Middleman Quotes

It is well-known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.

I have no respect to merchants and preachers; as far as I’m concerned, their only talent is coming up with the right word at the right time. What is a professional preacher, really? He is a kind of middleman who for the wrong reasons tries to make people buy his goods. The more he sells, the more his stock rises. The louder he hawks his wares, the larger his business grows.

I don't read newspapers anymore — I just lie to myself and cut out the middleman.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

A middleman’s business is to make himself a necessary evil.

You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line--it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel.

That is why fiction existed, as a way to look at the world without being broken by it.

If no one seems to understand Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman - Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

how” we think we will get happiness is the middleman,

She spoke into his ear. “You just mugged a guy. Stole his motorcycle.” “Not how I see it.” “How do you see it?” “Colonel Dai just bought a used dirt bike in Vietnam. I was kind of the middleman.” “Tell yourself whatever works, Violator.

...the incarnation is the complete refutation of every human system and institution that claims to control, possess, and distribute God. Whatever any church or religious leader may claim in regard to their particular access to God or control over your experience of God, the incarnation is the last word: God loves the world. God came into the world in the form of the people he created, the human race (including you and me), who bear his image. God's creation of humanity in his image gives hints of who he is, since we all are marked by his fingerprints. But as flawed humans, we give only a vague hint of God. Our broken reflection of God's image is easily drowned out by our broken humanity. then, two thousand years ago, God came in his fullness. He came to all of us in Jesus. The incarnation is not owned, trademarked, or controlled by any church. It belongs to every human being. The incarnation is not something that requires a distributor or middleman. It is a gracious gift to every person everywhere, religious or not. God gave himself to us in Jesus.

The Middleman: "So what's it going to be? Keep the secret or death?" Wendy Watson: "What do you think?" The Middleman: "Ma'am specificity is the soul of all good communication.

The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line—it’s a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter.

It was strange to listen to slick young Nazis along Fifth Avenue haranguing small gatherings from little mahogany pulpits. One spiel went as follows: "The philosophy of Hitler is a profound and thoughtful study of this industrial age, in which there is little room for the middleman or Jew." A woman interrupted. "What kind of talk is that!" she exclaimed. "This is America. Where do you think you are?" The young man, an obsequious, good-looking type, smiled blandly. "I'm in the United States and I happen to be an American citizen," he said smoothly. "Well," she said, "I'm an American citizen, and a Jew, and if I were a man I'd knock your block off!" One or two endorsed the lady's threat, but most of them stood apathetically silent. A policeman standing by quieted the woman. I came away astonished, hardly believing my ears.

the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

I mean if those moral principles are out there and God is just telling us what it is, then why do we need the middleman? Just tell us the reasons why it’s wrong and okay. And if it’s just because God said it what if he didn’t say murder was wrong, would that make it right? No, it would still be wrong.

As economist Thomas Sowell has noted, middleman minorities typically arrive in their host countries with education, skills, or a set of propitious attitudes about work, such as business frugality and the willingness to take risks. Some slave away in lowly menial jobs to raise capital, then swiftly become merchants, retailers, labor contractors, and money-lenders. Their descendants usually thrive in the professions, such as medicine, law, engineering, or finance.

Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command some things because they are moral? If the former is true, and God had no reason for his commandments, why should we take his whims seriously? If God commanded you to torture and kill a child, would that make it right? “He would never do that!” you might object. But that flicks us onto the second horn of the dilemma. If God does have good reasons for his commandments, why don’t we appeal to those reasons directly and skip the middleman?

The implications are enormous – not just to corporations, but to governments as well. If everything can be dis-intermediated and decentralized, what about the services governments provide – healthcare, welfare and education? The bureaucratic middleman megalith that makes them so inefficient and expensive could be circumvented altogether.

The historian is always a middleman: the facilitator of the reader’s understanding of the past.

From farm to table, that’s my goal. Of course, I want to get there cheaply, by cutting out the greedy middleman carrying all my groceries from the trees to my kitchen.

If God does have good reasons for his commandments, why don't we appeal to those reasons directly and skip the middleman?

There is a big difference between religion and spirituality. If you’re walking a spiritual path, it is because you’re trying to help yourself or others for the greater good. You’re trying to become a more conscious being through your actions and by understanding what motivates you. Religion, on the other hand, is basically a marketing plan. There is a middleman involved, and somewhere along the line someone is going to ask you for your credit-card number. They’re going to pass a plate in front of you, trick you into giving ten per cent of your income to some child-molesting fuckhead, or worse, trick you into giving up your civil rights over some storybook.

