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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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[x] uju32

How is lottery cheating is less reprehensible than any other cheating? And why would that
DragonParadox said:
unlike some of your other plans they are unlikely to object to this form of cheating at gambling
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be true, shouldn't Molly's parents object to it on the grounds of "do not steal"?

Was it already discussed somewhere in the thread?

Like yeah, when you enter the lottery, the $EV is negative, but the average lottery player does not buy in for the EV, they buy for the chance, however small, to make it big and make their lives qualitatively better for once, the hope in in its purest form.

And if we manipulate the lottery, we effectively rob millions of participants of this hope. Yeah, nobody would know, but we would.

And consider the prospective winner, whoever they may be. Manipulating lottery is straight up making their future money disappear. Yeah, there are mitigating circumstances, like they don't expect the money, but how is it different from e.g. manipulating execution of will of some wealthy elderly without close relatives whose money are to go to the fourth cousin thrice removed they last seen 25 years ago?

Why not stay completely legitimate, with crafting / divining location of lost treasures?

Start with diamonds, purchase industrial workshop, make it appear that we've got small scale artificial diamond factory going for legit paper trail, with a proprietary secret crafting tech. Maybe branch in to crafting small aircrafts from scrap and purchased raw mats.

Craft really good magic items, sell to not bad magical people for money, favors and other good things.
 
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It's a shame that Rosie isn't a creature of darkness or becoming our minion would help her with the mental problems we gave her.
 
myrix said:
[x] uju32

How is lottery cheating is less reprehensible than any other cheating? And why would that

be true, shouldn't Molly's parents object to it on the grounds of "do not steal"?

Was it already discussed somewhere in the thread?

Like yeah, when you enter the lottery, the $EV is negative, but the average lottery player does not buy in for the EV, they buy for the chance, however small, to make it big and make their lives qualitatively better for once, the hope in in its purest form.

And if we manipulate the lottery, we effectively rob millions of participants of this hope. Yeah, nobody would know, but we would.

And consider the prospective winner, whoever they may be. Manipulating lottery is straight up making their future money disappear. Yeah, there are mitigating circumstances, like they don't expect the money, but how is it different from e.g. manipulating execution of will of some wealthy elderly without close relatives whose money are to go to the fourth cousin thrice removed they seen 25 years ago?

Why not stay completely legitimate, with crafting / divining location of lost treasures?

Start with diamonds, purchase industrial workshop, make it appear that we've got small scale artificial diamond factory going for legin paper tail, with a proprietary secret crafting tech. Maybe branch in to crafting small aircrafts from scrap and purchased raw mats.

Craft really good magic items, sell to not bad magical people for money, favors and other good things.
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As far as Molly's perspective goes, the vast majority of people who win the lottery end up bankrupt and with worse relationships with those around them. Granted if one believed that 'a hope of winning' is something that you can possess then yes you would be robbing them of it, but if one sees the whole system as rigged and corrupt from the start, meant to fleece the poorest and most vulnerable in society than taking that away becomes far less problematic.

Interestingly enough the above is informed more by Charity than Michael who might indeed cleave closer to strict interpretation of 'do not steal'.
 
myrix said:
[x] uju32

How is lottery cheating is less reprehensible than any other cheating? And why would that

be true, shouldn't Molly's parents object to it on the grounds of "do not steal"?

Was it already discussed somewhere in the thread?

Like yeah, when you enter the lottery, the $EV is negative, but the average lottery player does not buy in for the EV, they buy for the chance, however small, to make it big and make their lives qualitatively better for once, the hope in in its purest form.

And if we manipulate the lottery, we effectively rob millions of participants of this hope. Yeah, nobody would know, but we would.

And consider the prospective winner, whoever they may be. Manipulating lottery is straight up making their future money disappear. Yeah, there are mitigating circumstances, like they don't expect the money, but how is it different from e.g. manipulating execution of will of some wealthy elderly without close relatives whose money are to go to the fourth cousin thrice removed they seen 25 years ago?

