>the Superior Court cancelled that mortgage in a 2017 decision, which was appealed by Michel Primeau, who beat Hooper in the game of rock paper scissors — and won the $517,000 wager.
Seems like the court itself decided to cancel the mortgage and the winner was the one who decided to appeal it in court.
>This gambling debt had even been recognized in a notarized contract and had led to the registration of a mortgage on the house of the loser, Edmund Mark Hooper.
>The mortgage was canceled by a judgment rendered by a Quebec Superior Court judge in 2017.
Because it was on a notorized contract. The guy that won is a huge asshole honestly.
Why is no one talking about the true jerk in this situation? The guy legally forcing the other to mortgage his house in order to give him $500k — because of rock, paper, scissors...
Well, we do not know what would happen if the situation were opposite. They both entered into the agreement, presumably seriously. It seems like just playing the game qualifies both sides as jerks.
Yes but sometimes you have a shark that eggs on the game knowing it is rigged.
Google rock paper Scissors robot. It's not inconceivable that a human may have some skills close to that. Or was purposely slowly entering their final state.
How do you propose to enforce this? If these two people had simply gambled the same way, and the loser took out the mortgage and paid the winner, nobody would even know.
It's illegal to gamble where I live, yet every year my friends and I place bets on major sporting events.
The solution to problems isn't always more government. Particularly when the proposed laws are totally unenforceable.
To penalize them, you have to identify them first. Gambling is like corruption, in that two innocent activities (a game and a transfer of money) are combined, and you need to prove that link to prove that gambling occurred.
To be fair, what you actually accomplish there is not to ban gambling, but just to limit it to table stakes. Though that's probably a more useful goal anyway.
It will not. First, large numbers of people will still gamble, and pay a far higher price to do so.
Sports betting is illegal in my state, yet the poker games at my local casino has always been full of bookies taking bets from other players, at significantly worse lines and higher vig than legal book makers in Vegas charge. And sometimes stiffing winners clients after they have a big win, or using threats of violence to collect from big losers.
A few years ago the poker room had to shut down fir nearly 6 months due to a flood. Private games spring up all over town, and instead of taking $126 an hour ($14 per player per hour) like the casino, they raked as three and four times as much. In one game a friend of mine saw the dealer cashed out $2500 in “tips” from her shift. she had been skimming from the pots and the “host” claims he wasn’t in on it. With no cameras, floor management, security etc, they are lucky they didn’t just get hit by a home invasion given the tens of thousands in cash at each game.
Legalized gambling doesn’t just save lives by keeping it out of organized crime control, it makes it far less costly for participants, and making its negative impacts on society much lower. In a competitive market the rake/vig is much lower, playing poker for $14 an hour has much more limited personal impact than playing it for $50/hour.
Lastly legal gambling can enforce rules to protect players from their worst instincts. One example is banning collection of gambling debts to help ensure players only play with what they can afford to lose.
> Sports betting is illegal in my state, yet the poker games at my local casino...
So gambling is still allowed in your state. I'm saying to ban it completely so the entire market is closed.
It won't be too difficult to crack down on private gambling sites as well. The issue in the US is that each state has its own laws, so this won't work unless there is a ban at the federal level.
> Legalized gambling doesn’t just save lives by keeping it out of organized crime control, it makes it far less costly for participants, and making its negative impacts on society much lower.
I don't agree. There are countries where gambling is banned, and they don't have a gambling or crime problem.
You ignore what I said and ignore reality. I gave real examples of two real gambling markets, one legal and illegal, that demonstrated how much worse the effects of the illegal market were.
Instead you claim countries have successfully banned gambling completely. OK name one so we can correct your misapprehension.
For example Sports betting has been illegal almost everywhere in the US for a long time. Illegal sports gambling has peaked near $150B a year.
> There are countries where gambling is banned, and they don't have a gambling or crime problem.
Like which? The only democracy I see that (almost) fully banned gambling seems to be Israel, and their underground gambling industry is estimated at $3.5 billion.
