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France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

311–320 of 821 posts

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

#311
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, holding the same dollar will lead you to purchase more goods at a higher quality than before as the market develops and expands - a higher purchasing power. AKA, a risk-free return on your uninvested, idle, capital that nobody owes you. The poor tend not to have much savings, by definition, which means that all this win goes to the already wealthy. Your argument is simply that your dollars should be wo…

>The poor tend not to have much savings, by definition, which means that all this win goes to the already wealthy. This is not true - saving rates were higher in the past before irresponsible monetary policy took over after the erosion of the gold standard. >Your argument is simply that your dollars should be worth more later because you got your dollar first. This is exactly what happens in an inflationary monetary…

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

#312
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really a bank-to-bank system; money doesn't instantly arrive at the recipient's bank account and paypal's ability to withhold it is notorious.

Nor is PayPal obliged to pay into deposit protection funds as EU banks are AFAIK. I think PayPal needs to start worrying about their standing in EU and becoming a collateral damage when France and Germany are on a roll to make a case for exercising currency sovereignty.

I'm fairly certain that PayPal is registered as a bank here in the EU, possibly in Luxembourg. It couldn't operate how it does here otherwise.

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

#313
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think he is talking about the murders, rapes, and stabbings. Heck, NL had 2 US citizens stabbed by an Afghani living in DE.

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

#314
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Libra becomes a thing, I would guess people will start selling things with it and Europeans will sell their services with Libra if Americans ell their services with Libra. Maybe in Germany, most people will stay away from it but in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy etc. - in places where people are more "relaxed" about the law enforcement will not miss business opportunities just because their rich neighbours can afford to m…

I'm one of these European users. An American shop only offering payments via Libra would end up the same fate as American shops that don't offer PayPal or another convenient payment method do right now. Why would I even remotely want this? These crypto threads make it out like it's the second coming, we have a more or less functioning financial system and even if it's broken I would not trust Facebook of all companie…

I would imagine machines doing the transactions. For example, a market for game characters where you buy and sell characters where the systems automatically keep tabs and handle the transactions without the friction of large bureaucratic institutions like banks.

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

#315
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Libra really taking on governments? It hasn't even launched yet let alone proven itself useful along consumers.

I would argue that Libra is competing directly with the US dollar. 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 wou…

Still this is very much hypothetical. I don't see the point is worry about it now when it's odds of success are completely unpredictable and so far it's got nothing but critique and scepticism from the early adopter crowd.

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

#316
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a private military company asserting their right to conduct foreign wars in the name of a subset of citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi (formerly known as Blackwater)?

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.

Pinkerton?

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

#317
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big difference between a local currency in a small region, or even a distributed crypto like bitcoin, and someone like Facebook. When Facebook starts pushing in a direction towards being an independent state-like power, you have to remember they have a “population” of 2.1 billion (daily active isers) Facebook if it were a country would literally be bigger than China. Their political power is fast approachin…

Facebook has a population of 0. People do not actually live on a land owned by them.

Perhaps not physically, but having influence over 2 billion minds grants a lot of power should you want to use it. All political action starts with an idea.

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

#319
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has turned out to be a potential threat to free society. I’m not just talking about the mass manipulation that goes on mostly unregulated, but also the fact that it has quite a lot of personal information on our citizens. Maybe that wouldn’t be an issue if Europe was the best of friends with America, but as that’s obviously not the case. I don’t think our relationship will fully deteriorate, but we can’t ign…

By your argument you would ban newspapers owned and controlled by individuals - that is what caused the Brexit mess

I think you should make all major publishers responsible for the content they present, and we actually do for news papers in Denmark. It's illegal for them to lie, and their editorial staff is held responsible. It's a little more complicated than that one line of course, and it's governened by an independent free speech party.

The manipulation that goes on on facebook and similar platforms would be illegal in our news papers, and it's exactly because we have a history of mass manipulation damaging society that we have those laws.

They've just not caught up to the modern platforms yet.

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

#320
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Libra is competing directly with the US dollar. 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 wou…

Still this is very much hypothetical. I don't see the point is worry about it now when it's odds of success are completely unpredictable and so far it's got nothing but critique and scepticism from the early adopter crowd.

True. During the Libra hearing, one of the senators basically turned to his peers and said (paraphrasing) "Why are we worrying about this now? We have a million other issues of much greater importance to worry about."
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