an incoming ballistic missile.
On the other hand, a Shahed-type drone (similar to a cruise missile) is much harder to detect because they fly very low and difficult to catch on rader until close to base. As a result, soldiers on base will have much less time to move to underground bunkers.
start charging congresspeople with insider trading first, before you charge any regular soldier
if rules dont apply universally, then screw these rules altogether
If you are in Kuwait you will find yourself under rockets whether you knew in advance or not
I think the worse aspect is if the news of an attack being leaked to the defender and you are being blown to bits as their ballistic missiles are not decimated in their preemptive strike.
They referred to soldiers that were killed by the start of the war. They thought the situation is normal, war was started without them knowing, got killed.
Not knowing in advance was an important factor
I mean, surely everyone in the middle east knew a war was on the horizon. Obviously not the exact plan or day, but it wasn't a secret that usa was gearing up for a war.
The war was surprised and host of people said so - goverments, expats living ij region, locals. And were pisssed
I imagine they were pissed. I dont think anyone likes being in the middle of a war. Nonetheless in the weeks leading up it was clear USA was moving massive amounts of naval assets into the region. It was on the news 24/7. I'm sure everyone in the military would have been able to read the tea leaves that something was going down soonish, even if they didn't know precisely what or when.
They should have kept an eye on the prediction markets.
> would be highly demoralizing
Those people should quit. Sour grapes isn’t an excuse for putting others’ lives at risk.
I don't think active duty special forces can just "quit", can they?
Or, your brigade’s master sergeant needs the invasion to hit on the 28th rather than Mar 1st.
> It seems like it would be highly demoralizing to US soldiers that they are prosecuted for betting on the outcomes of the battles they are risking their lives for but those insider trading commanding them aren't.
Why? The enlisted military has never had any issue with similar double standards in the past. George 'AWOL' Bush handily swept the military vote, as did Donald 'Bone Spurs' Trump.
Likewise, veterans routinely and overwhelmingly vote for people who cut veteran support and benefits, over people who don't.
If they think those people are fit to lead them, who are we to tell them they aren't?
I actually completely agree with your last phrase. Who are you to tell them anything, particularly with such ironic condescension?
This looks like the wallet lol - https://polyintel.io/trader/0x31a56e9e690c621ed21de08cb559e9...
Greed is always the undoing of such criminals.
If he'd stuck to $500 - $1000 bets, he could have stayed under the radar. And, over the period of his career, earned well north of $400k.
What’s the point of prediction markets?
They are just ordinary gambling unless you allow insider trading and manipulation, because that’s the only way the market can acquire and represent novel useful information.
But if you allow those things, you run into a host of well-documented problems which are the reason why those things are forbidden in other markets.
As it stands, prediction markets seem like a tech-aligned rebranding of age-old rigged gambling products.
> They are just ordinary gambling unless you allow insider trading and manipulation, because that’s the only way the market can acquire and represent novel useful information.
Representing only public information without agenda is useful in itself. Words are cheap, and which words you get to see and which words you don't get to see is according to some non-truth incentive. Prediction markets say "you get to make money if you know what the truth actually is". Media says "you get to make money if you entertain people".
It's unfortunate there's also significant negative side effects to financialized prediction markets. I'm more favorable to non-financial prediction markets like Manifold, which say "you get to have social status if you know what the truth is". Seems as though that's the right balance, although you could see how such non-financial prediction markets can be more easily defeated by dedicated non-truth actors if it became prominent in the public conversation.
In theory no, because it provides financial incentive to perform a comprehensive analysis of available data or conduct thorough investigations. In practice, yep.
The original point is to use crowd wisdom. Crowds seem better than single individuals to predict outcomes of certain types of events.
I think this is visible in sports betting markets. Unless all games are rigged, games outcomes are fairly random events, and betting markets are pretty good at assessing the probabilities of a team winning. Same thing happens in finance. Option markets are really good at assessing the probabilities of asset movements.
The thing though is that these markets are only good in predicting recurring events like game results or financial asset movements. They are good _overall_, as in, if you take 100,000 sport games, the bettings odds are going to be overall in line with what actually happens.
Hence some people deduced that crowds with skin in the game were wise in predicting random stuff. And what happened then is that some of them thought this kind of predictive power could apply to any kind of event, and then predictive markets were created, with the idea that crowds could magically come up with odds for anything, and that would be fairly correct. But what works for recurring events don't hold for single events like Maduro's capture or the end of the Iran war. So the odds in these market is only the result of influence and insider information.
