51–60 of 106 posts
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…
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.)
Depending on a local warlord to protect your independent privately owned city-state (in exchange for a healthy cut out of your profits, of course) doesn't sound like something that is likely to work long term. But at least one well known crypto-libertarian seems to be making some money out of it: > With Thailand cutting off power and telecommunications, electricity comes from diesel generators, which are expensive to…
Well, you're going to need _something_ like that (I suppose there's also the Be Your Own Warlord option, but that's presumably even more expensive). Provided the warlord is getting paid, they seem less likely to ask questions of dodgy fake cities than an actual government is (for instance see Honduras, where the current government is trying to get rid of the weird libertarian fake-city authorised by the previous government).
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.)
Libertarians would answer that in a True Libertarian World, gambling would be legal everywhere: so gamblers would have a rich choice between casino's and wouldn't have to resort to shady casino's with bad reputations, as they do now.
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.
> I fail to see the upside of living in somebody's pocket soviet union
The sort of extreme libertarians who are keen on this sort of thing don't acknowledge that it would be like that, though; in their worldview, without a government, (only, effectively, an _owner_), all would be well. Now, this may sound suspiciously like warlordism or feudalism to some of us, but we're not the ones who want to live in these sorts of places.
Singapore's completely different; it's rather authoritarian, but is generally a functioning state with strict regulation.
I thought they were talking about Las Vegas until I read the article. I wonder if that was the intention when they titled the article.
I think you might be imposing an America-centric view on the BBC. I doubt that was the intention.
And yes, more Las Vegas than Monaco, even though it is a 2 hour drive from where I live. Monaco is not famous for casinos (plural), it is famous for one particular casino, that is the Monte-Carlo casino.
And if they specified Asia, Macao would have popped up in my mind. As for the "fraud" part, casinos and fraud go well together, at least in popular culture. Which is a bit ironic considering that apparently, the scam businesses took over as casinos closed down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
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No, but it's probably the most famous (at worst, second behind Monte Carlo).
Monte Carlo isn't a city. It's a casino named after the Monaco neighbourhood where it's located: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_Casino
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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
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Monte Carlo isn't a city. It's a casino named after the Monaco neighbourhood where it's located: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_Casino
It's the same kind of administrative division as Monaco City. It's where the Grand Prix is announced as being held. Las Vegas is also legally a subset of the metropolitan area that it's part of. Americans do call the thing that Las Vegas is a "city" and do not call the thing that Monte Carlo is a "city", but this seems more like a translation artifact than any real difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Like, if you like on the American east coast, and enjoy gambling, Vegas may be a place that you'd like to go, but you have other closer options.