241–250 of 821 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Private entities attempting this would always have been shut down with violence. The prevailing violence established itself as "the state".
What time period? In the US? In communist countries? I would imagine what you said has been the case in many time periods in many different countries, but I am sure there are other scenarios. Do you have anything specific in mind?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are companies like Asgaard GSG providing basically that service (on a smaller scale and without public backing though).
Note that Asgaard is not operating on behalf of the German government. The service it provides is completely different to politically expedient way of projecting military power by the state.
I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: 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…
I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: 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…
I dislike Facebook but I kind of feel sorry for them now because any ambitious thing that they'll attempt will probably be blocked by governments now. Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though.
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)?
Is Libra really taking on governments? It hasn't even launched yet let alone proven itself useful along consumers.
It is a new form of currency for a user to obtain and use within the Libra ecosystem. I would imagine that the ideal world for Libra is for a user to onboard into the ecosystem and transact solely in that ecosystem. It would obviously require Libra to be ubiquitous for this to happen, but it may be the ultimate goal.
In this case, an American user would transact solely in Libra and not US dollar. I am not an economist, but I would imagine this is similar to Americans selling US dollars for foreign currencies, which I imagine weakens the dollar if done at a large enough scale.
Additionally, Libra is incorporated in Switzerland. I can only guess that this was done with foresight that the US might fight back against this new currency that competes against the dollar. With this incorporation location, it would be harder for the US to shut down this new monetary system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The monetary policy of the currencies underlying libra are also fully determined at the behest of their respective nation states (or centralized monetary authority in the case of the EU). So, actually not that flawed. Governments and central banks are foolish to not get behind something like this because the alternative is something they can't influence at all like Bitcoin which maintains no peg to anything they do.
> ... no peg to anything they do. Libra is still a problem. They start with a basket of USD + Yen + EURs to start. This appeases governments, just for the reason you mention "based on their currences". ...but Libra is designs that they can move away from them over time. It can move to revenue generating investments, like corporate bonds (like money markets do). Libra can then wait until closer to countries defaulting…
I dislike Facebook but I kind of feel sorry for them now because any ambitious thing that they'll attempt will probably be blocked by governments now. Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though.
> I kind of feel sorry for them now > Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though Feels like those two feelings are at odds with each other. Either you feel like they deserve it, and not feeling sorry for them, or vice-versa.
I believe people working directly on Libra have good intentions but Zuckerberg's previous actions are just making it almost impossible to achieve Libra's objectives.
At Facebook's scale, there are so many good things it can do. It's just that its leadership ruined things for the company.
> “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…
> but private security firms flourish. not in EU they don't also firms like Securitas mostly provide security services to enterprises, and gouvernements sites, not to citizens. bad comparison example
I dislike Facebook but I kind of feel sorry for them now because any ambitious thing that they'll attempt will probably be blocked by governments now. Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though.
Facebook is not a digital currency company, they are a Social Media company. If they want to produce a digital currency, Libra should be its own company and not piggyback off the success of the social media product. Social media needs chat, so WhatsApp and Messenger makes sense. Instagram is another social media company. But currency? Too far outside the core competency.
Same with Amazon... selling physical products is their core competency. Selling digital products is an offshoot of that. Allowing others to use your sales platform goes hand in hand too. But how in the world did they get to be a tech company hosting other people’s websites? How do they have a video rental business and also host a competing video rental business? AWS doesn’t make sense for Amazon the retail company.
In the trust-busting era none of this would have been allowed.