Pedro, I think most of us want to “run the common sense”, Dave did, I did, but you DIDN"T.
I said again and again at the beginning, a lot of agreements/principles are implicit, we just follow them according to our common sense.
If you only want to get the most from a couple lines of “explicitly written ones”, I suggest you go back to read it more carefully. Those lines granted “C2 Corpration” a free subscription. You so sure it was a “CORPRATION ACCT” following Dave’s signals?
Also, I think you emini guys never understand what options, especially mid-cap momentum option is running. I forgave your ignorance on that.
I wish Dave and Matthew can work out a way to solve this. Anyway, I like this site too.
Dave,
Well, I was about to subscribe to your system since I’m doing so poorly, and now you don’t care??? Now I’m really disappointed:)
Pedro,
You are missing Dave’s point here. If Mathew has to pay for the subscription, he wont be subscribing it. Doing otherwise is, lets call it that, “plain stealing”. Dave is saying, “you must pay for it, if you want to use my signals”. Please notice the if here. That is what I mean by “ethics is conditional”.
Existence, - the metaphysically given facts of reality, including the identity of man - is what demands of human beings a certain course of behavior. This is the only approach to ethics that does not culminate in disaster. Only a code based on the demands of reality can enable man to act in harmony with reality.
The “demands” of reality, however, are not commandments, duties, or “categorical imperatives.” Reality does not issue orders, such as “You must live” or “You must think”. The objective approach involves a relationship between existence and consciousness; the latter has to make a contribution here, in the form of a specific choice. Existence, therefore, does demand of man a certain course, it does include the fact that he must act in a certain way - if; if, that, he chooses a certain goal.
“Reality confronts man with a great many ‘musts,’ but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: “You must, if -” and the “if” stands for man’s choice: " - if you want to achieve a certain goal.” You must eat, if you want to survive. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must look at reality, if you want to think - if you want to know what to do - if you want ot know the goals to choose - if yoy want to know how to achieve them.
The field of ethics itself, including all moral virtues and values, is necessitated by the law of casuality. Morality is no more than a means to an end; it defines the causes we must enact if we are to attain a certain effect. Thus the principle replacing duty in a rational ethics is casuality, in the form of the memorable Spanish proverb "God said: Take what you want and pay for it."
If life is what you want, you must pay for it, by acccepting and practicing a code of rational behavior. Morality, too, is a must - if; it is the price of the choice to live, That choice itself, therefore, is not a moral choice; it precedes morality; it is the decision of consciousness that underlies the need of morality."
The subjectivist school, to which we may now turn, holds that values, like concepts and definitions, are creations of consciousness independent of reality. In this view, values are related to the goals of men or other acting entities. But no such goal, it is added, can be rational, none can have basis in the realm of fact. The good, accordingly, is divorced from reason; it is whatever arbitrary desires of consciousness decree it to be. Hence there is no such thing as moral knowledge; there is merely subjective preference.
Subjectivists of the social variety, despite their rejection of intrincism, also tend to advocate a duty approach to morality. Since, a human group of some kind is the creator of reality, they believe, its members’ arbitrary wishes are the standard of right and wrong, to which the individual must conform. The group thus assumes the prerogatives of the divine moral legislator of the intrinsicists, and self-sacrifice for the society becomes the essence of virtue, replacing self-sacrifice for God of the intrinsicists. This approach, though offered to us as modern, is merely a secularized version of the ethics of religion. To secularize an error is still to commit it.
The virtue of independence, is "one’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments and of living by the work of one’s own mind…"
Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative; he can survive in only one of two ways - by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite bed by the mind of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.
The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.
The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.
The basic need of the creator is the independence. The reasoning mind … demands total independece in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.
The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first.
If man lived on a desert island, a policy of dependence would be impossible to him. He would have to think, act, produce on his own or suffer the consequences. He would have to focus on reality or perish.
The same principle applies when one lives in society. The presence of other men does not change the nature of man or the requirements of his life. Others can properly offer one many values; they cannot, however, become one’s means of survival or basic frame of reference. They cannot be treated as a substitute for reason and reality - not with impunity.
ps: A parasite biologically, is a creature that lives on or in an organism of another species. The second-hander, however, is unique. He has no counterpart in the world of biology. He is a parasite on his own species.