The combative, rhetorical form is also absent from Asian law. In Asia the law does not consist, as it does in the West for the most part, of a contest between opponents. More typically, the disputants take their case to a middleman whose goal is not fairness but animosity reduction—by seeking a Middle Way through the claims of the opponents. There is no attempt to derive a resolution to a legal conflict from a universal principle. On the contrary, Asians are likely to consider justice in the abstract, by-the-book Western sense to be rigid and unfeeling.

Digital locks are roach motels: copyrighted works check in, but they don’t check out. Creators and investors lose control of their business—they become commodity suppliers for a distribution channel that calls all the shots. Anti-circumvention isn’t copyright protection: it’s middleman protection.

Deccani Hill Fort, Devgad, says the guidebook. Vandals and colonials have gouged the jewels from mosaic work: Victorian Englishmen whitewashed the murals, then plastered them over.

anyone who tells you there’s one reason for what they do is a liar.

Tragedy plus time isn’t comedy,

You have to get only a few pages into this book to realize that I quote a lot of people wiser than myself. I mean a lot of people. I’m unapologetic about this. It’s occurred to me many times over the course of writing this book that maybe I’m not really a writer. I’m a teacher or middleman. I take the curriculum of other people’s knowledge and I pass it along.

To succumb to the God Temptation in either of those guises, biological or cosmological, is an act of intellectual capitulation. If you are trying to explain something improbable, it can never suffice to invoke an entity that is, in itself, at least as improbable. If you’ll stoop to magicking into existence an unexplained peacock-designer, you might as well magic an unexplained peacock and cut out the middleman.

One such middleman is a South African security researcher based in Thailand who is known in the security community by his hacker handle “The Grugq.” The Grugq brokers exploit sales between his hacker friends and government contacts, pocketing a 15 percent commission per transaction. He only launched his business in 2011, but by 2012 sales were so good, he told a reporter he expected to make $1 million in commissions.

But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I--well, you may say that at present, I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell, he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits.

You no longer have to wait for the gods of corporate America, or universities, or media, or investors, to come down from the clouds and choose you for success. In every single industry, the middleman is being taken out of the picture, causing more disruption in employment but also greater efficiencies and more opportunities for unique ideas to generate real wealth. You can develop those ideas, execute on them, and choose yourself for success.

In a democracy, the government is the people," Milo explained. "We're people, aren't we?" So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it, we'll only be encouraging governmental control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own men and planes. We'll be taking away their incentive.

Blockchains for all What are these enthusiasts on about? The ‘blockchain’ technology behind bitcoin could prove to be an ingredient of an entire new world of technology, as big as the internet itself, a wave of innovation that drives the middleman out of much commerce and leaves us much more free to exchange goods and services with people all over the world without going through corporate intermediaries. It could radically decentralise society itself, getting rid of the need for banks, governments, even companies and politicians. Take

Slava, working in concert with the philosophy of the nation that had taken them in—good works as the by-product of self-interest—was able to give the descendants at the table, the children and grandchildren, the gift of knowing, at last, the unknown corners of their forebears, all because the forebears stood to make money. How cheaply they fell—the heart’s greatest terrors for a bushel of euros. Slava wasn’t a judge: He was a middleman, a loan shark, an alchemist—he turned lies into facts, words into money, silence into knowledge at last.

Henry had been a good master, his widow decided, as good as they come. Yes, he sometimes had to ration the food he gave them. But that was not his fault—had God sent down more food, Henry would certainly have given it to them. Henry was only the middleman in that particular transaction. Yes, he had to have some slaves beaten, but those were the ones who would not do what was right and proper. Spare the rod . . . , the Bible warned. Her husband had done the best he could, and on Judgment Day his slaves would stand before God and testify to that fact.

Although it would be difficult to prove, the pervading view of wealth—that it should be forcibly taken from those who have it—probably has an effect on crime. If, as they are told over and over, the poor are entitled to money earned by others, why should they not simply take it themselves and cut out the middleman? Crime is, in fact, a much more efficient way to spread wealth. Of every dollar spent by Congress for welfare, only thirty cents actually reach recipients. Administration and bureaucrat salaries eat up the rest.1318 New York City spends an incredible $18,000 a year per person to accommodate drifters on cots laid out by the hundreds on the floors of armories.