The result is that the odds are generally completely off, unless there is insider information. That's kind of what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. The bets there were on loans defaulting. These events are rare enough that it's impossible to assess their probability easily. And so banks relied on rating agencies (influence), to price the odds of these events happening. Rating agencies were wrong on a lot of these bets, meaning all the bets were placed at very very wrong prices, resulting in the crisis we saw.
The weird outcome of it all, is that those prediction markets have become insider information detectors. That's how they caught the guy. Whoever is winning big on these markets is necessarily cheating.
But I guess the main takeaway for me is that society is in such a state that a lot of people actually bet big on these things. Probably a combination of being fed dreams of fortune since childhood and the american dream not delivering. It's all very sad.
What about the rest of the Trump clan and their shady shit?
Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket...it's just comical
Solving insider trading is fundamentally impossible due to the burden of proof.
However I am convinced that forcing people to keep their shares for even just one week would stabilize the markets enough to make insider trading much more obvious (and easier to prosecute). It would also force a shift on perspectives more on the long run, instead of focusing on immediate speculation.
This was a prediction market, not a proper market trade, and I am glad I live in a country where that is outlawed. This is untaxed, unregulated gambling.
It would do nothing. You'd get an increase in derivatives volume with the same underlying effect.
Are prediction markets regulated? Is this about breaking the laws regarding prediction markets or is this about leaking classified information? I skimmed but not sure still.
Someone more cynical can say that this is about protecting Thiel’s investment(if people think it’s rigged may stop playing) or making sure that only big G makes money with classified information.
From the article:
unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
So what law is broken exactly? Will an engineer with classified information on F-35 use that for fixing his car be also prosecuted? I guess no, so is this about leaking the Maduro operation?
Insider trading and outcome manipulation seems to be the norm on unregulated markets anyway. Whats the crime?
By the letter of the law the guy fixing his car should be prosecuted, but like nobody is going to know and it’s not going to happen. In this case it’s pretty obvious the law was broken.
People have been prosecuted several times for using classified information to win WarThunder forum arguments.
These two videos might be of some help
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A654vzQTGbQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN4njIQcSR4
Kalshi is regulated and trading in this way on Kalshi is explicitly illegal. PolyMarket does not operate under US laws and I don't know if the same insider trading rules are a separate violation on top of just participating.
Why would Polymarket not operate under US laws? It's based in New York, and has already been fined by the CFTC. It's all in the wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymarket
All fungible markets are prediction markets. The idea that only some are is a mirage.
Sure, but in some you’re explicitly predicting the time someone gets black bagged, or an invasion happens - or you’re predicting next months oil price, which may be a defacto proxy, but has less moral hazard if you’re a random special ops guy.
Wilhoit’s Law
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Albeit wrongly attributed. [1]
[1]: https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...
I was under the impression that insider influence was the point of these systems? Want something to happen? Bet a lot of money that it won't, pulling the market forces towards the action you want.
It goes from "taking out a hit" to "betting that someone will live to next Thursday". It's such an obvious outcome of these systems that I was operating on the assumption that it was the actual point.
So maybe the thing this guy did wrong was to be so face-palmingly pants-on-head obvious about it that they had to shut it down?
Which is also horrifying if you think about it for more than a second.
"Want something to happen? Bet a lot of money that it won't" goes both ways. "Want to make money and have power over missile systems? Bet, and then make something happen."
“Super markets trade money for food. An obvious outcome is that someone without money will shoot the employees to steal food. Therefore the purpose of supermarkets is to facilitate murder”
Less so "supermarkets" specifically and moreso "capitalism" and the answers to your conclusion is obviously, yes.
This is why welfare systems exist. Because otherwise the system will push people to crime, especially so in our current implementation of Capitalism where it is possible to become unemployed/unemployable through no fault of one's own.
Nabbing the little guy for show, very much like Henry Hill taking one for Paulie and the gang. The same gang that robbed the Lufthansa vault at JFK Airport, stealing six million dollars in cash and jewelry.
When the history of this administration is written, provided that history itself has not been completely rewritten a la "1984," Goodfellas will be required reading/watching.
And the highly profitable daily mood-induced oil price bets will just be forgotten.
Wilhoit's Law:
Wilhoit's law.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
https://pylimitics.net/wilhoits-law/
> nabbing the little guy
Politics aside, he isn't a "little guy". He apparently holds the rank of master sergeant. That's a senior battalion-level role and somewhat political.
