Abortion: When absolute immunity isn’t?
Kate Cox is a pregnant 31 year old Texas Resident. Her doctor has informed her that her pregnancy is at serious risk. Her fetus has a rare genetic disorder that is very likely to result in a stillbirth outcome. As a result, this stillbirth could ultimately render Kate’s health at serious risk, it could risk potential future fertility issues and it could even be potentially fatal for Kate herself. Let’s explore.
Judicial Review
Kate has sued the state of Texas for a stay to allow her to have an abortion in the State of Texas. A lower Texas court ruled in Kate’s favor by issuing a stay of Texas’s strict anti-abortion law, thus allowing her to have an abortion. However, Ken Paxton quickly intervened and petitioned the Texas Supreme Court to rescind that lower court’s stay.
The Supreme Court has issued a summary judgement against the lower court ruling to prevent Kate from having an abortion in the State of Texas. The ruling cited that Kate’s medical circumstances don’t justify the lower courts ruling and don’t allow for her to have an abortion. Here’s where the problems for these judges (and Ken Paxton) arise.
Suing Court Judges
Court judges are granted absolute immunity when performing their judicial job duties so long as what the judges are doing remains within their jurisdiction. What is jurisdiction? That’s a really good question, one that needs another court to truly decide and clarify in a case like this.
Jurisdiction is, in short, whether the judge’s responsibility of being a judge is actually at play when the judge’s ruling took place. Meaning, as long as the judge exercised his or her judicial responsibilities faithfully both within the jurisdiction of the court (locale) and within the judge’s own specific jurisdiction (handling of judicial responsibilities), then the judge and by extension, all court staff performing court responsibilities enjoy absolute immunity from lawsuits. This means that so long as jurisdiction remains in place, then the judge’s absolute immunity prevents the judge (and staff) from being sued for his or her judicial actions in that court.
Where does jurisdiction end?
Good question. A question that doesn’t really have solid answers. In Kate’s case, jurisdiction should theoretically end once court judges (and legislators) begin dispensing medical advice. Not only is dispensing medical advice a practice limited to licensed doctors and other licensed medical professionals, dispensing medical advice is well outside of a judge’s jurisdiction unless they are also a duly licensed medical professional. Nothing in any court of law should allow or authorize a judge to practice medicine without a license. Not only is a judge not a doctor, dispensing medical advice is not part of ANY judge’s job description.
What does this mean? It means that any judge who chooses to intervene in a medical case and who opines that a person doesn’t fit the medical criteria for any specific medical treatment, THAT is the very definition of dispensing medical advice and, likewise, the illegal practicing of medicine.
Medical Business
If judges wish to get into the business of dispensing medical advice to defendants, then they should be required to not only attend medical school, they must also take on a medical license by passing the medical board exams for their state. Justices are not medical doctors and have no rights to dispense medical advice, not even in their court of law as a judge… which is why any rulings that duly dispense medical advice sit well and truly outside of any judge’s jurisdiction. However, because this is a legal issue, it would require another court to rule if what the judge decided fits within or outside of that judge’s judicial jurisdiction. From where this author sits, dispensing medical advice is not and should never be within a judge’s job role (aka jurisdiction).
Immunity Undone
What does this mean for cases like Kate’s in Texas? It means that Kate and her lawyer should sue each and every judge sitting on the Texas Supreme Court because each and everyone who made that medical advice ruling firmly went outside of their jurisdiction to make that medical advice ruling. Why? Because they are not dispensing justice, they are dispensing medical advice. No one should ever mistake a judge for a doctor or vice versa. When judges get into the medical business, they’re firmly well outside of their judicial jurisdictional boundaries.
When a judge falls outside of their jurisdictional boundaries, their absolute immunity is vacated and they are firmly subject to lawsuits. Specifically in this case, practicing medicine without a license, reckless endangerment, negligent homicide (should Kate die) and perhaps several others.
In Texas, being found guilty of practicing medicine without a license is a third degree felony, punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Ken Paxton could also be found guilty of practicing medicine without a license depending on what wording was sent over to the Texas Supreme Court to urge them to review this case.
Kate’s Health
If the Texas Supreme Court continues to hold that Kate’s medical case is outside of the boundaries of medical intervention to warrant a Texas stay, then the judges have dispensed medical advice against her actual licensed medical doctor’s own medical advice. Since when have judges become medical doctors? Since when do judges hold medical degrees and medical licenses? Since when do judges orders override a medical professional? They don’t when those orders are considered medical advice. Herein requires a court to make a ruling involving jurisdiction over these judges.
Meaning, Kate Cox needs to request her lawyer to sue each and every Supreme Court Judge (and Ken Paxton) for practicing medicine in the State of Texas without a license on the merit that the judges went outside of their jurisdiction by practicing medicine without a license. Again, practicing medicine without a license is and should be considered outside of a judge’s jurisdiction. No judge should be practicing medicine as part of their judge job duties. Thus, their judicial immunity is trumped by their practicing of medicine illegally.
Whether a lawyer would want to take on such a case to 1) establish if jurisdiction has been breached and if so, 2) if the judges practiced medicine without a license. Let’s let the court establish if these judges violated jurisdiction and, if so, then let Kate’s case against them proceed.
If Texas wants to play novel games with women’s health, then these judges need to have those same novel legal games played against them… and here is, just as Julie Andrews once sang as Maria von Trapp, “a very good place to start.”
Disclaimer: This article is intended strictly for informational purposes only. This article is strictly opinion and not intended to be, nor should be considered nor construed as legal advice in any way. Always consult a licensed attorney for legal advice.
↩︎
Fallout 76: Are Re-Rollers Gambling?
As of Season 12, entitled Rip Daring and the Cryptid Hunt, Bethesda might has well have entitled Fallout 76’s newest season, Welcome to Gambling. Let’s explore.
Challenge System
When Fallout 76 released in 2018, Bethesda included a “Challenge” system in the game. This challenge system allowed (and still allows in limited ways) players to obtain Atomic Shop currency called “Atom” in exchange for performing relatively basic challenges in the game world.
This Atom currency allows players to “buy” in-game items, such as CAMP add-ons, character clothing, hairstyles and face paint. The selection of the items in the Atomic Shop, at the time, was relatively limited in the early days, but has since expanded into consumables, Fallout 1st items, weapon and armor paints and even weapons.
Almost every video game released today offers a store with add-on items for players to purchase to enhance their gaming experience. The “Atom” currency has always been and remains the only currency in the game that can be purchased with real cash money in the form of USD (or other currencies around the world). For the purposes of this article, all dollar amounts shown are in USD.
For example, if you own a PlayStation, you can visit Sony’s PlayStation store and purchase Atom bundles, such as 500 Atom for $4.99 (or basically $5). The exchange rate is 100 Atoms to every $1 spent. An item in the Atomic Shop could then be said to cost $7 if it costs 700 Atoms. A small discount is applied the more Atom you buy.
If you pay $20, you’ll receive 2,400 Atoms. Bethesda’s marketing states there’s a bonus of 400 Atoms. In reality, this is simply considered a slight markdown on costs. Instead of costing $1 per 100 Atom, this changes the ratio to $1 per 120 Atom or discounted to 83¢ per 100 Atom. If you’re willing to spend $40, you’ll receive 5,000 Atoms. That further reduces the cost to $1 for every 125 Atom or 80¢ for every 100 Atom (a 20¢ discount or 20% discount for each 100 Atoms bought over the $5 purchase in the store).
That means that if you buy $5 worth of Atoms, a 1500 Atom item in the Atomic Shop store costs you $15.00. If you pay for $40 in Atoms, that same 1500 Atom item now costs you $12. That’s not a tremendous discount overall, but you will have saved $3 by buying $40 in Atom over buying three separate $5 Atom items (making $15 or 1500 Atom) from the PlayStation store. This conversion rate is only important if you’re wanting to equate how much something actually costs you in the Atomic Shop.