Some of the middlemen who claim to be closer to God than all the rest of humanity realise that they can outwit their followers by making them believe that the more you serve them, the more you are pleasing God. Needless to say, many folks throughout history bought this codswallop. For those followers, having an authority figure like a middleman, teacher, cleric, or guru becomes their only way to add spiritual significance into their lives and to feel whole. As a result, they throw away that responsibility by counting on another entity outside of themselves. Depending on such hand-holding renders them mentally, emotionally, even spiritually immature — losing their freedom and critical thinking in the process while never achieving wholeness. On the other hand, propelled by the exhausted rules, dogmas, and hierarchy they embody, when “the false prophets in sheep's clothing” notice the submission of such followers they often begin taking advantage of it. Now bow down and kiss my feet to reach Nirvana! Wash them first. But as Allan Watts seamlessly put it: “Anybody who tells you that he has some way of leading you to spiritual enlightenment is like somebody who picks your pocket and sells you your own watch. Of course if you didn’t know you had a watch, that might be the only way of getting you to realise.” This all echoes with even more striking words by Bob Dylan: You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Simply Know Thyself; the rest shall follow.

Like the incredulous inspector, many people are not ready to reduce morality to convention or taste. When we say “The Holocaust is bad,” do our powers of reason leave us no way to differentiate that conviction from “I don’t like the Holocaust” or “My culture disapproves of the Holocaust”? Is keeping slaves no more or less rational than wearing a turban or a yarmulke or a veil? If a child is deathly ill and we know of a drug that could save her, is administering the drug no more rational than withholding it? Faced with this intolerable implication, some people hope to vest morality in a higher power. That’s what religion is for, they say—even many scientists, like Stephen Jay Gould. But Plato made short work of this argument 2,400 years ago in Euthyphro. Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command some things because they are moral? If the former is true, and God had no reason for his commandments, why should we take his whims seriously? If God commanded you to torture and kill a child, would that make it right? “He would never do that!” you might object. But that flicks us onto the second horn of the dilemma. If God does have good reasons for his commandments, why don’t we appeal to those reasons directly and skip the middleman? (As it happens, the God of the Old Testament did command people to slaughter children quite often.)

The fragility of the US economy had nearly destroyed him. It wasn't enough that Citadel's walls were as strong and impenetrable as the name implied; the economy itself needed to be just as solid. Over the next decade, he endeavored to place Citadel at the center of the equity markets, using his company's superiority in math and technology to tie trading to information flow. Citadel Securities, the trading and market-making division of his company, which he'd founded back in 2003, grew by leaps and bounds as he took advantage of his 'algorithmic'-driven abilities to read 'ahead of the market.' Because he could predict where trades were heading faster and better than anyone else, he could outcompete larger banks for trading volume, offering better rates while still capturing immense profits on the spreads between buys and sells. In 2005, the SEC had passed regulations that forced brokers to seek out middlemen like Citadel who could provide the most savings to their customers; in part because of this move by the SEC, Ken's outfit was able to grow into the most effective, and thus dominant, middleman for trading — and especially for retail traders, who were proliferating in tune to the numerous online brokerages sprouting up in the decade after 2008. Citadel Securities reached scale before the bigger banks even knew what had hit them; and once Citadel was at scale, it became impossible for anyone else to compete. Citadel's efficiency, and its ability to make billions off the minute spreads between bids and asks — multiplied by millions upon millions of trades — made companies like Robinhood, with its zero fees, possible. Citadel could profit by being the most efficient and cheapest market maker on the Street. Robinhood could profit by offering zero fees to its users. And the retail traders, on their couches and in their kitchens and in their dorm rooms, profited because they could now trade stocks with the same tools as their Wall Street counterparts.

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish. “How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked. “Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English. “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked. “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket. “But… What do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.” The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you could run your expanded enterprise with proper management. The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years, 25 tops.” “But what then, señor?” The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions señor? Then what?" “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll in to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.

I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with — for I see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the United Europe. It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century — this reparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the "Fatherlanders" — then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can be said without some such "perhaps." But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe — I refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires" — will in a short time become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new role of broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility of shutting out homines novi from the government will ruin her, and her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in the footsteps of Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are the most inappropriate imaginable.