This isn't some random E-4 getting dragged.
This might burst some bubbles but this is absolutely a little guy because anything below a field grade officer (or the CSM sidekick below brigade) is a little guy and a battalion is actually quite low on the food chain.
Yes, there are some hard working NCOs and junior Os out there that make shit happen, but they are not the decision makers and make for great fall guys when shit hits the fan.
He may be a little guy but that doesn't mean that he's a fall guy. The Special Forces at Fort Bragg are a law unto themselves. I've just finished reading The Fort Bragg Cartel and the things some of those guys have been up to, and the leniency of both their commanding officers and the local civilian police toward them, are shocking. Drug smuggling, murder, theft of arms, coming back from deployment with tens of thousands of dollars taped to their persons...not to mention the war crimes.
Compared to a member of US Congress, or the senior executive branch, or the CEO class, they’re still nobody and the “little guy”.
Not that it’s defensible behavior.
Is he important enough to get a presidential pardon? That's how you know whether he's a "little guy".
To be fair, that bar is quite a bit lower these days, but still..
What's the going rate for pardons these days?
I read this as "why are they going after a soldier who made $30k when they could be going after guys who made seven figures off of expertly timed trades on going to war with Iran"
He profited $400K.
Pursuing this case doesn’t mean they’re excluding other cases. If you read the article this case was very clear because he made amateur moves and didn’t conceal his identity at all.
This was an easy nab. All leaks should be pursued regardless of who did it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Trump's insiders own't be investigated
He's actually too proud about it to hide it.
A 400 million plane "donation"
There is zero chance this escalates further off this guy.
Zero chance? What odds are you offering, because this bet looks very appealing?
I am guessing that you would not actually go all-in against a penny, and I’m curious to know what implied probability you actually offer. I will see your bet amount as an expression of your confidence level. If you say that you don’t bet, I’ll take that as an indication that you have no confidence, and believe the probability to be something above 50%
You could place a prediction bet probably.
Careful, you'll have Ka$hPatel wondering who to throw under a bus just for the giggles, the p0wn, and the extra $100 for his stripper lounge charity.
> he isn’t a little guy
His salary this year was probably about $118k on standard pay scales. I’m not sure what your definition of little guy is, but to me that qualifies
(Not trying to be condescending to anybody here, that’s not far off my salary and I’d definitely call myself the little guy)
Master sergeant is a respectable rank (first of senior NCO) but it’s not exactly a high ranking position. Speaking from AF experience, you’ll have a couple of them or higher in a 50 person squadron, and levels like group/wing command they’re oftentimes among the lowest ranking person in the room.
This is absolutely a low level soldier getting dragged.
A master sergeant is not remotely significant in the world of politics.
If he was "behind the fence", at most he would be a team sergeant or maybe even assistant team sergeant. Talking 4-6 members max.
They fired 4-star generals on a whim. The military is expected to be as loyal as the rest.
According to Google Gemini, there are over 16,000 master sergeants. Might as well be some random, especially when it's literally the president himself, cabinet members, congress, and other cronies directly doing the same and even worse things.
One soldier being arrested does not prevent others from being arrested. If anything, it sets a precedent.
Yesterday, people could justifiably say that betting on polymarket had essentially no consequences.
Today, we learned there can be consequences.
If in a year’s time this is the only person to ever be charged, that’s a different story.
As other comments said, this wasn’t exactly a “little guy” in rank.
He also made it all very obvious and traceable for them through the email addresses he used. From the report it doesn’t appear that he made any effort to conceal his identity or hide his tracks until afterward, by which time it was too late.
Well, if people in Congress, the Supreme Court, the administration, etc. don't have to conceal their "activities", why should this guy?
He wasn't a "little guy" but apparently his only mistake was not being high enough.
I don’t know why people are trying to defend this guy. We should be upset when anyone tries to use confidential information for personal gain. It’s also a security risk if anyone is incentivized to place bets based on confidential info.
I know you’re trying to make a separate point about Congress, but it’s silly to try to turn this into a class warfare thing. Congress didn’t even have this information at the time.
I haven't seen anyone defend his conduct, but it is natural to discuss his political clout because of this line on TFA:
> Today’s announcement makes clear no one is above the law
What others are saying, IIUC, is that no reasonable person believes an enlisted soldier (even a senior one) is above the law and that in fact there is a history of them being used as fall guys or scapegoats for people who do enjoy protection on the basis of their social class or government position.
