The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 4 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Middlemen organizations, not Visa and MasterCard, exploit small merchants with fees
“Where the crazy abuse is, is all the middlemen in those transactions. So Visa and MasterCard, they don't really abuse the merchant, but the abuse happens with all their partners. Like the independent sales organizations that work for the banks that work for Vi…”
Blue-chip sponsorships provide the storytelling infrastructure to create cultural icons.
“If you partner with those companies, you know, they have a similar type of storytelling and that's what allows you to become Mia Hamm, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan. It's the sponsors that do it, you know?”
Elon Musk pitched taking down Visa and MasterCard in 1999
“He was gonna, he's, you know, said right out of the gate, oh, we're gonna take down Visa and MasterCard.”
Airbnb survived early on by maxing out binders full of credit cards
“You know those binders where you keep baseball cards? I had one of those, except there weren't baseball cards in it. They were credit cards. We would go through visa after visa to MasterCard and then final to Amex. Just maxing out credit cards, and that's how …”