8/02/22: Salmon Arbitrage
“Say what now?” Lincoln said.
“Arbitrage. That’s what my superpower is. I have an inherent sense for small-to-medium scale arbitrage.” Jessica ate with her mouth open, which Lincoln tried his best to ignore.
“That’s not…”
“Take the recent gun buyback in Austin, Texas, for example. They’re paying $700 a handgun. So I bought a 3D printer and started 3D printing guns in Reno, Texas - the only county it’s legal in by the way; I just wanted you to know you’re not on a date with a felon - and then transported them by the crate to Reno to sell them. The transportation bit was tricky, but turns out there’s a loophole if you’re registered as a sporting goods store, which I technically am now.”
“So you’re saying I’m on a date with a sporting goods store.”
“Yes. Legally I’m a human being and also a sporting goods store. But definitely not a felon.”
“And all of this… worked?”
“I broke even after 45 guns, so yes. Sold another 400 guns, made a tidy profit, donated about half of it as carbon offsets, and kept the rest. Dinner’s on me, by the way.”
“They didn’t question it?”
“It was a big win for the program, they said to the press that they collected hundreds of ‘ghost guns,’ it was good for publicity, so they didn’t ask too many questions. Anyway, what do you do?”
“I work at a public library as an administrator. But wait wait, so you just print and sell guns for a living?”
“Oh god no, I hate guns. On the low-end of the spectrum of my superpower, I’m really really good at credit card churning. On the high-end of the spectrum - well, my biggest win was winning a month’s worth of private jet rides by buying ten thousand cups of yogurt. Nesquik tried to sue me for that by the way, but their promotion clearly said a month’s worth of jet rides if you won the golden ticket, so they kind of fucked themselves there. I sold those rides for 20k a pop, you can bet that that jet didn’t stay on the tarmac for more than an hour that entire month. Nesquik was pissed.”
“Huh. So… this is just something you can… sense?”
“It’s kind of a flavor in the air. Hard to describe. My mother could sense large-scale arbitrage, so she dealt mostly in international bruised-hedge trading before she got banned by the FTC. Still enough to set me and my sisters up with trust funds for life, and we have a summer beach mansion in Newport, run a EA cash transfer program in Côte d'Ivoire, et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera.” She waved her fork in the air with each et cetera.
“So why are you here? On a date with me?”
“I dunno, Tim said you were cute. And a good guy. So, you know, it’s worth just going for these sort of things. I like the whole dating process.”
“Oh.”
“You might have noticed this, but I’m very confident. And a bit of an extrovert.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
“Anyway, I only really inherited half my mother’s powers. Hard to live under her shadow you know? But who doesn’t have problems with their parents. By the way, are you gonna eat that salmon?”
“I guess not.”
“Knew you were gonna say that. Salmon arbitrage and all that. Got a nose for these things. Anyway, remember that dinner’s on me, so if you want a second bottle of wine you should go for it.”
“Sure. Red?”
“Yeah, red’s good.
“Red it is.”
“Okay, you’ve just been listening to me talk for like half an hour. If you don’t talk more, you’re going to make me look like a self-absorbed ass. So, you know, tell me about you. What are you interested in, what gets you going, what’s all this about being a library administrator - are you actually into that, or is it just to help pay the rent? This salmon is great by the way, I’m just going to work on this if you want to hold up your end of the conversation there, bud.”