Why not stay completely legitimate, with crafting / divining location of lost treasures?

Start with diamonds, purchase industrial workshop, make it appear that we've got small scale artificial diamond factory going for legin paper tail, with a proprietary secret crafting tech. Maybe branch in to crafting small aircrafts from scrap and purchased raw mats.

Craft really good magic items, sell to not bad magical people for money, favors and other good things.
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I think it's arguable if it counts as cheating. There's laws against rigging the draw, but not against methods of trying to predict it.

Using the crown isn't any more illegal than getting your palm read, not our fault our divination engine actually works.

For a mundane example, a guy named Stefan Mandel managed to win the lottery 14 different times (outside the US to be clear) with some math and now illegal bulk ticket buying patterns.

After they worked out his trick most lottery systems made it illegal, but they didn't ask for the money back.

On a moral level I think you're being a tad histrionic; no one as any more right to winning than anyone else, and you can just as easily claim we're 'taking' it from someone looking to buy another beach house as from someone in need. You're talking about a chance at a hypothetical like we're picking pockets at a homeless shelter.
 
BronzeTongue said:
In fairness there's only so many diamonds we can sell before someone, probably the IRS, goes "No seriously, where are you getting those diamonds?".
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It isn't likely the IRS that would notice or care, but rather someone with a vested interest in the diamond trade, either a commercial producer of artificial diamonds or even De Beers.

After all, a quantity of huge, perfect artificial diamonds suddenly coming on to the market signals that someone has, at the very least, developed a new method of reliably creating them. And if they can make them this good, how much more difficult would it be for them to imitate natural diamonds?
 
If we had reason to think that money would substantial speed up fixing the dragon nest I might focus more that that, but our major big advantage is we always have access to any expensive equipment we might need.

Now there might be expensive materials that would help us fix the nest, but we have not been given any indication that is the case.
Goldfish said:
It isn't likely the IRS that would notice or care, but rather someone with a vested interest in the diamond trade, either a commercial producer of artificial diamonds or even De Beers.



After all, a quantity of huge, perfect artificial diamonds suddenly coming on to the market signals that someone has, at the very least, developed a new method of reliably creating them. And if they can make them this good, how much more difficult would it be for them to imitate natural diamonds?
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They might notice, but we would be perfectly within our rights to tell them to buzz off. In another country it might be a problem, but America can be surprisingly free with how people make money.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
In fairness there's only so many diamonds we can sell before someone...
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I am not fully convinced of all that, but sure, we could settle on merely selling one more portion of diamonds. With no need to sell them literally today and opportunity to maximize the selling price by making fake natural diamonds, we'll earn enough for the short-to-mid term. Beyond that...

Car-repair and all that is way too small-scale, imo. In future, our potential income shifts by order of magnitude; with King and Kingdom, we'll have a small nation worth of industrial and material output under our control. Passive. NVM workhours.

We gonna need something bigger than a garage to start laundering big money. And we are going to actually need those big money once we'll start faction-building, which isn't really that far off.
 
Prospalz said:
I am not fully convinced of all that, but sure, we could settle on merely selling one more portion of diamonds. With no need to sell them literally today and opportunity to maximize the selling price by making fake natural diamonds, we'll earn enough for the short-to-mid term. Beyond that...

Car-repair and all that is way too small-scale, imo. In future, our potential income shifts by order of magnitude; with King and Kingdom, we'll have a small nation worth of industrial and material output under our control. Passive. NVM workhours.

We gonna need something bigger than a garage to start laundering big money. And we are going to actually need those big money once we'll start faction-building, which isn't really that far off.
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As cool as all the many worlds people have come up with are the most optimal would likely be a vast world of loyal humans. Imagine if we could over match the industrial capacity of the entire earth. The supernatural factions step lightly around humans because they recognize that sleeping power. We would match that power.
 