Slothrop is just settling down next to a girl in a prewar Worth frock and with a face like Tenniel’s Alice, same forehead, nose, hair, when from outside comes this most godawful clanking, snarling, crunching of wood, girls come running terrified out of the eucalyptus trees and into the house and right behind them what comes crashing now into the pallid lights of the garden but—why the Sherman Tank itself! headlights burning like the eyes of King Kong, treads spewing grass and pieces of flagstone as it manoeuvres around and comes to a halt. Its 75 mm cannon swivels until it’s pointing through the French windows right down into the room. “Antoine!” a young lady focusing in on the gigantic muzzle, “for heaven’s sake, not now. . . .” A hatch flies open and Tamara—Slothrop guesses: wasn’t Italo supposed to have the tank?—uh—emerges shrieking to denounce Raoul, Waxwing, Italo, Theophile, and the middleman on the opium deal. “But now,” she screams, “I have you all! One coup de foudre!” The hatch drops—oh, Jesus—there’s the sound of a 3-inch shell being loaded into its breech. Girls start to scream and make for the exits. Dopers are looking around, blinking, smiling, saying yes in a number of ways. Raoul tries to mount his horse and make his escape, but misses the saddle and slides all the way over, falling into a tub of black-market Jell-o, raspberry flavor, with whipped cream on top. “Aw, no . . .” Slothrop having about decided to make a flanking run for the tank when YYYBLAAANNNGGG! the cannon lets loose an enormous roar, flame shooting three feet into the room, shock wave driving eardrums in to middle of brain, blowing everybody against the far walls. A drape has caught fire. Slothrop, tripping over partygoers, can’t hear anything, knows his head hurts, keeps running through the smoke at the tank—leaps on, goes to undog the hatch and is nearly knocked off by Tamara popping up to holler at everybody again. After a struggle which shouldn’t be without its erotic moments, for Tamara is a swell enough looking twist with some fine moves, Slothrop manages to get her in a come-along and drag her down off of the tank. But loud noise and all, look—he doesn’t seem to have an erection. Hmm. This is a datum London never got, because nobody was looking. Turns out the projectile, a dud, has only torn holes in several walls, and demolished a large allegorical painting of Virtue and Vice in an unnatural act. Virtue had one of those dim faraway smiles. Vice was scratching his shaggy head, a little bewildered. The burning drape’s been put out with champagne. Raoul is in tears, thankful for his life, wringing Slothrop’s hands and kissing his cheeks, leaving trails of Jell-o wherever he touches. Tamara is escorted away by Raoul’s bodyguards. Slothrop has just disengaged himself and is wiping the Jell-o off of his suit when there is a heavy touch on his shoulder. “You were right. You are the man.” “That’s nothing.” Errol Flynn frisks his mustache. “I saved a dame from an octopus not so long ago, how about that?” “With one difference,” sez Blodgett Waxwing. “This really happened tonight. But that octopus didn’t.

The idea was always that someone would be allowed to make a profit as an intermediary. The key question is: Who will get to be that middleman?”7

Colonel Thomas Dooley, an executive of Sikorsky, the helicopter manufacturer, testified in a United States court that, while trying to sell Black Hawk helicopters to the Saudi regime, he experienced a ‘competition for bribes’. He explained that Prince Bandar told him explicitly ‘what bribes needed to be paid for the deal, through which middleman they must be routed and how he would distribute the money to other members of the royal family’.28

You might be tempted to skip the middleman and just leave this bit of code in Bicycle to begin with, but this push-everything-down-and-then-pull-some-things-up strategy is an important part of this refactoring. Many of the difficulties of inheritance are caused by a failure

shortest distance between two points is not a straight line—it’s a middleman.

The potential is great for people in the informal economy to exploit the blockchain’s middleman-free way to exchange assets and information and its irrefutable public record that’s free from the control of any one central institution.

Curely is an app that brings board certified doctors from around the world to your smart phone without a middleman—a sort of Uber for medical care.

Don't despise the middleman. He's necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a very good career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.

am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached. The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. I am merely a middleman trying to bring ideas together.

Page 107 -- Trading minorities, it is argued, come into conflict with business rivals of other ethnic groups. Conflict occurs, not merely because of ordinary business rivalries, but because immigrant minorities are able to undercut their rivals by the use of their own credit institutions, their guild techniques of restraining competition among themselves, and their use of cheap, usually family, labor. Their interests also collide with the interests of those with whom they transact business: consumers, tenants, clients. Finally, because trading minorities have the ability to obtain their own cheap labor, they depress the prospects for labor in the host society. The tractable character of labor in middleman minority firms insures that rising wages in competing businesses would not be accompanied by similar increases for workers of minority firms. A competing firm in the host society that granted a wage increase would find itself priced out of the market. Eventually, workers in host society firms come to identify immigrant businesses and the low wages they pay as the source of the low wages paid in the economy generally

Back in 1415, Prince Henry and his brothers had convinced their father, King John of Portugal, to capture the principal Muslim trading depot in the western Mediterranean: Ceuta, on the northeastern tip of Morocco. These brothers were envious of Muslim riches, and they sought to eliminate the Islamic middleman so that they could find the southern source of gold and Black captives.

