THE PATH OF SETTING UP THE ONLINE CASINO
Casino businesses are one of the best money-making industry across the world. There are lots of brick and mortar casinos, bookmakers, online casinos, and gaming arcades across the globe. It cannot be denied that gambling business is a profitable business that many entrepreneurs are seeking to involve in this industry. Gambling businesses are usually owned by many leading and well-known organisations.
Therefore, most of the entrepreneurs who involve in casino industry are always including in the Forbes lists in some regions. However, you can find that casino business is strictly regulated by many terms and conditions, therefore operators have to go through many process and paths to achieving the license.
In addition, the competition within gambling industry is extremely high that you probably challenge one of the top leading company in the world, and certainly one of the ‘money-burning’ challenges. This article will mainly taking ‘online’ casino platform as the topic for further discussion in licensing, website, software, marketing, technical support, and others which include in an online casino business. Drawing specifically from the online casino business, this article is attempting to take a closer look on how to set-up an online casino platforms and how much would cost for the business.

HFIVE5 – The Top Leading Online Casino In Singapore

https://hfive555.com/en/home
Before going through the details of setting-up the online betting business, herewith the recommendation of the best and reliable online casino website which operated in Singapore. The recommendations are coming from the local gambling community and also based on the reviews from internet within betting community.
As hfive555.com offers variety of casino games with best graphic and responsive speed to the players, and players would guarantee to experience the remarkable experiences while playing on Hfive5 online betting website. Live casino are also include in hfive555.com, where players can actually interact with the croupiers virtually through their screens.
All of the croupiers are highly trained by the local gambling authority before entering to the job, therefore players could definitely worry-free with hfive555.com services. Hfive5 guarantees that its professionalism would definitely satisfy their players and gamblers can safely enjoy any of their favour games with the reliable and licenses online casino in Singapore, Hfive5.
As above-mentioned, online gambling platform is one of the most competitive industry across the world, therefore it can be strongly believe that the leading online betting platform, Hfive5 is actually well-known and popular in Singapore.

What to Include or Prepare Before Starting-Up an Online Casino?

Licensing

Casino license is the most pivotal part and the most significant steps for those who planning to run a legitimate online betting platforms. Without doubt, ‘license’ is the document that allow the owner of casino to legally run an online betting platforms in some regions.
There are different license providers are available across the globe, therefore the owners can choose particulars licenses provider in order to operate their online casino businesses in specific regions. For instances, there are some popular countries that provides casino licenses for the businesses, such as Curacao, Malta, Philippines, United Kingdom, Montenegro and other nations.
Without business license, the online betting platforms would seem as illegal operates and it will be strongly condemned or even taking into the custody by the local authority. A license from offshore state such as Curacao or Alderney would be the best options for the person who seek for cheaper cost license, because of the low taxation within the states. On the other hand, those who need a reputable and higher status license, it is strongly recommended to opt for Swiss or UK licenses.

Benefits of having an online casino license

Once the organisation achieve the license to operate online casino is particular states, the company will possibly attract lots of well-known software providers. Most of the time, quality and popular software providers would not collaborate with fraud organisations which would probably ruin their business reputation.

Online Casino’s Website

Website is the most important and major platform for the businesses who involve in online casino industry. The website cannot be simply organised and managed because all of the revenue are coming from the websites. Therefore, the website should be well develop in order to bring the site to a perfect details.
For instance, those stages below-mentioned would be the necessarily steps for person who want to run a perfect website, such as the design & layout, programming & developing front-end web, offline & online marketing promotion, SEO & SEM, and integrating the site’s software.

Marketing

Importantly, giant networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google usually not allow gambling advertisement, thus it is strongly recommended organisations should fully understand the rules and restrictions of the social media. Additionally, organisations is strongly recommended to hire an expert who is very familiar with marketing and legal requirements in the ‘sensitive’ industry.
In conclusions, the above statements have generally stated the most pivotal part while any person who decide to involve in online gambling industry. There are many steps and procedures involved, thus it is strongly recommended the person who interested in gambling industry should take serious consideration in initial steps before entering to the online casino industry, also could refer to hfive555.com as a perfect example.

Lately there have been a few discussions about microtransactions and gamers asking for more control/regulations.
As someone who:

• grew up in the 80s and 90s (I’m almost 38 now)
• grew up in Southeast Asia
• I’m also a parent

I do think I might not be part of that crowd that’s too rabid to see government regulations.
—————
Personal opinion:
I remember back then when only a handful of people lobbied for government restrictions in games — Jack Thompson (remember that guy?) and a handful of parents who felt their kids were getting addicted to gambling and starting to worship the devil (because of trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokémon).

• Fun fact: Parents tried to sue trading card companies several times for “getting their kids addicted to gambling” but the courts dismissed all those cases. In fact, legal experts even mentioned that it was simply a case of bad parenting
  
• I hope I’m not the only one who’s too old to remember the 90s. There might be some folks here who were already teens or adult around that time.
  

Nowadays, gamers themselves are the ones pushing for more government control and legislation. It’s a little odd how the wheel has turned.
Another part of me is my cultural upbringing. I grew up in the Philippines where we were exposed to microtransactions in freemium online games since the early 2000s. It meant that our parents/elders were highly aware of what video games could do to us while growing up.
As a child, parents would give me a handful of quarters for the arcade or for the local fair (“color game” and “ring toss” are like kiddie forms of gambling then). The key factor here is that when I ran out of money because I was too stupid when spending, my elders would reel me back in and set me straight. It’s why I never developed a gambling vice... I learned the value of money at a young age.
Also, some parts of Asia (if some Western gamers don’t know yet) it’s actually common for the younger generation to stay with their folks until their married, and even then, they might just live in the building next door or close by. We don’t just pack up our things and disappear once we turn 18, when the only time we see our folks again is during the holidays.
And so parents not only play a crucial role in our development as children but even until our young adult years. Good parenting plays a key role in turning us into responsible people.
Likewise, given that other parts of the world have people who aren’t as privileged or as wealthy, kids end up preferring free/cheaper games, while at the same time parents don’t just have a dozen credit cards lying around the house (the same credit cards that kids grab to buy gems/premium currency which the internet fully lays the blame on microtransactions).
—————
So yes, it got me thinking:
There seems to be a push among gamers to focus on government regulations because of microtransactions.
However, very few people ever mention that parents should take a more active role, or be more responsible in raising and monitoring their kids.

• Is this simply because people feel that parents can no longer do these things and so the government/lawmakers should step in?
• Is this because of cultural differences?
• As for gamers who are also parents, are you able to raise children/young gamers responsibly? Or do you feel that the government should step in?

————
Again, this is just a personal opinion:
Personally, I simply believe that before the government or the rest of the industry steps in, the first responsibility in raising a child is always on me since I am a parent.
If my child ends up spending too much or falls in love with microtransactions and lootboxes, that’s not the failure of the government nor the company — that is my failure as a parent because I should have taught my child how to value his time, his money, and his future.
Technology may change. Games may change. Laws may change. But parenting responsibilities are a constant since time immemorial.
Just my two cents. Thanks everyone.
————-
Important Edit:
One user was kind enough to mention the definition of gambling in the United States.
Since our specific conversation started to turn to legalities, I also added several examples of lawsuits that were dismissed by US courts because the judicial system itself did not consider these TCGs/microtransactions as in violation of gambling regulations. Please see attached comment here with links provided..
Just a note reminding folks who just joined the discussion in case legal proceedings/definitions are brought up.
————-
Thanks to those who replied, and please continue the discussion.
I tried to reply to almost everyone and even added some helpful links and studies. Since I’m from the Philippines, I’ll reply to other users tomorrow since it’s almost midnight here.
Closing 1: Parenting
A big thanks to everyone who joined in the discussion. This last edit will address a lot of the points that were made and tie it in to the theme of the main post.
The topic is initially about the practical application of good parenting even before government regulations come into play. There's a pretty good reason why I pointed out my experiences as a kid, my upbringing, as well as parenting values. All of those points were to elicit a reaction from gamer parents out there. As you can see, in these three topics -- there were but a handful of comments from actual parents themselves. Unfortunately, a vast majority did not mention being a parent or how this affects them as a parent.
At the same time, you might notice that only a few respondents mentioned their own spending habits. Barely anyone mentioned their own practical examples of what their spending has been like. Many immediately went for the "microtransactions are bad" argument.
My belief is that a majority of respondents are not parents themselves (or have barely been exposed to MTX), and thus it lacks that practical experience or knowledge. Ergo, the responses come from outside sources such as YouTube or internet forums (there's a reason why some of the replies you see might remind you of something you've already heard in a video).
Closing 2: Microtransactions, Lootboxes, And Children
There's a reason why I added bits and pieces as cues: "90s parents = video games are bad" moral conundrum, Jack Thompson and various lobbyists, previous lawsuits in the US because TCGs were thought of as "illegal gambling," growing up as a child in Southeast Asia, Asia's experience with MTX since the early-2000s, as well as how gamers have been averse to governments stepping in just to affect video games in the past.
These are supposed to convey how gamers of yesteryears have viewed these issues in the past, and now how the tables have turned where gamers themselves are the ones clamoring for government regulations. It isn't necessarily an argument for or against microtransactions, and we simply look at the reasoning behind making the argument in the first place.
Now, relating it to the present day, you might also know that a number of studies, including a WHO classification of "gaming disorder," and even general practical applications have been met with apprehension and doubt from gamers.

• For instance, you will not get as much traction from discussions about "World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs being addictive" nowadays.
• Even "Minecraft addiction" among kids with ADHD barely gets a mention.
• Barely any vehement comments will come with talks about grinding systems, RNG mechanics, or games where people have put in 3,000+ hours.
• You probably won't even hear too much backlash about how Twitch streaming and YouTube ensure that gamers remain hooked on video games even after turning off their TVs and putting down their controllers.
• You probably also enjoy the idea that people play video games for 12-16+ hours while streaming for that entertainment value, despite the inherent physical and psychological risks that this activity poses. Ever wonder why there have been streamers opening up about psychological problems that have surfaced due to streaming and providing video game entertainment?
• EDIT: Don't forget, Psychology also teaches us that there's a connection between video games and narcissism01445-9/fulltext). Additional factors have also shown the rise in narcissism and a decline in empathy with the younger generation. It is, however, worth noting that some studies have attempted to debunk some of these claims.

People do not bat an eye in spite of studies about the myriad ways that video games and entertainment media keep us addicted and hooked while completely influencing our behaviors.
But, when you add "lootboxes = gambling" and "lootboxes = harmful to children" in the mix, it becomes a hot topic. And these ideas have become a prevalent thought among gamers today.
I believe there's a good reason for this. There's another prevailing counterpoint to the above and that's:

• Many gamers don't necessarily care about "the children" (as loathsome as that sounds). Relating it to Closing 1: Parenting -- many simply see the statement of "lootboxes = gambling = harmful to children" as the most convenient way to curb the proliferation of microtransactions.
• In a way, "children" have become the last line of defense for a number of gamers. The only way that lawmakers might step in to finally put a stop to microtransactions ruining games is if children are finally involved in the equation.

Video games, by their very nature, have engaged and hooked us as kids -- whether it's the 80s, 90s, or 2000s.

• You could be someone who spent countless quarters in an arcade (the earliest form of "microtransactions").
• You could have forgotten your obligations to your friends or family just because you want to play more video games.
• You could have gotten addicted to WOW or other MMOs; or "one more turn" in Civ when you realized it's already morning.
• You could know of a child whose only hobby and interactions come from Fortnite, as well as streaming being the only medium for them (or any other game that's hoooked them).
• It could've led to the worsening of your eyesight, to the lack of social cues, to the rise in narcissism, to depression and anxiety, or the lack of real-life goals and ambitions.

All of these affect you because of psychological implications. However, for the longest time, gamers have espoused the need for self-moderation, or for parents taking on a more active role.
And yet, strangely enough, when you put "lootboxes = gambling = bad for children" in the mix, suddenly it's about government regulations? Suddenly it's no longer about "parents being more responsible for their kids?"
It's odd because on one hand, you've had all the effects that video games have had on us for decades. A majority of gamers have treated them differently. Yet "lootboxes = gambling = bad for children" exists within its own bubble, where a completely different reaction applies?
Just a personal opinion, but again, I do believe this is mostly because gamers see this argument as the last line of defense just so developers will start making games the way they used to.

Lately there have been a few discussions about microtransactions and gamers asking for more control/regulations.
As someone who:

• grew up in the 80s and 90s (I’m almost 38 now)
• grew up in Southeast Asia
• I’m also a parent

I do think I might not be part of that crowd that’s too rabid to see government regulations.
—————
Personal opinion:
I remember back then when only a handful of people lobbied for government restrictions in games — Jack Thompson (remember that guy?) and a handful of parents who felt their kids were getting addicted to gambling and starting to worship the devil (because of trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokémon).

• Fun fact: Parents tried to sue trading card companies several times for “getting their kids addicted to gambling” but the courts dismissed all those cases. In fact, legal experts even mentioned that it was simply a case of bad parenting
  
• I hope I’m not the only one who’s too old to remember the 90s. There might be some folks here who were already teens or adult around that time.
  

Nowadays, gamers themselves are the ones pushing for more government control and legislatation. It’s a little odd how the wheel has turned.
Another part of me is my cultural upbringing. I grew up in the Philippines where we were exposed to microtransactions in freemium online games since the early 2000s. It meant that our parents/elders were highly aware of what video games could do to us while growing up.
As a child, parents would give me a handful of quarters for the arcade or for the local fair (“color game” and “ring toss” are like kiddie forms of gambling then). The key factor here is that when I ran out of money because I was too stupid when spending, my elders would reel me back in and set me straight. It’s why I never developed a gambling vice... I learned the value of money at a young age.
Also, some parts of Asia (if some Western gamers don’t know yet) it’s actually common for the younger generation to stay with their folks until their married, and even then, they might just live in the building next door or close by. We don’t just pack up our things and disappear once we turn 18, when the only time we see our folks again is during the holidays.
And so parents not only play a crucial role in our development as children but even until our young adult years. Good parenting plays a key role in turning us into responsible people.
Likewise, given that other parts of the world have people who aren’t as privileged or as wealthy, kids end up preferring free/cheaper games, while at the same time parents don’t just have a dozen credit cards lying around the house (the same credit cards that kids grab to buy gems/premium currency which the internet fully lays the blame on microtransactions).
—————
So yes, it got me thinking:
There seems to be a push among gamers to focus on government regulations because of microtransactions.
However, very few people ever mention that parents should take a more active role, or be more responsible in raising and monitoring their kids.

• Is this simply because people feel that parents can no longer do these things and so the government/lawmakers should step in?
• Is this because of cultural differences?
• As for gamers who are also parents, are you able to raise children/young gamers responsibly? Or do you feel that the government should step in?