" I don’t see how MK trading certain systems would in any way affect C2’s objectivity"
Neither do I. I am only contemplating it from the marketing angle. His marketing material clearly implies that his objectivity derives in part from his third party status. But his status is second party for those systems he trades. There must be some perceived benefit to portraying oneself as an ‘objective third party.’ On the other hand, he could just as easily market the fact that he uses systems just like C2’s consumers, so that he knows better how to rate systems for performance in a real trading environment. (the “I’m a trader too!” angle)
I think MK has a great idea here and is well along to making it work. I think he has a choice of whether to avoid even the slightest chance of any involvement with the systems outcomes by not trading them, which would allow him to claim 3rd party status, or to continue with the current setup and adjust his marketing materials accordingly.
This is going to be my last one on this very entertaining thread, thank for the laugh guys!
>South Park says:
>I think most of us want to “run the common sense”, Dave did
Most of us would agree, that a person (in this case Dave) with common sense actually reads what he is going to sign, or if he didn’t at least wouldn’t complain after he signed. Or at least he would know (with common sense) what he POSTED. Since he failed in both occasions, I just proved you wrong on your assertion.
You also failed to address any of my points, so I am going to say goodbye, there are trades to be made.
Again, thanks for the entertainment…
"Most of us would agree, that a person (in this case Dave) with common sense actually reads what he is going to sign, or if he didn’t at least wouldn’t complain after he signed."
Pedro, again you are evading the question and infact have no answer to the question: by what right does Mathew choose such a course (of subscribing and auto-trading Dave’s signals for free?) Just because he has put that specific clause in an agreement giving him the right which all system vendors signed, does not automatically make it ethical or make it right for Matthew to choose such a course. The fact that Matthew choose such a course is wrong.
The independent man does not function through [others]. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thniking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. The independent man who lives in society learns from others and may choose to work jointly with them, but the essence of his learning and his work is the process of thought, which he has to perform alone. He needs others with whom to trade, but the trade is merely an exchange of creations, and his primary concern is the act of creating; his conern is how own work. He may love another person and even decide that he does not care to live without his beloved; but he chooses his love as a complement to his work, and he chooses by his own rational standards, for the sake of his own happiness. He may enjoy receiving approval from others, but others are not the source of his self-esteem; he esteems himself, then enjoys receiving approval only when he independently approves of the approvers. This kind of man gains many values from mankind and offers many values in return; but mankind is not his motor, his sustainer, or his purpose.
Such an individual is a man of “self-sufficient ego.” The primary in his consciousness - that which comes first in any issue - is not other men, but reality as perceived by his mind. In fundamental terms, such a man does not need others; he acts among them just as he would without them. In principle, he is as alone in society as on a desert island.
The opposite policy consists in dropping one’s mind and accepting as one’s guide a different primary: people. This type of person is not moved by a concern for logic or truth; he is oriented basically not to reality, but to other men - to what they believe, what they feel, what he can wheedle out of or pump into them, what he can do to, with, or for them. The man who acquires his beliefs by accepting the consensus of his “significant others”; the man who gains his sense of self-worth from prestige, i.e., from reputation in the mind of others, regardless of their standard of judgment; the man who gets ahead not through work, but through pull; the social worker whose function is not to crate, but to redistribute the wealth created by others; the criminal or dictator who lives by initiating force against others - these are some of the “second-handers”. They are men who live through or within others, men to whom solitude, in principle, means death.
The relationship between the virtue of independence and fundamentals of metaphysics and ethics is readily apparent. Whether explicitly or otherwise, the independent man grasps the distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made. Confirmity to the metaphysically given, he understands, is essential to successful action; the man-made may be accepted only if and when it achieves or flows from such a confirmity. This kind of individual fulfills the basic requirement of human survival: he knows how - by reference to what absolute - to form his ideas and choose his actions.
To the second-hander, by contrast, the man-made - wheter rational or irrational, true or false, good or evil - becomes the equaivalent of reality. This kind of individual, having detached himself from the realm of existence, has no standard by which to judge others; he has now way to know whose ideas to follow, whose behavior to copy, whose favor to curry. Such a person reduces himself to helplessness, the fundamental helplessness of having left his life to the mercy of blind chance. The result is most people’s desperate need for an authority, religious or secular, who will take over their lives, make their value-judgments, and tell them what to do. The indepenedent man will refuse any such role, but the worst second-hander of all, the power-luster, is eager to accept it. Thereafter, he destroys everyone, including himself.
The independent man accepts the primacy of existence. In some terms, he understands that A is A no matter what men’s beliefs or desires. The dependent switches to the primacy of consciousness. He devotes himself not to the task of identifying that which is, but to imitating, appeasing, serving, or forcing the consciousness on whom he depends. As to reality, he velieves - insofar as he considers the issue at all - that he can safely leave the realm to others to deal with. “Nothing,” he feels, "is more powerful than my neighbors, my tribe, my colleagues, my armies, or my leader."
