Strategic superiority, a saga

Friday, 23 November, Year 4 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

Example #1 :

FreeNode-#bitcoin-otc-eu.log:Apr 21 14:37:48 {gigavps} my fav thus far from MPOE-PR "The deeper the hole you dig the further you will have to climb out, and Mr. P is easily the least forgiving type you will meet in your lifetime."

FreeNode-#bitcoin-otc-eu.log:Apr 21 14:56:10 {gigavps} so Masta P, i still don't understand why MPOE-PR speaks for you

FreeNode-#bitcoin-otc-eu.log:Apr 29 15:02:23 {gigavps} seems MPOE-PR has decided to focus on marketing instead of ruffling the forum feathers

FreeNode-#bitcoin-assets.log:Nov 23 17:13:22 {gigavps} you should send mpoe-pr into my thread to quote you on that

A lot must have changed since April, if the same person complaining about my PR then is seeking the support of my PR now. What exactly has changed ?

Everyone thinks PR is, shortly put, "be nice to everyone". Thus, they sugarcoat everything, they can never say No! and above all can never say "Fuck you!". Because you can not have meaningful discourse without even the possibility of "no" and "fuck you", they end up with meaningless discourse. Here's an example of the type :

Hello,

My name is Natalie and I am responsible for our customer support. Due to insufficient CAD on our account at the moment, we are unable to send CAD withdrawals and today is a public holiday in Japan. We will be working on having the conversion done after the long weekend to have enough CAD in order to process your withdrawal. Our apologies once again for the delay and inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience while we are working to resolve this matter.

This was Natalie's offering to a guy who was complaining that after one month's wait he still hadn't been sent his money, but instead was sent this. You've read it before, haven't you ? How many times ?

That's it, there you have it, that's the state of business communication currently, that's how it's understood, mentally represented and universally expected to work : be nice to everyone. Since you're being nice to everyone obviously you can no longer be in any way useful to anyone, but someone somewhere somehowi made the strategic decision that this is okay, that trading complete uselessness for partial niceness is worthwhile.

This happens to be exactly what PR is not. PR is not about clogging the channels with meaningless formulaic stupidity and actively attempting to prevent anything from moving either direction. PR is the effort of clearly communicating the position of the company to the market and the position of the market to the company. Clearly communicating means that sometimes the customer will be delivered a large steaming plate of "You're stupid". Clearly communicating means that sometimes the company will have to come out with a "We've been stupid" dounce hat and eat some crow.

I made the strategic decision that it's all worth it. I am perfectly willing to eat some crow if it comes to it, and I'm also perfectly willing to call "customers" idiots, if they're idiots. I went as far as to give the PR signed license to do exactly that : call people idiots.ii

There was a lot of armflailing about this unheard-of insanity, about my complete malfeasance and my PR's offensive incompetence, mostly from patent idiots with some unfortunate souls dragged into the fray by simple proximity, much like a river coming high sometimes carries unexpected items along in its fury.

But what's the end result ? The end result is that I have PR tempered in raw shitiii, and so whenever shit hits the fan I have a trusted, respected and powerful voice at my disposal. Everyone else has PR made out of sugar-coated papier mache. Whenever shit hits the fan they have to run and hide. What is the fucking point of PR if all it's good for is to sprout nonsense as long as things are going fine but has to disappear into a hole at the first cramp of crisis ?

Strategic superiority, this is what it is. Making this correct choice, in the face of everyone else knowing better, this is what strategic superiority is.

Example #2 : Early on I made the strategic decision to make my exchange inaccessible to the offensively stupid poor. I do not mean the poor, poverty in itself is just a state, it means nothing. I do not mean the stupid, stupidity in itself is just a state, it means nothing. The offensively stupid poor are however not simply stupid and not simply poor. They are something like Inaba.

For this purpose I did two things : one is that I introduced a fixed fee, which while significantly lower than what you'd expect of a fee in the field is still significantly higher than the disposable income of the poor and the other is that I used technology which while widely known and amply used was still not anything the WYSYWYG/GUI crowd has ever met. Together they did in fact - I am proud to report - manage to prevent the offensively stupid poor from joining MPEx. Going through the support requests is literally a pleasure, half the time it turns out to have been the most productive part of the day.

Everyone else made the exact opposite strategic choice : as many users as possible. Sam Gumpy, bereft of articulate speech yet innerly convinced he's the Emperor of Chinaiv was good enough a user for anyone else. The net result ?