————
Again, this is just a personal opinion:
Personally, I simply believe that before the government or the rest of the industry steps in, the first responsibility in raising a child is always on me since I am a parent.
If my child ends up spending too much or falls in love with microtransactions and lootboxes, that’s not the failure of the government nor the company — that is my failure as a parent because I should have taught my child how to value his time, his money, and his future.
Technology may change. Games may change. Laws may change. But parenting responsibilities are a constant since time immemorial.
Just my two cents. Thanks everyone.
————-
Important Edit:**
In case anyone mentions the definition of gambling in the United States, or legal matters...
Since our specific conversation might turn to legalities, I also added several examples of lawsuits that were dismissed by US courts because the judicial system itself did not consider these TCGs/microtransactions as in violation of gambling regulations.
These are from the 90s:

• Magic the Gathering and Baseball cards
• Pokemon trading cards and the moral panic that happened — ie. “Pokemon leads to devil worship”

Also some recent ones from a Google search:

• Game of War gambling = dismissed (2016)
• Valve CS:GO gambling = dismissed (2017)
• Castle Clash gambling = dismissed (2018)

Just a note reminding folks who just joined the discussion in case legal proceedings/definitions are brought up.
———-
Thanks to those who replied, and please continue the discussion.
I tried to reply to almost everyone and even added some helpful links and studies. Since I’m from the Philippines, I’ll reply to other users tomorrow since it’s almost midnight here.
Closing 1: Parenting
A big thanks to everyone who joined in the discussion. This last edit will address a lot of the points that were made and tie it in to the theme of the main post.
The topic is initially about the practical application of good parenting even before government regulations come into play. There's a pretty good reason why I pointed out my experiences as a kid, my upbringing, as well as parenting values. All of those points were to elicit a reaction from gamer parents out there. As you can see, in these three topics -- there were but a handful of comments from actual parents themselves. Unfortunately, a vast majority did not mention being a parent or how this affects them as a parent.
At the same time, you might notice that only a few respondents mentioned their own spending habits. Barely anyone mentioned their own practical examples of what their spending has been like. Many immediately went for the "microtransactions are bad" argument.
My belief is that a majority of respondents are not parents themselves (or have barely been exposed to MTX), and thus it lacks that practical experience or knowledge. Ergo, the responses come from outside sources such as YouTube or internet forums (there's a reason why some of the replies you see might remind you of something you've already heard in a video).
Closing 2: Microtransactions, Lootboxes, And Children
There's a reason why I added bits and pieces as cues: "90s parents = video games are bad" moral conundrum, Jack Thompson and various lobbyists, previous lawsuits in the US because TCGs were thought of as "illegal gambling," growing up as a child in Southeast Asia, Asia's experience with MTX since the early-2000s, as well as how gamers have been averse to governments stepping in just to affect video games in the past.
These are supposed to convey how gamers of yesteryears have viewed these issues in the past, and now how the tables have turned where gamers themselves are the ones clamoring for government regulations. It isn't necessarily an argument for or against microtransactions, and we simply look at the reasoning behind making the argument in the first place.
Now, relating it to the present day, you might also know that a number of studies, including a WHO classification of "gaming disorder," and even general practical applications have been met with apprehension and doubt from gamers.

• For instance, you will not get as much traction from discussions about "World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs being addictive" nowadays.
• Even "Minecraft addiction" among kids with ADHD barely gets a mention.
• Barely any vehement comments will come with talks about grinding systems, RNG mechanics, or games where people have put in 3,000+ hours.
• You probably won't even hear too much backlash about how Twitch streaming and YouTube ensure that gamers remain hooked on video games even after turning off their TVs and putting down their controllers.
• You probably also enjoy the idea that people play video games for 12-16+ hours while streaming for that entertainment value, despite the inherent physical and psychological risks that this activity poses. Ever wonder why there have been streamers opening up about psychological problems that have surfaced due to streaming and providing video game entertainment?
• EDIT: Don't forget, Psychology also teaches us that there's a connection between video games and narcissism01445-9/fulltext). Additional factors have also shown the rise in narcissism and a decline in empathy with the younger generation. It is, however, worth noting that some studies have attempted to debunk some of these claims.

People do not bat an eye in spite of studies about the myriad ways that video games and entertainment media keep us addicted and hooked while completely influencing our behaviors.
But, when you add "lootboxes = gambling" and "lootboxes = harmful to children" in the mix, it becomes a hot topic. And these ideas have become a prevalent thought among gamers today.
I believe there's a good reason for this. There's another prevailing counterpoint to the above and that's:

• Many gamers don't necessarily care about "the children" (as loathsome as that sounds). Relating it to Closing 1: Parenting -- many simply see the statement of "lootboxes = gambling = harmful to children" as the most convenient way to curb the proliferation of microtransactions.
• In a way, "children" have become the last line of defense for a number of gamers. The only way that lawmakers might step in to finally put a stop to microtransactions ruining games is if children are finally involved in the equation.

Video games, by their very nature, have engaged and hooked us as kids -- whether it's the 80s, 90s, or 2000s.

• You could be someone who spent countless quarters in an arcade (the earliest form of "microtransactions").
• You could have forgotten your obligations to your friends or family just because you want to play more video games.
• You could have gotten addicted to WOW or other MMOs; or "one more turn" in Civ when you realized it's already morning.
• You could know of a child whose only hobby and interactions come from Fortnite, as well as streaming being the only medium for them (or any other game that's hoooked them).
• It could've led to the worsening of your eyesight, to the lack of social cues, to the rise in narcissism, to depression and anxiety, or the lack of real-life goals and ambitions.

All of these affect you because of psychological implications. However, for the longest time, gamers have espoused the need for self-moderation, or for parents taking on a more active role.
And yet, strangely enough, when you put "lootboxes = gambling = bad for children" in the mix, suddenly it's about government regulations? Suddenly it's no longer about "parents being more responsible for their kids?"
It's odd because on one hand, you've had all the effects that video games have had on us for decades. A majority of gamers have treated them differently. Yet "lootboxes = gambling = bad for children" exists within its own bubble, where a completely different reaction applies?
Just a personal opinion, but again, I do believe this is mostly because gamers see this argument as the last line of defense just so developers will start making games the way they used to.

