Isn't it useful to pair identity with common reasons to identify? Why else would you ask?
Are you saying your fraud detection and speed beats Stripe, or just your price?
414 karma · joined September 20, 2025
Are you saying your fraud detection and speed beats Stripe, or just your price?
Was surprised to see no mention of wetware in the comments.
Thanks for pointing that out.
For the record, I meant the latter. Let the downvotes commence!
This is a good effort. So is the ban on stock trading. This administration is such that it is bringing corruption to the fore in a way not seen in generations. Things are always hard to pass at the start. Keep pushing and this administration will create a massive opportunity to swing the pendulum if we can (as hard as it is now) retain some optimism.
That sort of terminology might have flown back in the 18th century with Rousseau and the like speaking of a "general will" but in today's era of social science, it has about as much force as invoking divinity.
Everyone has bias. The idea of a general will is largely fiction and was discredited at the time.
Our system is based on coercion, costs and trade-offs and nothing more. That is human history. You may have some rights (perhaps a right to privacy, it is debatable) but this is really just the three core components dressed up in reverse. The freedom of speech for instance is simply to codify the idea that the state silencing you is intolerable. Intolerable is eventually meaningless unless it is backed up by costs and coercion against the state which they will seek to avoid.
When the state violates such "rights" flagrantly sometimes the people are called to manifest this aspect of "intolerable".
That's what a revolution is.
Failing that you need to convince people. And in so doing if you aim to find some "unbiased will of the majority" you are wasting your time.
You would be better off with a lobbyist. Surely such a person would not so readily engage in such fiction regarding how democracy actually works, and would thus be more effective in achieving your goals.
If people could just say I don't agree with this law, it "makes no sense" and it's written by "lobbyists" and the government should not "be able to force" me to comply then we don't have a society anymore.
You had better come up with some better arguments otherwise it just seems like the typical sad case of the losing side suddenly griping about the referee's monopoly of force when it's no longer going their way...
The comment you replied to rightly pointed out one way of getting ahead of said monopoly of force is addressing problems with the status quo before the state takes an interest. It didn't happen, and now you will probably get some heavy handed intervention. But ignoring this basic point to ask why oh why suggests an ignorance of the very nature of the society that is and has been constantly regulating you.
If you only happened to notice now you should consider yourself a rather lucky specimen in the long line of human history, full of those remarking "this makes no sense" as they are nonetheless compelled to comply.
Pretty soon you'll have "Middle Dakota". And on and on.
At a certain point the USA is going to have to address its structural issues - the founders foretold of this necessity. It's why the amendment process exists in the first place.
I picture in my head the old ayatollah emerging from his bunker for a late breakfast only to be blown to smithereens...
Would also explain why the Iranian response seems so haphazard and ill-conceived... if reporting is to be believed the conflict essentially opened with their government's decapitation.
"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal".
This was during the Frost/Nixon interviews, years after he had already resigned. Even after all that, he still believed this and was willing to say it into a camera to the American people. It is apparent many of the people pushing the excesses going on today in government share a shameless adherence to this creed.
I was quite surprised to see it that low... and also to find it is inaccessible for trading if a US national. Just looking at the platform it seems predominantly US driven so I gather many people are willfully attempting to breach the ToS (and probably lie to the IRS) when using it...
You, and your colleagues, should resign.
It's an open joke in DC if you ever visit there the official DC license plate has "end taxation without representation" on it.
You are right to point out the problems with getting it passed. I would just say we need to stretch our political imaginations. Let's also remember that when the Constitutional Convention was originally convened no one thought it was going to create a new constitution - it happened sort of by accident as circumstances changed. The original purpose was to make revisions to the Articles of Confederation.
I'll put it another way. We are far from the bottom here. This system can and I believe will inflict more dysfunction on us in the coming years. A constitutional crisis is not unthinkable anymore for a variety of reasons. A modern constitutional convention might be one of the few ways of getting ahead of it.
Perhaps in such a future situation then, small states can be convinced to amend compromises they may otherwise have never considered.
You could also just do away with bicameralism, which was proposed at the original convention. Also remember as originally written the population of the states did not directly elect their senators. Thus there is already amendment precedent (17th) for making major changes to the Senate.
Congress has abdicated its powers because as an institution it is broken. Several inland states with total state wide populations less than that of major metro areas on the coasts have the same amount of senators as every other state has - two. This means voters in a lot of states are over represented. Meanwhile, they say land doesn't vote, but in the United States Senate the cities and localities with the most people that drive much of our growth and dynamism are severely underrepresented. The upper and most important chamber of the Congress is thus undemocratic. Given it's an institution deeply susceptible to minority gridlock that depends on wide margins to do anything, well now more often than not it simply does nothing. An imperial presidency thus frankly becomes the only way the country can actually get most things done.