The independent man understands in some terms that reason is man’s means of knowledge; as a result, he accepts the responsibility of practicing the virtue of rationality. The parasite cannot justify his own default, but he does not want to do the necessary work; he does not want to exert the effort that an independent, creative existence would require. He wants the “freedom,” when he feels like it, to coast mentally or evade. Such a person is not always a passive type. He may struggle, act, even make a certain kind of long-range plan and figure out the means of implementing it (e.g., he may spend years planning how to rob a bank or enslave a nation). But none of this qualifies as “effort” in the moral sense or as rationality. Within a framework of the parasite’s life, struggle does not represent a commitment to focussing on reality or to being guided by his conceptual faculty. On the contrary, his struggle is an attempt to escape from reality and from the need to conceptualize. There is no such thing as a parasiticm based on fact or defended by an appeal to principle. There is only brazen double standard: "He will work and I will get away with my desire to cash in on the results."
Mental activity motivated by whim and streaked with evasion is not a form of reason, but of its opposite; just as inferences drawn from arbitrary premises and riddled with contradictions are opposite of logic. Neither reason nor logic can be defended in terms of context-dropping.
The ego or self, is the mind. The independent man, therefore, is the only genuine egoist. The second-hander - whether he seeks to exploit others and/or to serve them - is an opposite breed. In placing people above reality, he renounces his ego. Whatever his goal or intended beneficary, such a man is a literal altruist; he “places others above self” in the deepest sense and pays the price. The price is the fact that the selfless is the mindless.
Intelllectually, independence is “one’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments.” It is one’s recognition of the fact that the mind is an attribute of the individual and that no person can think for another. An intellectually independent man processes perceptual material by the use of his own rational faculty. In delaing with any question, whether of fact or value, end or means, philosophy or science, he follows the method of objectivity. A second-hander, by contrast, is a parasite of cognition, who accepts the ideas of others on faith. He is the man who says: "I don’t care whether others have reasons for their conclusions or not. If an ideas is good enough for my neighbours (or my grandfather, my subjects, my pope, my president), it’s good enough for me."
Individuals who trade their own creations are not parasites. The dependents among men in this issue are the non-creators. some of them do not care to perform any kind of work, but plead for unearned support from others; these are the moochers. Others turn criminal and seize the unearned; these are the looters. Others - by far the largest subcategory - are those who hod a legitimate job but drift through it out of focus, exercising no judgment, reaching no conclusions, merely imitating the motions of those creators around them.
All these types are “fed by the minds of others” in the literal sense of “fed.” All want the effects of reason without the need of exercising the faculty. All seek not to practice virtue or abolish it, but to be “hitchhikers of virtue.” None has any answer to the question: by what right do you choose such a course?
If I had to guess I would bet you and Pal are the same person, either that or you two know each other very well.
Who is John Galt?
I must my say thanks to Dave. It is perfect show.
In other points agree with Pete . It’s legal and clearly stated in “Terms of service”. Hehe. Moral, ethics. You sign in. Check your broker agreement you might be surprised by splitting of responsibilities . lol
Agree with Mark. If MK/C2 ever will try to trade my system it’s only very welcome from my side. I even close my eyes if it’s not legal and 
and it is not.
What I’d like to add to the show. There isn’t free lunch as in paper trading when you can forget about your paper losses. If MK has a courage to trade any C2 system it means he went the same route as any C2’s subscriber, picks something and put his real money to take some profit and share the risk. It’s best compliment that he can have when he’s trying to be in the same boat as any C2 subscriber hehe minus subscription fee, but in general subscription fee is nothing with comparisons of offered risk in C2
Eu
Pete, I completely agree, he IS Pal! 
Kavin=Pal=unreadable philosophical rumbling
Kavin, unless you are able to state your point in less than 10 sentences, please don’t even try. You ask moral questions. My answer: there is no universal moral truth. Get used to it…
To be short and more specific: Matt has the right to trade any system for free because: he can and because that is his payoff for coming up with the idea of C2.
A last note for complainers of freeriders: There is simply NO WAY to prevent freeriding. If you have subscribers you have no control over whom they pass the information. Thus you might have only 3 subscribers but it is quite possible that actually 10 people are trading your signals. Such is life, deal with it…
Now this is really my last post on this subject, I have said everything that was to be said.