WHY DO SOME SOCIETIES MAKE DISASTROUS DECISIONS?
[JARED DIAMOND:] Education is supposed to be about teachers imparting knowledge to students. As every teacher knows, though, if you have a good group of students, education is also about students imparting knowledge to their supposed teachers and challenging their assumptions. That's an experience that I've been through in the last couple of months, when for the first time in my academic career I gave a course to undergraduates, highly motivated UCLA undergraduates, on collapses of societies. Why is it that some societies in the past have collapsed while others have not? I was discussing famous collapses such as those of the Anasazi in the U.S. Southwest, Classic Maya civilization in the Yucatan, Easter Island society in the Pacific, Angkor Wat in southeast Asia, Great Zimbabwe in Africa, Fertile Crescent societies, and Harappan Indus Valley societies. These are all societies that we've realized, from archaeological discoveries in the last 20 years, hammered away at their own environments and destroyed themselves in part by undermining the environmental resources on which they depended.
For example, the Easter Islanders, Polynesian people, settled an island that was originally forested, and whose forests included the world's largest palm tree. The Easter Islanders gradually chopped down that forest to use the wood for canoes, firewood, transporting statues, raising statues, and carving and also to protect against soil erosion. Eventually they chopped down all the forests to the point where all the tree species were extinct, which meant that they ran out of canoes, they could no longer erect statues, there were no longer trees to protect the topsoil against erosion, and their society collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism that left 90 percent of the islanders dead. The question that most intrigued my UCLA students was one that hadn't registered on me: how on Earth could a society make such an obviously disastrous decision as to cut down all the trees on which they depended? For example, my students wondered, what did the Easter Islanders say as they were cutting down the last palm tree? Were they saying, think of our jobs as loggers, not these trees? Were they saying, respect my private property rights? Surely the Easter Islanders, of all people, must have realized the consequences to them of destroying their own forest. It wasn't a subtle mistake. One wonders whether — if there are still people left alive a hundred years from now — people in the next century will be equally astonished about our blindness today as we are today about the blindness of the Easter Islanders.
This question, why societies make disastrous decisions and destroy themselves, is one that not only surprised my UCLA undergraduates, but also astonishes professional historians studying collapses of past societies. The most cited book on the subject of the collapse of societies is by the historian, Joseph Tainter. It's entitled The Collapse of Complex Societies. Joseph Tainter, in discussing ancient collapses, rejected the possibility that those collapses might be due to environmental management because it seemed so unlikely to him. Here's what Joseph Tainter said: "As it becomes apparent to the members or administrators of a complex society that a resource base is deteriorating, it seems most reasonable to assume that some rational steps are taken towards a resolution. With their administrative structure and their capacity to allocate labor and resources, dealing with adverse environmental conditions may be one of the things that complex societies do best. It is curious that they would collapse when faced with precisely those conditions that they are equipped to circumvent." Joseph Tainter concluded that the collapses of all these ancient societies couldn't possibly be due to environmental mismanagement, because they would never make these bad mistakes. Yet it's now clear that they did make these bad mistakes.
My UCLA undergraduates, and Joseph Tainter as well, have identified a very surprising question; namely, failures of group decision-making on the part of whole societies, or governments, or smaller groups, or businesses, or university academic departments. The question of failure of group decision-making is similar to questions of failures of individual decision-making. Individuals make bad decisions; they enter bad marriages, they make bad investments, their businesses fail. But in failures of group decision-making there are some additional factors, notably conflicts of interest among the members of the group that don't arise with failures of individual decision-making. This is obviously a complex question; there's no single answer to it. There are no agreed-on answers.
What I'm going to suggest is a road map of factors in failures of group decision making. I'll divide the answers into a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem. Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their attempts to do so. While all this talking about reasons for failure and collapses of society may seem pessimistic, the flip side is optimistic: namely, successful decision-making. Perhaps if we understand the reasons why groups make bad decisions, we can use that knowledge as a check list to help groups make good decisions.
The first item on my road map is that groups may do disastrous things because they didn't anticipate a problem before it arrived. There may be several reasons for failure to anticipate a problem. One is that they may have had no prior experience of such problems, and so may not have been sensitized to the possibility. For example, consider forest fires in the U.S. West. My wife, my children and I spend parts of our summers in Montana, and each year when we fly into Montana I look out our plane window as our plane is coming in to see how many forest fires I see out there today. Forest fires are a major problem not only in Montana, but throughout the U.S. Intermontane West in general. Forest fires on that giant scale are unknown in the eastern United States and in Europe. When settlers from the eastern United States and Europe arrived in Montana and a forest fire arose, their reaction was, of course, that you should try to put out the fire. The motto of the U.S. Forest Service for nearly a century was: our goal is that every forest fire will be put out by 10:00 AM of the next morning after the day on which it has been reported. That attitude of easterners and Europeans about forest fires was because they had had no previous experience of forest fires in a dry environment where there's a big buildup of fuel, where trees that fall down into the understory don't rot away as in wet Europe and as in the wet eastern United States, but accumulate there in a dry environment. lt turns out that frequent small fires burn off the fuel load, and if you suppress those frequent small fires, then when eventually a fire is lit it may burn out of control far beyond one's ability to suppress it, resulting in the big disastrous fires in the U.S. Intermontane West. It turns out that the best way to deal with forest fires in the West is to let them burn, and burn out, and then there won't be a buildup of a fuel load resulting in a disaster. But these huge forest fires were something with which eastern Americans and Europeans had no prior experience. The idea that you should let a fire burn, and destroy valuable forest, was so counter-intuitive that it took the U.S. Forest Service a hundred years to realize the problem and to change the strategy and let the fire burn. So here's an example of how a society with no prior experience of a problem may not even recognize the problem — the problem of fuel loads in the understory of a dry forest.
That's not the only reason, though, why a society may fail to anticipate a problem before it actually arises. Another reason is that they may have had prior experience but that prior experience has been forgotten. For example, a non literate society is not going to preserve oral memories of something that happened long in the past. The Classic Lowland Maya eventually succumbed to a drought around 800 A.D. There had been previous droughts in the Maya realm, but they could not draw on that prior experience, because although the Maya had some writing, it just preserved the conquests of kings and didn't record droughts. Maya droughts recur at intervals of 208 years, so the Maya in 800 A.D., when the big drought struck, did not and could not remember the drought of A.D. 592.
In modern literate societies, even though we do have writing, that does not necessarily mean that we can draw on our prior experience. We, too, tend to forget things, and so for example Americans recently behave as if they've forgotten about the 1973 Gulf oil crisis. For a year or two after the crisis they avoided gas-guzzling vehicles, then quickly they forgot that knowledge, despite their having writing. And again in the 1960s the city of Tucson, Arizona went through a severe drought, and the citizens swore that they would manage their water better after that, but within a decade or two Tucson was going back to its water-guzzling ways of building golf courses and watering one's gardens. So there we have a couple of reasons why a society may fail to anticipate a problem before it has arrived.
The remaining reason why a society may fail to anticipate a problem before it develops involves reasoning by false analogy. When we are in an unfamiliar situation, we fall back on reasoning by analogy with old familiar situations. That's a good way to proceed if the old and new situations are truly analogous, but reasoning by analogy can be dangerous if the old and new situations are only superficially similar.
An example of a society that suffered from disastrous consequences of reasoning by false analogy was the society of Norwegian Vikings who immigrated to Iceland beginning in the year AD 871. Their familiar homeland of Norway has heavy clay soils ground up by glaciers. Those soils are sufficiently heavy that, if the vegetation covering them is cut down, they are too heavy to be blown away. Unfortunately for the Viking colonists of Iceland, Icelandic soils are as light as talcum powder. They arose not through glacial grinding, but through winds carrying light ashes blown out in volcanic eruptions. The Vikings cleared the forests over those soils in order to create pasture for their animals. Unfortunately, the ash that was light enough for the wind to blow in was light enough for the wind to blow out again when the covering vegetation had been removed. Within a few generations of the Vikings' arriving in Iceland, half of Iceland's top soil had eroded into the ocean. Other examples of reasoning by false analogy abound.
The second step in my road map, after a society has anticipated or failed to anticipate a problem before it arises, involves a society's failing to perceive a problem that has actually arrived. There are at least three reasons for such failures, all of them common in the business world and in academia. First, the origins of some problems are literally imperceptible. For example, the nutrients responsible for soil fertility are invisible to the eye, and only in modem times measurable by means of chemical analysis. In Australia, Mangareva, parts of the U.S. Southwest, and many other locations, most of the nutrients had already been leached out of the soil by rainfall. When people arrived and began growing crops, those crops quickly exhausted the remaining nutrients, so that agriculture rapidly failed. Yet such nutrient-poor soils often bear lush-appearing vegetation; it's just that most of the nutrients in the ecosystem are contained in the vegetation rather than in the soil, so that the nutrients are removed when one cuts down the vegetation. There was no way that the first colonists of Australia and Mangareva could perceive that problem of soil nutrient exhaustion.
An even commoner reason for a society's failing to perceive a problem is that the problem may take the form of a slow trend concealed by wide up-and-down fluctuations. The prime example in modern times is global warming. We now realize that temperatures around the world have been slowly rising in recent decades, due in large part to changes in the atmosphere caused by humans. However, it is not the case that the climate each year is inexorably 0.17 degrees warmer than in the previous year. Instead, as we all know, climate fluctuates up and down erratically from year to year: three degrees warmer in one summer than the previous summer, then two degrees warmer the next summer, down four degrees the following summer, down another degree the next summer, then up five degrees, etc. With such wide and unpredictable fluctuations, it takes a long time to discern the upwards trend within that noisy signal. That's why it was only a few years ago that the last professional climatologist previously skeptical of the reality of global warming became convinced. Our president is still not convinced of the reality of global warming, and he thinks that we need more research. The medieval Greenlanders had similar difficulties in recognizing that the climate was gradually becoming colder, and the Maya of the Yucatan had difficulties discerning that the climate was gradually becoming drier.
Politicians use the term "creeping normalcy" to refer to such slow trends concealed within noisy fluctuations. If a situation is getting worse only slowly, it is difficult to recognize that this year is worse than last year, and each successive year is only slightly worse than the year before, so that one's baseline standard for what constitutes "normalcy" shifts only gradually and almost imperceptibly. lt may take a few decades of a long sequence of such slight year-to-year changes before someone suddenly realizes that conditions were much better several decades ago, and that what is accepted as normalcy has crept downwards.
The remaining frequent reason for failure to perceive a problem after it has arrived is distant managers, a potential problem in any large society. For example, today the largest private landowner and the largest timber company in the state of Montana is based not within the state but in Seattle, Washington. Not being on the scene, company executives may not realize that they have a big weed problem on their forest property.
All of us who belong to other groups can think of examples of imperceptibly arising problems, creeping normalcy, and distant managers.
The third step in my road map of failure is perhaps the commonest and most surprising one: a society's failure even to try to solve a problem that it has perceived.
Such failures frequently arise because of what economists term "rational behavior" arising from clashes of interest between people. Some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior that is harmful for other people. Economists term such behavior "rational," even while acknowledging that morally it may be naughty. The perpetrators are often motivated and likely to get away with their rational bad behavior, because the winners from the bad status quo are typically concentrated (few in number) and highly motivated because they receive big, certain, immediate profits, while the losers are diffuse (the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals) and are unmotivated because they receive only small, uncertain, distant profits from undoing the rational bad behavior of the minority.
A typical example of rational bad behavior is "good for me, bad for you and for the rest of society" — to put it bluntly, "selfishness." A few individuals may correctly perceive their self-interests to be opposed to the majority's self-interest. For example, until 1971, mining companies in Montana typically just dumped their toxic wastes of copper and arsenic directly into rivers and ponds because the state of Montana had no law requiring mining companies to clean up after abandoning a mine. After 1971, the state of Montana did pass such a law, but mining companies discovered that they could extract the valuable ore and then just declare bankruptcy before going to the expense of cleaning up. The result has been billions of dollars of clean-up costs borne by the citizens of the United States or Montana. The miners had correctly perceived that they could advance their interests and save money by making messes and leaving the burden to society.
One particular form of such clashes of interest has received the name "tragedy of commons." That refers to a situation in which many consumers are harvesting a communally owned resource (such as fish in the ocean, or grass in common pastures), and in which there is no effective regulation of how much of the resource each consumer can draw off. Under those circumstances, each consumer can correctly reason "If I don't catch that fish or graze that grass, some other fisherman or herder will anyway, so it makes no sense for me to be careful about overfishing or overharvesting." The correct rational behavior is to harvest before the next consumer can, even though the end result is depletion or extinction of the resource, and hence harm for society as a whole.
Rational behavior involving clashes of interest also arises when the consumer has no long-term stake in preserving the resource. For example, much commercial harvesting of tropical rainforests today is carried out by international logging companies, which lease land in one country, cut down all the rainforest in that country, and then move on to the next country. The international loggers have correctly perceived that, once they have paid for the lease, their interests are best served by clear-cutting the rainforest on their leased land. In that way, loggers have destroyed most of the forest of the Malay Peninsula, then of Borneo, then of the Solomon Islands and Sumatra, now of the Philippines, and coming up soon of New Guinea, the Amazon, and the Congo Basin. In that case, the bad consequences are borne by the next generation, but that next generation cannot vote or complain.
A further situation involving rational behavior and conflicts of interest arises when the interests of the decision-making elite in power conflict with the interests of the rest of society. The elite are particularly likely to do things that profit them but hurt everybody else, if the elite are able to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. Such clashes are increasingly frequent in the modern U.S., where rich people tend to live within their gated compounds and to drink bottled water. For example, executives of Enron correctly calculated that they could gain huge sums of money for themselves by looting the company coffers and harming the rest of society, and that they were likely to get away with their gamble.
Failure to solve perceived problems because of conflicts of interest between the elite and the rest of society are much less likely in societies where the elite cannot insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. For example, the modern country of which the highest proportions of its citizens belong to environmental organizations is the Netherlands. I never understood why until I was visiting the Netherlands a few years ago and raised this question to my Dutch colleagues as were driving through the countryside. My Dutch friends answered, "Just look around you and you will see the reason. The land where we are now is 22 feet below sea level. Like much of the area of Holland it was once a shallow bay of the sea that we Dutch people surrounded by dikes and then drained with pumps to create low-lying land that we call a polder. We have pumps to pump out the water that is continually leaking into our polders through the dikes. If the dikes burst, of course the people in the polder drown. But it is not the case that the rich Dutch live on top of the dikes, while the poor Dutch are living down in the polders. If the dikes burst, everybody drowns, regardless of whether they are rich or poor. That was what happened in the terrible floods of February 1, 1953, when high tides and storms drove water inland over the polders of Zeeland Province and nearly 2000 Dutch people drowned. After that disaster, we all swore, 'Never again!' and spent billions of dollars building reinforced barriers against the water. In the Netherlands the decision-makers know that they cannot insulate themselves from their mistakes, and that they have to make compromise decisions that will be good for as many people as possible."