These strongly Aristotelian attitudes, which still dominate many societies today, reflected a suspicion of the middleman. They were thought to make money not by adding intrinsic value to the traded item, but by moving goods or money to areas of shortage, or even, many believed, by creating the shortage in the first place.

Firtash was the Ukrainian middleman for Gazprom, the Russian state-run natural gas giant. Putin used the company as an instrument of statecraft and an engine of corruption. Firtash bought gas from Gazprom at a steep discount. He marked it up threefold when he sold it to Ukraine, pocketing $3 billion and paying pro-Russian politicians, chiefly Yanukovych, to do the Kremlin’s bidding. Through the oligarch’s largesse, the president paid Manafort his millions.

If you are still waiting for a teacher, a guru, a middleman, or even a partner to make you feel whole, then you have not yet found the Tao.

Back in 1415, Prince Henry and his brothers had convinced their father, King John of Portugal, to capture the principal Muslim trading depot in the western Mediterranean: Ceuta, on the northeastern tip of Morocco. These brothers were envious of Muslim riches, and they sought to eliminate the Islamic middleman so that they could find the southern source of gold and Black captives. After the battle, Moorish prisoners left Prince Henry spellbound as they detailed trans-Saharan trade routes down into the disintegrating Mali Empire. Since Muslims still controlled these desert routes, Prince Henry decided to “seek the lands by the way of the sea.” He sought out those African lands until his death in 1460, using his position as the Grand Master of Portugal’s wealthy Military Order of Christ (successor of the Knights Templar) to draw venture capital and loyal men for his African expeditions. In 1452, Prince Henry’s nephew, King Afonso V, commissioned Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a biography of the life and slave-trading work of his “beloved uncle.” Zurara was a learned and obedient commander in Prince Henry’s Military Order of Christ. In recording and celebrating Prince Henry’s life, Zurara was also implicitly obscuring his Grand Master’s monetary decision to exclusively trade in African slaves. In 1453, Zurara finished the inaugural defense of African slave-trading, the first European book on Africans in the modern era. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea begins the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas. Zurara’s inaugural racist ideas, in other words, were a product of, not a producer of, Prince Henry’s racist policies concerning African slave-trading.1

They’d talked about having a quiet night in, and they’d gotten the last disc of Middleman from Netflix.

True spirituality does not require the need of an external middleman or mediator (priest, rabbi, guru, spiritual book, sacred object, etc.) that stands in between you and the Divine. You are already Divine

The American laughed and scoffed at him. He said, “You know, I have an MBA from Stanford, and I can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds you could buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, and eventually you’d have a fleet of fishing boats, and then instead of selling your catch to that middleman over there, you could sell directly to the processor,

Generally speaking, there are three broad categories of side hustles. You can sell a product, whether one of your own or someone else’s, you can provide a service, or you can be a middleman of some kind.

I think it might be a good idea. Some things still need to be worked out, but I think it could benefit everyone.” She shrugged. “I suppose you lot should decide what you want to do and who you want to speak for you.” The man who had pushed himself to the front, Lukas Hass, turned to the crowd and raised his voice for all to hear. “You heard what the lady said, so what will it be? Work with this Smythe and his folks or not?” There were a few calls of no, but the majority of the people were swayed by Kelly’s willingness to try. When that died down, Lukas spoke again. “So, it seems most of you want to give it a try. Now, who do you want speaking for you?” This time there was no dissent; everyone yelled her name. “Lukas, what the fuck?” Kelly spluttered. He faced her. “Kel, you have kept this lot active and occupied since we got here. You had me and the boys help you organize shelters and then the distribution of food and water.” She shrugged, “So, what’s that got to do with me being the speaker? I’m just a young…” “Don’t you finish that Kelly O’Donnell. You and me both know it’s shite, so don’t you even think it.” He glared at her a moment, then his face broke into a grin. “Besides, I’ve known you all your life, and if you weren’t in charge, you would make life hell for whoever was if you didn’t agree with ’em. I’m just cutting out the middleman here.” “Lukas Hass, I never.” A

I got a note from a reader, Gina, a little while ago. She wrote, “On a personal note—In 2016, your book The Dip helped me realize I was only trying to create a business so I could have the time to be a writer. I cut out the middleman and went all in on writing. Within two years I was able to become a freelance writer and researcher/fact-checker for kids and adults, full-time.” The lesson here is simple: By bringing her focus back to the purpose of the work, Gina was able to get back to work. To the work she wanted to do all along. We do our best work with intention.

