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"Automation is all about costs: you manually doing it, you automating it, someone else manually doing it, someone else automating it, and screwing up any of the aforementioned," says Tullus. "I didn't want anyone else to be involved, so I figured out a way to automate the burning of any FutureCoin, so we don't have to worry about that."
"That's good," says Jim, "but President Vilt?"
"Well, I have an an idea on how to fix Logg to prevent it from happening again. I'd take out the electoral college, everyone agrees that's stupid. As for what to do with the Senate, I wasn't sure if I should get rid of it entirely... But I decided I'd simply make the Senate proportional to population, apparently that's what Alexander Hamilton wanted, and judging by the number of Google hits for his name versus the other founding fathers, I'm guessing people consider him the best authority on these matters. I'd get rid of all gerrymandering, and make sure that all districts are forever determined by Markov Chain Monte Carlo. I'd put back highest taxes for the wealthiest and close all loopholes. And, most importantly, I'd make sure those taxes are also used to make sure that money doesn't infiltrate government again. Fighting fire with fire. I'd set it so tax dollars are used to make it so the rich or the poor can run for office, that lobbying is regulated tightly, that any inappropriate money influence on public officials is detected and exposed. And I'd reinstate the officials from before Vilt decided to take over as an interim government until a there's a special election per these campaign financing reforms.
"But as for President Vilt himself, and how to get a chance to enact these fixes... I couldn't think of an answer to that, until today, and his recent social media post," says Tullus.
"You mean the new Golden Rule," says Stacey, getting out her cell phone. Jim is puzzled. Stacey shows her phone to Jim.
Jim reads, "New Rule, by me, your sublime leader. The Golden Rule! He who has the most gold, makes the rules! Catchy no?"
Jim looks up, "Why does this sound familiar?"
"Scroll down," say Stacey. He does.
Jim continues, "I got this great idea watching a re-run of Duck Tales." Jim drops his head, shakes it.
Jim continues, "This is going to be illustrious, celebrated, famous, famed, renowned, acclaimed..." He reads silently some more. He looks up again. "Please don't make me read this." She grabs the phone from his hand.
"Basically," says Stacey, "he made this announcement yesterday. Per his Fast-Track Great Ideas initiative that was already passed earlier, any..." She makes air-quotes. "'Great Idea' that he comes up with and puts on social media, his lackies, that is, every other branch of government, needs only to give him a thumbs-up, plus-one, or smiley emoticon on social media to make it pass. And they all have."
"Thus," says Tullus, "with this rule, he has made the other branches moot."
"But why do this now?" asks Jim. "He has all the branches of government at his disposal, so why bother getting rid of them?"
"All of the branches are controlled by the richest individuals, who have pretty much all the Logg," says Tullus. "Like a toothpaste tube squeezed from the bottom, all that's left is in the top. These rich people, not as rich as Vilt, are next. I suspect Jerald Vilt knows that once these branches feel the squeeze, they might resist, so he's making himself an autocratic leader before that happens. Then he can squeeze the tube fully for himself without concern." Tullus gestures them to come closer. "What makes this interesting is we now have effectively the same problem we did before. We need access to a Logg wallet, or wallets, and their funds. We can then make changes to return Logg to a system of checks-and-balances, and further institute fixes to prevent moneyed-interests from taking over again. We can do this by his own golden rule, by having the most gold, the majority Logg, by taking all his Logg."
A gleeful look comes over Stacey's face.
"I know that look," says Jim.
"And these rules," says Tullus, "will make it so he'll have no way to change them even once we put all his Logg back!"
Stacey's demeanor changes. "What wait!" says Stacey. She grabs Tullus by his suspenders. "Listen Tullus, we keep putting our neck on the line, helping you, and we get no reward for the risk! Why should we do this!"
Jim looks at Stacey, "uh, Stacey..."
Stacey lets go of Tullus' suspenders, but is still angry. Tullus seems mostly unphased.