Not sure I follow? If two people have a 'rational' bet, then is that legal in your eyes? Surely you can't be saying that irrational actions should be illegal, or that gambling on 'irrational' decisions (however one might even try to define that) should be banned? Or that all gambling should be banned, because there is a chance that some bets might be irrational? None of those viewpoints seem to make any kind of sense, as far as I can see?
If the roles were reversed, I would have a similar criticism of the other guy. Clearly, the loser didn’t want to pay because he contested it in court — and the victor could have forgiven the debt.
I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
> I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
That's a bit different. Your friend is presumably not deliberately forgetting his wallet while eating $500k lunches, and if he was I bet you'd expect him to pay you back. And the game of Rock Paper Scissors may be trivial and low-effort, but betting $500k on the game is very much not.
If I enter into a $500k bet on a game of Rock Paper Scissors, it's with the understanding that I stand to lose $500k if I lose the game, and I take that seriously. The only reason that risk is worth taking is if I also stand to win $500k if I win the game. If I win and you turn around and say "oh come on man I really don't want to pay", then you're basically saying you entered into the bet with the intention of scamming me out of an expected sum of $250k, so yes I'll insist that you pay up.
This is a fair point. Part of the reason I would not make this bet in the first place is because I wouldn’t want the put myself into a situation where I either lose lots of money or risk causing financial hardship on another person. It’s lose-lose, in my opinion (I don’t think it’s worth $500k).
I understand how people can reasonably disagree about this and I take back calling him a jerk (although I hope I would not behave the same way in his circumstance). I also lack information about the specifics of what happened.
>I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
What is the minimum amount of effort required to make a bet of $500,000 valid?
If he's a true jerk, he'll report the now cancelled debt to his country's equivalent of the IRS. If you owe money and some or all of that is cancelled, in many countries the amount cancelled might count as income to you for tax purposes.
I'd expect that in this case it would not be income, because it sounds like the court determined that the debt was not valid in the first place and so it is more of a "there was never a debt in the first place" than a "cancelled debt" situation, but being investigated to determine that would likely be annoying.
The US army spends about $700 million on recruitment [0]. While that number has been higher recently since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.
I think the supposition is that Canada also has a volunteer army, but does not spend as much on recruitment. I am not sure if that is true or not, but anecdotally it feels like there is at least 10x the amount of military recruitment ads in the US as there are in Canada.
Bingo. There was a awful lot of screening at MEPS -- where you go to process for the US Military, regardless of Marines/Army/Navy/Airforce -- for medical stuff. Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.
I served with a dude who entered to be a diesel mechanic (even though he had no background/interest in it) because he got his GF pregnant and didn't have a way to take care of a kid at 19.
These are less of an issue in Canada, the UK, etc. where they have universal healthcare and better safety nets.
> Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.
Basic training was the hardest exercise that I'd had in my life up until then. They don't want you dying from an asthma attack on the obstacle course or something similar.
Or, if you have a heart condition, they don't want you dying on the operating table from it when they go to remove a piece of shrapnel.
Yup. And if you have a knee problem, back problem, etc. you will get chaptered out for medical reasons, so why waste time and money if that's the eventual outcome? Does the military want to pay for the healthcare of someone who went to basic training with a bad knee and made it worse due to being in the military? No! That isn't their purpose and we should never expect otherwise.
Sometimes I think people are just looking for a boogeyman.
Right, but does Canada have the same global police mission that the United States does? I’m not sure why it would be the default expectation that the U.S. and Canada or other NATO countries would have the same amount of recruitment advertisements.
So I guess I’m unsure about what was being clarified given the OP’s statement and then the following response.
> since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.
Implying the issue is a volunteer army. If that's the case, Canada would have the same problem as it's also a volunteer army.
If your argument is that it's not about being a volunteer army, it's about the scale of the military, you might be right... we'd have to compare the personnel number to recruitment budget ratio between NATO countries to get a sense of that.