Fallout 1st
With the introduction of Fallout 1st, this monthly subscription service muddies the Atom waters just a little. By subscribing to this service, you’ll receive not only access to all of Fallout 1st’s features, including access to private worlds, access to custom worlds, access to the ammo and scrap boxes and a bunch of 1st exclusive Atomic Shop inclusions, you’ll also receive 1,650 Atoms each month. The cost for Fallout 1st is $12.99/mo straight up or $8.25/mo if you pay for the $99 to buy 1 year / 12 months up front.
Depending on how you choose to buy Fallout 1st, the value of the monthly allotment of Atoms changes. Buying Fallout 1st at the 1 year price is obviously the cheapest option offering up a nearly 50% discount off of those 1,650 Atoms (ignoring all of the rest of Fallout 1st’s features). 1,650 Atoms would normally cost close to $16.50 to purchase. Of course, the closest Atom bundle on the PS store is the 1,100 Atom bundle which costs $10. You’d have to jump to the 2,400 Atom bundle at $20 to get enough to cover 1,650 Atoms. The best Atom cost bundle is the 1 year subscription to Fallout 1st which discounts the cost of Atoms to 50¢ per 100 or effectively half price. That means that that same 1500 Atom item in the Atomic shop would cost you $7.50… assuming all of your Atoms came solely from being a Fallout 1st member.
Buying Fallout 1st monthly at $13 is still a discount on Atom, but at a rate of (rounded up) 127 Atom per $1 spent, just slightly better than buying the 5,000 Atom bundle shown above.
Challenges and Score
When the first Scoreboard season arrived in 2020, Bethesda changed what the daily and weekly challenges gave as rewards. Prior to the introduction of the Scoreboard seasons, all challenges awarded Atom. A player can spend these Atoms in any way chosen. Atom was originally awarded from both daily and weekly challenges as well as all of the other environmental challenges in the game.
With the introduction of the first Season and the Scoreboard, daily and weekly challenges changed to providing S.C.O.R.E. (another insipid Bethesda acronym). For the purposes of this article, this author will use the word ‘score’ for simplicity. Score is simply yet another, but separate form of Experience Points (XP). The score moves a blue progress bar across the Scoreboard. Once the progress bar reaches the end, the Scoreboard advances by one space. Each Scoreboard has 100 board spaces. Each space requires a progressive amount more score to complete. The first space might require 1000 score to complete. The last space might require 3500 score to complete. Every space in between requires more than 1000 score and less than 3500 score to advance to the next space. Once the game board has completed, additional board spaces appear so that awards can still be accrued by performing daily and weekly challenges.
For the first few seasons, once you reached the Scoreboard’s end, the board was over. Challenges did nothing and were worthless. It wasn’t until a few seasons later that Bethesda realized the problem and added more board spaces after the 100th board space, the final space which awards the “big prize” (such that it is).
What exactly is a Challenge?
While there are many challenges available in the game, the ones that matter most to today’s players are those that produce score. These are the only ones that advance board spaces on the Scoreboard. All other remaining challenges still provide Atom, but in small and diminishing quantities. The only renewing challenges are the daily and weekly challenges. The environmental challenges are one-off challenges that, for the most part, do not renew. These environmental challenges are one-and-done… with the exception of pick-lock and hack-terminal challenges that have a progression system that eventually ends, but which provide a small amount of Atom so long as they remain uncompleted.
The daily and weekly score challenges help “move the needle” through the Scoreboard. Each game board space unlocks some kind of Atomic Shop item including the possibility of a space awarding Atom itself. The board spaces are not random chance. They are hard set by Bethesda and the “prize” can be easily seen by hovering over the board space.
When Fallout 76 was introduced in 2018 (and until 2020), daily and weekly challenges awarded exclusively Atom alone. The daily challenge board might, in total, award anywhere from 100 to 300 Atoms (maybe more) depending on that day’s included challenges. That meant you could gain at least between 100-300 Atoms per day simply by doing the daily challenges. In a week, that could accrue to 1,000 or more Atoms just by doing daily challenges. The weekly challenges might accrue up to 1,000 to 2,000 Atoms (or more) depending on the included challenges. That meant that between the daily and weekly challenges you could see anywhere between 1,200 and 2000 Atom accrued per week. The problem for Bethesda was that all this freely available Atom from the daily and weekly challenges meant that players didn’t need to buy Atom frequently or sometimes at all. Bethesda wanted more income.
When the Scoreboard was introduced, the amount of Atom awarded by challenges was dramatically reduced to only those Scoreboard spaces which, all except one, offer a measly 150 Atom per space and only a handful of these spaces now exist on the board. In total, a single season Scoreboard typically awards 2,000 Atoms instead of up to 2,000 Atoms we were formerly getting per week from completing both the daily and weekly challenges. With the Scoreboard, it now takes many, many weeks of challenges to unlock the total Atom on the Scoreboard. Less Atom given out means more Atom sold with real cash money.
In other words, the amount of Atom awarded by the Scoreboard has been drastically reduced… forcing players to actually pay real money for Atom to buy larger Atomic Shop items. Bethesda enforces this purchase behavior by putting shop bundles into the Atomic shop for 16 days or 3 days or similar limited time offers which see the item disappear from the store after the timer ticks down. It’s a ruse that tries to force gamers into buying Atom to avoid “losing out”.
The challenges themselves include all manner of fetch quests. Some are long tailed and some can be completed in just a few minutes. Many are convoluted and may require things that a low level player might not have or might not yet have access to. Not all challenges can be completed by every player, depending on where that player is in completing the game’s main quest lines.
Challenge Examples
Challenges come in all shapes and forms. Some require completion of the challenge once, but many require completion of the challenge multiple times. For example, “Scrap Junk to produce Black Titanium (0/10)”. The 0/10 means that the player must scrap junk 10 times to produce Black Titanium to complete the challenge.
Bethesda plays games with these counters, too. The “Collect Pieces of Wood (0/200)” is a challenge that Bethesda has modified from its original to make it more difficult. When you collect wood, you might actually collect 4, 8 or even up to 20 pieces of wood as random chance. Yet, Bethesda only counts the collection itself toward the counter, not the number of the pieces of wood collected… as a way to cheat the player out of getting the task done sooner. Yet, “Craft ammo on a Crafting Bench (0/50)” still counts each individual piece of ammo crafted towards the challenge, even if you’ve only pressed the crafting button once. It’s this inconsistency and disparity between the challenges that not only make this system confusing, it makes the challenges a pain in the ass not knowing which rules apply. These counters are also what put long tails on challenges and require them to take a whole lot longer to complete than they should.
Some challenges are based solely on the completion of other challenges, like the Gold Star Daily Challenge. The Gold Star challenge isn’t actually a challenge, it’s a counter. It counts a specific set of challenges that have been completed. Once all of the Daily Challenges have been fully completed, the Gold Star Daily Challenge also completes. The Gold Star Daily challenge is an incidental challenge that completes only because other challenges have completed.
Challenges might include the following:
- Kill a Yao Guai with a Syringer
- Collect 100 Pieces of Wood
- Scrap junk to produce Black Titanium
- Kill a Deathclaw
- Eat a Meat based Meal
- Eat Pre-War Food
- Scrap Pre-War Money
- Complete a Daily Ops
Each of these challenges is usually sub-qualified with the number of times the player must perform that task. For daily challenges, if not once only, then it’s typically set to 3-5 times; relatively easy. For weekly challenges, it might be 20-100 times. With the introduction of the Re-Roller, the daily challenges have increased repeating the task from 3-5 to sometimes 20 or 30 or more, making these tasks take much, much longer. Yet, you still only have 24 hours to complete the challenge. There’s reason for this change, keep reading.
Atomic Shop Items
Atomic shop items are actually worthless. Why? Because you can’t craft them for others, sell them or even drop them. Any items purchase from the Atomic shop or, by extension, received from the Scoreboard are exclusively locked to that player. If you purchase (for Atom) an outfit from the Atomic Shop, it is exclusively for your use alone. If another player wants that same item, they must also spend Atom to buy it from the Atomic Shop. These player locked items make the item, in fact, worthless in the game world. They’re cosmetic, yes, but that’s the extent of the value of that item.