Oh, but the net result is glorious. You can read it in detail or else I shall summarize it for convenience.

Gigavps lists some miner bonds on GLBSE. GLBSE implodes. Gigamining attempts to reconstruct things somehow, which in any possible contemplation has the marginal disadvantage of excluding some very small holders (for whom any burden - such as for instance "send a postcard" - is likely to exceed their total investment). The conclusion ?

For those with small holdings your options may well end up being either walk away or try to cause grief by reporting what happened to as many regulatory bodies as you can. Your call on which of those options you take.

Now, is there any doubt that some people will try to cause grief simply for the purpose of causing grief ? Not in my mind. They feel entitled to some BTC. The mental process goes something like this :

  • Person A has lost that BTC for them.
  • They do not wish to accept this fact, so they mentally construct the invalid alternative "either we accept that person A has lost our BTC which is now therefore lost or else we assign the BTC debt to person B". This alternative does not exist, yet since one end of the alternative comes to "no BTC" and the other comes to "BTC" it will be evaluated to come to "Person B is responsible for the BTC A lost".
  • If asked to evaluate whether their constructed alternative above is logically valid or not, they will proceed similarly : if it is not then no BTC. If it is then BTC. Therefore it is.

Honest toil not so much, but honest cunning aplenty in this fabled subsection of the population, the offensively stupid poor. The costs of the strategic mistake of dealing with them are huge.

Up until recently it was practically impossible to become embroiled into any sort of dealing with the subgroup, their ownership being strictly assumed and their lives strictly subsumed by the corporations competent at dealing with the human cattle : fastfood providers, supermarkets, the government. Both as employers and providers these specialised bureaucracies have the necessary tools, including cattle prods (or whatever they're called now, non-lethal something or the other) to correctly handle them. They have the chemicals, they've done the research, know the behavioural patterns, have the walls all built to obstruct vision, living arrangements all thought through and everything.

Bitcoin suddenly opened the gate. It is a poisonous offering. You are grossly unequipped to interact straight with the refuse of Western society. Accepting investors with fortunes under a million dollars or whatever the limit was placed for US citizens may make sense. Accepting investors with fortunes under any arbitrary value and simultaneously wits under any arbitrary threshold is not a sound business plan but a strategic mistake.

There is a reason some salaries are very high : strategic competence is both very valuable and very rare.

———
  1. I'll tell you who, too : the strategic management of FCMG retailers, principally the large supermarkets. The reasoning for this strategic decision was that since their customer is borderline mentally retarded it makes absolutely no sense to try and engage him in communication. It is for them more productive to just jam the channels shut and let hunger and gluttony work their normal magic.

    Then hordes of mindless imbeciles limited themselves to copying this, to the point that it has become the statu quo. []

  2. For srsly. When's the last time you had a customer that did that ? Never ? I tell you... 'til you do you haven't lived, as a PR. []
  3. Carlin lives forever. []
  4. Not in terms of obligations and responsibilities, mind you, just entitlements. []
Category: Oda Superbiei
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50 Responses

  1. "Bitcoin suddenly opened the gate." << Kinda like that AOL did that one September, as I understand it.

    Also, the 'signed license' you gave your PR is a particularly enjoyable read.

  2. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    2
    Mircea Popescu 
    Friday, 23 November 2012

    Kinda like that AOL did that one September, as I understand it.

    Sort-of, yea. There was little need of moderators on the interwebs before then. Anyone who tried to interact with the new aol crowd as if they had been old timers was in for quite a rude awakening.

    Also, the ’signed license’ you gave your PR is a particularly enjoyable read.

    The making of Bitcoin history!

  3. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=571bb887941f145631bca99e70a2115e&topic=102333.0

    Fact. The owner of MPEX has attempted to sell NSFW photos of herself.

    Lol wut, link?

    Opinion MPEX looks like shit. Seriously. "border=1"? No CSS3? We have a highschool teenager on these forums whose website looks many times better. And is porn-free.

    Win.

  4. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    4
    Mircea Popescu 
    Saturday, 24 November 2012

    Ppl be confused.

  5. I really loved what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool!

  6. Great Boroda`s avatar
    6
    Great Boroda 
    Thursday, 4 April 2019

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  7. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    7
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 4 April 2019

    Noi sa fim sanatosi.

