[ExI] Bad news for US customers of Intrade

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Eh, a quick explanation, but if you still do not understand
> after this one then you're probably not worth any further
> reply:
>
> On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 12:47 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki
> <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 2:17 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki
>>> <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> you demand that bureaucrats
>>>> have to control individual securities trades rather than letting
>>>> market participants make their own decisions. In your world people
>>>> have to act through gatekeepers of power (elected officials, unelected
>>>> bureaucrats) rather than through individual acts of trade.
>
>>> You have been claiming that my support for any degree
>>> of law and regulation, means that I support total law and
>>> no individual choice.  For instance, see the above-quoted
>>> section.
>>
>> ### Adrian, you need to read an adversary's statement attentively,
>> before giving a hasty reply. Where in the above statement do you find
>> the word "total" or other related quantifiers ("only", "all", "none")?
>
> "Rather than" is the qualifier here, as if only X or Y is possible
> rather than partial X and partial Y.

### Seriously? Let's have a vote: Anybody else possibly reading this,
especially native English speakers, please weigh in - does the word
"rather" in the paragraph quoted above (starting with "you demand that
bureaucrats...."), used there twice without an absolute qualifier
(such as "always", "only", "exclusively") actually act as an absolute
qualifier on its own?

But, in case nobody reads it, here is for you Adrian a reference to an
English dictionary, explaining the meaning of "rather":

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rather

If interested I can also supply you with the definition of "is", the
word that many philosophers and at least one president foundered on.

------------------------
> No.  I give you what you need to understand.  I do not have
> unlimited time to re-explain every point to you as many times
> as it takes, and I have already spent multiple hours on this.
>
> That is why you are not worth any further reply if you still
> don't understand after this letter.

### The online dictionary thinks I do understand, quite well.
-------------------------
>
>> Interesting choice of pronoun - "we". In this very same sentence I
>> would have inserted "they".
>
> Like it or not, you live under the same government I do,
> therefore "we" are under the same government and
> suffer its controls.

### You missed my veiled insinuation, so let me explain me in greater detail:

The last subordinate clause in the sentence you wrote "This is but one
example where I have not, in fact, taken the side of more government
control than what we have now" (the clause "what we have now") can be
modified to refer to either of two  subjects - the government or the
people. I would have chosen the former referent, expressing my feeling
that the government is an extraneous entity ("what *they* have now").
You chose "we" - as if identifying with the government (you +
government = we), or merging the government and the people (the people
+ government = we).

Just thought this might be a Freudian glimpse.

Rafal