221–230 of 821 posts
Excuse the ignorance... but what do France and Germany specifically fear? That if Libra would become more popular than the mainstream fiat currencies Facebook could have more control over the economy than governments?
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Not sure to be more comfortable to rely more on the interests of a private US company that has already been proven un-ethical several times than to trust an elected (so revokable) governement ;-) But in Europe, we have more trust in our own governement and less in corporation than in the US, where it seem to be the opposite
I would rephrase this to say, in America we have less trust in government and more trust in the individual. The distinction is this: No one is forcing anyone to use Libra its your choice. : )
I've seen that said many times in fora (fortunately not so often on HN), but the only people that seem to subscribe to it are the preppers and the gun fanatics, usually using some kind of reference to words that have not been updated in a couple of centuries. It's about as useful as wanting to back to the glory days of England.
Americans trust their government on average just about as much as people of other countries trust theirs, with a notable exception made for the Swiss.
> The distinction is this: No one is forcing anyone to use Libra its your choice. : )
And it is the choice of the democratically chosen governments of France and Germany to decide to so something about it, and I'm fully in agreement with that.
The last we need is for the Zuckerbergs to have the power to start dictating monetary policy, the amount of power he has today is already way more than he should have.
Note that neither Germany nor France has decided to 'block bitcoin', or outlaw it (which they could do, but it remains to be seen how much effect that would have). And we are not forced to use that either.
What other times in history have private corporations taken on government entities and succeeded? Have any of these attempts been on this scale and against an entity of this power (i.e. proposing a new monetary policy against the US Federal Reserve)?
Dumbest move ever by Facebook to preanounce and give governments time to complain. They should have moved fast and dealt with the consequences later. They had a reasonable chance of being the dominant cryptocurrency, and instead they get to spend a year apologizing and backtracking before they ever deploy.
Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to some foobar in the last century, which I'm sure everyone is aware of.
So if Facebook, 10x of Germany's population comes around the corner with a proposal akin to "Hey do you mind if we just skip the paperwork part and just control currency, while actually being a social media tech giant" there going to be up against every trick in the book. This is not hypocrite behavior because Germany allowed some fun regional currency project no one is aware of some time ago. This is much more protecting the idea of the German society.
And personally, as a German, I'm really glad about it. You remember the hundreds of cases of worked with a scummy developer on an app once, now I'm blocked out of my email and all my files stories? Now imagine that, but with money and with a company who never even bothered to pretend it isn't evil - this is gonna be a no, thank you!
> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…
I'm sorry but you are drawing a false equivalence. Security may be inherent to sovereignty, but you would have to argue that a MONOPOLY on security is inherent to sovereignty, in order for your argument to apply to currency.
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There is no “working with government”, for any proposed money substitute that gives normal people a place to hide from central bank inflationary policies.
Our current capitalist system does not work without inflation.
The poor slobs left holding the Fiat waste-paper...
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Yeah, very confusing statement - would they use this same logic to ban Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as against their soverignty? Do they treat gold similarly?
« Yeah, very confusing statement - would they use this same logic to ban Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies? » No, and that's the great point everyone is missing. Paraphrasing their logic: "it is inherent to the sovereignty of nations that no private entity can claim monetary power". In other words, they don't want private entities to control monetary power, but they tolerate this power being in the hands of "public"…
I doubt the use of the words "private entity" was specifically intended to exclude decentralized currencies. It probably actually means "anyone who is not us."
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> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” Also, what the hell is that supposed to mean? If something is inherent to something else, it doesn't mean it's exclusive to it. Maybe something got lost in translation, but if not - they don't even know how to say whatever it is that they want to say.
Yeah, very confusing statement - would they use this same logic to ban Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as against their soverignty? Do they treat gold similarly?
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Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?
Most banks will charge you extra for the instant payment. It's pretty ridiculous.