Some items can be used by other players, like Shelters, making these kinds of Atomic Shop items a bit more worthwhile than those like cosmetic armor or weapon skins. Shelters, for example, are probably one of the most useful items in the game. These in-game rooms offer the player a way to decorate and build in creative form, which can be shared by other players who visit that shelter. Shelters also afford a way to display items to other players that you have found and which you value. You can even display Atomic Shop items, but why bother? Only the rarest items found in the game world are those worth displaying.
What is a Re-Roller?
Here we arrive at the heart of this article and why you’re here reading. It’s important to understand the above system in place to understand this next most recent introduction by Bethesda, the Re-Roller (aka Re-Roll). Some challenges have been a problem to complete by some players, but only because the player might not be far enough along in the game to actually complete that challenge. For example, they might not have access to a specific location that a challenge requires. The player also might not be high enough level to use the required weapon to complete the challenge. There are many challenges like these that Bethesda includes in the challenge board.
Because of complaints over uncompletable challenges, Bethesda has now introduced in Season 12 (the current season as of this article), the concept of a Re-Roller. What is a Re-Roller? It simply allows you to “spin” for and hopefully 🤞 get a new and completely different challenge. And here’s where the gambling arises and where Re-Rollers intentionally fail.
Before diving into all of that, let’s step back in time.
EA and Loot Boxes
Several years back around 2019, EA introduced for-pay loot boxes into several of its games, but most notably FIFA. These for pay random chance loot boxes, once opened, provided the player with a common, rare or legendary item, which could be used in the game. In the case of FIFA, the game’s loot boxes provided trading cards in various rarities.
Many authorities jumped in claiming these loot boxes had become a form of gambling. These authorities are not wrong. They are a form of gambling. You spend real money and then the game spins and awards you with a “win” or “lose” situation. Because of typical house odds of offering up the worst rewards most frequently, it encourages players to do it again and again in hopes of getting “something better” or at least not a duplicate. Yes, duplicates are possible and extremely common.
As a result of the backlash over loot box gambling and other games of chance, EA and several other game developers have since stripped loot boxes from their games.
Enter Bethesda and Re-Rollers…
Re-Roller Gambling
While Fallout 76 has included a relatively real appearing slot machine in the game for many months now, it doesn’t rely on real cash money to operate. The in-game slot machine uses “caps”, an easily obtained in-game currency. This currency has been in the game from the beginning. Today, caps are considered mostly worthless, other than for the purposes of finding player vendors who are selling relatively rare in-game items.
With this slot machine, there is effectively no way to lose. The cost to play is 10 caps. Spending 10 caps, you’ll always get something for your caps spent. For example, spinning this slot machine always awards +2 to Luck for a limited time, a very useful player perk for as long as it lasts. You can always renew this perk by spinning again. You get this perk no matter whether you get caps back or not. Most times, you’ll get back exactly the caps you spent to play, 10 caps. Sometimes you’ll get back 4 caps. Occasionally, you’ll get 20 caps or more. If you don’t win anything, the game still awards you a piece junk to scrap or sell… junk likely worth 5-10 caps at a vendor. In essence, you almost never lose any caps in this slot machine… and even then, the additional perk means you never lose. It is also impossible to spend real cash money to play this machine as caps cannot be purchased directly with USD.
Enter Re-Rollers
The name itself actually has connotations of spinning something, like a slot machine. Even the sound effects used when re-rolling are reminiscent of spinning a slot machine. How do Re-Rollers work?
Because some challenges may be uncompletable (for whatever reason), a Re-Roller allows the player to take a chance on a new replacement challenge in the hopes it will be better than what was there. In effect, the Re-Roller is tantamount to pulling the arm on a slot machine and waiting for the spinning to stop to see if you have “won”. If not, that encourages you to spin again. This encouragement is tantamount to and turns a Re-Roller into a form of gambling… triggering the same effects as any other game of gambling. While the game issues one free Re-Roller per day, additional Re-Rollers aren’t free, making this situation far, far worse.
Re-Rollers cost Atom to buy from the Atomic Shop. As has been established earlier, Atoms cost real USD. Thus, to buy Atom means paying real cash money to Bethesda for these Atoms. Thus, Re-Rollers cost the player real cash money to buy. This further means it’s possible to lose a large amount of real USD to gambling with these Re-Rollers. This is also the first time Bethesda has tied real cash money to an in-game random chance based gambling device in Fallout 76.
One could argue that Lunchboxes could be considered a form of gambling, but there’s really no gambling involved. You buy a lunchbox, you open it and you get a reward in game. There is no random chance involved. The only randomness is in the name of perk you get, not whether you’ll get one as each one is nearly equal to the others. More than this, you can buy Lunchboxes in the game world by earning in-game currency… something that can’t be done with Re-Rollers.
Re-Rollers can only be obtained by spending Atom in the atomic shop or by obtaining a very small number of them off of the Scoreboard (and even less off of the ever diminishing environmental challenges). Even then, the Scoreboard only offers 3 Re-Rollers from a single space with just a few spaces across the game board. Those 3 Re-Rollers are easily consumed in just a few minutes on ONE (1) Challenge. There is no other way to get Re-Rollers in Fallout 76 as of this writing.
Gambling Triggers and Addictions
The problem with random chance spin and win mechanisms is that they trigger the same exact gambling centers of the brain as any other form of gambling. Because real money is involved in obtaining Re-Rollers, this could cause real actual gambling problems for children targeted by this new Re-Roller mechanism. Unlike the slot machine above, which always wins you something, the Re-Roller has no guarantee you will get anything different from what you already have, which is perceived by the player as a loss. Yes, it IS entirely possible to get the same exact (or an even worse) challenge as a result of a Re-Roller. Sometimes it happens multiple times in a row.
Let’s consider that it costs 50 Atom to buy one Re-Roller. That means that an average player could spend as much as $1 for every 2 Re-Rollers purchased. Because a player might need use multiple Re-Rollers multiple times, it would be easy to spend $5 or $10 attempting to get new daily challenges… every single day. That money adds up in a week or a month or even a year.
As stated above, this unusual move is the first time Bethesda has tied real world fiat money into the purchase of a random chance game mechanic driven entirely by the need to gamble. While there’s no way to win cash money back out of this, using it always means loss of money AND its effect as a gambling device stands. Because the win is considered a “better” (subjective interpretation) challenge, the loss is real money spent on wasted / lost Re-Rollers. This loss of Re-Rollers has the real affect of triggering a gambling addiction.
As a result, the questionable inclusion of this game mechanic is easy to see children become addicted to this system so that they continue to Re-Roll without bounds, just to see what they get… all in an effort to make Bethesda more money! It’s not a simple matter that child wants to complete the challenges. It’s that the addiction causes the child to want to see “better” or “rarer” challenges. Addictive mechanics lead to addictive behaviors… and this Re-Roller feature has a real chance of being abused by someone caught up in gambling addictions. Worse, these games are targeted towards children and young adults who might not understand gambling addiction or the money problems which can result from them.
More than this, it’s surprising that Bethesda didn’t realize that these real world money tied Re-Rollers are actually a form of gambling and put the brakes on this feature before introduction.
Because Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, that puts Microsoft on the hook for this gambling device. An enterprising lawyer may now see very deep pockets in Microsoft and choose to pursue a lawsuit over perpetrating gambling on minors. In fact, under the eyes of state laws, gambling targeted towards minors is illegal. Bethesda is playing with legal fire here.
Convoluted and Epic Challenges
One thing that has made this entire Re-Roller system far worse and even more addictive is the inclusion of even more complex and convoluted challenges. Most daily challenges included in past Seasons have required relatively simple quest objectives. Go kill a single creature. Fetch 5 purified water. Easy and relatively simple, but also useful items to player.
