Way back in 2016 when I first started out on Steemit as 
because the account name "sift" was already reserved, one of the first accounts I interacted with was 
.
We were not on the same page about many things but there were no major issues and I always followed him. I'm not sure if he ever followed me or not.
I don't imagine he will be pleased about me doing this post, but in all honesty I’m past caring. I live in New Zealand which is in the process of imploding, so the fact that all my posts on Hive are downvoted to zero is small potatoes, and most of my friends here are looking at alternative platforms anyway.
He went on to be very popular on Steemit, me not so much... I ended up having quite a few accounts, partly because some were heavily flagged and in some cases basically driven off the platform. Censorship in these parts is nothing new.
Moving forward to Hive, he became quite a name on Leo Finance. Despite being a crypto investor myself, I pulled all my support for Leo Finance after the insiders there nuked the living crap out of one of my alt accounts.
So I had no issues with
@edicted/jrcornel-being-flagged-to-zero
Just before he was banished from Leo Finance we disagreed on the state of the American economy. I said it was already in Recession and was heading into Depression. We had an exchange of comments here - @frot/is-trying-to-fail-an-effective-tactic
That was back in March 2021.
He was really keen to make it a bet of 100 Hive, to which I agreed. The bet was that by the end of the second quarter, America would be in an economic depression. He was adamant that it would not be.
Because he disappeared from Hive I forgot about the bet until he started popping up in comments demanding I pay him the 100 Hive I owe him. And implying that if I refuse it’s because I can’t afford to or am a scam artist.
With the benefit of hindsight it was a dumb bet – not because the American economy is not in a state of collapse at this point, and already clearly was by the end of June, but because nobody can agree on the exact definition of a depression...
For example, one definition is: Over 10% decline in GDP, along with around 20% unemployment, and a downturn that lasts more than 1-2 years.
By that useless “definition” we have no way to draw any conclusion until 1-2 years are up, and WTF is “around” 20% unemployment?.
All the definitions on sites like Wikipedia have now been revised and made vague and indefinable. As as almost everything this year. This meaningless “definition” is currently on Wikipedia:
In the United States, it is defined as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession
What is “significant”. Personally I think his claim that America was NOT in a state of depression by the end of Q2 is wrong and that he owes me 100 Hive. But I can’t be arsed pursuing it.
We actually did define our bet at the time - it was:
"I am betting that the American economy will be in a state of DEPRESSION by July 1 2021 - Depression as in a 10% or greater decline in economic output as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) for two consecutive quarters"
Today he sent me some links to prove his point. But the first one doesn't prove anything. In fact it doesn’t mention Q2 but says of Q1
“Growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) in the OECD area slowed to 0.3% in the first quarter of 2021, down from 1.0% in the previous quarter, according to provisional estimates. This slowdown is partly related to the strengthening of COVID-19 containment measures in some countries in early 2021.
I'm going to have to look into this more, but saying the downturn in the US economy in the first half of this year is not greater than 10% sounds like saying Biden got more votes than Trump...Sure he did...
https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/gdp-growth-first-quarter-2021-oecd.htm
