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Oh sure it's interesting, but from my experience that generally translates to "Huh neat," and maybe a offhand mention at the dinner table vs "WE MUST FIND THE SECRETS." I really think DP is also overestimating how "golden goose" a business with an expected turnaround of a few hundred thousand max in revenue would be for a city the size of Chicago. Like small scale boutique crafting is small scale boutique crafting, the revenue from Molly's Diamonds R Us is not making or breaking the budget.
Yes the gov has all sorts of levers to pull to hypothetically make Molly's life difficult but generally ime the gov does not care how the goose is cooked so long each Dep gets what they want (Finance gets paid, Inspectors don't see anything that looks like it'll kill someone in the next week, etc). If someone does start pulling shit I'd really expect it to be from someone using this as an excuse vs someone legit being that interested in this small kooky business out of the many weird things that already exist in Chicago. And in that case anything with any legal trail could hypothetically be used for that.
Off by one or two orders of magnitude revenue there.
But the basic argument is sound.
I mean, we just literally lived through the entire cryptocurrency kerfluffle.
It was obviously a scam. People warned it was a scam. The US government didnt raise a finger and let it play out as tens and hundreds of millions of dollars sloshed around, only getting involved when obvious crimes were committed.
When its not immediately criminal, the US govt will demonstrably let a lot of fishy stuff run on. It is patient.
Hell, anyone remember how long Bernie Madoff ran his Ponzi scheme?
Again, how often are the images updated? If it's less often than once per half a year, that's not an issue at all.
Landsat and Digital Global were allegedly weekly back then.
I know that PlanetLabs is within a day, but PlanetLabs was only formed in 2010.
They do have to share their formulas, though, in order to show that they are safe and have jo stuff like coke or meth in them. And they have to pass safety inspections. It should be far easier to bribe a local African government than USA federal governmen
No they dont.
That is done by food and health inspectors checking the finished products.
Which are freely available.
The safety regulations aren't just something to wave away. You can't just say "no, there are no dangers involved in my new undisclosed innovative diamond making process". You have to demonstrate that there are no dangerous chemicals, flammable or explosive materials involved, etc.
Previously addressed.
With the actual commetary of someone with some insight into US regulatory schemes.
And then there's an issue of economy of scale. You made a new and very cheap process and aren't expanding? Someone will want to buy it off you. And when you won't agree, that's going to cause interest. And I got the impression we didn't want interest directed at us from the mundane world.
Make no mistake, a startup is probably viable, but that's the path of Molly becoming new Elon Musk eventually.
The fact that you arent selling the process implies that it doesnt scale.
So will there be some interest? Yes.
But nothing more than that.
A smallscale operation that stays resolutely private, and shares no details of its proprietary process is weird.
But not an attention-drawing sensation, just a curiosity.
As opposed to someone bribing his way through a significant fraction of a Third World country's land licensing, solid mineral and export control bureaucracy, in the hope that noone from the United States, any other major economy or even a journalist will twig to such a massive bribery operation.
I mean, if you think that refusing to sell the process is going to draw attention?
What exactly do you think happens when Anglo-American or Ocetz or the like tries to buy the mine in order to expand it and you refuse? What happens if your local accomplices get greedy?
Or some journalist/activist comes sniffing around and they murder them?
Its a lot harder to keep any sort of control over things spiralling out of control when your conspiracy involves the cooperation of several hundred people across two different nations.
