It's from that perspective that I find what Ned did here absolutely fascinating. This is the kind of stuff you find in Machiavelli's "The Prince" and Robert Greene's "48 Laws of Power".
thats a pretty ridiculous statement. What ned did was manage the news -- In a manner so transparent and hamfisted that its apparent to every single person who looks at this post (which i think is linked on a bunch of forums as well) knows whats going on.
Lets review exactly what happened here.
He made whats probably a completely innocuous WD.
then someone posted about it.
So he spends like a thousand bucks to try to move the post down, because its one where he just can't use his vote to hide.
That is to say, he spent $1000 to wreck his credibility and probably chased off a ton of buyers, for the sake of what? Not having to come here and explain whats probably an innocuous transaction (50K isnt market breaking). Also, he proved that promoting a post (a feature he just introduced) is absolutely worthless, because whales will just pump money into other posts in order to achieve the same effect they do with voting in other views.
thats not realpolitik. Its just real bad business.