Without this specific statement from the FBI director, then it would be "soldier gets caught doing bad thing" and the other part would be off topic. But the article itself introduces the idea of class and impunity.
Nobody is defending this person.
> ...but it’s silly to try to turn this into a class warfare thing.
You can ignore the class warfare but the class warfare isn't ignoring you/your country.
> don’t know why people are trying to defend this guy
It’s a hot take. It’s also a one off. You don’t have to strategize building the case law to then enable further investigations and prosecutions, a process which takes year and is beyond the internet’s attention span. (Silver lining: these takes are also mostly meaningless. Gears will grind on.)
Because the path to Rule of Law is not deleting/refusing to enforce all laws.
Rule of Law means no one is above the law. In practice this is an aspiration (in the U.S. and everywhere else) but giving up on that isn’t going to make the world better.
They don't call 'em cannon fodder for nothin'!
Per Goodfellas, "Paulie and the gang" ended up in jail while Henry Hill received witness protection. So, it wasn't just for show
When the history of this administration is written
I often think about how much we can trust history 20-30 years from now. It is hard to trust history from hundreds of years ago, either because it was written by victors or because there just isn't enough material in the first place. I suppose we have the opposite problem now (and in the future) - too much noise and junk, whole bunch of it generated by AI slop - where does one even start?
For everyone saying this isn't some little guy... compared to the administration which is engaging in the same thing, it's a little guy designed to be a distraction.
Oh, and let’s not forget the politicians like Pelosi, the Clintons and many other top Democratic Party politicians, repeatedly engaged in insider trading of stocks, often times using classified information, for multi million dollars profits. Almost never investigated. Practically never convicted.
Yes, please, by all means with full transparency and public trials.
Then clear the docket because you're going to need a lot of investigators to even begin on the Trump administration.
Here's a recent article from the American Bar Association on the rampant and on-going f*ckery.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-righ...
Everything about this statement is completely wrong.
False, conspiratorial, dogmatic, juvenile.
The arrest and indictment of someone for betting on Polymarket - which has not yet been tested in court - is going to give huge attention and precedence to the likely illegal activities of some of Polymarket shenanigans coming out of the white house.
Edit: if this was political, it would be pushed in the other direction. This is the NY DOJ doing their jobs.
...
I don't think this is going to be Hacker News fascinating discourse, but the current USA administration is so openly, brazenly, continuously, gleefully corrupt; continuously fire people with ethics and competence and bring in the in-group of equally corrupt ; and have continuously been rewarded for that behaviour; that I feel the OP is merely observationally factual.
The current Executive is 'brazenly criminal', yes, but there is nothing much 'factual; about the OP's comment.
None of this remotely has to do with 'Conservatism', it's certainly not ideological, and it's likely not political either.
This indictment is going to cause a massive headache for White House as they have likely been involved in 'insider trading'.
This is actually regular Justice, finally seeing some movement, to cynically characterize it as otherwise, totally against common sense (aka it's bad for the WH) is just unsound. I think it demonstrates the kind of bubble a lot of people live in, which is maybe understandable in the current climate, where horrible behaviours have gone unpunished. But still. This is the story of a state doj doing their job.
What? Military trials are not necessarily public.
It's by the Southern District of NY and the case will get national attention.
This is a hugely negative thing for the Administration, as District Attorneys, SEC staff, etc. are going to be actively seeking how this could parlay into investigations and indictments of the people in the White House making Polymarket and other speculative bets just before government actions.
There are 100's lawyers reading that right now getting inspired on how they can take action to turn their investigative powers onto whoever those actors are aka family members or associates of those in the White House / Cabinet.
An investigation could be done at the State Level, away from the control of the DoJ, and, if it yields evidence, it wouldn't have to even make it's way through the courts in order to be political destructive.
The suggestion by the OP this has anything to do with ideology or the ruling power throwing one under the bus is ridiculous. Note that the ruling regime isn't above such a thing, but that's not what is happening here because it definitely does not serve their interests - it's the total opposite.
This could turn into a political nightmare that crashes the party.
Edit: if we want to be 'hopefully cynical' - recognize that this could absolutely be the vector that takes the man down, or even many of them. Imagine how many WH, Cabinet Members, family members could get investigated for this and under purvue of state investigators where the investigation can't get shut down.
This was charged by DOJ not under a military tribunal
Wilholt's essay is a nice one. But it amounts to defining the opposition in a way that's easy to tear apart followed by tearing it apart. It's a cute trick but isn't much of a basis for serious discussion.