That wouldn't surprise me. As a kid, airshows and movies like Top Gun & Iron Eagle certainly gave me a pro-military view. I did end joining the army after high school. On the first day of basic training, I also have very vivid memories of drill sergeants mocking us recruits for having bought into the "be all you can be" propaganda :)
My favorite memory of an airshow was seeing the SR-71 fly. Oh my gosh that thing was cool. It was so loud that its vibrations set off what seemed to be every car alarm in the parking lot. At the end of its performance, the pilot just pulled back on the stick and just flew straight up into the clouds. I don't know if this video is the airshow I went to, but imagine a kid with a love of military aircraft seeing this thing up close --https://youtu.be/aV82gbriMc8.
I also have fond memories of seeing an A/V-8B Harrier do a vertical take off and landing. The funniest memory I have was seeing the label on an Apache helicopter's 30mm cannon that said "do not aim at personnel on base".
My favorite first hand experience was getting to fly in a vintage WW2 B-25 Mitchell. I sat in the glass bubble where a gunner would sit at the front of the aircraft. This was in 2012. The owner said that all of the parts he ordered to keep the plane flying came in the original WW2 packaging. As of 8 years ago, somewhere out there was a warehouse full of WW2 era spare parts for 70 year old bombers!
On another tangent: there are also collectors of WW2 (and older) combat rations, and some people open their contents for review and sometimes consumption today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA6u-sYhFi0
If you really wanted to try and take a flight on this plane, or a similar one, I could try to get you in touch with the guy. It's a friend of my Dad's friend.
Here's a video from 1992, which will give you a sense of what is event is/was like, too:
> On the first day of basic training, I also have very vivid memories of drill sergeants mocking us recruits for having bought into the "be all you can be" propaganda :)
I suspect someone joining the military after being in college and private industry has a higher chance of completing the pilot program than someone 18-20 years old which make up the bulk of the military recruits. (Assuming they both meet all physical requirements.)
> I suspect we'll see a change to WFH, not because workers like it, but because it is cheaper and production doesn't change (not to mention it quickly reveals whose "production" is really just physically presenting in an office)
I’m unconvinced and very skeptical that on the average across all people that transitioned to WFH due to COVID-19 there is “no change” in measurable productivity.
The relative merits of WFH productivity wise are debatable. Being forced to WFH unplanned and against your will, during a stressful pandemic? If you think productivity isn’t down per hour* I have a bridge to sell you.
*A lot of workers are surely working more hours to compensate, or out of boredom. This presents a whole different set of risks.
> Interestingly, when I lay it all out like that and add it up, the US monetary policy looks like a big business's bureaucratic system, the kind that'd be ripe for disruption by a startup. Of course, it's not quite so simple when we're talking nation-states and not Silicon Valley ventures
That’s because governments have the privilege of establishing itself as a monopoly. They control the rules of the marketplace via regulations.
Imagine a world where one county underfunds infrastructure because of 5G health fears, but another country does not. Wouldn’t the county that implemented the infrastructure have a competitive advantage?
There are two angles of potential for who benefits.
1) Misdirection. Someone trying to muddy the waters of blame related to SARS-CoV-2. In that case, almost anything other than the truth will be useful. Chaos of information is ideal if that's your goal. Try to shatter the consensus. Unleash, entice, the people prone to extremes on conspiracy theories, let them do the work of spraying non-sense everywhere. Moderately effective and at very little cost, all they require is a gentle nudge at a time like this.
2) Degrade competitors when it comes to their deployment of technology (5G in this case). A small erosion is a large potential benefit over time. Once you have an advantage, keep pressing it forward.
Don't know about the Bay Area but where I live they've declared a judicial emergency and shut down most of the courts. It might violate the right to assembly but you're unlikely to get a judge to hear your argument until after the order has been lifted.
“The Court’s postponement of argument sessions in light of public health concerns is not unprecedented. The Court postponed scheduled arguments for October 1918 in response to the Spanish flu epidemic. The Court also shortened its argument calendars in August 1793 and August 1798 in response to yellow fever outbreaks.”
I mean, the guy went to court to weasel out of the bet.