One boy joined a pair of travelers who promised to help him find work in the city and then sold him to a middleman whom the brickmaker bought him from. But every one of the remaining five were snatched from the villages where they lived, hidden in false-bottom wagons and then moved to riverboats. All five lived north of the city, and were brought down the river to Tarinon.

He had begun breaking into people’s houses shortly before Mike had been arrested for killing Jessie. He loved the feeling of being in a stranger’s house when they weren’t there, alone, looking through their personal things, taking what he wanted, fantasizing about sexual scenarios involving bondage. It gave him a feeling of power. He had given his cousin much of what he stole of value. Mike had in turn sold it, then given the money to Richard, minus his share for acting as the middleman. Richard quickly warmed to the idea of getting money so easily. It certainly beat working.

Have some faith in your government,” Barnes told her. “We march stupidly into countries we don’t understand; we sit back as our cities are decimated by natural disasters; and we let our schools go quietly to shit—despite these things, one thing we’re pretty good at is finding people who don’t want to be found.

this was why fiction existed, as a way to look at the world without being broken by it.

It had been a five-year exercise in self-immolation.

Fables and Fortune Hunters An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish. “How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked. “Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English. “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked. “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket. “But … What do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.” The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?” To which the American replied, “15–20 years. 25 tops.” “But what then, señor?” The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions, señor? Then what?” “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos …

The Internet put us on this disintermediating path some time ago, well before the blockchain came along. But it’s worth noting that at the heart of each new Internet application that cuts out some incumbent middleman there has typically been a technology that helps humans deal with their perennial mistrust issues. Who would have thought a decade ago that people would feel comfortable riding in the car of some stranger they’d just discovered on their phones? Well, Uber and Lyft got us over that trust barrier by incorporating a reputation scoring system for both drivers and passengers, one that was only made possible because of the expansion of social networks and communication. Their model showed that if we can resolve our trust issues with technology and give people confidence to transact, those people are willing and able to go into direct exchanges with complete strangers. These ideas are setting us on a path to a peer-to-peer economy.

Olsen set out to make his dream a reality. He raised $5 million, partially with tokens, to launch a startup called Lykke, whose mission, he says, is to “build a matching engine that can offer a fair market price across any digital coin, whatever its nature.” Confident that the scaling problems of blockchains will be resolved one way or another, he is convinced that open data and middleman-free blockchain-based asset markets will trend toward zero transaction costs for cross-trading in all securitized digital assets.

Thought about going to Mexico and coming back without papers many of us vets say it will be a lot faster to get treated then to wait in a 5 year waiting list while also it will change to a 100 year waiting list if the whole world joins healthcare for all as it’s a direct clone of the VA failure, Vets Choice is good but cannot survive unless we remove the VA as the middleman

What Pope Benedict XVI failed to specify in 2013 is that the main media outlet responsible for the hijacking of the Second Vatican Council was Time magazine, which acted as the middleman between the CIA (C. D. Jackson was the intermediary employed by both institutions) and double agents like John Courtney Murray, S.J. To this day no one has explored the extent to which this realization led to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. The one thing we know for certain is that the resignation precipitated Bergoglio’s election as pope. The connection is more than post hoc.

At home, while Dad is away, Jim beats up Tom, Tom beats up me, and sometimes Jim skips the middleman and beats me up directly.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence. “Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence—that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions—that, like a judge impervious to public opinion, he may not sacrifice his convictions to the wishes of others, be it the whole of mankind shouting pleas or threats against him—that courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.

As interest rates began to rise in the post-war period, leaving your cash at a bank that paid near zero percent interest was not such a good investment. Corporations and municipalities had millions of dollars to invest, but could not get a decent return on the short-term cash. They wanted a rate, because any rate was better than nothing. At the same time, securities dealers on Wall Street began holding trading positions. Previously the role of the broker-dealer was as a pure middleman. That’s the broker part of broker-dealer. When a client wanted to sell a bond, the firm’s salesmen scoured the market to find a buyer. If they could find a buyer, the trade was done: end-user seller to end-user buyer, and the Wall Street firm just stood in the middle. That changed in the 1950s. Some broker-dealers, like Bear Stearns and Salomon Brothers, realized they could make money buying bonds for their own trading account. And, they could even make money betting on the direction of interest rates.