Watch: Wilholt's essay consists of exactly and only one indefensible, rhetorical sleight of hand. Consequently, no one can honestly defend it. Attempts to do so are undeserving of serious scrutiny.
After tearing down a strawman, he claims high ground:
> The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
But you'll get a fair bit of support for Wilholt's so-called anti-conservative principle from a fair number of prominent conservative thinkers.
The modern US conservative party really does seem to believe only in that one principle and nothing else. They will pardon actual sex traffickers like Andrew Tate and worse as long as they're on their side. They will defend any action at all by Trump, no matter how vile or illegal or stupid or wrong. It's not a sleight of hand if its true.
Go read a few months worth of the National Review.
Many prominent conservative thinkers are not particularly big fans of Trump. They like portions of his initiatives and policies but not him as a standard bearer, because he does dumb, ill-principled stuff at odds with conservatism.
Peggy Noonan of the WSJ can't write two sentences without letting you know how much she disdains Trump, e.g.
A few annecdotal voices dont change reality; american conservatism is poisoned, and must be rejected by all sane/moral humans for multiple generations.
I guess I should clarify it to the modern US conservative party. I know there are a few dissenters even there, but 95% of them vote the way he wants and of course we could have impeached Trump and many cabinet officials long ago if they voted that way. They unquestionably enable this administration. I think its fair to say they represent the conservatives broadly, certainly they are the people the nations conservative citizens elected and continue to support.
I made a similar argument and was downvoted. Yeah, the well-connected pay a fine when caught. This guy's mistake was not knowing he did not belong to that club. He amounted to no more than a fall guy.
There seems to be a pattern that if someone who was not pre-selected by some elites ends up making their own money (I.e. real 'self-made') they are swiftly attacked by the system. On the other hand, look at Nancy Pelosi; she didn't get into any trouble.
Are people allowed to be self-made anymore?
For me personally, after years of planning and hard work, I once managed to secure myself about $40k of passive income from a blockchain in crypto; this lasted a few years but eventually the founders suspiciously abandoned the entire tech stack (for no reason) and switched to Ethereum; this destroyed the opportunity for me; literally lost that stream entirely. Now, recently, I was able to re-establish a passive income stream of about $10k per year from a non-crypto source; this is from an opportunity I took over 10 years ago... I'm worried about that being taken away somehow.
Authority-wise, a MSG in the army isn't exactly a little guy either. That's quite a senior role. In their battalion they likely head either operations, intelligence or supply.
This isn't joe schlub making side bets here. This is a senior late-career enlisted in an extremely sensitive position violating all of their trust and authority to cash out big.
That MSG works for a Captain or a Lieutenant. If said MSG is good, there might be a future of advising a commanding officer on uniforms and length of grass at increasingly higher echelons. The rank is not newsworthy.
We all know there were suspicious large bets on the stock and oil markets during the war.
If small potatoes are getting sued while the sharks swim freely. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the moral.
Insiders bet a solider would be caught for betting on Maduro. They won.
I guess the rest can now bet on whether he will:
1. Apply for a presidential pardon.
2. Get it.
There are a lot of (rightly) critical comments here about the imbalance between prosecutions of high-ups taking bets and the grunts (in this case though, a senior-ranking soldier).
But it seems to me that the closer to the frontline you go, the betrayal is even worse; if the story is true, then these are his friends and comrades he is endangering for financial gain - its not just an abstract risk argued away by simple high-level corruption.
Do we have any evidence of higher-ups making bets?
People with a lot of money have certainly been making bets (plenty of recent news items on that), but I think the point being raised by others is that it's suspicious that only the lower orders have so far apparently been pursued.
How many people in congress made the exact same bet on the exact same information, and for them it's "legal?"
None, because Congress wasn't informed of the Maduro raid until afterwards?
Usually there is this gang of 6 or gang of 8 who is still kept informed.
Weren’t they famously kept in the dark for this and Iran?
We have finally figured out the purpose of the War Powers Act.
We aren’t talking about in official capacity
People act like the pervasiveness of insider trading in Congress is an indisputable fact, when there have been only a few trades with suspicious timing, which is similar to what you would expect statistically from 535 wealthier people trading with no insider information. The only case where I feel like insider trading is likely was Richard Burr's sales before COVID.
Congress (plausibly) beats the market: https://www.ft.com/content/14339d5b-5a5f-4e4a-8293-ff3a2e25d...