With this Season, Bethesda has abandoned these simplistic challenges for longer tailed, more complex and even more difficult challenges. Where it might have taken an hour to get through the daily challenge board, it might now take 3 hours because of these newer more complex and convoluted daily challenges.
Weekly challenges have always been long tailed. That means that they might take several days to complete. That’s the point in weekly challenges. Daily challenges have always given only 24 hours to complete these challenges before they reset for the next day. Moving the challenges from maybe 5-10 minutes per challenge to 15-20 minutes per challenge is an odd play, but not when you consider Re-Rollers.
A reasonably experienced player can instantly size up the amount of time a specific challenge might take. This re-enforces the need to Re-Roll long-tailed challenges in the hopes of “getting something better” …. thus, ensuring that players get addicted to this random chance Re-Roller system. Thus, the reason for inclusion of longer, obscure and more complex challenges ensure that players will buy into this gambling mechanism for a “chance” to get something better or faster or easier.
In reality, the challenges ahead of the one being Re-Rolled are equally as complex and equally convoluted, with the exception of a perhaps a tiny few which might be as easy or as useful as those given in prior seasons. A player ultimately has no idea what might pop up when a challenge is Re-Rolled. Thus, the illusion of “getting something better.”
However, it didn’t stop with complexity. Bethesda felt the need to include one more incentive to reinforce gambling behaviors: Epic Challenges. “Epic Challenges” offer higher Score and are, thus, rarer to see from a Re-Roller. Rarity is a concept that will cause players to want to gamble. Because Epic Challenges are considered a low chance “win”, players will be incentivized to consume Re-Rollers multiple times until they get an Epic challenge.
Therefore, this Epic Challenge system “rarity” encourages players to Re-Roll every challenge on the daily (and weekly) boards simply to get Epic Challenges. Doing so could cost the player $20, $50 or even $100 real cash money to achieve… being required to Re-Roll 6 challenges per day and up to 12-20 Weekly challenges. Expensive AND addictive.
Way Cheaper to Pay for Board Spaces
On the Scoreboard, Bethesda has included the ability to pay 150 Atom to advance one space. For example, if you’re at space 99 and you want to complete the board, you could simply pay 150 Atom and avoid the hassles of performing challenges to gain the required amount of score.
Let’s equate this with Re-Roller costs. The purchase of three (3) Re-Rollers costs 150 Atom, the same amount it costs to buy one board space. Consider that three Re-Rollers on daily challenges cannot provide you with any amount of score close to completing a board space by itself. The board space might complete if, for example, the score amount given for a challenge is 150 and that also happens to be the amount needed to advance to the next board space. That also meant you had completed many previous challenges to get the progress bar to the point of being almost completed.
To put this in perspective, for only 150 Atom, the gameboard will advance an entire board space (adding somewhere between 1000 and 3500 score) OR you can pay 150 Atom for three Re-Rollers in the hopes that you can replace one single daily challenge and receive maybe 100-200 score. In other words, paying for just three Re-Rollers at 50 * 3 = 150 Atom is between 10x-35x more expensive than simply paying that same 150 Atom to advance a full board space. Thus, there is zero value in paying for Re-Rollers when you can pay for board spaces. Bethesda understands this.
Gambling Targeted Towards Minors
There’s a reason why gambling establishments require people to be age 21 to play. First and foremost, it’s the law. More than this, children shouldn’t be gambling. Unfortunately, video games can’t age check before each use. There is no way to exclude a system like Re-Rollers from players under the age of 21. The only way to avoid such a situation is if such a gambling system is not included at all.
This is why so many game developers have since removed real cash money based random chance loot box systems from their games. It’s also questionable why Bethesda has now chosen to include one in Fallout 76. Bethesda has most definitely crossed a line here; a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.
Ultimately, this Re-Roller system is likely to be seen for what it is, a gambling system strongly encouraging children to gamble by the use of Bethesda’s “Epic” challenge strategy, strongly appealing to “rarity” and “miss out” child behaviors. Gambling systems should never be included in products used by or, more importantly, targeted towards minors… particularly gambling systems when tied to the use of real cash money.
Bethesda, if you’re reading, you might want to quickly retain legal counsel as this Re-Roller system is likely to blow up in your face once again. That, or you quickly need to consider its removal from Fallout 76.
Gambling Addictions / Get Help
If you’re a player who is susceptible to gambling addiction, you should not play nor fall prey to Bethesda’s gambling encouragement. Instead, please get help. It is strongly recommended to steer clear of all such gambling mechanisms included in video games; mechanisms which trigger gambling addictions and encourage you to spend real money on them.
If you’re a parent reading, you should limit your child’s play of Fallout 76. Better, stop their play altogether until Bethesda removes this gambling device and stops encouraging players to pay real cash money on random chance gambling devices.
No video game should ever make money off of the backs of children encouraged to ostensibly gamble with real money. Gambling should always remain in places like Las Vegas or Atlantic City, where people who physically travel there have made the conscious decision to gamble and are of legal age to do so.
Can this be corrected / Solutions?
[Updated Mar 18th, 2023] When this article began, this author wrestled with the idea of adding a solutions section and decided against it. The simplest solution seemed for Bethesda to remove the feature from the game entirely and be done with it. However, I’ve since decided to include this section, only because it may help out other developers considering adding “games of chance” to their game… particularly when those games of chance are tied to fiat currency and in games where children (aged 17 and below) already make up a very large portion of the player demographic.
When you’re building an adventure game like Fallout 76, where the primary objectives are to explore and experience combat situations, adding games of chance (like the Re-Roller) as ways of raising additional money is problematic and possibly illegal in some parts of the United States. Basically, a game developer should never raise money by targeting children with games of chance when tied to fiat currencies.
The big mistake Bethesda made here was to tie the purchase of a Re-Roller to fiat USD money. To rectify this situation, Bethesda would need to untie this entirely. Get rid of Re-Rollers purchased through the Atomic Shop and replace the purchase of Re-Rollers to vendors located in the game world using one of the many already established in-game currencies, such as Scrip, Gold Bullion, Stamps or Caps. These in-game currencies are earned, not purchased. For a gamer to obtain these currencies, it only requires time, not real cash money. In fact, there is no way to pay for these currencies with real cash money using any in-game mechanism by Bethesda. However, that doesn’t resolve the problem over the fact that Re-Rollers are a game of chance included in a game title targeted towards children.
Instead, Bethesda needs to reconsider the idea of swapping out one challenge for another entirely. For example, get rid of this “game of chance” mechanic entirely and replace it with a buyout option. Instead of being required to “roll and pray for something better”, the player can simply buy out the challenge by using in-game currency. Pay some amount of caps or scrip or stamps or bullion and the challenge is instantly completed. An in-replacement buyout option gets around the problem of gambling and games of chance entirely.
The other option is to simply include more challenges… more than are actually needed to complete the game board. If the player misses a few challenges, no big deal. Though, the buyout option is the best solution as it gives the player the option to complete all challenges if they so choose simply by playing longer and earning more in-game currency.
Should a buyout option be tied to actual fiat currency? Perhaps. One thing is certain with the buy-out option, it cannot in any way be considered a potentially illegal form of gambling targeted at children. Though, bilking children out of money for the purposes of such “buy-out” mechanics is still considered dubious at best. Including games of chance in similar fashion to a slot machine, on the other hand, is problematic all around when an excessively large demographic of players consists of ages 17 and below. The only way such games of chance mechanics should be included is if the developer has a way to absolutely 100% exclude 17 and younger from participating in these mechanics.
To date, I don’t know of any game developer that has found a way to do this reliably… or at all! The best way to handle the inclusion of “adult” gambling situations is simply not to include them. If you want to operate games of chance via fiat money gambling situations, then spend the money to construct and open a real casino in Las Vegas.
↩︎
President Biden’s Classified Documents
Biden is currently the sitting President of the United States. Let’s make this perfectly clear right from the go. Does a President of the United States have legitimate access to be in possession of classified documents? Yes, but let’s explore.