DragonParadox said:
if one sees the whole system as rigged and corrupt from the start, meant to fleece the poorest and most vulnerable in society than taking that away becomes far less problematic.
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Eh, that just sounds to me like "fleece the poorest and most vulnerable" even harder, got even that last bit away from them, leaving them with nothing.

It would apply if Molly would decide to fight the lottery system and make lives of the poorest better, e.g. by going into politics and manipulating laws and economy, but it's nothing of the sort, it's using the corrupt and rigged system for its intended purpose and benefiting from its evil.

But got it, it's in character. At least Michael is on the level.

BronzeTongue said:
I think it's arguable if it counts as cheating. There's laws against rigging the draw, but not against methods of trying to predict it.

Using the crown isn't any more illegal than getting your palm read, not our fault our divination engine actually works.

For a mundane example, a guy named Stefan Mandel managed to win the lottery 14 different times (outside the US to be clear) with some math and now illegal bulk ticket buying patterns.

After they worked out his trick most lottery systems made it illegal, but they didn't ask for the money back.

On a moral level I think you're being a tad histrionic; no one as any more right to winning than anyone else, and you can just as easily claim we're 'taking' it from someone looking to buy another beach house as from someone in need. You're talking about a chance at a hypothetical like we're picking pockets at a homeless shelter.
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Why engage in something that may be arguably not 100% legit? You said so yourself, it is presumed that methods that guarantee lottery wins should be illegal, and actual examples of ones were made illegal.

There are different views on the matter, but I think prevailing one, supported by outlawing methods of guaranteeing wins and strict controls on randomness of draws, is that the spirit of the lottery is that it is a game of chance between all the tickets, with a fee to the organizers, with each ticket having uniformly the same chance of winning. And manipulating chances is cheating at the game.

Again, why try something dubiously moral and dubiously legal if we have other alternatives? It would be a different tale if we were in a situation when we for sure needed tens of millions in the immediate future and had no other recourse, but otherwise I see no reason to engage in it, certainly not just because we can.

Not arguing that it should not be an option, just arguing against taking it without sufficient reasons.
 
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fictionfan said:
They might notice, but we would be perfectly within our rights to tell them to buzz off. In another country it might be a problem, but America can be surprisingly free with how people make money.
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Well, one could end up with us targeted for some run of the mill industrial espionage, while the other could be considerably worse, though the danger should be relatively low unless we start offloading diamonds indistinguishable from natural ones.

Anyone who thinks De Beers wouldn't try to squash us through any means necessary, including murder, doesn't realize what kind of ruthless stranglehold their cartel has on the diamond market.
 
Prospalz said:
I am not fully convinced of all that, but sure, we could settle on merely selling one more portion of diamonds. With no need to sell them literally today and opportunity to maximize the selling price by making fake natural diamonds, we'll earn enough for the short-to-mid term. Beyond that...

Car-repair and all that is way too small-scale, imo. In future, our potential income shifts by order of magnitude; with King and Kingdom, we'll have a small nation worth of industrial and material output under our control. Passive. NVM workhours.

We gonna need something bigger than a garage to start laundering big money. And we are going to actually need those big money once we'll start faction-building, which isn't really that far off.
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There is no way we can domestically launder a nation state's economic output, even if we pick a smaller option, so we're going to need a large and involved multinational setup for that. Which is something that takes seed funding and legwork to do. Assuming we can actually work out large scale export at all anyway.

The way I'm envisioning this is starting with one garage to do personal work through, then growing the business until it's actually legitimate and setting up holding companies as our infrastructure and needs grow. Bridging the gap from that to something bigger should easier than jumping straight for the top.
 
Goldfish said:
Anyone who thinks De Beers wouldn't try to squash us through any means necessary, including murder, doesn't realize what kind of ruthless stranglehold their cartel has on the diamond market.
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Certainly. But I expect them to be very surprised by just how hard a target we actually are. And if they do use such methods then I would feel justified in using similar methods to take over the entire De Beers corp. Infinerals have lots of methods of coercion.
 
myrix said:
Why engage in something that may be arguably not 100% legit? You said so yourself, it is presumed that methods that guarantee lottery wins should be illegal, and actual examples of ones were made illegal.

