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Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#41

Post by bandrami »

k8sToGo wrote: post #37
feverzsj wrote: post #32

It's not just some scams. It's the darkest thing ever in the whole human history. After China banned using of death row organs around 2014, the world's largest organ black market has moved to southeast Asia. There are estimated more than 100k victims (mostly Chinese) annually. Some of them may be released, if their families can afford the ransom. The remaining victims are treated like livestock. They are forced into…

Are you sure you didn't just describe RimWorld? Someone doing that in real life is truly disturbing

Remember that the universally recognized setting for a grim cyberpunk dystopia is not a theoretical prediction but a memory of an actual city just north of Hong Kong that was demolished 30 years ago

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#42

Post by [deleted] »

Muromec wrote: post #19
rsynnott wrote: post #12

You know those quasi-libertarian dreams of independent privately-owned city-states? Yeah, doesn't seem like such a good idea now, does it? (I'm kind of surprised none of those crypto-libertarian groups have tried Myanmar, actually; it is, at least at the moment, particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing.)

Does anybody dream of living in one or just dreams of owning the one? I fail to see the upside of living in somebody's pocket soviet union when places like Singapure actually exist.

[deleted]

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#44

Post by lawgimenez »

misantroop wrote: post #27
amiga386 wrote: post #18

On a related note, POGOs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_offshore_gaming_ope... The Philippines (under Duterte) said to Chinese criminals: Feel free to base your operations here and rip off your fellow Chinese, but don't rip off us Filipinos. Then these POGO centres started scamming locals and Chinese alike, and staffed themselves with scam victims, using blackmail and torture to force them to work there an…

Philippines is corrupt to the core as well, from courts to police to civilians. So the real reason why POGOs were thrown out of the country was that the didn't pay off the right people. Nothing gets done in Philippines without bribes.

I live here my whole life for over 40 years, anecdotal I know, but I have only encountered one corrupt scenario in my lifetime. Nothing gets done is just too dramatic.

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#45

Post by snapcaster »

snakeyjake wrote: post #30
lmm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it's probably the most famous (at worst, second behind Monte Carlo).

Las Vegas is an insignificant mote of dust compared to Macau when it comes to Casinos and gambling.

wow you're not kidding! looked this up and revenues are somewhere like 10x-20x of macau compared to vegas. That's pretty nuts, didn't realize there was that big of a gap

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#46

Post by thenthenthen »

bandrami wrote: post #41
k8sToGo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you didn't just describe RimWorld? Someone doing that in real life is truly disturbing

Remember that the universally recognized setting for a grim cyberpunk dystopia is not a theoretical prediction but a memory of an actual city just north of Hong Kong that was demolished 30 years ago

Which city? Are you talking about Kowloon Walled city?

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#48

Post by tiagod »

commandersaki wrote: post #5

Aren't these spots popular for running pig butchering scams? I don't know why BBC article didn't explicitly say this.

>The latter are also known as "pig butchering" scams, named after the farming practice of fattening pigs before slaughtering them.

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#49

Post by bandrami »

thenthenthen wrote: post #46
bandrami wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that the universally recognized setting for a grim cyberpunk dystopia is not a theoretical prediction but a memory of an actual city just north of Hong Kong that was demolished 30 years ago

Which city? Are you talking about Kowloon Walled city?

I am. The memory of it somehow became the universally-accepted built environment of the future.

Re: Shwe Kokko is accused of being a city built on scams

#50

Post by zemvpferreira »

feverzsj wrote: post #32

It's not just some scams. It's the darkest thing ever in the whole human history. After China banned using of death row organs around 2014, the world's largest organ black market has moved to southeast Asia. There are estimated more than 100k victims (mostly Chinese) annually. Some of them may be released, if their families can afford the ransom. The remaining victims are treated like livestock. They are forced into…

Please don't take this as a criticism but do you have a source documenting what you're describing? I'd really like to read up on it.
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