Those examples illustrate situations in which a society fails to solve perceived problems because the maintenance of the problem is good for some people. In contrast to that so-called rational behavior, there are also failures to attempt to solve perceived problems that economists consider "irrational behavior": that is, the behavior is harmful for everybody. Such irrational behavior often arises when all of us are torn by clashes of values within each person. We may be strongly attached to a bad status quo because it is favored by some deeply held value that we admire. Religious values are especially deeply held and hence frequent causes of disastrous behavior. For example, much of the deforestation of Easter Island had a religious motivation, to obtain logs to transport and erect the giant stone statues that were the basis of Easter Island religious cults. In modern times a reason why Montanans have been so reluctant to solve the obvious problems now accumulating from mining, logging, and ranching in Montana is that these three industries were formerly the pillars of the Montana economy, and that they became bound up with the pioneer spirit and with Montanan self-identity.
Irrational failures to try to solve perceived problems also frequently arise from clashes between short-term and long-term motives of the same individual. Billions of people in the world today are desperately poor and able to think only of food for the next day. Poor fishermen in tropical reef areas use dynamite and cyanide to kill and catch reef fish, in full knowledge that they are destroying their future livelihood, but they feel that they have no choice because of their desperate short term need to obtain food for their children today. Governments, too, regularly operate on a short-term focus: they feel overwhelmed by imminent disasters, and pay attention only to those problems on the verge of explosion and feel that they lack time or resources to devote to long-term problems. For example, a friend of mine who is closely connected to the current federal administration in Washington, D.C. told me that, when he visited Washington for the first time after the year-2000 national elections, the leaders of our government had what he termed a "90-day focus": they talked about only those problems with the potential to cause a disaster within the next 90 days. Economists rationally justify these irrational focuses on short-term profits by "discounting" future profits. That is, they argue that it may be better to harvest a resource today than to leave some of the resource for harvesting tomorrow, because the profits from today's harvest could be invested, and the accumulated interest between now and a harvest of exactly that same quantity of resource in the future would make today's harvest more valuable than the future harvest.
The last reason that I shall mention for irrational failure to try to solve a perceived problem is psychological denial. This is a technical term with a precisely defined meaning in individual psychology, and it has been taken over into the pop culture. If something that you perceive arouses an unbearably painful emotion, you may subconsciously suppress or deny your perception in order to avoid the unbearable pain, even though the practical results of ignoring your perception may prove ultimately disastrous. The emotions most often responsible are terror, anxiety, and sadness. Typical examples include refusing to think about the likelihood that your husband, wife, child, or best friend may be dying, because the thought is so painfully sad, or else blocking out a terrifying experience. For example, consider a narrow deep river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a long distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam's bursting, it's not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam. Surprisingly, though, when one gets within a few miles of the dam, where fear of the dam's breaking is highest, as you then get closer to the dam the concern falls off to zero! That is, the people living immediately under the dam who are certain to be drowned in a dam burst profess unconcern. That is because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one's sanity while living immediately under the high dam is to deny the finite possibility that it could burst.
Psychological denial is a phenomenon well established in individual psychology. lt seems likely to apply to group psychology as well. For example, there is much evidence that, during World War Two, Jews and other groups at risk of the developing Holocaust denied the accumulating evidence that it was happening and that they were at risk, because the thought was unbearably horrible. Psychological denial may also explain why some collapsing societies fail to face up to the obvious causes of their collapse.
Finally, the last of the four items in my road map is the failure to succeed in solving a problem that one does try to solve. There are obvious possible explanations for this outcome. The problem may just be too difficult, and beyond our present capacities to solve. For example, the state of Montana loses hundreds of millions of dollars per year in attempting to combat introduced weed species, such as spotted knapweed and leafy spurge. That is not because Montanans don't perceive these weeds or don't try to eliminate them, but simply because the weeds are too difficult to eliminate at present. Leafy spurge has roots 20 feet deep, too long to pull up by hand, and specific weed-control chemicals cost up to $800 per gallon.
Often, too, we fail to solve a problem because our efforts are too little, begun too late. For example, Australia has suffered tens of billions of dollars of agricultural losses, as well as the extinction or endangerment of most of its native small mammal species, because of introductions of European rabbits and foxes for which there was no close native counterpart in the Australian environment. Foxes as predators prey on lambs and chickens and kill native small marsupials and rodents. Foxes have been widespread over the Australian mainland for over a century, but until recently they were absent from the Australian island state of Tasmania, because foxes could not swim across the wide, rough seas between the Australian mainland and Tasmania. Unfortunately, two or three years ago some individuals surreptitiously and illegally released 32 foxes on the Tasmanian mainland, either for their fox-hunting pleasure or to spite environmentalists. Those foxes represent a big threat to Tasmanian lamb and chicken farmers, as well as to Tasmanian wildlife. When Tasmanian environmentalists became aware of this fox problem around March of 2002, they begged the government to exterminate the foxes quickly while it was still possible. The fox breeding season was expected to begin around July. Once those 32 foxes had produced litters and once those litters had dispersed, it would be far more difficult to eradicate 128 foxes than 32 foxes. Unfortunately, the Tasmanian government debated and delayed, and it was not until around June of 2002 that the government finally decided to commit a million dollars to eliminating foxes. By that time, there was considerable risk that the commitment of money was too little and too late, and that the Tasmanian government would find itself faced with a far more expensive and less soluble problem. I have not heard yet what happened to that fox eradication effort
~~~
Thus, human societies and smaller groups may make disastrous decisions for a whole sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it. All this may sound pessimistic, as if failure is the rule in human decision-making. In fact, of course that is not the case, in the environmental area as in business, academia, and other groups. Many human societies have anticipated, perceived, tried to solve, or succeeded in solving their environmental problems. For example, the Inca Empire, New Guinea Highlanders, 18th-century Japan, 19th-century Germany, and the paramount chiefdom of Tonga all recognized the risks that they faced from deforestation, and all adopted successful reforestation or forest management policies. Thus, my reason for discussing failures of human decision-making is not my desire to depress you. Instead, I hope that, by recognizing the sign posts of failed decision making, we may become more consciously aware of how others have failed, and of what we need to do in order to get it right.

Lately there have been a few discussions about microtransactions and gamers asking for more control/regulations.
As someone who:

• grew up in the 80s and 90s (I’m almost 38 now)
• grew up in Southeast Asia
• I’m also a parent

I do think I might not be part of that crowd that’s too rabid to see government regulations.
—————
Personal opinion:
I remember back then when only a handful of people lobbied for government restrictions in games — Jack Thompson (remember that guy?) and a handful of parents who felt their kids were getting addicted to gambling and starting to worship the devil (because of trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokémon).

• Fun fact: Parents tried to sue trading card companies several times for “getting their kids addicted to gambling” but the courts dismissed all those cases. In fact, legal experts even mentioned that it was simply a case of bad parenting
  
• I hope I’m not the only one who’s too old to remember the 90s. There might be some folks here who were already teens or adult around that time.
  

Nowadays, gamers themselves are the ones pushing for more government control and legislatation. It’s a little odd how the wheel has turned.
Another part of me is my cultural upbringing. I grew up in the Philippines where we were exposed to microtransactions in freemium online games since the early 2000s. It meant that our parents/elders were highly aware of what video games could do to us while growing up.
As a child, parents would give me a handful of quarters for the arcade or for the local fair (“color game” and “ring toss” are like kiddie forms of gambling then). The key factor here is that when I ran out of money because I was too stupid when spending, my elders would reel me back in and set me straight. It’s why I never developed a gambling vice... I learned the value of money at a young age.
Also, some parts of Asia (if some Western gamers don’t know yet) it’s actually common for the younger generation to stay with their folks until their married, and even then, they might just live in the building next door or close by. We don’t just pack up our things and disappear once we turn 18, when the only time we see our folks again is during the holidays.
And so parents not only play a crucial role in our development as children but even until our young adult years. Good parenting plays a key role in turning us into responsible people.
Likewise, given that other parts of the world have people who aren’t as privileged or as wealthy, kids end up preferring free/cheaper games, while at the same time parents don’t just have a dozen credit cards lying around the house (the same credit cards that kids grab to buy gems/premium currency which the internet fully lays the blame on microtransactions).
—————
So yes, it got me thinking:
There seems to be a push among gamers to focus on government regulations because of microtransactions.
However, very few people ever mention that parents should take a more active role, or be more responsible in raising and monitoring their kids.

• Is this simply because people feel that parents can no longer do these things and so the government/lawmakers should step in?
• Is this because of cultural differences?
• As for gamers who are also parents, are you able to raise children/young gamers responsibly? Or do you feel that the government should step in?

————
Again, this is just a personal opinion:
Personally, I simply believe that before the government or the rest of the industry steps in, the first responsibility in raising a child is always on me since I am a parent.
If my child ends up spending too much or falls in love with microtransactions and lootboxes, that’s not the failure of the government nor the company — that is my failure as a parent because I should have taught my child how to value his time, his money, and his future.
Technology may change. Games may change. Laws may change. But parenting responsibilities are a constant since time immemorial.
Just my two cents. Thanks everyone.
—————
For anyone who might be interested in legal proceedings in the past. Just in case any user brings up “gambling laws in the US”

• Magic the Gathering and Baseball cards
• Pokemon trading cards and the moral panic that happened — ie. “Pokemon leads to devil worship”

Also some recent ones from a Google search:

• Game of War gambling = dismissed (2016)
• Valve CS:GO gambling = dismissed (2017)
• Castle Clash gambling = dismissed (2018)

———-
Thanking everyone who’s replied so far. Please keep the discussion going.
I tried to reply to almost every user and even add some helpful links to articles/studies. I mentioned I’m from the Philippines and it’s almost midnight here so I’ll have to rest. I’ll reply to others tomorrow.
Closing 1: Parenting
A big thanks to everyone who joined in the discussion. This last edit will address a lot of the points that were made and tie it in to the theme of the main post.
The topic is initially about the practical application of good parenting even before government regulations come into play. There's a pretty good reason why I pointed out my experiences as a kid, my upbringing, as well as parenting values. All of those points were to elicit a reaction from gamer parents out there. As you can see, in these three topics -- there were but a handful of comments from actual parents themselves. Unfortunately, a vast majority did not mention being a parent or how this affects them as a parent.
At the same time, you might notice that only a few respondents mentioned their own spending habits. Barely anyone mentioned their own practical examples of what their spending has been like. Many immediately went for the "microtransactions are bad" argument.
My belief is that a majority of respondents are not parents themselves (or have barely been exposed to MTX), and thus it lacks that practical experience or knowledge. Ergo, the responses come from outside sources such as YouTube or internet forums (there's a reason why some of the replies you see might remind you of something you've already heard in a video).
Closing 2: Microtransactions, Lootboxes, And Children
There's a reason why I added bits and pieces as cues: "90s parents = video games are bad" moral conundrum, Jack Thompson and various lobbyists, previous lawsuits in the US because TCGs were thought of as "illegal gambling," growing up as a child in Southeast Asia, Asia's experience with MTX since the early-2000s, as well as how gamers have been averse to governments stepping in just to affect video games in the past.
These are supposed to convey how gamers of yesteryears have viewed these issues in the past, and now how the tables have turned where gamers themselves are the ones clamoring for government regulations. It isn't necessarily an argument for or against microtransactions, and we simply look at the reasoning behind making the argument in the first place.
Now, relating it to the present day, you might also know that a number of studies, including a WHO classification of "gaming disorder," and even general practical applications have been met with apprehension and doubt from gamers.

• For instance, you will not get as much traction from discussions about "World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs being addictive" nowadays.
• Even "Minecraft addiction" among kids with ADHD barely gets a mention.
• Barely any vehement comments will come with talks about grinding systems, RNG mechanics, or games where people have put in 3,000+ hours.
• You probably won't even hear too much backlash about how Twitch streaming and YouTube ensure that gamers remain hooked on video games even after turning off their TVs and putting down their controllers.
• You probably also enjoy the idea that people play video games for 12-16+ hours while streaming for that entertainment value, despite the inherent physical and psychological risks that this activity poses. Ever wonder why there have been streamers opening up about psychological problems that have surfaced due to streaming and providing video game entertainment?
• EDIT: Don't forget, Psychology also teaches us that there's a connection between video games and narcissism01445-9/fulltext). Additional factors have also shown the rise in narcissism and a decline in empathy with the younger generation. It is, however, worth noting that some studies have attempted to debunk some of these claims.

People do not bat an eye in spite of studies about the myriad ways that video games and entertainment media keep us addicted and hooked while completely influencing our behaviors.
But, when you add "lootboxes = gambling" and "lootboxes = harmful to children" in the mix, it becomes a hot topic. And these ideas have become a prevalent thought among gamers today.
I believe there's a good reason for this. There's another prevailing counterpoint to the above and that's:

• Many gamers don't necessarily care about "the children" (as loathsome as that sounds). Relating it to Closing 1: Parenting -- many simply see the statement of "lootboxes = gambling = harmful to children" as the most convenient way to curb the proliferation of microtransactions.
• In a way, "children" have become the last line of defense for a number of gamers. The only way that lawmakers might step in to finally put a stop to microtransactions ruining games is if children are finally involved in the equation.

Video games, by their very nature, have engaged and hooked us as kids -- whether it's the 80s, 90s, or 2000s.

• You could be someone who spent countless quarters in an arcade (the earliest form of "microtransactions").
• You could have forgotten your obligations to your friends or family just because you want to play more video games.
• You could have gotten addicted to WOW or other MMOs; or "one more turn" in Civ when you realized it's already morning.
• You could know of a child whose only hobby and interactions come from Fortnite, as well as streaming being the only medium for them (or any other game that's hoooked them).
• It could've led to the worsening of your eyesight, to the lack of social cues, to the rise in narcissism, to depression and anxiety, or the lack of real-life goals and ambitions.

All of these affect you because of psychological implications. However, for the longest time, gamers have espoused the need for self-moderation, or for parents taking on a more active role.
And yet, strangely enough, when you put "lootboxes = gambling = bad for children" in the mix, suddenly it's about government regulations? Suddenly it's no longer about "parents being more responsible for their kids?"
It's odd because on one hand, you've had all the effects that video games have had on us for decades. A majority of gamers have treated them differently. Yet "lootboxes = gambling = bad for children" exists within its own bubble, where a completely different reaction applies?
Just a personal opinion, but again, I do believe this is mostly because gamers see this argument as the last line of defense just so developers will start making games the way they used to.

Period: 1871.34 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	997	491307
Rate (per day)	0.53	262.47
Unique Redditors	583	204145
Combined Score	73897979	111652302

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 6733557 points, 92 submissions: maxwellhill
   
   1. Churchill's grandson slams Trump for skipping cemetery visit because of weather: "They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen," Soames tweeted (150308 points, 8064 comments)
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   3. Bill Gates, the world's second-richest person behind Jeff Bezos, wants rich people to pay higher taxes: “We've updated our tax system before to keep up with changing times, and we need to do it again, starting with raising taxes on people like me." (111904 points, 8519 comments)
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   8. Ships owned by cruise giant - Carnival Corporation - emit 10 times more air pollution than all of Europe’s cars (98696 points, 4192 comments)
   9. Tesla quietly shipping hundreds of battery packs to be paired with solar panels to Puerto Rico ever since the storm cleared: Tesla employees are currently installing the batteries and repairing solar systems, as well as coordinating efforts with local organizations. (96344 points, 2880 comments)
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2. 2307007 points, 34 submissions: ManiaforBeatles
   
   1. Facebook’s only Dutch factchecker has quit over the social network’s refusal to allow them to highlight political lies as being false. “What is the point of fighting fake news if you are not allowed to tackle politicians?” Hoekman asked. (83974 points, 2700 comments)
   2. 61% of Canadians want government to take action on climate change even if economy suffers: poll (82310 points, 3639 comments)
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   4. Ridicule and disbelief as Boris Johnson insists he's never told a single lie in his whole political career - 'He was sacked twice for lying. So when he says he has never lied, he’s literally lying,' says Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson (78640 points, 2668 comments)