This two senators for every state arrangement was a compromise agreed to when constitutional ratification was in doubt, when the USA was a weak, newborn country of about 3 million people confined to the Eastern seaboard at a time in our history where our most pressing concern was being recolonized by European powers. The British burned down the White House in 1812 imagine what more they could have accomplished if the constitutional compromises that strengthened the union had not been agreed to.
This compromise has outlived its usefulness. No American today fears a Spanish armada or British regulars bearing torches. These difficult compromises at the heart of America already led to one civil war.
The best we can do is create a broad political movement that entertains as many incriminations as possible (probably around corruption/Epstein, which must make pains to avoid any distinction between say a Bill Clinton or a Donald Trump) so we can get past partisan bickering to get enough of mass movement to try to usher in a new age of constitutional amendment and reform.
If it doesn't happen this cycle of Obama Trump Biden Trump will continue until this country elects someone who makes Trump look like a saint. It can happen. Think of how Trump rehabilitated Bush. We already see the trend getting worse. And if it does, then the post WWII Germany style reset being mentioned here will then become inevitable.
The question is about whether any of that can be meaningfully attributed to some lawyer vs engineer divide. Your question doesn't answer that in the slightest and thus I have no idea why you are asking it.
Sure Xi and some other senior leadership in China studied as an engineer. He also studied Marxism. As a part of a government delegation he studied agriculture, even bringing him to stay abroad in Iowa of all places. The world is too complicated for this type of analysis, sorry. I don't even think it is remotely the right data point to focus on or compare.
Dan Wang does the same spiel on every podcast and it is always terrible and seems predicated on credulous hosts who know little about the history of either country and certainly not enough about both who just use his lame analysis to engage in this current fad of Western self-pity. Instead of reform and asking hard questions let's just throw soft balls at Dan Wang's cheap analysis that anyone with a Wikipedia level education would know is absurd so we can keep propping up the same impoverished China v America tropes.
Why don't we demand better honestly we should be ashamed that one guy can just come up with such a dubious thesis suddenly appear everywhere and no credible debate or pushback once. The only thing Dan Wang convinces me of is the poverty of the modern intellectual environment.
Much of what makes America unique is tied to this essentially once in a generation event that will never happen again on this planet, a contingent confluence of Earth's parallel geographic and biological evolution... it's fairly easy to rebel or become a superpower when other powers have to contend with peer conflicts right on their borders. A break with England was inevitable why take orders from people an ocean away in the age of sail?
What a profitable time for the Lutnicks, who are of course already fabulously wealthy. Our system really does reward the best people.
Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States? That would be a question of fact, not characterization. And that, if it is easy enough to smuggle guns from red states into Mexico to commit crimes, it stands to reason it is even easier for red states to do the same to blue states? Or are you going to invent some other strawman to attack in your defense of your "individual rights"?
Similarly to how many (most?) guns used criminally in Mexico actually come from the United States.
Edit: I'm not surprised by the downvotes, but I am amused. These are objective facts. Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States. Americans love the boogeyman of dangerous Mexican cartels so much they never seem to ask themselves where these guns come from in the first place. Hint: look in the mirror.
And just to get ahead of it, I sure hope you are not tempted to make an equivalency between a Polish death and not mentioning Brave in a vain effort to resuscitate your position. Because not only would that be extremely misplaced given you provided the clumsy reference in the first place, but Kerry's point in of itself doesn't negate that. You can both understand any life lost is a tragedy while also understand there is no "grand coalition" when the United States shares > 90% of the costs. Just like (even though again, these things should not be compared, but just to indulge the comparison you yourself invoked) maybe Brave or some other under 1% fork does some good things, but that doesn't mean it is relevant to list them for this kind of announcement or any time chromium comes up.
Honestly I have no idea what you're trying to say. Following the allusion to the meme you brought up would be to realize that saying "Actually, you forgot about Brave" is a funny thing to say because its irrelevant and thus a dumb thing to say. It seems you understand there is a joke being made here but perhaps don't realize you're on the wrong side of it.
Pretty extreme bar your setting. I would think most people would agree it could still have extremely (and surprisingly) potent accuracy and still fail in this case. I wouldn't expect facial recognition to work in a case when there is little to no face to work with... if that guy came dressed like that to any airport or mall he would've been detained immediately.