Republican Agenda
Ever since the Department of Justice (DOJ) has begun investigating Donald Trump for a number of alleged wrongdoings, the Republicans have treated Biden as if he is in the wrong. While the DOJ does operate as part of the Federal Government, it is an autonomous entity not under direct control of the White House. While the White House, or more specifically President Joe Biden, can agree or disagree with the DOJ’s handling of matters, his opinion is not relevant to that department’s investigations.
Let me even clarify the heading of this section. The ‘Republican Agenda’ specifically refers to the MAGA Republican agenda, a small sect of the overall Republican party that is extreme in all aspects and is willing to take their agendas to extremes. These specific Republicans are unwilling to compromise, hold firm on conspiratorial ideals, wish for the government to topple and are doing their level best to instigate a civil war. This began under Donald Trump. Like the other MAGA Republicans, Trump also holds unrealistic and extreme points of view; points of view that are dangerous to Democracy and, frankly, to the rest of the world.
These MAGA extremist points of view may ultimately be the undoing of not only American Democracy, but unravel America itself. Meaning, the United States Government may be on the verge of disappearing if MAGA get their way… and with it, not just America, but the economies around the rest of the world. In other words, America’s economy is so intertwined with the rest of the world economies, if America falls, so will many other countries, likely including China and Russia. MAGA Republicans are playing with fire.
Mainstream Media
Unfortunately, mainstream media is helping this MAGA agenda along by pushing stories that further these MAGA narratives; narratives that only serve to undermine Democracy, but also undermines all of the foundational democratic institutional glue of the United States Democracy including the judicial system, the executive branch and the legislative branch. There is no branch of the US government that is not currently under internal siege by these MAGA extremists.
Mainstream media is making this situation worse by perpetuating and perpetrating fraudulent stories on the unsuspecting public (Democrat, Republican or Independent).
Stupidity Runs Rampant
One thing that’s become abundantly clear is that stupidity is running rampant throughout far too many MAGA Republicans. Yes, even from people who’ve been elected to government positions. These people have demonstrated they are severely under-educated and do not possess the cognitive or critical thinking skills to understand fact from fiction from fabrication. These are people who that when told something by someone even slightly trustworthy (to them), they believe every single word as though it were written as gospel in the Bible.
Mainstream media is taking full and complete advantage of this fact and are now writing not only extreme propaganda articles, they’re writing the absolute worst form of tabloid garbage. Case in point. Dailymail writes this entirely propagandistic article: THIRD batch of files found at Joe Biden’s Delaware home.
By ‘files’, this article means “classified documents.”
Presidential Power and Classified Documents
As the duties and powers confer to the duly elected President of the United States, that elected individual is given absolute clearance over the documents presented to him and created by him. This means that as President and while remaining the sitting President, that President inherits all clearance levels needed to perform and execute his or her duties as President of the United States.
This clearance level includes possession of and creation of classified documents at any level needed to perform those duties.
It also means that wherever the President chooses to work, classified documents are likely to be present, either previously created by someone else or, indeed, created BY the President of the United States himself as part of his job responsibilities. Having this clearance level is entirely part of being President of the United States.
Possession of Classified Documents as a Crime
To circle back around to that insanely stupid Dailymail article, it attempts to insinuate that Biden somehow should not be in possession of said documents. The President needs to be in possession of whatever classified documents allow him to perform and execute his responsibility as President of the United States. There is no crime here. Biden is not a criminal for being in possession of such classified documents.
Let’s liken this situation to Donald Trump. After Biden was sworn into office as President of the United States, Donald Trump became an Ex-President or if you prefer, a former president. As a former president, each former President gives up their role as sitting President including giving up access to various classified top secret documents.
Donald Trump was found to have been in possession of said documents at his Mar-A-Lago residence. However, the stark difference between Biden and Trump is that Biden is STILL the sitting President of the United States and still possesses the rights to own, hold, read and manage classified documents. Ex-President Trump, on the other hand, no longer holds the right to own, hold, read or manage such classified documents.
Questions without Answers
The question surrounding Trump is whether the documents were duly and properly declassified prior to those documents landing at Mar-A-Lago. As an Ex-President, Trump no longer holds the power to declassify such documents after leaving office. Biden, as President of the United States, still holds the power to declassify any document he chooses.
Thus, any such rousting by the Dailymail to make it appear as if Biden is somehow in the wrong or has performed a crime, there’s a simple Presidential fix. Biden, as President of the United States, can immediately and instantly declassify any and all such documents in question, leaving the people trying to make Biden look bad standing firmly with egg plastered on their faces. The President can nullify any such alleged criminal situations.
Biden being in possession of classified documents is not only NOT a crime for Biden, it’s actually part of his responsibility as President of the United States. As I said, stupidity reigns supreme with the MAGA Republicans.
Smart or Not?
The question comes down to NOT whether Biden’s possession of such documents was (or is) illegal, but whether it was a smart idea to leave them in his Delaware home. That’s the only situation that has any problems for the Government. Biden firmly has every right to BE in possession of those documents. The problem is only if those classified documents remain in the home unsecured when Biden is not actively there.
No, it’s probably not the smartest of ideas to leave such documents unattended. So long as there is sufficient security at the home to protect that home from intruders, and one would hope that as a sitting President, his home would be not only duly protected by active armed security forces, it would be outfit with an active security system. Even then, so long as the documents were placed into a properly secured safe or other such similar and nearly impenetrable storage unit, then the documents are considered properly secured even at his Delaware residence.
If someone who accessed Biden’s premises managed to gain access to such documents and read them, the illegal activity is actually on the people who found and read the documents. It is illegal for those people searching for them to be reading those documents, not Biden. Meaning, it is THEY who should be arrested for reading Biden’s classified documents.
Biden’s Desk
It gets worse. Any document that Biden writes while sitting at his desk could be considered instantly classified from the moment the pen hits paper. This means that finding a piece of paper with writing sitting on top of any desk, surface or object within Biden’s home could always be considered classified at some level. That means that anyone reading such documents without any clearance level granted could be considered having committed a crime. Not Biden, mind you, but the reader.
If there’s a crime having been committed here, it’s the people who infiltrated Biden’s home to find such classified documents. That means that the United States has a major security problem on its hands around Biden’s home.
If people (likely MAGA Republicans) are so easily able to penetrate the President’s residence to find such documents, security is no where near where it should be for that residence. This is clearly both a crime called breaking and entering and possibly even stalking.
Biden’s Security
Someone on Biden’s security team needs to quickly ferret out who gained access to the Biden Delaware home and how they managed to gain that access. This is a question no one is asking. However, this is a serious security breach at the top levels of government. No one should have access to Biden’s home with the exception of the Biden family and the Presidential security detail. All others should not be allowed onto the premises unless under escort by said security and only when a member of the Biden family is present. Otherwise, the Biden house should be firmly and completely secured and barred from entry except for Biden family members only. In other words, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Apples to Oranges
Let me get to the heart of why this all matters. Someone or several someones in the MAGA Republican party is simply trying to craft an illusion that appears like Trump’s classified document situation. This crafted situation is intended to make it seem like there’s something hypocritical going on. Except, there isn’t.
The only way the same situation between Trump and Biden can unfold is only after Biden leaves office as President. Only then can Biden be held accountable for holding onto classified documents at a personal residence.
While Biden remains a sitting President of the United States, he is a duly sworn officer of the United States Government and remains in power with all of the duties, responsibilities and, yes, clearances needed to perform that job.
On the other hand, Trump lost those powers, duties and clearances the moment he left office as President. For this reason alone, there is absolutely no comparison here.
Trump’s legal woes over classified documents remain. Donald Trump has no right, power or clearance to hold onto such still classified documents at his Mar-A-Lago residence. Biden, on the other hand, still holds every right, power and clearance to BE in possession of such classified documents wherever he chooses to work.