Pelosi has made many suspicious trades: https://insider-trading.org/the-nancy-pelosi-insider-trading...
Suspicious trades before Trump's Iran announcements: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge0grppe3po
It is legal and until we vote for people who will outlaw it we only have ourselves to blame.
Easy to say, hard to do, when your two "choices" at the ballot box represent slightly different groups of wealthy donors.
Vote in primaries. Also wealthy donors probably care less about whether a candidate can self-enrich with insider trading.
Ah enlightened centrism rears its head again. Remember folks: at all points both sides are exactly the same /s.
If you guilt me into voting, I'll probably vote for somebody you don't like.
Isn't it better that I don't vote?
> Isn't it better that I don't vote?
Maybe. I'm not actually that invested in people voting. But that doesn't negate the hypocrisy of complaining when you're, through inaction, endorsing the status quo.
There have been multiple times where the final vote count was the difference of a handful of votes. No one is guilting anyone to vote and some will say that neither party represents what they want and that sucks. But ultimately there has to be one side that even if you don't overall like them you would still rather they get elected. So vote for who you think might be best. And if they have policies you don't agree then contact your representative and say "I voted for you but do not want xyz policy". The more who speak up the better.
"better" for whom?
No. It is better that you vote. For at the end of the day you can:
1. know you tried to express your wishes
2. know that the outcome is because people expressed their wishes
3. realise the balance between 1. and 2. whether the outcome is as you hoped, and especially if it is not as you hoped.
This is important because hanging back and saying "Well I didn't vote for them!" is by default not supporting democracy as your country views it.
I'm not American. And surprise: regardless of your reasons you get judged by the government you put in power, since foreign policy is how the rest of us experience your choices.
And your choices are evidently you're completely okay with the current situation as well.
Everyone knows how the parties are different
Its valid to be more annoyed by the ways that they’re the same
your cause is not my cause, its better for the viability of your preferred party if you remember that
Its valid to say a lot of things. But it doesn't escape you from having to own those choices.
You are what you'll accept, and you looked at the choices given and said "I'm okay with either one".
Because the consequences of whatever mutual dissatisfaction you had still means one of them gained power and implemented their agenda anyway. And you were okay with that.
You don't get to not make a decision and then pretend you aren't culpable for your inaction.
the other person was talking about not making a decision, so you've transposed an idea not mentioned at all onto my comment
good luck out there
what to remember: the goal of the parties are to win friends and influence people, it's a weird meme that you aren't doing that and neither is the other party. time to re-evaluate the communication style yeah? proselytizing isn't working
The idea that nobody in American politics is trying to win friends nor influence people is indeed a very weird meme! As you say, that implies there's a big lane of persuasion that isn't being filled for some reason, even though everyone who's heard of Dale Carnegie knows it ought to be.
Have you considered the possibility that the meme might be false? That would explain neatly why it's so weird.
amusing.
parties are losing members and partisan’s methods are not effective
there is a big lane of persuasion that isn’t being filled
“Any clearance holders thinking of cashing in their access and knowledge for personal gain will be held accountable”
Yeah right.
I think you misspelled “the White House”
It’s arguable that opening the doors for greedy soldiers to do a little insider trading and inadvertently expose the illegal covert violent raid that they’re party to might be one of the few positive outcomes in a society gamified by Polymarket
I thought prodiction markets benefit from insider knowledge. Isn't the whole point that insiders make bets, thereby surfacing knowledge and allowing for more accurate forecasts? So wouldn't we want more military service members making bets? In this case, any potential military target of the US would really want this insider info.
> So wouldn't we want more military service members making bets
Who is the "we" in this sentence?
Yes, insider knowledge makes the prediction market more accurate (albeit at the cost of being less "fair"). However US government doesn't want prediction markets to accurately predict the timing of their secret military operations. Hence the arrest.
I think the problem is similar to insider sports betting, which is that once someone has made a bet, they will try to influence policy decisions in order to profit from that bet.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
Although, it would be amusing to create a sports league where the athletes are expressly permitted to wager on the outcome of their games.
I think the problem is similar to insider sports betting, which is that once someone has made a bet, they will try to influence policy decisions in order to profit from that bet.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
Maybe we just don’t want prediction markets.
You spelled gambling platform wrong. This attempt to rename gambling websites is infuriating. I hope these people get meaningful prison time
What an idiot, don't input your real id and don't use own face in KYC. Omfg.