  8. HazelZenry`s avatar
    8
    HazelZenry 
    Wednesday, 7 August 2019

    Фейковые новости и неуважение к власти. Что дальше?

  9. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    9
    Mircea Popescu 
    Wednesday, 7 August 2019

    ისტორიულად რომ ვთქვი, შენი ქალიშვილის უკანალი გავტეხე.

  10. Newtown`s avatar
    10
    Newtown 
    Thursday, 9 April 2020

    I don't even understand how I finished up here, but I thought this put up was good.

    I don't realize who you might be however certainly you are going to a famous blogger in the event you are not already. Cheers!

  11. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    11
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 9 April 2020

    It'll all start slowly making sense as you dedicate your life to reading more and more Trilema instead of ~anything else.

  12. I like everything what is said and I support it a lot. I am glad to be here and to share my opinion.

  13. Hello, this is probably an annoying question and one you get a lot, but seeing someone as successfull and smart as you, all I want to ask is if you have any tips on how to make money right now in general/what assets to invest in? I believe that most people just work their asses off, spend all their money every month on rent and all their other personal needs and never consider on investing or trying anything ambitious, because they don't know/ don't think it will work out and don't have the time for it and that's why they finish just about where they started. I don't want to end up like that, but I need to obtain more knowledge and I know that, but right now, I just want to use the opportunity you give to readers of your blog like myself and ask for your advice because I am sure that someone as successful as you, would be able to give me guidance rather than a specific straight-forward answer/solution if you don't really have one.
    Thank you for your time and I really do enjoy reading through your blog!

  14. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    14
    Mircea Popescu 
    Monday, 16 November 2020

    There's a number of different things in there.

    First off, there's two aspects to money. Money is on some level an immediate necessity, allowing human life to distinguish itself from mere animal, providing for necessary luxuries such as hot water for one's women so they're pleasant fucktoys as opposed to outright beastly and toys for one's children such that they're fun to have around and watch growing up as opposed to outright beastly and so following. Money is on another, perhaps its true or fundamental level a manifestation of social pre-eminence, an elaborately elegant mechanism for the enslaving of Hegel/Husserl's "Other", for its rendering out of the obnoxious chaos that spawned it in the first place along a golden chain towards... well, childhood and thereupon feminity, useful subservience in a word. (Which is also why self-castration as proposed by Levinas&co is such poisonous nonsense. There can never be any kind of Other-superiority, not in fact nor even potentially.)

    Depending which of these two interests you the strategy involved will be derived off the two available possibilities : if what you want is Money (n), you will have to identify in your accessible environment your available Master, and kneel before it. Whether you live in the decrepit land of "corporations" or in the barbaric lands of Pashtun warlords, your strategy for M(n) consists of finding your Pater familias and being its client. If what you want is Money (p), you will have to identify in your accessible environment the monetizable differential, and monetize it. Whether you're a Florentine merchant sailing for spices and golden fruit aka pomodori or me putting the hurt on idiots, your strategy for M(p) consists of breaking "the law", absolutely in spirit if not necessarily in form, because that's what breaking the surroundant imbeciles out of their comfort always reduces to.

    Investment in particular is unrelated to either kind of making money. Investment is a manner of making friends, which is why J P Morgan is quoted exactly once on Trilema : that's the once he had a point. The complete discussion of financial investment in the present socialism is still embodied in The Universal Plan for Wealth, and there it will remain (much like the complete discussion of personal investment in the present socialism is found in Strategy for the antisocial struggle etcetera). There is no possiblity nor any venue available to make friends, there's no point in attempting to discuss anything with the "this is our policy" idiots scattered about, therefore not playing is the only winning move. (And therefore qualifiers and discriminants such as I use, to certify one is in fact a human being and part of human society, as opposed to mere spawn of subhuman misery.)

    Finally, there's a reason I don't particularly mind answering questions. It comes quite readily to me, on the strength of... all the equipment laying about, that I've either made myself or otherwise acquired. It makes impossible tasks trivial, and various problems others encounter not even capable of being problems, for me. Wealth, you know, is a lot more and plenty besides merely having a lot of money, or otherwise lottery winners would be the happiest people on Earth.

  15. There is no even one day that passes that I do not visit this website, I simply like it a lot.

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  6. [...] via [...]

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  27. [...] Recall You are grossly unequipped to interact straight with the refuse of Western society. [...]

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