Not sure why you edited out the other person's name. If this is legit, suchmoon would know exactly who this is by looking at her PMs.

Venuezla had problems before we put sanctions on. The US did not apply any sanctions until mid-2015, and there were reported food shortages years before that (official data stopped being reported after there were shortages of about a quarter of goods).

The US is a two-time world war champion.

Tonight in Trump's State of the Union address, he condemned socialism and said "America will never be a socialist country". He also condemned the dictator currently in power (although not recognized as the legit president) who has used violence, killings, and frivolous criminal charges to stifle dissent in his country.

Socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez looked very uncomfortable as this condemnation received bipartisan applause.   

Socialism in Venezuela has changed what used to be one of the wealthiest countries in South America into one of the poorest.

Even Nancy Pelosi applauded when Trump issued this condemnation.

You are the one who mentioned lauda, not me.

Anyway, on the subject of signature campaigns (or bounty campaigns), employing someone who has tried to extort someone as a manager is a bad reflection on the underlying company. They are effectively the face of the company, or at least more so than any individual participant in a signature campaign.

The underlying reason why companies do not want someone with negative trust participating in their signature campaign is because they do not want to be associated with a scammer.

On a specific trust rating level, Lauda has shown his willingness to tarnish the reputation of anyone critical of him (which is a far cry from leaving him negative trust), and has more or less lobbied for the exclusion of anyone willing to leave him negative trust for his extortion attempt (which was not a sting operation as he claimed).

IMO.....

You should be able to articulate why it is dangerous to trade with someone you are giving negative trust to. The word "dangerous" would mean this person will attempt to steal money/property they are not entitled to in an average sized trade OR this person has tried to do this in the past (successfully or otherwise).

So if you observe someone doing x, and you leave a negative rating because they did "x", you should be able to explain why "x" means someone is likely to attempt to steal money/property in the future ("x" could be a scam attempt, in which case, it would be pretty self- explanatory).

Someone engaging in a long con might successfully complete some trades before trying to steal from others, so successful trades should not automatically mean negative trust is wrong. However many successful trades should work in a person's favor if they have not tried to scam in the past.

I can't say I disagree with this decision, however I think this highlights a problem with the current DT system, and to a lesser extent, the merit system.

I reviewed the posts he gave merit to on Feb 5, and I would say a good 40% of the posts reasonably had a fairly high amount of effort put into them, another 40% were good enough to receive merit if someone was being aggressive in giving away merit, and two or three were not reasonably deserving of merit (unless you agreed with what they were saying). This is a problem because the only reason he was caught was because he was openly trying to meddle with the trust system voting. If he had not made this public statement, no one would have any idea what he was doing, and all that merit would be sent for political reasons.

On the merit system, I have seen few controversial posts with large amounts of effort put into them that have merit, especially from merit sources. Conversely, I have seen many reasonably low-effort posts that make a "popular" statement with merit from multiple people.

No, the hacking of the account being illogical does not mean it is impossible, obviously. But it is evidence (circumstantial) that there is no hack. It should be weighed with other available evidence.

I think you are using the wrong standard.

If a stranger asks you to trade (when you are known to engage in similar trades), you will see this person as not trustworthy, and as such will put yourself in a position in which he is in possession of money that belongs to you. It would not be appropriate to give this person a negative rating.

BadBear had a standard that he wanted to be 100% sure, without any someone was a scammer before leaving a negative rating (which from what I could tell, was more strict than beyond a reasonable doubt), and Tomatocage worked to ensure his ratings were fair and accurate, and I believe he has a very high standard for tagging a scammer (although probably not as high as BadBear).

I don't have an issue with a "tag first ask questions later" trust policy, so to prevent someone from quickly scamming multiple people, and continuing doing so after being called out as a scammer, however once questions are asked, a high standard should be used. I don't think "75% certain" is a high enough standard, especially considering the lack of motive, and the ~month delay in getting "caught", during which time a hacker would likely have tried to either scam or build up reputation, neither of which happened.

It is no secret that Lauda routinely gives negative ratings in order to silence criticism of him and his associates.

You should work on your reading comprehension.

I don’t think a 75% chance is appropriate for a negative rating.

I would point out there doesn’t appear to be any motive in hacking the account as to my knowledge he hasn’t even tried to conduct any business. Putting a lot of effort into falsely claiming you are the owner of an account isn’t logical to me in this case.

I think the above is especially important because:

By your logic, anyone employing a known extortionist should be seen as untrustworthy.

I will keep this in mind...

The wealth tax is actually unconstitutional. The 16th amendment says
The 10th amendment says:

As such, since the constitution only allows congress to tax incomes, and not assets, a wealth tax is unconstitutional.

The estate tax is constitutional because it is not actually taxing assets directly, but the transfer of assets from the deceased to their estate.

She doesn’t understand economics either.

It is effectively impossible to get someone like Lauda removed from DT now (despite widespread agreement that he should not be on it), so he will not care what others think of his ratings. He will hand out as many ratings as he can without regard for their legitimacy, even going as far as handing out ratings for those who expose his criminal activity.

No discussion is necessary for lauda.

The original owner likely purchased bitcoin at $2/coin, and potentially a lot. However you assume he didn’t sell at $200.

If he bought at $20 and sold at $200, he would have done 5x as good as someone who bought at $1k and sold at $20k later that year.

If that thread was real, someone paid $1,000 for a VIP based on the $20k price at the time. I can’t imagine earning that much with an account, even over a year.

Edit: That thread was created Dec 11 2017, and last edited a week later saying one was sold. However the account “woke up” in August, 6 months earlier. Unless the password was reset within a week of Dec 11, 2017 this thread was not selling btc_bear.

You should be able to explain why this is true:

Is it possible? Sure, but I don't think that is what happened.

Buying accounts is very risky, not only because of the risk of negative trust from the SJW forum police, but also from fake claims of the account being hacked, fake hidden loans, so I don't think it would be a profitable business to buy up accounts to resell anymore. I would suspect someone buying up accounts would quickly find themselves with many accounts that are worthless, or otherwise cannot sell, of course after paying for them.

It would make more sense to me that the majority of account sellers farm them either themselves or with the help of a group of close business associates that they can trust (or is an individual who is in need of money and is willing to part ways with their account).

Not long after I exited the account business (or maybe it was just before I exited it, I don't remember), someone asked me to post from some of their accounts for a month in exchange for a fee. I was told to avoid any threads involving a dispute between groups, and threads in meta (IIRC), so it is known to avoid those types of threads, by at least that person.

Similar to your "Nigerian prince" scenario, there is not any evidence this is the case. There is also the capitalism strangeness in his posts, and account selling is a very low skill task, and I can't really see an account broker/seller picking up on this.

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If someone wants to sell me bitcoin who has no trade history and I don't know, and asks that I send money to him first, I would obviously not trust him, but I would respond by saying that he can either agree to use a mutually agreed upon escrow, or he can send me the bitcoin first -- what I would not do is respond with giving negative trust (if he later shows signs he was trying to scam me, that might change).

Similarly, I don't have any particular reason to trust btc_bear and would certainly not send him money first in a trade. However that is not to say that he is going to try to trade with me with the intention of trying to scam me.

I believe I said at the time the evidence I had that caused me to believe you are lauda was circumstantial and I have since apologized for saying that you are an alt of an extortionist criminal.

I was told by a reliable source who wished to remain unnamed that lauda has a pill addiction. This person knows because he was told by people who are in a position to know and are to have said they have direct knowledge (IIRC)

Yea it’s too bad I haven’t dealt in accounts in many years.

Your post only highlights that he has negative trust because of his stance on the trust system.