When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced—since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand. However, that's how it's done. You see, reasons require scales to weigh theme. And scales are not made of cotton. And cotton is what the human spirit is made of—you know, the stuff that keeps no shape and offers no resistance and can be twisted forward and backward into a pretzel. You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between to points is not a straight line—it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel.

The term “real” is a misnomer. You could say that the life forms that occupy earth are real. They appear as physical structures and they are based on mathematical formula and geometry. We are, in a sense, code. This code interacts with the physical senses, which decodes the formula and we are transformed to flesh and blood “life forms.” But at a quantum level we are, as I said, code. Underneath or beyond the quantum level—call it the pre-quantum level—we are infinite beings. We are Sovereign Integrals. What I am suggesting is that the term real, applies to the Sovereign Integral state of being and consciousness. The term is relative, however, because the Sovereign Integral consciousness is not considered real in the three-dimensional plane, and the human instrument is not real in the Domain of Unity. It is the reality of the dominant environment that determines the reality of the subjects and objects of that environment. The environment of three and four dimensional planes like earth, establishes a consensual, subjective reality—propagated by our unconscious and genetic mind. The environment of the infinite establishes a reality that has no mediation or signal transformation. It is elemental and core. There is no sensory “middleman” or propagation of perception. It is one and all in action. The individual is allowed to decide what is real and what is not. Illusion is a Russian doll; it has many layers, some of which transmit a sense of true awareness. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase: Perception is reality. The subjective realm defines the seemingly objective. Illusion, the outermost doll, is the only one that is seen and therefore, known. However, if you open the outermost doll, you find another, albeit smaller one waits. This repeats seven times until you find the indivisible. We would call this core, innermost doll: the Sovereign Integral. This is where you want your imaginative faculty trained and honed in. This is where you want your life to progress, not satisfied that perception is reality, or that the outermost “doll” is real and worthy of your devotion. All of that said, it does not mean that the outer world—physical reality—is a waste of time or so mired in illusion that it isn’t worth developing. Quite the opposite. The outer world is your workshop, the place you can experiment, build things, create, try and fail, and so on. It is a place of severe challenges at time, but also of beauty and joy. The illusion isn’t in the physical things of this world. The illusion is in the self-perception of the individual life form.As long as the individual perceives themselves as a human instrument, maybe with a soul, maybe not, they will see all life as a place of separation and disunity. They will accept the illusion that life emits, which is one of separation. In this, they become lost, lost to themselves as infinite beings, and unable, as a result, to generate and sustain the vision into their true self.

Google’s service is not a server,” I wrote, “though it is delivered by a massive collection of Internet servers—nor a browser—though it is experienced by the user within the browser. Nor does its flagship search service even host the content that it enables users to find. Much like a phone call, which happens not just on the phones at either end of the call, but on the network in between, Google happens in the space between browser and search engine and destination content server, as an enabler or middleman between the user and his or her online experience.

archetypal middleman; his career had coasted to that comfortable plateau above those who actually did productive work, but safely short of a position where he had to make any vital decisions.

We discovered a chain-reaction effect. Those individuals with the highest levels of amyloid deposits in the frontal regions of the brain had the most severe loss of deep sleep and, as a knock-on consequence, failed to successfully consolidate those new memories. Overnight forgetting, rather than remembering, had taken place. The disruption of deep NREM sleep was therefore a hidden middleman brokering the bad deal between amyloid and memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease. A missing link.

Page 16: …the character of the Chinese immigrant gradually changed from that of a simple Oriental trader or labourer to an essential middleman between Western importers and exporters on the one hand and the mass of the peasant population on the other. Chinese shopkeepers and itinerant traders funneled the manufactures of the West from European import houses in Bangkok to the indigenous population throughout the Kingdom, and at the same time acted as collection agencies for local products—tin, shellac, rubber—exported to the industries of the West.

