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France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

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Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything Academi/Xe/Blackwater ever did was at the behest of the US government. GP was talking about a scenario such as Apple hiring Academi to destroy Samsung's factories. So far we have private companies providing security/defensive services, but we have yet to see private companies providing mercenary/offensive services without the explicit involvement of a government.

> but we have yet to see private companies providing mercenary/offensive services without the explicit involvement of a government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

The date it was founded (31 December 1600) is the date it received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#282
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetary and fiscal policy is not the same as us balancing a checkbook at the end of the month. Money is created over time for many reasons, on a micro scale for stimulus, and on a macro scale because the economy grows over time and money represents a slice of economic activity. Keeping it from going up and giving disproportionate gains to money holders past is part of the job. There's nothing ironic about it, this i…

>Keeping it from going up and giving disproportionate gains to money holders past is part of the job. There's nothing ironic about it, this is the job of central banks, and there's nothing shady about it. There is something incredibly shady about it, because inflationary monetary policy is inherently a regressionary redistribution of purchasing power and wealth due to Cantillon effects whereby those relatively closer…

> There is no need to print money in a growing economy...

There is, for a number of reasons, but not least of which is fairness. If I get a dollar, then the size of the economy doubles, my purchasing power as a fraction of the total amount of economic activity doubles. This creates wealth inequality over time, too. Likely to the benefit of the same people.

I hear you re: Cantillion effect, though I'm sure that could be solved with a targeted tax.

Most importantly, philosophically, nobody owes you a risk-free return over time on your idle, un-invested capital. I can think of no justification for why your dollar should be worth more in the future than it is today. At best, I could see an argument for the same amount, though I think a little bit less to encourage investment is a totally reasonable place to draw the line.

> ...some of the highest recorded levels of economic growth in history has generally been slightly deflationary (the United States during the 1800s is a prime example).

You mean the industrial revolution? I'd say there were externalities that affected that. Counter-point, the great depression.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#283
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All problems from big tech stem from their centralization. If Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook were broken up into collections of smaller, independent companies... a lot of the ills would simply disappear, and the market as a whole would be a lot healthier.

This is a trope that has little basis in fact. Please explain concretely why breaking each of those companies would be better.

Amazon - See data hoarder [1]. Other than that, debatable because Amazon organizationally seems to optimize for efficiency (e.g. compressing margins). However, by cracking it into a logistics company and an online retail company, users would benefit from broader access to Amazon's efficient supply chain. Furthermore, the incentive for Amazon to abuse its logistics advantage to muscle out competition (e.g. Amazon Basics + first-party product offerings) would be lessened.

Apple - Probably the most debatable of the group. See first-party app store [2]. The biggest case for Apple would be about how lazy they've recently been for non-margin generating offerings. Since iTunes, and then the app store, they've gotten lazy about relentlessly innovating. You've seen it in the iPhone and the MBP. To say nothing of their server offerings.

Google - See data hoarder [1]. See first-party app store [2].

Facebook - See data hoarder [1]. See first-party app store [2].

Google and Facebook are essentially the Valves of everything. They're spitting out cool things here and there, while rolling in the mountain of cash they're taxing from the rest of the economy. You'd be hard pressed to convince me that cash wouldn't better be spent by other companies.

[1] Data hoarder. By centralizing collection of user / customer data (usually by first-mover advantage, leveraging that to buy any existential threats), these firms have created a dominant market position. They control the platforms, so they collect the data, so they have more data, so they can more efficiently monetize that data, so they can afford to buy competitors (repeat). This cycle is unlikely to be broken without regulatory intervention.

This is firstly a sub-optimal state of affairs because it allows these companies to rent seek from all downstream consumers of this data (most clearly: advertising). By leveraging their position as the sole source of an ongoing data feed for "their" users, they position themselves as the only place to obtain that data in a functional manner. Ergo, all downstream consumers are compelled to purchase it from them, or do without.

The counter-argument is that they perform this function more efficiently than a hypothetical freer market of numerous competitors. However, I leave it to you to decide how often an entity without external competitive pressure has chosen to operate in the most globally efficient manner for their customers.

Secondly, this impacts product development, whereby the data owners may choose at their sole discretion not to share this data with competitors. As a result, there are products that only these parties are capable of creating. Because of the scale of these organizations, there are many opportunities they will not see as worth their time. Consequently, those opportunities will never be pursued, as the smaller companies interested in doing so simply can't without access to that data.