   5. UK School cancels play about Darwin and evolution after Christian parents complain - It has provoked anger among other families who call the decision 'shameful' (75030 points, 4522 comments)
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   8. David Attenborough has highlighted Australia as an “extraordinary” example of a country where people in power remained climate change deniers despite the country facing some of the worst effects of global heating. (73499 points, 3215 comments)
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   10. Student in Peru makes history by writing thesis in the Incas’ language - A doctoral student in Peru has made history by becoming the first person to write and defend a thesis in Quechua – the language of the Incas, which is still spoken by millions of people in the Andes. (73050 points, 1616 comments)
3. 909846 points, 11 submissions: mvea
   
   1. Justin Trudeau Is ‘Very Concerned’ With FCC’s Plan to Roll Back Net Neutrality: “We need to continue to defend net neutrality” (136712 points, 5176 comments)
   2. Puerto Rico's governor says 'let's talk' after Elon Musk says Tesla can rebuild the island's power grid (96461 points, 5293 comments)
   3. Elon Musk leads 116 experts calling for outright ban on killer robots - Open letter signed by Tesla chief and Google’s Mustafa Suleyman urges UN to block use of lethal autonomous weapons to prevent third age of war (91487 points, 4864 comments)
   4. 'We're trying to go all in': Chocolate giant Mars pledges $1 billion to fight climate change (89569 points, 3585 comments)
   5. France passes law to ban all oil and gas production by 2040 (86772 points, 2530 comments)
   6. Canada decides the F-word is not taboo for radio listeners' ears - Country’s broadcast watchdog rules that the word is now so commonplace that it is no longer as vulgar as it once was (83649 points, 2932 comments)
   7. Feeding cows seaweed could slash global greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say: "They discovered adding a small amount of dried seaweed to a cow's diet can reduce the amount of methane a cow produces by up to 99 per cent." (71441 points, 4018 comments)
   8. Sikhs aim to plant million trees as 'gift to the planet' - Global project will mark 550 years since birth of religion’s founder, Guru Nanak (68041 points, 1957 comments)
   9. At least seven patients in Beijing who doctors said had “no hope” of regaining consciousness were re-evaluated by an artificial intelligence system that predicted they would awaken within a year. They did. (67009 points, 1034 comments)
   10. EU will remain top investor against climate change, in defiance of Donald Trump's policies - 'We, Europeans, must lead the free world against climate sceptics' (61324 points, 5316 comments)
4. 897473 points, 14 submissions: madazzahatter
   
   1. 'I am ready to stand for my principles': Double world chess champion says she won't defend titles in Saudi Arabia because of kingdom's inequality. The Ukrainian, 27, will not travel to Saudi Arabia, where she wouldn't even be allowed to walk down the street unaccompanied. (82681 points, 3426 comments)
   2. The Trump administration withdrew the United States from an international effort to fight corruption on Thursday that targeted revenue from oil and natural gas extraction...global initiative that requires member nations to disclose their revenues from oil, gas, and mining assets. (78224 points, 4150 comments)
   3. Mass arrests resulted on Saturday as thousands of people and members of the 'Extinction Rebellion' movement—for "the first time in living memory"—shut down the five main bridges of central London in the name of saving the planet, and those who live upon it. (67737 points, 6199 comments)
   4. Federal government says it will not consider decriminalizing drugs beyond marijuana, despite calls from Canada’s major cities to consider measure. Montreal and Toronto are echoing Vancouver and urging government to treat drug use as public health issue, rather than criminal one. (66120 points, 4563 comments)
   5. 2018 worst year on record for violence and abuse against journalists, with at least 80 killed in connection with work, further 348 imprisoned and 60 held hostage, according to Reporters Without Borders...figures suggest more than half of journalists killed in 2018 were deliberately targeted. (64639 points, 1969 comments)
   6. Costa Rica's newly elected President Carlos Alvarado has announced a nationwide ban on fossil fuels, part of his ambitious plans to create a decarbonized society. "We have the titanic and beautiful task of abolishing the use of fossil fuels." (63410 points, 1652 comments)
   7. Indian brothel owners get first life sentence for trafficking children: Two Indian brothel owners have been jailed for life for the trafficking, rape and sexual abuse of children, an unprecedented sentence in a country where fewer than two in five trafficking cases ends in a conviction. (63146 points, 2264 comments)
   8. Facebook has been criticised for allowing a 16-year-old child bride in South Sudan to be auctioned off to the highest bidder on its platform. Her father received 500 cows, two luxury cars, two bikes, a boat, some mobile phones and $13,800 in exchange for his daughter. (62285 points, 3965 comments)
   9. Vietnamese activist jailed for 14 years for live-streaming protest against steel plant’s pollution: The US$10.6 billion steel complex discharged toxins such as cyanide and phenol during a test run in April 2016, killing massive amounts of fish and other sea life along more than 200km of coastline. (61793 points, 1961 comments)
   10. The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change,” one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time.” (59842 points, 5932 comments)
5. 800567 points, 11 submissions: anutensil
   
   1. 'We Don't Know a Planet Like This': CO2 Levels Hit 415 PPM for 1st Time in 3 Million+ Yrs - "How is this not breaking news on all channels all over the world?" (126879 points, 10666 comments)
   2. Donald Trump to strip all funding from State Dept team promoting women's rights around the world - Leaked plan comes as First Daughter Ivanka defends her father's record with women (79098 points, 9071 comments)
   3. 20 Tons Of Nutella Stolen From Truck In Germany - Police are looking out for over $80,000 of sweet contraband. “Anyone offered large quantities of chocolate via unconventional channels should report it to the police immediately.” (74006 points, 2597 comments)
   4. Google will soon ban fake news sites from using its ad network - Cutting off their revenue streams (71691 points, 4627 comments)
   5. Donald Trump claims he has 'absolute right to pardon myself' (71160 points, 9496 comments)
   6. Australia plans random drug tests for people receiving welfare (69614 points, 9919 comments)
   7. The National Rifle Association Has Deep Ties to Accused Russian Spy Maria Butina - Here is the years’ worth of evidence. (64520 points, 6406 comments)
   8. After Epstein, Prince Andrew Left Out in The Christmas Cold - Prince Andrew’s humiliation is complete as he is banned from attending the traditional 11am Christmas day church service. (64165 points, 2937 comments)
   9. Russian Whistleblower Assassinated After Uncovering $200 Billion Dirty Money Scandal - Andrei Kozlov was gunned down in 2006, weeks after trying to shutter the world’s biggest money-laundering scam—one reportedly used by Putin’s family & the FSB. (61563 points, 2189 comments)
   10. Families of 44 dead submarine crew react with fury as Argentine Navy confirms an explosion was recorded last week when it vanished - One widow branded the Navy "perverse b******s" for allowing family members to continue to believe their loved ones could be found alive. (59466 points, 2696 comments)
6. 784097 points, 10 submissions: green_flash
   
   1. Germany ends all arms sales to Saudi Arabia (121590 points, 3080 comments)
   2. Norway has issued a threat to Brazil that if rising deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is not reversed, its billion-dollar financial assistance to Brazil’s Amazon fund will fall to zero. (101114 points, 3212 comments)
   3. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed that Europe should impose a carbon tax on American imports if Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris climate pact. (94099 points, 9310 comments)
   4. Kiwi tourists urged not to ride elephants in Thailand: "A female elephant will be shot and then its baby is captured," Intrepid Travel co-founder Geoff Manchester says. "That baby is then tortured until it's willing to submit to humans and it's then trained to do elephant riding." (88155 points, 3488 comments)
   5. Doctors in Italy reacted with outrage Monday after the country’s new populist government approved its first piece of anti-vax legislation (68467 points, 4862 comments)
   6. 'Homosexuality is not an illness': Germany plans to ban conversion therapy this year, health minister announces (65377 points, 3773 comments)
   7. Canada is running out of marijuana two days after it became legal (64765 points, 3158 comments)
   8. Trump signs largest arms deal in American history with Saudi Arabia despite warnings from human rights advocates that the deal risks making the US complicit in war crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. (62121 points, 6188 comments)
   9. More than 41,000 people will run the London Marathon on Sunday. When they reach mile 23, they'll be handed edible pods made of seaweed extracts instead of a plastic water bottle. (61176 points, 2236 comments)
   10. Duterte is Assassinating Opponents Under the Cover of the Drug War, Philippine Rights Groups Say (57233 points, 1986 comments)
7. 769693 points, 11 submissions: pipsdontsqueak
   
   1. Trump signs bill backing Hong Kong protesters into law, in spite of Beijing's objections (116988 points, 7325 comments)
   2. US appeals court upholds suspension of Trump travel ban (89379 points, 15436 comments)
   3. Catalonia has 'won right to statehood' (73496 points, 11110 comments)
   4. Maria Butina pleads guilty, is first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy around time of 2016 election (64211 points, 3188 comments)
   5. Trump attacks protections for immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries in Oval Office meeting (62671 points, 13491 comments)
   6. Russians charged over election tampering (62553 points, 4784 comments)
   7. Trump says Singapore summit with North Korea leader Kim is cancelled (62111 points, 10940 comments)
   8. Theresa May's Brexit deal suffers second defeat in UK Parliament (61055 points, 7906 comments)
   9. In historic first, sitting US and North Korean leaders meet face-to-face (60626 points, 11461 comments)
   10. South Africa's President Zuma resigns (58442 points, 2997 comments)
8. 757952 points, 11 submissions: AdamCannon
   
   1. U.S. ambassador to Panama resigns because he can 'no longer work for Trump'. (105396 points, 6908 comments)
   2. Elephant poachers shot dead by rangers at wildlife reserve in Kenya. (93011 points, 4342 comments)
   3. The U.S. has officially quit the UN Human Rights Council. (84229 points, 10580 comments)
   4. Wildlife poachers in Kenya 'to face death penalty.' (66189 points, 2602 comments)
   5. Puerto Rico introduces bill to become U.S. state by 2021. (62019 points, 6031 comments)
   6. Facebook now says up to 87 million users may have had their data leaked to Cambridge Analytica. (59792 points, 2619 comments)
   7. Russian billionaire 'loses half his fortune' after 'divorcing Vladimir Putin's daughter'. (58517 points, 3241 comments)
   8. Kim Jong Un received a USB from South Korea's president with a blueprint for connecting North Korea with the world. (57917 points, 2630 comments)
   9. Elon Musk's massive backup battery took just 140 milliseconds to respond to crisis at power plant. (57739 points, 2588 comments)
   10. New measurement confirms: The ozone is coming back - "All of this is evidence that the Montreal Protocol is working—the chlorine is decreasing in the Antarctic stratosphere, and the ozone destruction is decreasing along with it." (56627 points, 2198 comments)

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INTRODUCTION

This article titled Duterte still waiting for China’s ballyhooed bonanza is written by RICHARD JAVAD HEYDARIAN a political analyst in Manila. Mr. Heydarian is affiliated with the Liberal Party, the establishment party that Benigno Aquino belongs to, that doesn't favor closer ties with China at the expense of sovereignty. While some people see Duterte as a anti-establishment candidate, in reality he is part of the elite, and is affiliated with former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that favors closer economic ties with China. This was evident when she was President.
In the article, Mr Heydarian argues that after 3 years, Duterte has very little to show for in actual investment from China. This is confirmed by this article Playing a losing game with China. All the Philippines has gotten from China right now is about a couple hundred million a year in Chinese investment mainly online casinos which most of the Filipino public and the Chinese government itself want Duterte to shut down. Cambodia shut their online Casinos last month, because of pressure from the Cambodian public and China.
The reality is as far back as a decade ago it was apparent that China didn't consider Philippines strategic. The US$24 Billion in aid and investment that China promised the Philippines was just a promise. Secondly, the reason why Chinese commitment to Philippines has been low is because its more careful lately with disbursing funds for BRI projects, and the Filipino themselves are very careful. Philippines overseas debt is 24% of its F/X reserves. Given China current account balance is moving to balance (small deficits/small surplus), China will be more careful how it lends money overseas in the long run.

SUMMARY

Despite China's highly touted Belt and Road Initiative, a US$1 trillion program to build infrastructure worldwide, Japan's infrastructure-related investments are still much larger than China's in Southeast Asia.
His comments came amid festering territorial disputes between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, which have escalated since a suspected Chinese militia vessel rammed and sank a Filipino fishing vessel at the sea's Reed Bank in June.
China's promise of an infrastructure investment bonanza, funds that were supposed to drive Duterte's touted "Build, Build, Build" campaign, has not arrived, putting into doubt the wisdom of his mostly acquiescent policy in the South China Sea.
Ahead of his election in mid-2016, he made it clear that he prefers warmer ties with China, because "We have to talk and what I need from China is not anger. What I need from China is help to develop my country."
Three years later, among China's ten proposed big-ticket infrastructure projects, only the $60 million Chico River Pump Irrigation Project and another has apparently cleared the preliminary stages of implementation.
Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has admitted to several "Roadblocks", including China's initial insistence on using renminbi in aid disbursement, heavy reliance on Chinese workers and managers, and an unwillingness to co-finance projects with other lenders such as Japan and the Asian Development Bank.
However, even more worrying, festering territorial disputes between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, which have escalated since a suspected Chinese militia vessel rammed and sank a Filipino fishing vessel at the sea’s Reed Bank in June.

OPINION

WHY THE CHINESE DON'T CONSIDER THE PHILIPPINES IMPORTANT
Chinese don't consider the Philippines that important, because they are obsessed with the Malacca Strait. China has billions of dollars in Malaysian BRI projects, while very little infrastructure investment in both the Philippines or Thailand for example.
There are three reason for this.
The first is because of Philippines strict environmental laws, there isn't a lot of Chinese investment in mining unlike Indonesia or Myanmar.
The second is conceptual and historical. The Chinese have a 15th century view of Southeast Asia. At the time Philippines was a scattered collection of small kingdoms and tribes. Zheng He passed the Philippines as they sailed through the South China Seas, without making any stops. In contrast, the Japanese have considered the Philippines strategically important during the war and after the war. During the War the Japanese main invasion route into Southeast Asia was from Taiwan to the Philippines and down through Makassar Strait, capturing the oil fields in Borneo and finally to Java.
The third is Filipino are very pro-American, so relations could easily reverse once Duterte steps down.
HOW FAR CAN THE CHINESE PUSH THE FILIPINOS BEFORE THEY SNAP
Despite what many Mainland Chinese think, the friendliest country in Asia toward ethnic Chinese has been the Philippines, not Thailand. The last time there was serious anti-Chinese violence in the Philippines was 17th century. Unlike Thailand, the Philippines never forced Chinese to assimilate by closing Chinese language schools. Some Chinese assimilated, some didn't.
Over the past decade, there have been numerous incident between Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippines naval and Filipino fishermen. Here is a timeline of the incidents between China and the Philippines
Skirmishes, standoffs, harassment in West Philippine Sea
Between 2012-2016, there had been 8 incidents. In 2018-2019, there have been 10 incidents. In the South China Seas, Duterte appeasement of China only increase Chinese harassment, which sends the wrong message to other claimants - that appeasement will make it worse.
During all these incidents, the Filipinos never started like riots like Vietnamese did in 2014, leaving over dozen Mainland Chinese dead.
How do you think people would react in China? Riots were started over incidents with Japan. There are Mainland Chinese harassing people in foreign countries over Hong Kong.
In one incident this year, a Chinese ship rammed a Filipino fishing boat, sinking it. They left the scene, leaving 22 Filipino fishermen in the water. Someone could have died. The Filipino public were upset, but there was no demonstrations let alone rioting.
SOUTHEAST ASIANS OK WITH CHINA, BUT MAINLAND CHINESE NOT SO MUCH
Chinese think historical and hold grudges, Southeast Asian, particularly Filipinos don't, and are more worried about the present. Filipino's don't care how great China was in the past. They don't obsesses over the Japanese occupation like the Chinese do
Southeast Asia is different from the West, is ordinary people are less concerned with actions of the Chinese government, but with activities of Mainland Chinese in their respective countries. This in turn impacts the overall relations between countries and China. The two biggest areas of concern for Filipinos about Mainland Chinese are:

• Chinese investors have poured money into Online gambling industry in the Philippines that target the Chinese in Mainland China. This has brought an influx of Mainland Chinese workers. The first impact of these workers is to drive up rent and prices of apartments in Metro Manila. Secondly, most of the workers are working illegally, meaning they are working on Tourist visas, Thirdly, as in Cambodia, the online casinos bring a lot of illegal activity like drug use, human trafficking, extortion,,
• Most of the drugs (meth) comes from China, and Mainland Chinese gangs are the main suppliers. This is a long standing problem Despite the talk China hasn't done much to curb the trade. Drug lords in China protected by Communist Party officials, and some could even be members of the Party

The Chinese government recognizes both problems, and has told the Philippines government to ban online Casinos. My personal opinion is China could solve these problems and stop illicit transfers overseas, by legalizing casino gambling in Mainland China.
In my opinion, the only major benefit the Philippines has gotten with improved relations with China is the tourist numbering has doubled from 500,000 to 1,000,000. However, tourist number were increasing before the improvement in relations.
CONCLUSION
If I was in China's position, if I could get something for nothing, I would do the same. I think Duterte's mistake was over promising to the Filipino people of the potential China's bonanza. China didn't cough much aid or investment under Arroyo, and Duterte should have expected that policy should have remained the same.

There are two main reasons why Digong's war on drugs is, from the outset, doomed to fail.
First, the government cannot legislate morality. Since the Duterte regime could not legislate people's morals, it decided to resort to extra-legal means.