"Pete, I completely agree, he IS Pal! :)"
I’m not joking, search for the following 3 terms in the forums and see how the postings line up:
“independent man”
“ethics”
"metaphysics"
I hope MK is on the watch for system vendors also posing as non-vendors by having two accounts registered on C2.
I do not run a system here. I am a subscriber to Mark’s system. But If I did have a system, I would agree with Mark. There is no reason why Matthew should not benefit from his ideas. He came up with the brilliant site, let him use it’s clients services for free.
Gary
I disagree. “Integrity” is loyalty in action to one’s onvictions and actions. If one demands of man obedience to duty, the rejection of pleasure, the practice of sacrifice, then of course men will be assaulted by temptation, the temptation - inherent not in any “lower” nature but in the vital requirements of a rational being - to seek values, to pursue happiness, to achieve their own welfare. If people believe that such concerns are vices, then the practice of integrity is not only impossible to them, but a threat; to the extent that they enact their preachments, their survival is imperilled. Hence the mystics’ unfailing claim that, because of “practical” or “earthly” or “bodily” considerations, moral perfection is unattainable, i.e., there is no universal moral truth and get used to it. So it is, if “perfection” is denied by intrinsicst dogmas. To irrational principles, one cannot be loyal. Ideas that are not derived from reality cannot be consistently practiced in reality.
In dealing with other men, as with his own emotions, the man of integrity is an absolutist. In cases of disagreement or conflict, he is willing to listen to others, certain others, and - up to a point - to modify his behavior in order to gain their cooperation; but he is not willing to bargain about morality. Being an “extremist,” he rejects today’s most popular attack on integrity: the creed urging as the essence of virtue the practice of compromise.
A “compromise” is “an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions.” In reason, the validity of such a procedure depends on the kind of concession a man is making.
If a man makes concessions in regard to concretes within the framework of rational moral principles that both parties accept, then his action may be entirely proper; but not if he compromises moral principles themselves.
In the very act of a man endorsing a compromise between clashing ways of life, the essence of one, independence, has been thrown out; while its opposite has become the ruling absolute. This is part of the reason why such a man grows increasingly mindless with the passage of time.
The attempt to reach a compromise between reason and emotionalism means the rejection of reason and the enshrinement of emotionalism. The same argument applies, as in logic it must, to every moral compromise (whether or not it involves capitulation to others). One accepts a rational principle either as an absolute or not at all.
There is no “no-man’s land” between contradictory principles, no “middle of the road” that is untouched by either or shaped equally by both. Even the most short-range mentality cannot escape the influence of principles; as a conceptual being, he cannot act without guidance of
some fundamental integrations, whether explicit or implicit. And just as, in economics, bad money drives out good; so, in morality, bad principles drive out good. If a man tries to combine a rational principle with its antithesis, he thereby eliminates the former as his guide and adopts the later. This is the mechanism by which the conceptual faculty avenges itself on the unprincipled man.
If, you try to make a deal with the devil, then you lose to him completely. “In any compromise between food and poison,” "it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.“
The reason for this is not that evil is more powerful than good. On the contrary, the reason is that evil is powerless and, therefore, can exist only as a parasite on the good.
The good is the rational; it is that which conforms to the facts of reality and thereby fosters man’s life. Such a principle must be upheld as an absolute and practiced without contradiction; it acquires no advantages from its antithesis. The rational (the good) has nothing to gain from the irrational (the evil), except a share of its failures and crimes… A property owner does not need the help of a burglar who is trying to loot him. By its very nature, the good can only lose by trafficking with the evil.
The evil is in exactly the opposite position. The evil is the irrational; it is that which clashes with the facts of reality and thereby threatens man’s life. Such a principle cannot be upheld as an absolute or practiced without contradiction, not if one wishes to avoid immediate destruction. Evil has to count on some element of good; it can exist only as an exception to virtue, on which it is relying. The irrational, has everything to gain from the rational: a share of its achievements and values. A producer does not need a burglar, but a burglar does need the producer on whom he preys. And so do bandit nations need freer countries - which they seek not to annihilate, but to rule and loot. Nor does a second-hander type want to throttle every act of independent judgment; the most primitive collectivist tribe knows in some terms that somebody has to think to some extent, or they all will starve. Nor does a political boss seek to reverse every proper verdict; on the contrary, the boss mentality counts on the apperance of justice, so that men will respect the courts, so that then, when the boss wishes it, he can intervene behind the scenes and cash in on that respect.
Evil is not consistent and does not want to be consistent. What it wants is to inject itself into the life-sustaining process sometimes - short-range, out-of-context, at whim. To achieve this end, it needs only a single concession by the good: a concession of the principle involved, a concession that evil is proper “sometimes.” Such a compromise is evil’s charter of liberty. Thereafter the irrational is free to set the terms and spread by further whim, until the good - is destroyed.