If you’re struggling here (many do), some Economics 101 may help. There are only four different types of utility: place utility, form utility, time utility, and possession utility. What can you make easier to understand, faster to get, cheaper to buy, or more accessible to others? Place utility: Make something inaccessible accessible Form utility: Make something more valuable by rearranging existing parts Time utility: Make something slow go fast Possession utility: Remove a middleman

Is capitalism inherently bad? I do not concur. Every system has its pros and cons. So why is the world shifting towards (democratic) socialism? Based on my observations, uncontrolled capitalism is too large of a nuisance to be ignored. We can see the wide inequity and inequality of wealth and standard of living in neoliberalist countries (ahem). Free market is like natural selection - it stirs up fierce competition without brakes. But what the world needs is more collaboration, not "devouring" one another! And by more collaboration, countries can keep each other in checks. Does this sound like a fantasy? Once again, I do not concur. You are more than disposable goods. Your self-worth should not be tied to how much you can afford. Allow the government to help you. Or if your government is corrupted, turn to local charities; that is how the light leaks through. Last note before I shut up and retreat, there are few governments which are uncorrupted, but one should not lose faith in humanity, or at least yourself. What if we achieve a higher self by wanting less and donating more? I think we would be partaking in socialism in ourselves, which, in other words, bypass the most often nasty institution and help reaching a more balanced state. Of course, cutting the middleman (the government) is the last straw when it is useless.

...middleman activities have usually not been seen as producing wealth, but only as appropriating preexisting wealth, since the middleman does not visibly create a material thing. Neither does anyone else create or destroy matter, except for a few nuclear physicists. Turning iron ore into steel products is not creating a material thing but only changing its form to something that people want more. That is precisely what middlemen do when they make goods or money available earlier than otherwise through retailing, credit, or loans. They change the time when things become available.

I started to see that prayers weren't self-righteous aspirations to be petitioned through a deified middleman but simply love offered up to the universe, words of intention released with hope, devoid of expectation.

a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?” To which the American replied, “15–20 years. 25 tops.” “But what then, señor?” The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions, señor? Then what?” “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos …

It was the fact that we were selling dead animals. You see, farmers are only supposed to sell live animals to processors and marketers who are supposed to make all the money—those notorious middlemen. After all, we couldn’t have all that middleman money going to farmers. No, that wouldn’t be right. Farmers are supposed to be peasants, serfs, impoverished dolts, remember?

Nathan had never liked anger. It seemed a barbaric and undignified emotion. He knew it always masked fear or hurt, and had often wished everyone could simply be sensible enough to cut out the middleman.

Nathan had never liked anger. It seemed a barbaric and undignified emotion. He knew it always masked fear or hurt, and had often wished everyone could simply be sensible enough to cut out the middleman. He

From the early 7th century BCE until the middle of the 6th century BCE, the Lydians played an important role in the history of the eastern Mediterranean region as they took on the role of middleman between the empires of the Near East and the emerging Hellenic civilization in Greece.

It was what you did when you resurfaced after a year undercover: You hooked your wagon to the repetitions of domesticity.

She would push and push on that one question until a crack formed in the wall of her ignorance.

Birkmann waved that away. "I'm not religious. Going to church - it's a magic show, in my opinion. Don't tell the Chamber of Commerce I said that." "I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about God," Virgil said. "I'm a Lutheran minister's kid, and, believe me, there's a difference between a religion and God. I sorta cut out the middleman.

The left and right give lip service to the dialectic. You talk things out, argue them, and the answers will float to the surface.

If no one out there understands Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman. —BILLY BRAGG, “WAITING FOR THE GREAT LEAP FORWARDS

What they got, really, was a cross-section of American paranoia, of hidden prejudices rising to the surface. Whatever diverged from the mainstream was suspect.

Then a bit of a celebration is in order.” The Colonel all but sneers. “You want to celebrate being a poster girl? Or would you rather cheer a suicide mission?” Now I really do smile. “I don’t see it that way.” Slowly, I fold the orders again and slip them into my jacket pocket. “Tonight, I drink to my first independent assignment. And tomorrow, I head to Norta.” “Your eyes only, Captain.” When I reach the door, I glare at him over my shoulder. “As if you didn’t already know.” His silence is admission enough. “Besides, I’ll still be reporting to you, so you can pass on my relays to Command,” I add. I can’t help but goad him a little. He deserves it for the nanny comment. “What’s that called? Oh yes. The middleman.

Yet it’s not hyperbole to say that millions of women and girls are actually enslaved today. (The biggest difference from nineteenth-century slavery is that many die of AIDS by their late twenties.) The term that is usually used for this phenomenon, “sex trafficking,” is a misnomer. The problem isn’t sex, nor is it prostitution as such. In many countries—China, Brazil, and most of sub-Saharan Africa—prostitution is widespread but mostly voluntary (in the sense that it is driven by economic pressure rather than physical compulsion). In those places, brothels do not lock up women, and many women work on their own without pimps or brothels. Nor is the problem exactly “trafficking,” since forced prostitution doesn’t always depend on a girl’s being transported over a great distance by a middleman. The horror of sex trafficking can more properly be labeled slavery.