What Trump has done may be found to be illegal. What Biden has done (and continues to do) is perform his duties as sitting President of the United States. Until Biden leaves office, no crime has been committed involving classified documents. Dailymail, your article is a red herring and it’s damaging America.
Mainstream Media Stirring the Pot
Such articles by the likes of Dailymail only seek to stir the pot of dissent. They use people’s stupidity against them by making it seem like someone is in the wrong when clearly they are not. Thus, it only comes down to the editors and producers of said articles earnestly trying to undermine Democracy by making something appear as illegal when it clearly is not.
What Trump has done may very well be illegal and that remains to be seen by the investigations the DOJ is performing. Biden has done nothing yet illegal, but it might not be the brightest of ideas leaving such documents lying around in the open. Joe Biden, buy a proper document safe.
However, the question remains, how did someone gain access to Biden’s Delaware home to find such documents? No one should be allowed on the premises without Biden’s or his Secret Service detail’s authorization.
Something around Biden’s situation is clearly amiss, but it has nothing to do with classified documents. No one is investigating this.
Dailymail Comments
Reading some of the entirely misguided and, dare I say, stupid comments I’ve read on that Dailymail site, it’s clear that stupidity reigns supreme among MAGA conservatives. It’s like MAGA Republicans check their brains at the door when they walk into a room. They want to find anything and everything to attempt to discredit and, ultimately, impeach Biden. They are even willing to attempt to turn Biden’s daily and standard Presidential duties into a criminal activity.
While impeachment (using whatever junk they can fabricate) may be possible with the House now under Republican control, there is absolutely no way the Democrat controlled Senate will ever vote to convict and remove Biden from office. The MAGA Republicans know this, but they’re still trying quite hard and stupidly to discredit Biden. The only thing the MAGA Republicans are doing is making sure they never ever get elected again.
That’s the reason for such lame and stupid arguments as in this insipid Dailymail article allegedly finding classified documents at Biden’s residence. I’d honestly be more surprised if there WEREN’T classified documents found at Biden’s residences.
Planted Documents
Some have also supposed that the documents were planted by Republicans. While anything’s possible with MAGA extremists, they wouldn’t need to plant classified documents at Biden’s residence. Biden has been actively working at this residence and it makes perfect sense that some classified documents might remain there.
The question isn’t whether the documents were planted or even why the documents are there, but how someone managed to infiltrate Biden’s residence to find them? Why was someone snooping about Biden’s property? How did they get in? Why were they reading said classified documents of a sitting President without permission? These are bigger, more important security questions that need to be addressed… especially by Biden’s Secret Service Detail.
Vice President Documents
To close this article, you’ll notice that I didn’t mention the fact that these documents were from Biden’s time as Vice President until just now. Why is this fact not important? It’s not important because very likely there’s no way to establish exactly when the documents landed at Biden’s Delaware home. The presumption is that these documents landed at his home prior to Biden becoming President. We can’t know this.
Unless strict chain of custody for ALL classified documents is maintained, including exact dates when said documents changed hands, there is very likely no way to verify the exact date any specific document ended up at Biden’s home. Additionally, as President, Biden might need access to classified documents back from his a time as Vice President to handle matters occurring today. For this reason, he could have requested those documents and brought them to his home WHILE PRESIDENT… which is perfectly legal.
Finally, I’ll also point out that while the DOJ is investigating these documents found at his residence, they will likely exonerate Biden over all of the above points. I also hope that someone at the DOJ is smart enough to point out the security flaws and weaknesses with people snooping around Biden’s home in search of such documents… which honestly discloses the much, MUCH bigger problem here.
Let’s Suppose
Even if it’s possible to establish the documents were kept at the Biden residence prior to Biden becoming President, the fact that he is NOW President of the United States overrides that problem. The fact that he has clearance NOW overrides his possession of them when he wasn’t president and wasn’t vice president. Let’s take this one step further. The only way this information can truly be used against Biden is at an impeachment hearing.
The DOJ cannot easily (or possibly at all) bring criminal charges against a sitting President of the United States for activity prior to his being in office. The US Constitution is crystal clear on how to remove a President from office and that is strictly through impeachment and conviction via the House and Senate. That same constitution is entirely silent on bringing criminal charges against a sitting president and, up to this point, so has the Supreme Court remained silent on this point.
Political Stunt
This update is from Feb 4th, 2023. I’d like to point that in the same form as Republicans always like to call out against the Democrats, the Republicans are now guilty of doing exactly the same thing TO the Democrats. This whole situation is born out of a Republican agenda to discredit the Democrats. The point in “lawyers” “finding” documents at Biden’s home is strictly for the purposes of trying to weaken any DOJ case against Donald Trump.
The point here is that Donald Trump wants leverage when a DOJ lawsuit is finally brought against him (DJT). Trump can now point to Biden as an example of “the same classified document situation” and then ask why Biden is not being brought to justice over having similar documents at his house.
Let’s summarize the primary differences here:
- One is president, one is not…
- Biden is the sitting President of the United States.
- Donald Trump is NOT president.
- When exactly the documents arrived at the dwellings in question…
- It cannot be established when Biden’s documents arrived at Biden’s Delaware home (i.e., before or after his presidency).
- Donald Trump’s documents definitely arrived at Mar-A-Lago AFTER Trump left the White House and was, thus, no longer President and no longer held clearances high enough to possess some of those supposedly (de)classified documents.
- Level of Classified Documents…
- Biden’s documents were from a time when Biden was Vice President. It has not been established the level of classified documents involved, but likely were NOT the highest levels of top secret.
- Allegedly, some of Trump’s classified documents involved documents so Top Secret, they could not be declassified by a sitting President under any circumstances.
These three basic points are what the Department of Justice must establish against both Biden and Trump. However, Biden is still the sitting President. Even if the DOJ were to find criminal actions allegedly involving Biden, his being President overrules that criminal action. It is unlikely Biden can have any criminal actions brought against him while he is sitting President of the United States.
The only action afforded against a sitting President is those powers given to Congress to impeach (House) and convict (Senate) the President. Even then, these powers are political in nature, performed by politicians, not judicial actions performed by a justice or jury. In other words, there is no other actions available to the government against a sitting President.
The DOJ could hold its legal actions against Biden until Biden is no longer President. As long as Biden remains President, he is shielded from criminal actions by the DOJ. That doesn’t preclude individuals from suing Joe Biden in civil court, but the best that can be extracted from such civil actions is money. Civil proceedings are never criminal actions and cannot produce criminal consequences.
Difference between Biden and Trump
As for Donald Trump, his classified document case is fairly clear cut in most regards. The only real questions that must be answered around Donald Trump’s case is, “Were the documents actually declassified?” It is on the DOJ to establish whether or not some or all of the documents were declassified. If all of the documents were declassified, then there’s no case against Trump. If the DOJ had established this by now, then the DOJ would have already dismissed its case. It has not.
Further, it is also on the DOJ to prove that if some of documents couldn’t be declassified by a sitting President, then there is now a clear violation by Donald Trump in retaining those documents after becoming an ex-President.
Once the DOJ has established that Donald Trump had classified documents in his possession and that those documents were not declassified (and at what level), then it is on the DOJ to establish the level of crime that Donald Trump committed while by being in possession of said documents. After this point, it is, once again, on the DOJ to further ascertain if foreign nationals visited Mar-A-Lago (via registration at Mar-A-Lago and/or flight records and/or cab records and or rental car records) and determine if those visiting foreign nationals might have had access to said documents in Donald Trump’s possession.
Being in possession of classified documents is a separate crime (possession) from allowing foreign nationals access and, more importantly, to view and read such classified documents (espionage / treason).
The Department of Justice has a long road of research ahead for all of the above.
With Biden, possession of such classified documents isn’t currently a crime. Even then, the only way to try and convict Biden is through impeachment. With Trump, there is absolutely nothing shielding Trump against such criminal legal actions. Trump can try to point at Biden as an example, but Biden’s Presidential shield is pretty impenetrable. Trump has no such shield at all against DOJ actions. Even as much as Trump wishes to use Biden as a punching bag, it’s not going to work in the long run.