Second, Duterte's methods miserably missed the very source of this issue, which is poverty and unemployment. And the main source of this country's worsening poverty levels is PROTECTIONIST and RESTRICTIONIST economic policies.
The nexus between unemployment and drug use was thoroughly investigated in the U.S. and Europe, and I'm not sure if we have updated literature tackling this particular issue in the Philippines.
One study in the U.S. found that "illegal drug use was 18 percent for the unemployed, followed by 10 percent for part-time workers, 8 percent for full-time workers and less than 6 percent for those in the "other" category, which includes retirees."
To further explain this correlation, consider the following facts:

• States with higher unemployment rates tend to have higher rates of drug use.
  
• Each 1% increase in the unemployment rate increases alcohol abuse by 17% and drunk driving by 35%.
  
• After the economic downturn in 2008, marijuana and other drug use increased as unemployment increased. This pattern is reflected in every age group except for the elderly.
  

For Westerners who tried Digong's militaristic methods in dealing with drug problems, they might find our "war on drugs" very simplistic. All we need to do is give the police force the mandate and extra-legal authority in dealing with both drug users and sellers. And this is one of the reasons why Digong needs more money!
PNP Chief Bato once blurted out during the Senate investigation that the source of drugs is China. But as Digong said, dealing with the main source would mean invading China, which is something that we can't do.
Like stated above, one of the main triggers of drug use is unemployment and poverty. No wonder why most drug raids took place in slum areas. But to deal with these two issues (poverty and joblessness), the Duterte regime needs to overhaul our economic system by revising the 1987 charter. Dismantling our economic protectionism requires constitutional revision, which will take years to complete.
This way, Digong would be able to destroy what he calls "Oligarchs" by simply exposing them to a higher level of competition. The market, not the government, would be the one to destroy them.
The problem with Duterte is that he's also determined to destroy his critics. And this is one reason why his bloody war on drugs is meant to be continuous.
--------------------+
ADDENDUM: For those who are saying first world and progressive countries like USA and Portugal also have drug problems, yes they do. But you know what? They tried this militaristic or tough method before and it failed. It cost them billions in taxpayers' money. Like guns, alcohol, cigarettes and gambling, these illegal drugs and substances are and will be forever part of human life. Unless you can magically make them disappear. Thing is you don't have that supernatural power, folks. You might kill all drug users but you can never stop the source. Whether you like it or not, some ingredients or components of these so-called illegal drugs are being used in the medical field.
Now this might shock you but first world and progressive countries' solution is LEGALIZATION/DECRIMINALIZATION. In Portugal for example, decriminalization of drugs led to lower crime rates and lower drug use. Also, American policy-makers have admitted their war on drugs that caused higher crime rates is a multi-trillion dollar failure.
Furthermore, this drug problem is a lifestyle issue, and lifestyle is a matter of choice. Illegal drugs lure or affect both rich and poor people. Sometimes we make bad choices. One solution to combat these bad choices is EDUCATION (both at home and school). Once you equip students with proper health education and philosophy, they will never consider taking or abusing illegal drugs. Those raised by good parents grow up to be productive members of our society. Those exposed to violent environment will have higher chances of drug use.

President Starry Lee of the People's Republic of China has recently been making great strides in the diplomatic strategy and position employed by the country to the rest of the world. In recent developments, it would seem like a prime time for China to get on their heels and make their next move in the endlessly changing world. President Lee has thus invited President Mohindas and President Sims to attend a series of talks with Premier Wang Liuxian on the multiple subjects.
The Chinese firstly wish to discuss a joint policy on the subject of Afghanistan. As all parties are aware, the United States has begun actively efforts to combat extremism in the country and we believe this presents a high opportunity to establish strong cooperation between the USA, China and India in the effort to bring down the remnants of frontline radical Islam. The PRC is thus already beginning plans to construct a base near the border with Afghanistan to give a forward position to begin our own efforts to assist in liberating Afghanistan and building our relationship with both Afghanistan and other participants in the process. The proposed base will also be open to Indian and American arrivals for resupply, repairs and reinforcement.
Premier Wang Liuxian would also like to eagerly discuss the nature of a joint effort in battling countries which actively pursue illegal or inefficient whaling policies. The United States already maintains legislation that allows the President and Secretary of Commerce to embargo fish imports from countries which are deemed to be diminishing the effectiveness of an international fishery conservation program. The legislation is, specifically, part of the Pelly Amendment of 1971 and has been used in the past. Premier Liuxian believes that, with China and India also joining in this approach towards inefficient fishing and whaling in international waters, we can make real headway in protecting fish stocks from unsustainable exploitation which risks the global economy in the long term. The Chinese have also had the voiced support of the Germans in this affair, and the agreed support of India and the US will solidify a global and effective effort in combating this thread to long-term fishing.
A final proposal the PRC wishes to bring up in this opportunity is the subject of currently expanding Columbian influence and a comprehensive strategy to ensuring it does not develop to a state the threatens to global security of the world. In the past, Columbia has pursued a strategy of domination over both allies and enemies alike, manifested in examples from Indonesia to the Philippines. If this is continued that there is a major potential for a gamble by Columbia to unleash a major conflict that could threaten the world stage entirely. The Premier wishes to discuss if the other powers are equally concerned about the potential the government of California possesses with current government policy to damage the peace and tranquility of the world. If so, the Chinese are looking to discuss countermeasures to ensure that the global economy and sovereignty of fellow nation states across the globe are protecting from further expansion and influence by Columbia.
China believes that these discussions are of utmost importance for discussion, especially in an ever-changing geopolitical climate such as this. All parties are undoubtedly committed to pushing forward towards one single goal of a peaceful and friendly community of sovereign nations across the globe. We therefore think that cooperation together in this effort will help to ensure just that.

Developments in Financial Services

• Binance is launching a JV with Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange (LCX) to launch a fiat to cryptocurrency exchange, Binnace LCX. The exchange/platforming will be based in Liechtenstein and offer trading between Swiss Francs (CHF) and euros (EUR) against major digital currencies pairs with the potential for new trading pairs in the future.
• bloXroute Labs, along with a partnership with a team of student at Northwestern University, are experimenting with a trustless scheme to address the scalability limitations of Bitcoin’s P2P platform. At the moment, with the Lightning Network, Bitcoin transactions capacity is capped at 82 BTC. According to Sarit Markovich, professor of strategy at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the bloXroute solution is scaling at 100x better and are targeting 1,000x.
• BOLT, a privacy overlay for the lighting network that will be applied to zcash, was formally launched on Github today. BOLT will obscure transaction, balances and sendereceiver identities. The BOLT upgrade to the zcash protocol is considered a soft fork.
• Coinbase, according to CEO and co-Founder Brian Armstrong in an interview with Bloomberg, is adding 50k new users a day. Assuming this run-rate, it implies Coinbase will add 350k new users a year.
• DGE, a South Korean blockchain developer, who launched its native cryptocurrency TMTG a few weeks ago that is linked to value of gold is attempting to partner with global gold exchanges (after agreements with the Korea Gold Exchange and Vau Diamond Exchange) to create a stable ecosystem for TMTG. In the opinion of DGE, many cryptocurrency developers do not consider the stability of their coins and its impact to the ecosystem these cryptocurrencies support.
• Ethereum Classic is +18% this morning after crypto’s inclusion into the Coinbase index fund after being added to the Coinbase Pro trading platform. At the moment, Ethereum Classic has a 0.91% allocation in the fund.
• Huobi, the Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange (and third largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world), has announced partnerships with Yatai International Holding Group, Vnesheconombank, Chi Fu Group, Asia International Finance Holdings, and Dbank Group to create cryptocurrency trading exchanges/platforms in the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Canada. The five companies will use Huobi’s Cloud service which will provide the different platforms with the tools they need to open their exchanges on a proven framework.
• LINE, a Japanese social messaging app, announced that is forming a USD$10mm blockchain venture capital fund. The company believes the decision to create a blockchain venture fund will make LINE one of the first publicly traded companies to formalize token investments through a corporate fund structure.
• Pantera Capital announces it has raised USD$71mm for a third cryptocurrency fund. Calling it Venture Fund III, Pantera has already begun to make investments following an allocation to cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt (that has a JV with ICE).
• Ripple Labs continues to focus on expansion plans, even in the face of recent lawsuits from the District Court of California. The lawsuits content that Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP, should be considered a security which the company flatly rejects. In spite of these issues, Ripple Labs remains focused on its overseas expansions plans in Asia and the Middle East.
• Ripple Labs has endorsed three cryptocurrency exchanges, Bittrex, Bitso, and Coins.ph as its preferred partners for transactions with Ripple’s xRapid payments system. Management at Ripple Labs is encouraging users in the US, Mexico and the Philippines to use these exchanges while transacting with xRapid. XRapid is a solution for Ripple’s blockchain-based real-time gross settlement system and is meant to facilitate international fiat transfers between financial institutions.
• Square announces that customers will be able to buy/sell Bitcoin via its Cash App across all 50 states in the United States.
• The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is publicly expressing concerns about the acquisition of Beat Holdings, listed on the TSE, by Noah Ark Technologies, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency frim. The TSE concerns are related to management’s bias to stay away from the cryptocurrency sector.

Regulatory

• The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is exploring using a distributed ledger technology (DLT) in place of its current clearing house electronic sub-register system. According to Dominic Steves, Managing Director and CEO of the ASX, shifting to a DLT system would save the exchange as much as USD$23bn. A DLT would permit customers to use nodes instead of sending messages and connect to the whole database instead of having to communicate with several different databases and should help eliminate errors.
• Bitmain’s upcoming IPO is coming under scrutiny as investors continue to worry about its long-term viability. Specifically, there seem to be concerns about Bitmain’s reserve of Bitcoin Cash which is considered an illiquid position given the daily turnover in current Bitcoin Cash markets. Bitmain’s IPO is currently being valued at USD$18bn.
• Bloomberg is reporting that a Bitcoin-based ETN that is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm will begin targeting US investors. The ETN, Bitcoin Tracker One, is listed and traded in Sweden but is now being quoted in USD$. Traders will buy the ETN in a similar way that they buy ADRs where transactions are in USD$ but settlement, clearing and custody will be done in SEK.

General News

• Alexander Petersons, product director of cloud mining service Hashtoro.com and self-proclaimed crypto-enthusiast, believes the cryptocoin industry will begin shifting to cleaner and smart mining by taking advantage of local climates to help reduce electricity consumption. While cryptocurrency critics cite costs of crypto mining as an impediment that will limit widescale adoption of digital currencies, Petersons and the team at Hashtoro.com believe the use of clean energy will help address the challenges of scalability.
• Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver has hinted the online cryptocurrency news publisher may consider an ICO in the future. The topic was brought up during a conversation with one of Bitcoin.com’s lead developers about developing tokens on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain - - Bitcoin.com published a new tool helping aspiring developers to build tokens on the Bitcoin Cash protocol.
• A group of researchers/hackers have claimed to have hacked John Mcafee-backed hardware wallet Bitfi. According to its advertising, Bitfi claims to be unhackable. The researchers/hackers claim to have had complete access to a Bitfi wallet for the past two weeks, tracking data being sent out of the wallet while still being connected to the Bitfi servers.
• According to a research report by Citrix, 59% of UK companies have been affected by cryptojacking malware. Cryptojacking malware employs its victim’s computational resources without their permission in order to mine cryptocurrencies for the attacker and leads to a wasteful increase in electric power consumption and the slowing down of affected devices. According to Citrix’s research, 80% of the cryptojacking cases took place in the last six months.
• Deviant coin releases its whitepaper ahead of the launch of its hybrid decentralized exchange and its open-source hardware wallet. The novelty of Deviant is that it proposed to create rewards within its ecosystems without the typical centralized control of node operators. The Deviant network offers improved speed with stealth addresses for complete anonymity, encrypted messaging for secure communication, low transaction fees, lower confirmation time, and a limited total supply.
• The Ethereum community continues to struggle with DApps topping the number of downloads on the blockchain network that are promising investments with high returns that turn out to be fraudulent. As an example, Team JUST, the anonymous development team behind the gambling DApp FOMO 3D is warning that an indentical version of its game is eating up 1/3 of the Ethereum network’s total computational power and raising USD$7mm over the past week.
• Genesis Mining, an Iceland-basd hashpower hosting service, is forcing customers to upgrade their Bitcoin mining contracts following this year’s drop in cryptocurrency valuations. The company is discounting the upgrade price of its Radiant service per 1 TH/s to USD$180 from USD$285. In 60 days, Genesis announced it will terminate open-ended contracts that mine less than the daily maintenance fee.
• Hash House, a crypto-themed café and workshare space in the city of Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province in China, has recently launched. Among its many features, Hash House will provide visitors with learnings materials on cryptocurrencies and will hose seminars and meetups on different crypto topics.
• China News reports that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Business School has received a USD$20mm research grant to investigate the security capabilities of electronic payment systems. Partnering with University of Hong Kong (HKU), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), the HKUST-led research initiative will focus on artificial intelligence, network security and blockchain technologies.
• During an unofficial discussion with Quartz India, unnamed state official in the Indian government, which is examining the impact of the virtual currency ecosystem.
• IBM files updates to a pending patent for managing a databases management system (DBMS) using a blockchain database. The patent was initially filed in December 2017 and covers the idea of connecting a blockchain databases with a traditional central database.
• Joe Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum and ConsenSys, does not see the recent sell-off in cryptocurrencies constraining growth of the crypto ecosystem. In an interview with Bloomberg, Lubin suggested the recent run-up in cryptocurrency valuations is similar the previous six bubbles with each bubble more pronounced than the previous.
• Joe Lubin, the co-founder of the Ethereum Foundation, during an interview with Bloomberg, claims Ripple is not a blockchain technology and is not a competitor for Ethereum. In Lubin’s mind, Ripple is a payment system, not a blockchain technology. In the case of EOS, Lubin cautions against its decision-making framework and doesn’t believe it is should be treated as layer-one technology yet.
• Users can now be paid to participate on the lightning network nodes. The average fee on the lightning network currently is about 1 satoshi. In comparison, the montly income of using the lightning network has been estimated to be closer to USD$2 for a prominent application developer.
• Microsoft recent patent applications suggests the company is looking to use trusted execution environments (TEEs) within its blockchain technology. TEEs are pre-determined types of blockchain or other security protocols in validation nodes. TEEs will help assist in the implementation of consortium blockchain networks and will also assist in verifying blockchain transactions on networks where multiple pre-authorized entities must interact.
• Saudi Arabia officials warn citizens in a formal joint statement from the Ministry of Trade & Investment, Ministry of Information and Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency that trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are illegal in The Kingdom. This press release is in contrast to The Kingdom’s positive disposition to blockchain technology.
• Taproot, a protocol overlay for Bitcoin pushed by one of Bitcoin’s most well-known developers Greg Maxwell, will offer a privacy layer which will address Bitcoin critics who believe the benchmark cryptocurrency’s privacy is awful. Taproot, supported by other popular Bitcoin developers, will require the Schnorr upgrade which is still not ready to be implemented. The power of Taproot will be the ability to make smart contract transactions look like any regular Bitcoin transaction, offering anonymity for senders and receivers.
• The national government of Vietnam has decided to ban imports of cryptocurrency mining equipment. According to the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, 3,664 ASIC devices were imported into the city in C1H2018. The ban of cryptocurrency mining equipment is related to a government investigation into a ICO-fraud that scammed USD$660mm from 32,000 domestic investors. At the moment, cryptocurrencies are outlawed as payments in Vietnam after the Vietnamese Central Bank refused to accept cryptocurrencies as a recognizable form of non-cash payments.
• During an interview with Crypto Congressman Jason Hsu, Vitalik Buterin, the co-Founder of the Ethereum Foundation, highlighted his worries about the lack of sustainable applications on the Ethereum blockchain. Buterin is working on a proof-of-stake and charting protocols to help address the current bottlenecks that are preventing widescale adoption of Ethereum. In his opion, privacy concerns remain the biggest hurdle for widespread adoption of Ethereum in the financial sector.

Sources:
https://www.ccn.com/asias-largest-stock-exchange-is-honestly-troubled-by-a-cryptocurrency-firm/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/13/does-50-decline-in-the-turkish-lira-prove-bitcoin-is-better-than-fiat/ https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-cafe-and-coworking-space-hash-house-established-in-xian-china/ https://bitcoinist.com/cryptocurrency-regulations-india-months/ https://www.coinspeaker.com/2018/08/13/ripples-expansion-plans-overshadowing-its-lawsuit-worries/ https://bitcoinist.com/saudi-arabia-bitcoin-trading-illegal/ https://www.coindesk.com/square-expands-cash-app-bitcoin-purchases-to-all-50-us-states/ https://www.ccn.com/thailand-police-seek-more-arrests-in-24-million-bitcoin-fraud/ https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-to-use-petro-as-unit-of-account-for-salaries-goods-and-services https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-taproot-privacy-tech-is-ready-but-one-things-standing-in-the-way/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/15/coinbase-continues-to-add-50000-users-a-day-during-bear-market/ https://www.coinspeaker.com/2018/08/15/crypto-goes-green-using-renewable-energy-in-cloud-mining https://cointelegraph.com/news/citrix-survey-more-than-half-of-uk-companies-hit-by-cryptojacking-malware-at-some-point https://cointelegraph.com/news/japans-messaging-giant-line-sets-up-10-million-hong-kong-blockchain-venture-fund https://www.coinspeaker.com/2018/08/16/google-blockchain-and-ethereums-future-vitalik-buterin-shares-his-thoughts-at-a-private-event-held-in-san-francisco/ https://blockonomi.com/vitalik-buterin-future-blockchain/ https://www.coindesk.com/pantera-capital-raises-71-million-for-third-crypto-venture-fund/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/16/ethereum-classic-etc-surges-after-coinbase-consumer-confirms-listing/ https://www.coindesk.com/asx-head-says-new-dlt-system-could-save-billions/ https://cointelegraph.com/news/soft-crypto-etf-alternative-now-geared-towards-us-investors-says-bloomberg https://www.ccn.com/gnosis-creator-ethereum-adoption-is-about-dapp-network-effect-not-users/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/16/crypto-exchange-huobi-partners-with-five-firms-to-launch-trading-platforms/ https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-lcx-launches-fiat-to-crypto-exchange-in-liechtenstein https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-endorses-preferred-crypto-exchanges-for-xrp-payments/ https://www.ccn.com/ripple-picks-three-crypto-exchanges-for-international-xrp-payments/ https://cointelegraph.com/news/ripple-partners-with-three-crypto-exchanges-as-part-of-xrapid-solution https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/17/xrp-recovers-as-ripple-expands-crypto-exchange-partners/ https://www.ccn.com/genesis-mining-offers-customers-a-discount-to-offset-falling-bitcoin-rewards/ https://cointelegraph.com/news/genesis-mining-compels-certain-customers-to-upgrade-btc-mining-contracts https://www.coindesk.com/jd-com-rolls-out-blockchain-platform-with-its-first-app/

American at Cross-Roads in the Philippines -- a little too long to fit here, so the middle part is in the Comments, marked "American at Cross-Roads in the Philippines, Part 2 of 3, continued from main post text."
Also posted on Advice, Philippines, and WorldPolitics -- https://www.reddit.com/Advice/comments/59nnnh/american_at_crossroads_in_the_philippines_how_can/ https://www.reddit.com/Philippines/comments/59na7p/american_at_crossroads_in_the_philippines_i_also/ https://www.reddit.com/worldpolitics/comments/59nf4n/american_at_crossroads_in_the_philippines/
I've been following and enjoying much of Reddit for two years, but this is my first post. I never imagined that my first post would be made out of desperation and hope for saving ideas and advice from fellow redditors, but that's why I'm writing this now --
I am on the brink of success or losing all I've had or aspired to for the past 5 years. My long-term fate may be decided in the next few days -- long-term success, meaningful work and happiness on the one side, or total loss of virtually everything on the other. What happens in the next few days may seal my future life for good or bad. Background -- short (somewhat) version: I moved from Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. to the Philippines 4 years ago, in August 2012. My purpose, in shorthand, was to try to develop ways to continue the work of Ramon Magsaysay, Philippines president in the 1950s. The idea was to do things to help the Philippines reach more of its economic, social, and spiritual potential.
Magsaysay is a former president of the Philippines from the 1950s, after the U.S.A. returned Philippines’ independence after King Philip of Spain -- and mainly the Catholic Church via the corrupt and exploitative friars they sent [written about with great ironic humor and eloquence by Jose Rizal] -- exploited and undermined, and ultimately weakened and corrupted, the lumad culture (analogous to the native-American culture in the U.S.A.), followed by multi-century exploitation by "mestizo," (Phil's name for Spanish-Filipino, Chinese-Filipino, Japanese-Filipino, and other mixed-nationality residents and citizens, whose families have mainly controlled and exploited the Phils since the Spanish invasion 1500 years ago) overlords.
"Mestizo" is ostensibly a racist term in some ways, often equated here with "mixed-race." But it is not really genetics; the corruption and exploitation common among the mestizo is a cultural phenomenon at root. Multiculturalism is good in the sense of understanding other cultures, finding synergies between cultures, learning and enjoying varieties and novel things, and learning from the best in other cultures that may apply to one's own life or that a nation may beneficially adopt into their own culture. But I don't agree with the idea of "respecting all cultures." Some aspects of some cultures are not only unworthy of respect, but are in fact just plain wrong and harmful -- some virtually entire cultures are bad and deserve opposition and change, not respect.
It's not just citizen or resident mestizo, but also outsiders, including multi-national corporations, that exploit the natural resources and industries of the Philippines, often appropriating resources from ordinary Filipinos, in concert with corrupt government officials who are in it for the bribes, and the NPA (New People's Army, a paramilitary group) who they pay, with corrupt government officials’ blessings, to terrorize and steal from and even murder anybody who stands in the way of their exploitation. Mining operations are a prime example of this kind of goings-on.
Nor should an individual be judged by the culture they live in or come from, but rather by what aspects of that culture they exemplify. There are certainly many individual mestizo who are exemplary in good ways -- Don Ildefonso Tan Bunting, the son of a Chinese immigrant from Fujian, China, from about 100 years ago, was one of the first I learned about in many interesting ways. He was mestizo, but besides being an honest hard-worker in early life and an honest businessman later, he went out of his way, selling much of his property and nearly going into bankruptcy, so that he could continue to pay his employees, during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s -- he did everything he could to continue to pay them even during times when they couldn’t work and his enterprises had no income because of the Japanese invaders’ interference. The Tambunting pawnshops are also some of the fairest such in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambunting_Pawnshop So, in short, “mestizo” is just a common attribute among the exploitative class in the Philippines, not a determinative of character.
Getting back to my original purpose here (and continued aspiration), it's mainly, like Magsaysay and written about eloquently by Rizal, to develop opportunities here in the Phils for ordinary and exceptional people to have a good life and future here in the country, and contribute to the further development of the country -- vs. the current government (or "occupying government") policies before Magsaysay, and since Marcos following Magsaysay of exporting whole PEOPLE instead of products or services or talents or arts and crafts, or native resources. During Magsaysay's tenure, the Philippines was #1 in all of southeast Asia in overall economy, income per capita, GNP per land-area, quality of living, farmers' and other workers' rights, justice for the indigenous lumad, including lumad ancestral land-claims, AND overall exports, including textiles, tires, electrical equipment, minerals, rice, and much more!
Much better quality of life and opportunity, respect for lumad culture, and for overall justice than even South Korea.
Now even Thailand and Indonesia, among others, best the Philippines by far -- and South Korea dwarfs the Philippines by all the measures that Magsaysay had begun to build up. Many people in the U.S. are familiar with popular South Korean exports such as Samsung, LG, Daewoo, Kia, Hyundai, Korea Express, etc. Many people don't realize that many pricey beauty products, such as Polatam Water Gel Extra Force Brightening Mask, Blithe Green Tea Splash Mask ($45 for a small bottle!), Kicho Ultra Moisturizing Sun Cream ($36!), Aruel Wheat and Celery Juice Cleanse Mask, Aromatica Natural Coconut Cleansing Oil ($45), Herbolle Rosemary Cream Body Wash ($32), Shangpree Gold Back Pearl Hydrogel Eye Mask ($60), Caolion Pore Cleansing Blackhead O2 Bubble Pack ($26), Neogen Bio Peel Gauze Peeling Wine ($27), Cosrx Acne Pimple Master Patch (5), also come from Korea. -- http://fashionista.com/2016/08/most-popular-korean-beauty-products#&gid=ci01f3b9362000272b&pid=blithe-tundrajpg
Not to mention K-pop, Hello-Kitty, even K-dramas (soap-opera type shows) etc. "Barack Obama cited "Gangnam Style" as an example of how people around the world are being "swept up by Korean culture – the Korean Wave."[119] In August 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also affirmed that the Korean Wave "spreads Korean culture to countries near and far." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Wave#United_States
In fact, "in 2014 South Korea exported $583B, making it the 5th largest exporter in the world. During the last five years the exports of South Korea have increased at an annualized rate of 9.5%, from $370B in 2009 to $583B in 2014. The most recent exports are led by Integrated Circuits which represent 10.2% of the total exports of South Korea, followed by Refined Petroleum, which account for 8.04%." http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/ko
Were it not for the cultural tragedies wrought by the friars and others since the Spanish invasion, this could have been the Philippines we're talking about. (There isn't even any general awareness of Philippines cuisine in the western work, much less industrial or other potentials.)
Here’s a typical example of how things have worked here under the -- mostly -- mestizo overlords: The Philippines was the top exporter of clothing and other textiles after Magsaysay’s presidency, which ended with his death in a plane crash in 1957. When Marcos became president eight years later, in 1965, he gave the textile industries, like many others, to his friends and cronies, who didn’t care about running a business, just about embezzling the money. They ran the textile industry into the ground -- poor quality product at high prices, exports plummeted to zero, and Filipinos couldn’t afford, and didn’t want, the crappy clothes and fabrics being offered.
So ordinary Filipinos began buying imports. Marcos solution? Did he tell his friends and cronies to start doing their job, improve quality, get with the times, reduce waste and embezzlement, etc? No, he made it illegal to buy imported textiles, forcing ordinary Filipinos to waste their little money on the over-priced junk his friends and cronies were making.
This is typical of the political and business leadership in the Philippines for a long time -- instead of developing the Philippines as a good country for its citizens, they just USE the Philippines to line their own pockets, even extracting the most they can from the already impoverished citizens.
The government has invested somewhat, in limited ways, in keeping people alive and getting them educated, and the motives have been mixed among some better and worse government officials, but it’s largely not an exception -- a big part of the reason is to keep up the supply of marketable people to export to go work for other countries, so the government can get their taxes on the remittances, and so the exported people will send money home to their families so the government has more money to extract from them.
And the remittances sent home from exporting people to help build other countries relieves the Philippines government of the pressure to build their own country.
Right here in Kauswagan, there are many woods and wood-products highly desirable in the U.S. and other western countries. Even mahogany, common in U.S. -- Phil's mahogany is different and interesting, but there are also many exotic woods that Americans and other westerners have never seen before, including MANY hard-woods. Also textiles, cacao, indigenous seafoods, complete culinary preparations, even pre-packaged Chicharron Mang-Juan, an unusually delicious, cheap and healthy snack chip made mainly of green peas; and I've found there are a lot of skilled machinists and fabricators here and in Cagayan de Oro.
My plan to get started when I moved here four years ago in August 2012, was to start with some textile handicrafts that aren't available in the U.S., but market-tested very well in Chicago, and at the prices people would be happy to pay, there is plenty of margin to pay for shipping and tarrifs and for all to make a good living and profit -- the workers in the Philippines, me and the other managers, the wholesalers and retailers in the U.S., etc. And I found several good sources that would be happy to work with us, in Paranaque, Quezon, Bicol, and Bukidnon, among other places. Unfortunately, the legacy of the friars 400 years ago and others since doomed that plan when it turned out my Filipino business partner was never sincere about doing anything constructive in the Philippines, and regarded his fellow Filipinos as people to use and exploit, and diverted the resources into gambling and kicked me out when I didn't agree to invest in that. (Similar happened when I moved to Butuan to work for the Kultural Revival Network (KR)to develop my goals in another way, by establishing programs to train people in international entrepreneurial skills so they could stay with their communities and families and market their products and talents to the world, instead of thinking their only future was to work abroad. After I got support from Congressman Jose “Joboy” S. Aquino II, ABS-CBN television network and San Miguel Corporation, and worked out cooperative arrangements with the cities of Butuan and Tagum, and even wrote a winning script that qualified us to compete in a prestigious cultural festival in Singapore, the leader of KR disappeared with all the money, and nothing ever got done, and of course I never got paid for my work.)
It was after this that I learned how to support myself by working remotely for companies in the U.S. and Argentina and elsewhere. The pay tends to be very low -- sometimes about 20-cents per hour -- and it’s a difficult way to make a living, but if you do good work and learn new sets of skills, your reputation grows and you can command higher pay.
Within a few months after I started that remote work, I was earning enough to support myself and my ex-fiance Neil very well, and we had everything we needed in our home in Toril, Davao, where we moved together, plus enough for extras like recreational outings, and to start building savings.
But in general, my own story so far in the past 4 years has been dominated by disappointments like those mentioned in the prior paragraphs -- in addition to the above disasters with the planned export business and KR, I was scammed by a few ostensible potential romantic partners, robbed of everything I had for food and medicine when I left a visitor, who ostensibly came to help me deal with a corrupt landlady problem, alone in my room while I went to the bathroom, had my professional dress clothes stolen (and sold to a second-hand store) by someone who offered to do my laundry for a reasonable fee, etc. My cell-phone disappeared in similar way. The Kauswagan area (20 kilometers west of Iligan City, in Lanao del Norte province, Mindanao), however, is one of the best places I ever lived in the Philippines, especially Purok 1 of barangay Kawit Oriental. As irony and fortuitous outcome would have it, however, the way I ended up here was another trick propagated by an uncle-nephew team. I talked to the uncle, a local school principal, on the phone before moving, and thought we understood each other and that he was not only trustworthy but indeed a rather intelligent, good man. But in the end, I lost a lot and was the victim of violence and serious injuries, one of only two times in my 4+ years in the Philippines.
But that was the last time I made that kind of mistake. I’ve started to understand the society and different cultural branches better, and to be smarter about steering clear of and protecting myself from those things I don’t understand yet. And there are at least a half-dozen people in the neighborhood where I live now, since 10 weeks ago, that I trust 100%, and who look after my well-being and safety very well.
My main challenges in the past 3 years, however, have been related to my very slow and difficult recovery from brain and spinal injuries sustained when a speeding drunk driver ran a red light while I was crossing the street. That is also the main reason why my ex-fiancé left me a few months after that (our relationship is definitely permanently in history, though I no longer hold it against him that he left me during those times, because it was almost too much for me, 50 years old at the time, to deal with, much less for a 26 year-old who was already trying to adjust to so many other things about growing up; and in any case, I had no choice, but he did, and he took it). My physical and mental and psychological recovery was harrowing in itself, but I also had to sell everything, including my piano and appliances and everything else, to pay medical bills and eat, because I lost a lot of clients while I was unconscious in the hospital, and re-building my client base was painfully slow because of my brain injuries and relentless pain.
However, I am much better now, pretty much fully recovered, and more -- in many ways better than even before the accident. And my income is also finally starting to recover, though the challenges of getting a chance to cement the opportunity for a better life is what this post is mostly about.
What’s been turned upside-down and backwards here isn’t just about exports or workers’ rights -- it also extends to domestic industries. For example, there’s a dairy conundrum and a cacao/tableya conundrum -- Philippines mainly imports both, despite an abundance of cows and some of the best cacao in the world.
Instead of even having domestic industries in those areas, Filipinos send their money to Nestle and others at prices higher even than things cost in the U.S. For example one gallon of so-called “fresh milk” (it’s not, it’s reconstituted milk powder, with vegetable oil and other junk added to stretch it out) from Nestle costs about $8 here, whereas by the logic of labor and land costs the Phils should be able to produce a gallon of milk for LESS than in the U.S., not 4-times as much. I will have to write about all this later, but there is a whole lot more to it. $405.30 would be ideal, because that's enough for all expenses for a whole month and would give lots of extra margin for the unforeseen, and if not too much unforeseen, I could buy another piece of foam to sleep on (I had to sell the one I recently bought for less than 1/2 what I paid, so I could repay one of the sari-sari stores for food) -- and it's enough to cover everything including paying my food debts, and cover my working expenses, and enough to eat and work for a full 30 days -- that's plenty of time to recoupt even if I lose all clients and have to start all over from zero.
However, if enough help (money for computer and internet access) comes within the next 2 days, I am pretty confident that $165 will be enough, because if I can meet my next deadline and keep going to meet the next two also, I am sure enough that that is all the chance I need. I am sure enough that I have given my word of honor and sincere commitment to those who don't believe in my potential here (or in the potential of the Philippines), that if I get that much to work with in timely fashion, I have to prove that I can succeed definitively with that -- or I promise to give up most of what I have aspired to for the past 5 years, and turn my focus to returning to the United States of America.