Morally it's ok to steal crypto from these types of markets, everybody is crooked there, client and market makers.
There’s 109 comments on this submission of the news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883108
Congress is protected but soliders arent from profiting. Why are laws so biased?
This isn’t actually the case. Congress members and their employees have been banned from insider trading since the 2012 STOCK Act. That’s why they do it through family members now
The first group makes laws, the second group doesn't.
Some things do trickle down.
My respects to a real one, hope it turns out ok
I thought the names in the opening were the people being charged. Then I realized they were the prosecutors.
Perfectly fine for the rich and powerful, but don't you average citizen dare do anything like it! The US law and justice system is a complete joke.
This is also illegal for any rich or powerful service members.
Prediction markets working as intended.
Does polymarket have trial markets? Maybe 12% chance of being a mistrial - oh wait just shot up to 99%; new user called the_judge88 just bet $100K on that?
Cha-Ching! I bet $2000 that this guy was going to get charged.
He screwed himself by taking steps to show how much of an amateur he was, by trying to delete his polymarket account and change the email address on his crypto exchange account
He should have just cashed out and donated 20% of it to Mar-a-Lago saying exactly what he did and a thank you. It's a little too low for a club membership but since the President's family is a shareholder of Polymarket I think it would have been seen as attracting liquidity
AG would have been instructed to stamp out the investigation, no charges would have been filed
His op-sec probably wasn't sufficient to hide his gains via multiple small bets, no-log VPN, and cycling through Monnero both ways. The next prediction market to directly use Monero and no-log will be untraceable.
Nice. I'm against polymarket allowing bets on war precisely because of this. But I think we can all agree that perpetrators hold more liability than the platforms, they are the true cuplrits of warcrimes/treason.
So crypto fraud gets deprioritized, with cases like the one against Nader Al-Naji dropped entirely, while Trump and his family profit massively from crypto and corruption themselves.
Yet prediction market fraud is made an enforcement priority, except to say that nobody close to Trump's own cabinet will be prosecuted - the little guys will be made an example of to make it seem like those at the top are taking the moral high-ground. "Every accusation is a confession."
I think we all can guess at the truth here.
The entire corruption-as-service aspect of this is interesting.
I wonder when someone figures out vote-buying-as-service
Seems like he needed more Op/InfoSec training...
Rules for thee but not for me.
Who is the "thee" and "me" in this scenario?
The guy who got arrested is “thee” the members of the White House admin and Congress making bets are the “me”
what is that country
Bet your life, not your money on this mission please. Thankz.
Associated DOJ release: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-soldier-charged-usin...
Now do all the rest of them
Silly prole, insider trading is a white collar crime reserved for your betters. Time to learn your place.
They should run for Congress
Everyone's a grifter these days.
The more surprising thing is that the common invasion soldier also benefits financially. So far we only knew that the oligarch system that is currently controlling the USA, also benefits massively - the stock market changes with regards to Iran showed this already, but also see the more recent comments made in regards not just to the orange king himself, but his family dynasty and their involvement; in particular orange king jr. is involved a LOT here, also with regards to that mentioned soldier (see the companies that were involved, crypto-stuff and so forth). This reminds me a bit of Epstein, in a way - so far the US justice system claims that only two people (the dead Epstain and his wife) organised all those naughty parties. Well, that is logistically simply impossible, aside from the question how they had all that money. How deep do these networks used by the superrich go? You have more and more victims who claimed not only to have been underage, but also service-sold to other rich people. Why are these latter people not in court? How corrupt is that system? Evidently we now know that these invasion soldiers also bet on their own invasions - I guess when they claim "we are doing work for Good" here they mean this with regards to their own pockets.
Just as Smedley D. Butler once stated, many many years ago: "War is a racket"
so they catched this guy, yet pelosi and 300 others ate making millions every month, and nothing.. really people who has woken up, there is no words for this, yet the 80% are still asleep
Since citizens united it’s legal to pay unlimited amounts for political propaganda (lying to the public).
Obama called this out explicitly after the ruling and his analysis has been more or less accurate.
What was his rank? What was his job? What was his clearance? How did he have access?
The canadians have the info. He was special forces. He was enlisted (not an officer). He was involved, or at least privy to, the planning of the Venezuela thing.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11814801/maduro-capture-polymarke...
Feds waited no time to drop the indictment and make arrest. 3 months is lightning fast for a white collar crime. Wall St. ppl who commit insider trading pay a fine and admit no wrongdoing, discouraging the profits, and only after many years and trades have passed. Goes to show how elites play by a different set of rules. His mistake was not knowing he was not in that club. Have no idea why this was downvoted. I see so many other people who make this argument about privileged elites and always get upvoted.
