Crypto might not be as obvious as a pyramid scheme but there are some similarities. The people who bought into digital currencies have a keen interest in recruiting others to continue purchasing these currencies. The more people that get involved and buy into crypto, the higher prices will go. That means those at the top, the early buyers, will become even wealthier. In fact, 1,000 people own 40 percent of the entire Bitcoin market. That means relatively very few people are getting rich from Bitcoin.

The only real utility that crypto has is:

1. tax avoidance
2. low cost transfers for payment

Said utility is more than offset by the huge energy bill. So in summary, yes, it’s a pyramid scheme.

What is needed is a low energy cryptocurrency! Here we go:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/computing/software/bitcoin-alternative

Nic reckons we carry around in our brain a ledger of the good and bad that we’ve done.

If the bad gets too out of whack we subconsciously punish ourselves.

Hence karma.

Not only is there nothing noble about the oppressed, but there’s nothing oppressed about the noble.

You can’t, or couldn’t, blame a bloke for trying.

At one end we have hard coercion and rape. At the other we have mild convincing and smiles all around.

In the middle we have soft coercion, or hard convincing, and the possible influence of alcohol and drugs.

It’s this middle ground that will keep the lawyers fed so long as the victims maintain their rage.

Some victims have no choice. They have to act to survive.

Others do it out of fashion.

There’s no obvious solution.

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil nor give false testimony.

In Australia you can’t rape someone any more. What you can do is have sexual intercourse without consent.

Then they spend a long time defining sexual intercourse and consent.

Consent is complex. It’s the vibe of thing that’s left up to the jurors.

For example, coercion implies there was no consent. But it depends on the type of coercion and the state of the victim.

For example, drunkenness in the victim implies coercion. But drunkenness in the perpetrator offers no immunity.

My guess, the pendulum will swing too far the other way and a bunch of blokes will do time for very little

It’s as hard as making bullying illegal. One person’s bullying is another’s water/duck.

Always, Viv uses the subordinating conjunction, sometimes, as a discourse marker, and that’s as far as he gets in his explanation of anything. Cracks me up.

Let’s hope he’s not accused of a crime anytime soon.

‘Vivian, did you assault Ms Higgins?’

‘Sometimes.’

Tom Sharpe
Robert Heinlein
Tom Forsyth