The power of the good is enormous, but depends on its consistency. That is why the good has to be an issue of “all or nothing,” “black or white,” and why evil has to be partial, occassional, “gray.” Observe that a “liar” in common parlance is not a man who always, conscientiously, tells falshehoods; there is no such creature; for the term to apply to a person, a few whoppers on his part is enough. Just as a “hypocrite” is not a man who scrupulously betrays every idea he holds. Just as a burglar” is not man who steals every item of property he sees. Just as a person is a “killer” if he respects human life 99.9% of the time and hires himself out to the Mafia as an executional only now and then.
To be evil “only sometimes” is to be evil. To be good is to be good all of the time, ie., as a matter of consistent, unbreached principle.
Evil is delighted to compromise - for it, such a deal is total victory, the only kind of victory it can ever achieve: the victory of plundering, subverting, and ultimately destroying the good.
It is pretty clear this is PAL, and no, I have not forgotten your insulting pm. Why have an alias? So you can start posting diatribes and insult people without showing your system links?
And that he can have someone to agree with his ramblings. I believe his postings as “Kavin” show who the real Pal is.
Regards
- Fanus
To bring up an old question back from 2006.
I am not debating whether C2 can or should subscribe to any system for FREE. I think the terms of service make it clear that they can. Should they? Well a matter of opinion, but I don’t really want to get into that again.
My question is related to notifying the system vendor of a non-listed subscriber (C2) that is trading their system. I think to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, the vendor should be clearly notified.
As a vendor, it would be ideal to know if and how much C2 is trading using their system.
One other idea, this is assuming that Matt has not already thought of this.
Say C2 has an investment fund of $1million or so.
The purpose of this fund is to analyze and select a certain number of C2 systems to trade with real cash using the same C2 technology that subscribers are using.
The selection process, in effect, would be like a competition. If your system is selected, you would be notified by the C2 fund as to the amount of investment and expected minimum time frame, and any other limitations or rules the fund may have added (like stop trading after a x% drawdown).
As a benefit of being selected, instead of receiving a subscription fee, the C2 fund would agree to pay the vendor a % of the profits from trading. This % could be tiered based on how long the C2 fund trades each system.
Now, tell me that this is not an awesome idea that would really focus vendors on what is important and compensate the best systems in a fair and scalable fashion.
Jim
"Say C2 has an investment fund of $1million or so. "
1) I would rather C2 put the money into site improvements, advertising. and new functionality.
2) I doubt that C2 has $1 million for such an endeavour. But if you are willing to front the money LOL…
3) Few vendors here really know what they are doing. If I was a site owner, I would think long and hard about trading even most of the “top” systems, which usually, do not really have aqn edge.
4) If Matthew uses any of the systems (except for reselling them), I think that would be one of the few perks of site ownership. The earlier posts (2006 I think) denouncing him using C2 systems free is unfounded. I doubt this site is highly profitable, and is time intensive. Using a C2 system is Matthew’s business decision, and I don’t think he is obligated to tell anyone. And who would enforce it? It is like a customer telling a store owner he cannot buy at wholesale from the products coming in, because his customers have to pay retail. Many business owners do that.
Now, tell me that this is not an awesome idea that…"
As I said above, I don’t think it is awesome to have C2 using its money. Now if perhaps independent investors were willing to put up money… But the main problem is, that C2’s mission is to be a website that allows subscribers to find systems, put out by vendors and thoroughly analyzed by C2. However, C2 vendors are operating under the role of PUBLISHERS. That is what things like the CFTC allow. Vendors can only put out generalized thoughts about the market; they are prevented from tailoring their advice to any individual person/group. They are preventing from asking “how much $$$ do you plan to trade” or “here is what i suggest you use my system at your point in life”, etc. But some here skirt that occasionally and could run afoul of regulatory problems.
I suspect putting in an “investment fund” would open up C2 and Matthew to a host of unwanted scrutiny and regulatory headaches.
Well, I think it is a good idea anyway. I suppose there is nothing stopping anyone from doing such a thing.
Jim
In my view, the rules say that Matthew has a free subscription to every system. There is no need to tell that he is subscribed to a particular system because he is automatically subscribed to all systems. Just like any other subscriber, he is free
- to follow or to ignore signals without telling anyone,
- to use whatever capital he wants without telling anyone.
I see no reason why a different set of rules should apply to him.
I agree with Jules.