This doesn't seem like a simple white collar crime. If the military are betting on the operations they will carry it's virtually espionage.
Wouldn’t that make insider trading virtually corporate espionage?
What was the last corporate-espionage conviction in America?
Rules for thee not for me
> Goes to show how elites play by a different set of rules.
Epstein said the same, and yet nobody went out to protest.
In desperate times in the age of AI, one needs to grift in order to survive. This soldier was just doing that to maybe...enrich themselves like the politicians also breaking insider trading laws?
This is why no-one at the top institutions, politicians (Pelosi), presidents (Trump) and everyone else in proximity gets arrested or charged for insider trading in all forms. It doesn't apply to them.
This is a reminder that the rule makers are allowed to grift and break their own rules, but will arrest you for copying them or doing the same thing because this soldier was not part of their club.
He wasn't invited to their private insider group chat. So this solider was arrested and charged instead.
lol no SEC lawsuit or civil complaint: strait to the indictment and arrest. Goes to show how elites are truly a privileged class. They get to admit "no guilt" and forfeit profits, avoiding prosecution. Have no idea why this was downvoted. I see so many other people who make this argument about privileged elites and always get upvoted. I never have the right opinion on anything.
> no SEC lawsuit or civil complaint
The suspect didn't trade securities. SEC doesn't have jurisdiction. The curiosity–to me as a layman–is that this is being prosecuted by the DoJ versus under the UCMJ.
Then what laws were broken if it is not insider trading?
> what laws were broken
"Van Dyke was indicted on charges that included unlawful use of confidential information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, and wire fraud."
How does this not apply to Trump and the rest of congress? Billions in market manipulation.
It’s a good question. I don’t know. Unfortunately, my circle is mostly in securities, and thus that is not.
Probably something related to leaking or unauthorized use of classified information.
Isn't this the purpose of Polymarket? To give a more accurate picture of what is going on/going to happen by giving insiders a financial incentive?
Polymarket isn't doing anything about it. It's the US government because obviously while I suppose this info made a more accurate "prediction" it also yk, leaked confidential state military secrets which is something the government can prosecute. They're not being prosecuted for insider trading on Polymarket
Insider bets distort the probabilities, creating a conflict of interest and causing market manipulation. We don't let athletes bet on their own games, because some will deliberately lose. They will do this when the odds are good and they will make more money. So you don't get accurate predictions, because the more probable something is, the better the odds and the more money to be made by someone manipulating the odds.
End result is you place bets against things you want to happen. eg. USA invading Iran. If you win the bet, you make money. If you lose the bet, you still win because the USA invaded Iran. And maybe that happened because people in power took your bet and influenced the odds in their favor. A fully deniable market for bribes. Same reason you can't bet on unnatural death, because it crowdsources assassination.
Sure, but the purpose of the FBI is to go after people leaking classified military Intel.
Different people and organizations in this world have different goals. More news 10.
I thought so too. Giving people with insider info a chance to make a buck in ways they didn't have before.
Not my downvote btw, corrective upvote now applied.
How is this illegal? Polymarket isn't a US-regulated market.
From the indictment, he's being charged with the following:
* Unlawful Use of Confidential Government Information for Personal Gain
* Theft of Nonpublic Government Information
* Commodities Fraud
* Wire Fraud
* Engaging in a Monetary Transaction in Property Derived from Specified Unlawful Activity
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/media/1437781/dl
So had this not involved presumed military secrets, it would have been legal? So it was the classified info that made it a crime, and then the insider trading aspect was later tacked on? It's crazy how the government adds so many charges. This guy is screwed.
That's part of the Chesterton's Fence nature of why these markets are bad. We know insider trading is a bad thing for the stock market, so it's policed. These markets, being a post-regulation internet free for all, aren't.
It's rather obviously illegal to leak classified intel by taking public actions based off of it... that's practically the meaning of the word "classified".
It is illegal to leak classified intel if you're just an average person.
If you're the Trump hand-picked Secretary of the War Department then it is not illegal and will never be punished.
Always remember which tier of justice you are on prior to committing a crime!
Not true, they lobbied very hard to be regulated under the CFTC because of its more relaxed rules
Polymarket isn't being accused or charged with wrongdoing.
They directed the right size bri...consulting fee to Jr.