"Anyway," says Tullus. "I came back because I do need your help. I have some theories of how to do it, but I want to know..." He looks at Stacey. "Remember you said you had a plan to get access to Mark's wallet?"
"You mean the one that required already having access to Mark's wallet?"
"Yes."
She shakes her head, she gets up from the table. "I refuse to be mocked."
"No wait," says Jim, touching her arm. Stacey looks down at his hand on her arm. He immediately retracts it.
"Jim," asks Stacey. "How many times have I asked you to touch my arm?"
"None."
"How many times have you done it?"
"Two." He looks down. "I'm sorry." She rolls her eyes, sighs, and sits down.
"Here was my extremely stupid plan," she says. "We create some fake insider-trading knoledge. We send it to Suleman, well, in this case Vilt. It says a bunch of whale traders... A herd? A pod?"
"I personally prefer 'gam,'" says Tullus, "but go on."
"A pod of whales is going to do some market manipulation. They plan to sell and buy massive amounts of Logg to artificially deflate and inflate the price. In my original plan, Suleman had very little Logg, just some dust, we needed to get his last bit. We'd make it look like price has dropped dramatically. He'd buy a lot of what he thinks is cheap Logg. We'd make the price look like it went back to normal, or higher. Then, he'd sell it all back, even the dust. I suppose we'd have to do the opposite with Vilt. We'd have to make it look like the price increased massively. Then he'd sell it all. Then we'd do this stuff that Tullus wants. Then--assuming we actually want him to get it back..." She shakes her head. "We'd make it look like the price went down a lot, either the same amount or more. By the same token, Vilt, like Suleman, would only later realize that the profits he made didn't really exist." She sits back down, and slumps. "But it doesn't work. Because for both plans we'd have to make a fake version of whatever exchange they normally use. And recreate the connections to the appropriate wallets. And if we could do that--then we wouldn't need any of this stupid plan. And if we and ask them to re-enter the information into this fake exchange, it would be extremely fishy, since if it is their regular exchange, why would they need to re-enter it?"
"Hmm," says Tullus, thinking. "Actually... It's a good plan. It just needs a small tweak."
"Really?" they both exclaim--Stacey most surprised.
"Yes, you're right, Vilt would be very suspicious if it was his usual exchange asking for the information. So, we have to get him to use a different exchange."
"But why would he?" asks Jim.
"There are many scenarios when one might want to use a different exchange. For example, a different exchange might have a coin listing that another doesn't. And, if you think about it, it would actually be a lot more realistic to assume someone could manipulate an unusual trade pair, than say, Logg versus the US Dollar. Some exchanges will offer a discount on trade fees if you use their proprietary coin as the base pair. We can say that the whales are planning on manipulating that specific trade-pair. And, naturally, that exchange would be the only one to have that trade-pair. Which means, he couldn't verify what was going on by looking at his usual exchange, or otherwise use another exchange. His profits would be in the base coin, but he could then trade that for US dollars or whatever else he wanted. The trick is to find an exchange that is considered reputable enough that it'll pass a simple one-page-results Google search on its veracity, but has weak enough security that we can at least pull off faking his interactions with it. You'd need that or... You'd need to pull off the long con, and create an exchange just for this purpose."
"Yeah," says Stacey, "but it would probably require a year or so of acting like a real exchange to get people to..." Tullus smiles. "You already have one don't you?"
"As soon as Jerald Vilt threatened to take over Logg, I started to come up with a few tools we might need later."
"Hmm," says Stacey. "Will any actual trading have to occur?"
"I suppose it is likely," says Tullus.
"And this trading would likely effect the actual values of both coins, will it not?"
"I suppose it will," says Tullus.
"Okay," says Stacey, "I'm in." Jim nods.
"Good!" says Tullus.
"By the way," says Jim. "You said a few tools... What other tools?"
"Well, one of them makes it easier to kidnap a person, but I think we should go forward with my trading platform."