One might argue that that's sub-optimal, and that eventually the data owners would awaken to the profit opportunity in selling that data to the interested companies. To which I would retort something along the lines of "GM, Ford, and Kodak all recognized new market opportunities, and did they pursue them?" Institutional conservatism and inertia at scale is a lazy thing.

[2] First-party app store. By owning the underlying hardware platform / presentation interface (in Facebook's case), there's a clear conflict of interest. First-party app store owners face a substantially lesser incentive to innovate, secure, or respond to customer demands than they would in a free marketplace. As a result, app store management practices and technical functionality rot in comparison to a free market in which they were forced to compete with competitor's app stores.

Without going in depth, there is an obvious financial component, whereby first-party app stores with a monopoly are able to rent seek and extract a greater-than-optimal cut of app revenue. In a free market of alternatives, greater portions of app revenue would flow through to developers (note: in individual, the aggregate case is admittedly more complex).

Additionally, this extends to app censorship and policies. By controlling app stores as the gateway to "their" customers, the underlying owners can shape the kinds of apps they allow to exist. This produces negative outcomes in at least two ways. (1) Apps' responsiveness to actual customer demand is suppressed, as they must first and foremost satisfy app store rules. This can be seen in censorship policies (e.g. issues with distributing open source or "PR sensitive" apps), as well as functional abilities (e.g. the variety of always-on / background execution use cases precluded for all but first-party apps). (2) The app market is distorted to optimize for revenue in the current system, as opposed to revenue from actual customer demand. If there were a freer app store market, I offer that you wouldn't see 1,000 clones of "flashlight w/ ads" apps.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#284
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin has no Facebook-sized entity That is exactly the point. That would be a threat as they see it (just from reading the statement even). That's why bitcoin which is not a private entity, is not seen as a threat at this time.

mrb's comment that "we will block Libra and we will not block Bitcoin* as some sort of tacit approval is bullshit. Bitcoin is tolerated because it's not centralized, and no one (obvious) entity is controlling it. If the EU governments could, they totally would ban Bitcoin. Libra, on the other hand, is a power grab by someone they can regulate, so they will.

Bitcoin being "tolerated" is more accurate than "approved of". That's what I mean.

And again, if they didn't tolerate it, they could ban/outlaw it, just like China did.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. : )

> in America we have less trust in government and more trust in the individual

Maybe, excepted that Facebook is not an individual. Compagnies are not individual.

They are just private entities seeking for their own profit and should be treated as such.

There is no trust to have in Facebook: if they can fuck half of the world to double their benefits, they will do it. That's it.

Trusting such entity to ensure "common good of people" through a currency is simply madness. And Libra is exactly that.

I'm sorry if it shock the American "free" way of thinking, but this is our European way of thinking.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#286
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. : )

> in America we have less trust in government and more trust in the individual Maybe, excepted that Facebook is not an individual. Compagnies are not individual. They are just private entities seeking for their own profit and should be treated as such. There is no trust to have in Facebook: if they can fuck half of the world to double their benefits, they will do it. That's it. Trusting such entity to ensure "common…

> Maybe, excepted that Facebook is not an individual. Compagnies are not individual.

Corporations are exercises or government power, in fact.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#287
post #265

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…

> Hey do you mind if we just skip the paperwork part and just control currency, while actually being a social media tech giant This is a gross mischaracterization of what Libra is. Libra is a token that's backed 1 to 1 on some basket of currencies and mostly government bonds. The Libra foundation makes money by taking a portion of the investment return to fund themselves, much like a brokerage takes a bit of the retu…

> portion of the investment return

I'm not super on top of a lot of the details here, but I thought Libra was like a currency. What investment return?

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#288
post #221
post #103

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?

It's the fear that people may prefer using other currencies than their own, which collapses the regime of spending through inflation.

Thanks, not sure why I'm being downvoted...

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#290
post #278

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…

> 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. Maybe if they'd turn their minds towards what ruling parties have had a monopoly on government for decades as to not allow one club to get co…

> Germany is deconstructing itself by [...] ignoring millenium problems in governance, such as unchecked mass migration.

What are you talking about? Germany is 25% immigrants, the US is close to 100% immigrants.

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