There are different views on the matter, but I think prevailing one, supported by outlawing methods of guaranteeing wins and strict controls on randomness of draws, is that the spirit of the lottery is that it is a game of chance between all the tickets, with a fee to the organizers, with each ticket having uniformly the same chance of winning. And manipulating chances is cheating at the game.

Again, why try something dubiously moral and dubiously legal if we have other alternatives? It would be a different tale if we were in a situation when we for sure needed tens of millions in the immediate future and had no other recourse, but otherwise I see no reason to engage in it, certainly not just because we can.

Not arguing that it should not be an option, just arguing against taking it without sufficient reasons.
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There's no such thing as presumed law, and that's no standard to hold ourselves to. The mechanism of the game is that everyone does their best to guess the numbers that will get drawn, and the winner gets the cash. The trick that was made illegal was one person mapping out and buying multiple tickets to tilt the odds.

Being right about our method of prediction where the guys pulling lucky numbers from fortune cookies are wrong doesn't make the fundamental act any different from the perspective of the game.
 
Goldfish said:
Well, one could end up with us targeted for some run of the mill industrial espionage, while the other could be considerably worse, though the danger should be relatively low unless we start offloading diamonds indistinguishable from natural ones.

Anyone who thinks De Beers wouldn't try to squash us through any means necessary, including murder, doesn't realize what kind of ruthless stranglehold their cartel has on the diamond market.
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On further thought thinking about the chain of events. If De Beers wanted to murder us they would want to get a cut out to make sure it can't be traced back to them. Since they likely don't have minions in Chicago they would have to hire local talent.

Now imagine Marconi's reaction to De Beers trying to hire him or someone in his employe to kill Molly.
 
Goldfish said:
Well, one could end up with us targeted for some run of the mill industrial espionage, while the other could be considerably worse, though the danger should be relatively low unless we start offloading diamonds indistinguishable from natural ones.

Anyone who thinks De Beers wouldn't try to squash us through any means necessary, including murder, doesn't realize what kind of ruthless stranglehold their cartel has on the diamond market.
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fictionfan said:
On further thought thinking about the chain of events. If De Beers wanted to murder us they would want to get a cut out to make sure it can't be traced back to them. Since they likely don't have minions in Chicago they would have to hire local talent.

Now imagine Marconi's reaction to De Beers trying to hire him or someone in his employe to kill Molly.
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I don't think they'd notice or care unless we started putting a lot of diamonds on the market.

They're ruthless about their monopoly, but they can't possibly track zero infrastructure small money transactions happening at an effectively random spot on the planet.
 
Goldfish said:
Anyone who thinks De Beers wouldn't try to squash us through any means necessary, including murder, doesn't realize what kind of ruthless stranglehold their cartel has on the diamond market.
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In that scenario, at least if they went after our family, I would imagine that they would risk running into the protections that White God has on our family.
Unless vanilla mortals are entirely immune to/not allowed to be affected by such defenses? I feel that if that were the case, though, then Denarians and others (but mostly Denarians) would abuse the ever loving fuck out of such a loophole.
That said, we have no idea what resources they may have at their disposal. Admittedly, anything powerful enough to pose a threat at least to Michael or ourself would also know that messing with Knight-adjacent people is generally a bad plan. For that matter, even with vanilla mortals, I doubt that there would be anything keeping the White God & co. from ensuring that Michael (or possibly us? IDK) are in the right place at the right time to stop whatever attacks they might launch against our family.
That may not stop them attacking other people who are close to us, of course.
Rosie, for one.
The people at our church and our school, for a whole lot more.
 
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fictionfan said:
On further thought thinking about the chain of events. If De Beers wanted to murder us they would want to get a cut out to make sure it can't be traced back to them. Since they likely don't have minions in Chicago they would have to hire local talent.