If I don't succeed with that amount of help and that chance, I will appeal to the embassy -- my understanding is that they will sometimes pay the airfare and any past-due visa/immigration fees so that a U.S. citizen can return to the U.S. My understanding is that you have to sign a promissory note acknowledging your responsibility to repay the government, but that the state department is very accommodating in the respect that they will give you time to get re-established and develop an income in the U.S. before you have to begin to repay. If that doesn't work, maybe my older brother, my only immediate family who talks to me at all since I moved to the Philippines, would help me return to the U.S. -- right now, that is all he said he is willing to help with; he will not help with anything that involves staying in the Philippines.
I am copy-pasting below the letter I sent to about a dozen friends, former class-mates, former work-mates, and relatives. So far, no luck, not even a reply saying sorry can’t help.
SO I AM APPEALING TO MY FELLOW REDDITORS FOR ADVICE ON A WORKABLE WAY TO MAKE IT THROUGH THIS CROSS-ROADS. I AM SO CLOSE TO TOTAL RECOVERY AND LASTING SUCCESS AND SECURITY, AND THE CHANCE TO BUILD TOWARDS MORE MEANINGFUL WORK AND PROGRESS WITH MY ORIGINAL ASPIRATIONS -- $165 close if it comes within the next day or two, but the amount needed goes up with each delay, because of ongoing expenses just to survive, and a potential chain-reaction of losses if I can’t get back to work full-time every day very soon. (The “timing is a bitch” aspect of my situation is explained in itemized detail in the letter I copy-paste below.)
Here is the letter I sent to friends and family, so far without any luck:
“Hi K____ -- I admit this message and the attachment is an appeal for more help, because I'm on the brink of the greatest chance for success and stable self-sufficiency -- and also the brink of losing everything. But I know my recovery since my brain injuries and other things has been a long, long process, and I understand if people don't believe anything they can do will really help -- and I'm past-due on my part.
And you've helped generously already, which is part of why finally after 3 long years I'm finally seeing the light of day.
So, in any case, take the attached also as an update and conversation-opener.
I send as Word-doc attachment because it's too long for a FB message [Word-doc text copy-pasted below for this Reddit post].
K, please help me if you can; I am on the brink of success or total loss. All of the $50 my cousin E_ sent went to paying back my local debts for food, and my past-due debt to the net-shop for computer and internet use. Maintaining trust and goodwill in the community is the first basic to try to maintain for my well-being and future prospects.
I haven't been able to work or go online except for 20 to 60 minutes each day, depending on how many pesos Darwin an afford to lend me. I continue to be so scared of losing everything. BUT I HAVE KEPT IN TOUCH WITH MY CLIENTS, AND IF I START WORKING FULL-TIME TODAY OR TOMORROW, IT'S POSSIBLE TO SAVE EVERYTHING AND CONTINUE UNINTERRUPTED ON A PATH TO FINANCIAL SELF-SUPPORT.
I JUST GOT AN EXTENSION FROM THE CLIENT FOR WHOM I WAS PREVIOUSLY FACING A SUNDAY OCTOBER 16 DEADLINE, NOW PAST. I HAVE AN EXTENSION UNTIL FRIDAY 9:30PM MY TIME TO FINISH THE NEXT PHASE, FOR WHICH AN IMMEDIATE PAYMENT WILL BE PROCESSED UPON COMPLETION. Unfortunately, the client is not willing to give an advance, or even a partial payment for work completed, until reassured I have working conditions to continue reliably without further interruptions and delays.
I absolutely HAVE to get to work finishing that job, and another with a deadline in two days, Thursday. And tend some things with my other clients, or all is lost. I’m really close to total self-sufficiency -- and even a pretty GOOD income is realistic within months, with enough to start savings . . . but I’m facing losing it all.
$125 that I appealed for last week, was enough last Wednesday to go ahead full-time without further losses, and give a safety-margin for the unforeseen. I could have paid my debts in the community, done my work, had a safe margin for any unforeseen payment delays or work-order changes, and stayed on track non-stop after that. But as I said, the $50 E_____ sent me, that I only learned about two days later when Darwin lent me some pesos for computeinternet use at the net-shop -- was only enough to cover most of my debts to Amor for the Sawer store food credits, plus my net-shop debts and two other food-store debts, who helped me with 300-pesos (about $7)-limited credit after Amor cut off my Sawer-store credit when it reached 2000 pesos (about $50 -- note that all dollar-conversions I mention account for bank profit on the exchange rate and Paypal and Xoom international transfer fees, which makes the effective exchange rate about 40 pesos to the dollar instead of the nominal 47) after the previous week.
Actually, Amor agreed to let me make partial payment, and leave some still owing, so I could pay the net-shop in full and hopefully re-establish credit there, but so far no luck.
So I still need the other $75 to make it work once and for all, plus $64 for at least 7 additional days now (unless you can send enough right away for me to start working full-time first thing tomorrow morning , in which case only 6 additional days of delay cost) beyond what I had hoped when I wrote you, of just spending (or rather, borrowing) for survival without being able to work by Wednesday your time-zone to make all work and avoid timing delay disasters and significant consequent additional delays and possible loss of everything; after Saturday, I'm likely to lose more income, or at least have it delayed, and as I've tried to explain a few times, timing is a bitch until I have a safety net, which can lead to a chain-reaction of disabling losses.)
Please consider this one more time, K_____. Besides the $75 I was short from my original needs to secure everything, the extra 7 days wasted mere survival days cost or put me in debt an additional $63.87 (7 days x about $8-9.50 per day, minus the one day I didn't eat, plus my electric fill came due -- it also includes all other utilities and everything else that continues whether I'm able to work and earn or not). I promise that if you and/anyone else comes through in time for it to work without more wasted costs or lost jobs, this will be the last time. I give you my word that I will give up and go back to U.S. if I don’t pull it together and keep it together this time.
$138.87 is enough to be sure it will work, with some margin for the unforeseen (such as any delays due to work-order changes, illness, etc.). [Please also see note below about possible increase to $166.37 to allow resumption of vitamins and supplements to help with the one health issue of concern right now -- it's the paragraph that begins "K_____, if you'd like to help me resume those supplements right away . . . " ]
The main reason I am so far behind schedule are those that I told you about in detail before, but part of it is my fault, too, like buying that piece of foam to sleep on last week before I was 100% sure of the funds coming in from a client. And looking back I think I spent too much time socializing with my new friends and neighbours. I work most of most days, but perhaps if I worked a few more hours some days, I could have completed EARLY the job with deadline this Sunday, and been paid already, and not be in this fix.
It was bad luck that my laptop failed again, too, which happened just a couple weeks ago. But I found a very good solution to that via Rio and Banet Adiner, who are really good people, and let me connect all 4 of my hard-drives to the computer in their net-shop, and allow me to install all the software I need, etc. No other net-shop will allow any of that. But they cut off my credit 10 days ago (all paid back now from the $50 you sent) with no more internet or computer until I can give a definite repayment date.
I have one job that is mostly complete and will pay on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday if I meet the final benchmarks -- this was originally written several days ago, but I couldn't borrow enough to finish writing and send it to you then, and it's too late for this now -- HOWEVER, as I explained above, I have since got an extension and IT'S STILL POSSIBLE TO SAVE EVERYTHING; I have several other ongoing jobs with expedited payments for one coming in the following Saturday, another delayed-type payment (one week refund period agreed between us if they approve all of the work and set aside payment in Escrow through Upwork; payment is currently scheduled next week, but if my client or their client evaluate later or realize need for additions or revisions, or don't get the expected results or progress towards results for their projects or businesses, etc. -- but I will lose those clients too, in addition to all I lost in recent 2 weeks due to timing, which is a bitch when broke for too long -- if I don't start updating them and completing the next stage of reports, analysis and other early or mid-job benchmarks. My situation now: I have no funds at all until I get paid this Saturday, Sunday or Monday, IF I get paid -- but I have to finish all the rest of the job BY FRIDAY MY TIME, WHICH IS THE BEST EXTENSION I COULD GET, to get paid. But I have nothing to pay the net-shop fees with. I can only write you this letter by borrowing a few pesos from Darwin, but that has to be very limited. I have no money for food either, and Darwin’s family, the Sawers have been giving me limited credit at their store, but that is cut off when it reaches too high, so delays have resulted in not eating for a day or more sometimes (some people fast for a day on purpose, so it's usually okay). I mentioned before, above, that Banet and Rio cut off my credit for computer and internet usage, and though now paid back from the $50 you sent, they won't resume any credit because I haven't been able to give a definite payback date yet, until I get the help I need to make a solid and secure plan.
As you may recall from a different letter, my laptop busted again about 3 weeks ago, that's one, among several, reasons that I didn't meet promised goal of independence after more than 31,758 Philippine pesos (about $665 -- since I moved to Kawit Oriental (so-called Bliss Kawit by people in the area, but that's not the real name, just area people's nick-name).
I bought unlimited internet load for 30 days (no strict limit, but a slow-down if you exceed 800 GB in one day, far more than I need for my work or even my leisure time online, because while I need to download and upload large files and programs, I'm don't need to watch videos or movies or other heavy bandwidth things. I found a deal that few people, none I know, seem to know about -- it's perhaps an oversight of the provider, a hang-over from a Blackberry promo that you can make work for any device, where you can get that for only 20-pesos per day, about 50-cents -- much cheaper and more convenient than working at a net-shop, which typically costs 12 pesos per HOUR, about 30-cents, so my daily bill is usually about 120-pesos or more, $3.00, six times as much as working at home. However, since my laptop failed, I cannot use that load, so I gave it to Darwin and his fiance Shelly-Mae, a small gift after all they've done and continue to do for me.
I absolutely HAVE to get to work finishing a job with Sunday deadline, and tend some things with my other clients, or all is lost. I’m really close to total self-sufficiency, and even a pretty GOOD income, with enough for savings, is realistic within months, but I’m facing losing it all.
I am very well now, got my medication for 6-weeks-plus (I've been tapering the dose down, with successful results so far -- I had been taking 90-110mg, nine to eleven 10mg tablets, per day, and have in mind to titrate the dosage down to 6 tablets per day, a single 10mg tablet every 4 hours, which also corresponds to baclofen's plasma half-life) thanks to E, best glasses I've had in 10 years thanks to A and Dr. Monesit, I also have prospects later, after I continue stable income and build savings, for my original purpose here, which is to continue Ramon Magsaysay's work of 60+ years ago.
(Magsaysay is a former president of the Philippines from the 1950s, after the U.S.A. returned Philippines independence after King Philip of Spain -- and mainly the Catholic Church via the corrupt and exploitative friars they sent [written about with great ironic humor and eloquence by Jose Rizal] -- exploited and undermined, and ultimately weakened and corrupted, the lumad culture (analogous to the native-American culture in the U.S.A., followed by multi-century exploitation by "mestizo," (Phil's name for Spanish-Filipino, Chinese-Filipino, Japanese-Filipino, and other mixed-nationality residents and citizens, whose families have mainly controlled and exploited the Phils since the Spanish invasion 1500 years ago) overlords.
"Mestizo" is ostensibly a racist term in some ways, often equated here with "mixed-race." But it is not really genetics; the corruption and exploitation common among the mestizo is a cultural phenomenon at root.
Multiculturalism is good in the sense of understanding other cultures, finding synergies between cultures, learning and enjoying varieties and novel things, and learning from the best in other cultures that may apply to one's own life or that a nation may beneficially adopt into their own culture. But I don't agree with the idea of "respecting all cultures." Some aspects of some cultures are not only unworthy of respect, but are in fact just plain wrong and harmful -- some virtually entire cultures are bad and deserve opposition and change, not respect. It's not just citizen or resident mestizo, but also outsiders, including multi-national corporations, that exploit the natural resources and industries of the Philippines, often appropriating resources from ordinary Filipinos, in concert with corrupt government officials who are in it for the bribes, and the NPA (New People's Army, a paramilitary group) who they pay, with corrupt government blessing, to terrorize and steal from and even murder anybody who stands in the way of their exploitation.
Nor should an individual be judged by the culture they live in or come from, but rather by what aspects of that culture they exemplify. There are certainly many individual mestizo who are exemplary in good ways -- Don Ildefonso Tan Bunting, the son of a Chinese immigrant from Fujian, China, from about 100 years ago, was one of the first I learned about in many interesting ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambunting_Pawnshop Getting back to my original purpose here (and continued aspiration), it's mainly, like Magsaysay and written about eloquently by Rizal, to develop opportunities here in the Phils for ordinary and exceptional people to have a good life and future here in the country, and contribute to the further development of the country -- vs. the current government (or "occupying government") policies before Magsaysay, and since Marcos following Magsaysay of exporting whole PEOPLE instead of products or services or talents or arts and crafts, or native resources. During Magsaysay's tenure, the Philippines was #1 in all of southeast Asia in overall economy, income per capita, GNP per land-area, quality of living, farmers' and other workers' rights, justice for the indigenous lumad, including lumad ancestral land-claims, AND overall exports, including textiles, tires, electrical equipment, minerals, rice, and much more!
Much better quality of life and opportunity, respect for lumad culture, and for overall justice than even South Korea.
Now even Thailand and Indonesia, among others, best the Philippines by far -- and South Korea dwarfs the Philippines by all the measures that Magsaysay had begun to build up. Many people in the U.S. are familiar with popular South Korean exports such as Samsung, LG, Daewoo, Kia, Hyundai, Korea Express, etc. Many people don't realize that many pricey beauty products, such as Polatam Water Gel Extra Force Brightening Mask, Blithe Green Tea Splash Mask ($45 for a small bottle!), Kicho Ultra Moisturizing Sun Cream ($36!), Aruel Wheat and Celery Juice Cleanse Mask, Aromatica Natural Coconut Cleansing Oil ($45), Herbolle Rosemary Cream Body Wash ($32), Shangpree Gold Back Pearl Hydrogel Eye Mask ($60), Caolion Pore Cleansing Blackhead O2 Bubble Pack ($26), Neogen Bio Peel Gauze Peeling Wine ($27), Cosrx Acne Pimple Master Patch (5), also come from Korea. -- http://fashionista.com/2016/08/most-popular-korean-beauty-products#&gid=ci01f3b9362000272b&pid=blithe-tundrajpg Not to mention K-pop, Hello-Kitty, even K-dramas (soap-opera type shows) etc. "Barack Obama cited "Gangnam Style" as an example of how people around the world are being "swept up by Korean culture – the Korean Wave."[119] In August 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also affirmed that the Korean Wave "spreads Korean culture to countries near and far." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Wave#United_States
In fact, "in 2014 South Korea exported $583B, making it the 5th largest exporter in the world. During the last five years the exports of South Korea have increased at an annualized rate of 9.5%, from $370B in 2009 to $583B in 2014. The most recent exports are led by Integrated Circuits which represent 10.2% of the total exports of South Korea, followed by Refined Petroleum, which account for 8.04%." http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/ko
Were it not for the cultural tragedies wrought by the friars and others since the Spanish invasion, this could have been the Philippines we're talking about. (There isn't even any general awareness of Philippines cuisine in the western work, much less industrial or other potentials.)
Right here in Kauswagan, there are many woods and wood-products highly desirable in the U.S. and other western countries. Even mahogany, common in U.S. -- Phil's mahogany is is different and interesting. Also textiles, , cacao, indigenous seafoods, complete culinary preparations, even pre-packaged Chicharron Mang-Juan, an unusually delicious, cheap and healthy snack chip made mainly of green peas; and I've found there are a lot of skilled machinists and fabricators here and in Cagayan de Oro.
My plan to get started when I moved here four years ago in August 2012, was to start with some textile handicrafts that aren't available in the U.S., but market-tested very well in Chicago, and at the prices people would be happy to pay, there is plenty of margin to pay for shipping and tariffs and for all to make a good living and profit -- the workers in the Philippines, me and the other managers, the wholesalers and retailers in the U.S., etc. And I found several good sources that would be happy to work with us, in Paranaque, Quezon, Bicol, and Bukidnon, among other places. Unfortunately, the legacy of the friars 400 years ago and others since doomed that plan when it turned out my Filipino business partner was never sincere about doing anything constructive in the Philippines, and regarded his fellow Filipinos as people to use and exploit, and diverted the resources into gambling and kicked me out when I didn't agree to invest in that. (Similar happened when I moved to Butuan to work for the Kultural Revival Network (KR)to develop my goals in another way, by establishing programs to train people in international entrepreneurial skills so they could stay with their communities and families and market their products and talents to the world, instead of thinking their only future was to work abroad. After I got support from Congressman JoBoy Aquino and ABS-CBN television network and San Miguel Corporation, and worked out cooperative arrangements with the cities of Butuan and Tagum, and even wrote a winning script that qualified us to compete in a prestigious cultural festival in Singapore, the leader of KR disappeared with all the money, and nothing ever got done, and of course I never got paid for my work.)
Add dairy conundrum and the cacao/tableya conundrum -- Philippines mainly imports both, despite an abundance of cows and some of the best cacao in the world. But instead of even having domestic industries in those areas, they send all their money to Nestle and others at prices higher than things cost even in the U.S. I will have to write about all this later, but there is a whole lot more to it.
I have good health -- better than before the accident 3 years ago, a place to live, good jobs for the 5-weeks-plus, with client payments more than probable if I have computer access and internet access. And if I have those things, I can get more.
Continued in the Comments, headed "American at Cross-Roads in the Philippines, Part 2 of 3, continued from main post text" because the whole text was too long to fit here . . .