Once the DOJ chooses to bring criminal action against Trump, there’s nothing Trump can say, do or point fingers at that will reduce his liabilities… no, not even Biden’s having documents at his Delaware home.
Political Stunt Conclusion
And yes, the entire reason for Trump to use Biden as a “classified documents” punching bag is strictly a political stunt. It hasn’t even been established if the documents were planted at Biden’s residence strictly to facilitate this political stunt. Knowing Trump’s callous disregard for, well, just about any law in existence, there’s absolutely know way to know if Trump orchestrated this whole shenanigan against Biden. If I were working in the Government, I’d definitely begin an investigation over the lawyers who allegedly found these documents at Biden’s residence to find out what connections they may have to Trump…. see six degrees of separation.
Note: Randocity prefers using Reuters and the AP as sources whenever possible. These two news organizations have regularly proven to be mostly unbiased when reporting, unlike all major TV “cable news” networks.
Have a thought or idea to discuss? Please leave a comment below. If you like reading Randocity, please click the follow button in your mobile app or web browser.
↩︎
Is the GameStop stock run collusion and conspiracy?
This is exactly what Wall Street and SEC regulators are now trying to determine. Let’s explore.
Reddit and GME
A subreddit named wallstreetbets has surfaced and it appears to be the location where a large group of people (on the order of 250k or more people) are congregating. The difficulty is, it seems that this subreddit is being used to coordinate efforts to manipulate the GameStop (GME) stock to affect the following:
- Lose money for the hedge funds which are shorting this stock
- Manipulate the price upward heavily to make money
The question remains, is this considered a form of market manipulation, collusion and/or conspiracy?
What is Collusion?
Investopedia states:
Collusion is a non-competitive, secret, and sometimes illegal agreement between rivals which attempts to disrupt the market’s equilibrium. The act of collusion involves people or companies which would typically compete against one another, but who conspire to work together to gain an unfair market advantage.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/collusion.asp
The subreddit has, so far, been a public forum that anyone can join. It was private for only a very brief period of time on January 27th, 2020. As a result, it doesn’t fall under the ‘secret’ category.
The Oxford Dictionary defines collusion as:
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
Oxford English Dictionary
This is minimal in terms of what it says, but one thing it does clarify is that it doesn’t necessarily need to be ‘secret’.
Wikipedia defines collusion as:
Collusion is a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading or defrauding others of their legal right. Collusion is not always considered illegal. It can be used to attain objectives forbidden by law; for example, by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion
Based on all of these definitions above, it does appear that “gathering a group of people together” to “gain an unfair market advantage” is probably enough to be considered collusion. As Wikipedia states, not all collusion is illegal. However, defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage IS illegal.
Sticking It to the Man
While the wallstreetbets subreddit believes they are “sticking it to the billionaires”, they may, in fact, be sticking it to themselves. I see this situation as the virtual equivalent of the mob insurrection on Capitol Hill. While that situation wasn’t considered ‘collusion’, it does bear a lot of similarities to the Capitol Hill situation.
How? This GME reddit is 250k people all congregating to a achieve a common goal… to raise the price of the GME stock and, at the same time, stick it to the hedge fund investors who were heavily shorting the stock.
Stock Shorting
I’m going to take a little bit of a detour here to explain stock shorting. When a hedge fund shorts a stock, they are “hedging” that the stock’s price will go down. If the stock price does go down, the hedge fund makes money through borrowing, selling, then buying back the stock and then returning the stock to the lender. If the stock price goes up, however, the hedge fund must still buy and sell the stock at a loss (see below).
Stock shorts are actually buying and selling of borrowed stock. The hedge fund borrows a specified number of shares from a broker, then sells the stock immediately at the current price. For example, they could borrow 1 share and sell it at $100 market price. $100 goes into their brokerage account. When the price goes down to $50, they buy the stock back at that $50 price ($50 goes out of their brokerage account), then they return the stock to the lender and keep the $50 difference in their account. It’s a way for the hedge funds to make money without ever having to own that stock. Technically, you could do this with anything, such as a car, but the odds of a successfully shorting with a car are much lower.
Now that we understand how you can make money on shorts, let’s apply this to what the redditors are doing with GME and find out more about whether this is collusion, conspiracy or both. Someone in the wallstreetbets subreddit thread determined that GameStop, AMC Theaters, Bed Bath and Beyond and perhaps even other stocks were heavily shorted by hedge funds.
Hedge funds typically place a lot of stock shorts on companies that are on the verge of collapse. It makes sense. If a company is on the verge of going out of business, the odds of the stock dropping go up dramatically. Therefore, hedge funds heavily short the stock to make money. By ‘heavily’, they borrow as much stock as they can get their hands on. The more they borrow, they more they can make if the price drops.
What happens if the price goes up?
This is where shorting stock becomes a big, big problem. Should the price go up, the hedge fund is now responsible to pay for the loss. Let’s go back to the example above.
- Borrow 1 share and sell it for $100
- Market price goes up to $150
- Hedge fund must buy it for $150 and loses $50 in addition to the $100 they gained in the first sale.
Here is what the subreddit people are attempting to do by forcing these hedge funds to lose money. With stock shorts, there is no limit on the losses. As the stock price is driven ever higher, the hedge funds lose more and more money when their short position comes due and they are forced to buy it back at a loss. For example, if they borrowed and sold 1000 shares at $3 (1,000 * 3 = $3,000) and stock price goes up to $300 (1,000 * 300 = $300,000), when they are forced to buy it back because the lender wants it back, they are forced to pay $297,000 (in addition to the $3,000 they gained by selling it initially) to cover the cost of buying that stock at its current price. Because hedge funds buy these low priced “in danger” company’s stock, they bet that the stock price will go down. This proves that there is no cap on losses when shorting.
Because of the market forces with the wallstreetbets subreddit, this very large group of people have worked together (colluded) to ensure the price goes up to an extremely high price… one that forces the hedge fund to cash out and lose money (conspire) and also force the stock price higher so those who got in first can make a lot of money (market manipulation to an advantage).
Collusion, SEC and DOJ
Here’s where this situation becomes a problem in the same way as the Capitol Hill mob. Social media allows people to post anything they want and discuss whatever is on their mind. It’s very freeing, but it can also be equally damning. In this case, both the SEC regulators have a reason to go looking in much the same way as the DOJ went looking for Capitol Hill mob participants.
People participating in the wallstreetbets subreddit have left breadcrumbs to their person. Meaning, by writing into that thread, it gives the SEC regulators a way to track down who you are, where you are and whether you participated. For those not living in the United States, the DOJ might not be able to do much. However, for those who are in the United States, the DOJ can lay claim on you.
Collusion and conspiracy isn’t taken lightly. In this specific case, the wallstreetbets subreddit had the ability to push the GME stock from less than $10 to over $300 in about a week. That’s definitely market manipulation. If using this subreddit to tell everyone hold or sell or buy, that definitely manipulates the market and because all people are doing it at once can be seen as a form of collusion and market manipulation. Manipulating the market to gain an advantage is illegal. Doing it using collusion makes that collusion illegal. On top of that, attempting to force a bad outcome on someone else is considered conspiracy.
Penalties
Let’s understand now what the penalties for collusion are:
Most criminal antitrust prosecutions involve price fixing, bid rigging, or market division or allocation schemes. Each of these forms of collusion may be prosecuted criminally if they occurred, at least in part, within the past five years. Proving such a crime does not require us to show that the conspirators entered into a formal written or express agreement.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/price-fixing-bid-rigging-and-market-allocation-schemes
From the above DOJ’s web site, we can see that market division or allocation schemes may be prosecuted criminally. Further, the DOJ doesn’t have to show that the conspirators entered into an agreement. The word conspirators is the noun form of conspire. Also, because it states “Most” to open this paragraph, it means the DOJ is open to other forms, not just those listed.