Moving past that, yes we are in agreement. In fact you bring up an excellent point, which is that political parties themselves make corrupt use of campaign finance lawlessness to get in the way of their own voters and rig their own primary systems. None of these entities, whether the DNC or a right wing corporate interest group should be able to buy and sell American elections.
Individual campaign contributions are a non issue, also because regular people are capped at relatively low and long established FEC limits these various slush funds/pacs are designed to circumvent. As you said, the math is clear. I'm confident if this issue were ever put straightly to the American people, the result would be overwhelmingly in favor of campaign finance reform. The real issue isn't anyone's ability to do math, but what you hinted at earlier. The political parties themselves enjoy and benefit from this corruption. Therefore they are incentivized to ensure such a vote never takes place.
The current moment offers an opportunity to overpower such entrenched powers that be, if we can collectively move beyond partisan finger pointing that will only alienate those fellow Americans we need to agree with us to make such a broad based reform possible.
Citizens United litigated a very specific issue. It was only an issue because Congress had actually passed some meaningful campaign finance reform after many painful years (really decades) of effort. The court essentially kneecapped it overnight on a 5 to 4 basis. Get money out of politics commonly means get dark/pac/corporate money out of politics, not individual donors well within long established FEC limits that these pacs are designed to circumvent.
Again, billionaires live by different rules. This doesn't just apply to taxes, criminal justice, etc it applies to the foundation of our democracy - free and fair elections. What could be more in keeping with the best of American traditions than ensuring our elections are as egalitarian as possible?
These problems will be solved. Most Americans agree on most things. Don't let the politicians who benefit off of dividing us fool you. An agenda that focuses on reform outside of the usual finger pointing game of partisan politics and promises to enact these reforms without fear or favor will win.
Any such agenda must also be willing to purge itself of any old guard that stands in the way, and treat them as a virus attached to their political movement. There is no benefit from trying to say, make a wedge between a Clinton and a Trump. If you can't get over that you're part of the problem, and this cycle will just continue.
Stop defending an old guard halfway in the grave. Being right doesn't matter in electoral politics, winning does. It is likely the only way to achieve such a broad reform is to be willing to entertain as many incriminations as possible.
Given recent relevations re Epstein this is our best chance to reform corruption in generations. Let's not squander it by defending anyone simply because they fall on one side of a dubious partisan line, or seem "less bad" than another.
The broader the castigation, the more likely to achieve momentum that can actually enact said reforms, given the disadvantages of taking on these vast incumbent interests and a government that is easily susceptible to gridlock driven by a minority.
A few days? That one day led America to prosecute two wars for over a decade - both of which failed. Both of which seeded the ground for the current moment, as the prevailing political establishment has lost all credibility.
This century was supposed to belong to America. Go back and see how optimistic people where about the new millennium. Where is that now? It's gone.
Because the American government responded to one of the darkest days in history by:
1. Invading Afghanistan only to lose it two decades later to the very people they had tried to dislodge in the most painful way possible - literally running away on the tarmac while those that had risked their lives to support them were begging not to be abandoned.
2. Invading Iraq when there were no WMDs and Saddam Hussein has never had anything to do with the faction that was in Afghanistan. Thousands died for what? And we are still there even though that war was supposed to end long ago.
Both of these entities had previously been supplied weapons by the United States btw, in Afghanistan against the Soviets and in Iraq against Iran. No one was held accountable for that. Oops.
Why do you think people are voting for the system to be torn apart? You are correct the attack itself would not destroy America, as everyone knew. The question is what would America do after.
On that count, the failures were numerous and again, no one in power was ever held accountable. This is its own form of lawlessness that has encouraged the present circumstances.
Now a security apparatus that has failed to impose its will on the streets of the likes of Baghdad is manifesting in a new form in Minneapolis. Afghanistan was known as the graveyard of empires. The goal was to draw us there so it could once again live up to its name. In such a circumstance, success is not measured in a manner of days, but in years. Thus I very sadly find much to agree with in the comment you so eagerly dismissed.
A notable case was the Uvalde school massacre, which only ended when a border patrol tactical team (believe from the BORTAC group you mentioned) took over from dithering local forces. This was a major example, but interagency collaboration has also become routine in far less dire circumstances.
The militarization and blurred lines have thus become a feature not a bug. And it won't be reformed simply by having the current administration fade into the rearview mirror. It would be beneficial I think though if current excesses led to a more holistic introspection and reform, but we'll see.