Now imagine Marconi's reaction to De Beers trying to hire him or someone in his employe to kill Molly.
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I imagine that reaction starting with "no" and moving on to "no, I am not trying to kill the daughter of a Knight who is herself some form of supernatural creature that I have yet to identify," before settling on "no, and because of those knowledge spirits she uses, she probably already knows about the electronic communication you sent asking us to try, so… good luck with that."
 
BronzeTongue said:
There's no such thing as presumed law, and that's no standard to hold ourselves to. The mechanism of the game is that everyone does their best to guess the numbers that will get drawn, and the winner gets the cash. The trick that was made illegal was one person mapping out and buying multiple tickets to tilt the odds.

Being right about our method of prediction where the guys pulling lucky numbers from fortune cookies are wrong doesn't make the fundamental act any different from the perspective of the game.
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Let's agree to disagree, I think it's one of the standards we should hold ourselves to, given my understanding of Molly's morals and intentions and my preferred way of her character evolution going forward.

Can't see how "The trick that was made illegal was one person mapping out and buying multiple tickets to tilt the odds." can be an argument in favour of legality, Crown of Eyes is exactly the trick to tilt the odds, just as mapping out and buying multiple tickets, so would be illegal in the same way in the spirit of the law.

Bottom line, I'm of the opinion that lottery CoE tricking is not 100% without character costs, including moral costs (cf. Michael's opinion), and we should not do that without sufficiently compelling reasons.
 
BronzeTongue said:
There is no way we can domestically launder a nation state's economic output, even if we pick a smaller option, so we're going to need a large and involved multinational setup for that.
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Suborn existing one. What do we have Infernal charms for? :V

Or just make a mutually beneficial agreements, which'll probably end up roughly in the same direction anyway, because of a power disparity.
 
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Prospalz said:
Car-repair and all that is way too small-scale, imo. In future, our potential income shifts by order of magnitude; with King and Kingdom, we'll have a small nation worth of industrial and material output under our control. Passive. NVM workhours.

We gonna need something bigger than a garage to start laundering big money. And we are going to actually need those big money once we'll start faction-building, which isn't really that far off.
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How does that work. The king and the kingdom talks about how we can take people to our private world, but I can't find any charms or rules about taking anything out. Has DragonParadox said something or are the rules somewhere that I haven't looked?
 
TonedMite said:
In that scenario, at least if they went after our family, I would imagine that they would risk running into the protections that White God has on our family.
Unless vanilla mortals are entirely immune to/not allowed to be affected by such defenses? I feel that if that were the case, though, then Denarians and others (but mostly Denarians) would abuse the ever loving fuck out of such a loophole.
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I'm pretty sure they are, but that the white god doesn't screw around with "I'm not touching you" arguments on this front. If a Denarian Rube Goldburgs a home invasion then Uriel gets to have a say in how it goes down.

myrix said:
Let's agree to disagree, I think it's one of the standards we should hold ourselves to, given my understanding of Molly's morals and intentions and my preferred way of her character evolution going forward.

Can't see how "The trick that was made illegal was one person mapping out and buying multiple tickets to tilt the odds." can be an argument in favour of legality, Crown of Eyes is exactly the trick to tilt the odds, just as mapping out and buying multiple tickets, so would be illegal in the same way in the spirit of the law.

Bottom line, I'm of the opinion that lottery CoE tricking is not 100% without character costs, including moral costs (cf. Michael's opinion), and we should not do that without sufficiently compelling reasons.
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The thick being that he was paying to win; they made it illegal so that you couldn't just buy out the game and ride the margin between bulk ticket prices and the payout for a profit. An act that would dry up ticket sales outside of the whales, killing the game when they could no longer support it.

My disagreement with you is that I don't see this as doing real tangible harm to participants, and that the lottery system is a vile scam with no integrity to be concerned with violating on principled level. So I don't see a moral argument against engaging in behavior many participants in theory agree is allowed that just so happens to actually work.
 
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