Definition of conspire:
(of events or circumstances) seem to be working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone’s detriment.
Oxford English Dictionary
In this case, the conspiracy is to bring down the hedge funds by forcing them to lose money. That definitely wreaks of conspiracy. At the same time, the conspirators gain a market advantage by driving up the price to make money.
Let’s go back to that DOJ article from above and describe what the penalties actually are:
Enacted in 1890, the Sherman Act is among our country’s most important and enduring pieces of economic legislation. The Sherman Act prohibits any agreement among competitors to fix prices, rig bids, or engage in other anticompetitive activity. Criminal prosecution of Sherman Act violations is the responsibility of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/price-fixing-bid-rigging-and-market-allocation-schemes
Violation of the Sherman Act is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $10 million for corporations, and a fine of up to $350,000 or 3 years imprisonment (or both) for individuals, if the offense was committed before June 22, 2004. If the offense was committed on or after June 22, 2004, the maximum Sherman Act fine is $100 million for corporations and $1 million for individuals, and the maximum Sherman Act jail sentence is 10 years. Under some circumstances, the maximum potential fine may be increased above the Sherman Act maximums to twice the gain or loss involved.
That means that anyone who is found to have participated in this scheme, which should be readily apparent by reading comments on that subreddit, may be liable for $1 million for EACH violation and up to 10 years in prison. The fine could be well more than this if the gain from the market advantage ended up more than the fine itself.
Participation?
If you participated in this, don’t think that the Department of Justice can’t find you. They most certainly can. Think about all of the people they have found from the mob on Capitol Hill. The DOJ can subpoena reddit for the IP address used, then trace it back to your ISP also with a subpoena, then trace it back to the household where that IP resided at that moment in time, then send someone to the home. It’s only a matter of tracking the specific person who posted on reddit which can be easily done by reviewing the devices in the household (via warrant confiscation). Yes, they can confiscate your devices including your phone.
If the SEC regulators determine collusion and conspiracy were involved (and it looks more and more likely), then every individual who participated may find themselves in court, fined at least $1 million, have a felony on their record and may face up to 10 years in prison.
The hedge funds may or may not get their money back. The government could distribute the collected fines to the hedge funds to help offset their losses. However, the hedge funds may also be able to bring their own lawsuits against each individual separately should the SEC find foul play in this situation. That means that in addition to the DOJ’s own penalties, the hedge funds may also have legal recourse against every individual who participated.
Social Media
When participating in such actions, social media is not your friend. It holds onto and remembers everything you say and do. Because you volunteered that information to that social network, you gave up the right to the privacy of that data by posting it. That means that you brought the wrath down upon yourself by participating.
Investing and Collusion
Investing alone with no participation in the subreddit thread may not be seen as collusion by the SEC. People have the right to buy and sell stocks at any time. So long as they’re buying and selling stocks on their own and those sales cannot be traced back to participation in a wider collusive conspiratorial effort, then it shouldn’t be considered collusion or conspiracy. Though, you might still be called or visited if you bought into GME stock and have been determined to have visited reddit or Twitter or discussed anything about this situation.
However, those people who can be definitively traced to both bumping the stock price up AND participating in the subreddit to affect others to “do the same”, particularly with regards to conspiring against the hedge funds, these people may be brought up on charges of collusion, conspiracy and market manipulation.
If you’re reading this article and you’ve participated, deleting your posts may not protect you. If your post has lived for more than 24 hours on reddit or Twitter, it’s very likely on a backup that the DOJ can request. Deleting the post from the interface may not be enough to prevent the DOJ from finding your involvement.
Just Starting
The SEC investigation into collusion, conspiracy and market manipulation is just beginning. The SEC and DOJ will take their time before they start tracking down individuals and arresting them. Just as it has taken weeks to track people down to arrest the mob on Capitol Hill (which is still ongoing), it might take weeks or months to track down everyone involved in the GME market manipulation. Don’t think you’re safe if the DOJ hasn’t visited you yet. The DOJ isn’t under any time constraint to round up and charge individuals in any specific time frame. They will do it on their time, which could be months or even years later.
↩︎
Are Trump’s final Pardons legal?
The United States Constitution has very specific language defining how and when the Presidential power of pardons and reprieves can and cannot be used. Let’s explore.
Constitutional Language
From Article II, Section 2, here is the language that defines the President’s powers. Note, styles have been added for clarification purposes.
The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
U.S. Constitution => Article II => Section 2
At the end of this paragraph, we have an exception to and limitation of the previous power, “grant reprieves and pardons”. Some might argue that this exception covers the entire paragraph describing his powers as a whole, but this exception immediately follows the definition of the President’s aforementioned “grant reprieves and pardons” power. While the exception may cover all of his power in a logical sense after full impeachment AND conviction and having been removed from power, it doesn’t make sense to cover all of his powers while he still holds office after impeachment, but before the trial. He must still remain commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, for example.
Instead, I believe that this specific language, because it appears directly after the “grant reprieves and pardons” language is intended to narrowly apply solely to the power of granting reprieves and pardons, not to the entire paragraph.
Logically, this interpretation makes the most sense because you wouldn’t want a President who is in the process of being impeached to flurry pardon both himself and those who might have been involved, thus nullifying the entire impeachment proceeding. Meaning, the power given to Congress to impeach the President must not be allowed a loophole by the President to avoid impeachment.
Trump’s Pardons and Reprieves
While the language of the constitution is clear on what powers the President has, it has exclusions when specific powers are unavailable to the President as defined just above.
Let’s examine Trump’s flurry of pardons on the way out of office. Because of the way the constitution language is written, it seems that Trump’s final flurry of reprieves and pardons on the way out, but which occurred after his second impeachment on January 13, 2021 may not be constitutionally valid or legal. According to the constitution, the President forfeits the power of reprieves and pardons “in cases of impeachment” or, more specifically, during impeachment proceedings.
One can argue that Trump lost this power during his first impeachment. He did. However, that impeachment ended in acquittal… thus restoring all powers to him that he would have lost between the House’s impeachment, but before the Senate trial concluded in acquittal. If he had made any pardons during that impeachment period in 2019, those would also be constitutionally invalid.
Our Framers’ Logic
The framers of the constitution would have logically understood the impeachment process fully. After all, they designed it. The framers understood that impeachment is a two step process requiring both the House and the Senate to participate. They also understood that because these two houses must work together to complete the process, there could be delays between the time the House approves their impeachment resolution and the time the Senate begins and concludes the impeachment trial.
These same framers also understood that because of the time required to complete the impeachment process in full, the President could use his power of pardons and reprieves to nullify the very reason for the impeachment itself. To avoid this design flaw in the process, the framers included the clause ‘except in cases of impeachment‘ to limit the use of this Presidential power during impeachment proceedings and thus avoid the possibility the President could pardon himself or others and nullify the entire impeachment.
Legal vs Illegal Pardons
The point to all of this is that President Trump, at the time before he left office, was still under impeachment proceedings. This clause in the constitution would then suspend Trump’s power of reprieves and pardons until the impeachment had reached full conclusion: acquittal or conviction.
Because Trump’s impeachment is still ongoing as of this article (and was at the time of his exit from office), any reprieves and pardons he signed after the House passed its Article of Impeachment would be constitutionally illegal and thus, null and void.
If Trump had remained in office after conclusion of the Senate’s impeachment trial AND if the trial resulted in his acquittal, his power of reprieves and pardons would be restored. He could have then reissued those reprieves and pardons to make each of them legal and valid. However, Trump is no longer President as his term has ended. His ability to reissue those reprieves and pardons has ended. This means that all of the reprieves and pardons that Trump issued after January 13th, 2021 are constitutionally invalid and must remain invalid in perpetuity.
President Joe Biden, the now current President, could reinstate those reprieves and pardons on Trump’s behalf if he so chooses, but that would require Joe Biden to agree to reissue those specific reprieves and pardons on behalf of Donald Trump.
↩︎
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
leave a comment