France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

Post by Smithalicious » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

h0h0h0h0111 wrote: post #520

Smithalicious wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now No it isn't, not even close. At most it's the third most powerful tech company, after Alphabet and Amazon.

Amazon is surely big and rich, but do they really exert the same psychological/social power on you? You don't read your news on Amazon, you don't send messages to your closest friends on amazon, you don't go down reading rabbit holes from following links on Amazon (not really, anyway). Certainly purchase data is very powerful (ask supermarkets!), but I think it pales in comparison to the breadth of data Facebook and…

Post by sorokod » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

yitchelle wrote: post #434

sorokod wrote: post #365

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When it is the majority of the population, it is beyond a personal decision. It boggles my mind, but "majority" of the German population has a preference to Currywurst ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst ) - is this also "beyond a personal decision" ? If you have a reference to German government pursuing an anti credit cards policy - please provide it here.

Curry wurst is definitely a cultural thing. Most kids growing up in Germany eats curry wurst, and continues to eat them in adulthood. This paper (0) is a good write-up on how the card systems works in Germany. (0) - https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub188/22957/... edit:updated the link

Post by alacombe » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #122

SanchoPanda wrote: post #17

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You tell Facebook that if a French national is offered Libra you will fine them. If they complain they don't have the tech to prevent that. You fine them anyway. The theme here is that Facebook has lost the trust of too many important people, and maybe they just want to hurt what looks like another enormous American tech company that has been too careless and too aggressive.

If they complain that they're not able to identify who lives in France you bring the hammer of the law down; hard! They would just have conclusively proven that they ignore KYC regulations and are running the biggest money laundring operation ever

Post by simplecomplex » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

gzer0 wrote: post #385

bko wrote: post #374

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Which is one reason why capital controls are so destructive. Allowing denizens to keep their savings in whatever form they so choose is a human right. Libra will afford people the option to invest in and use a token that is backed 1 for 1 to a basket of global currencies and government bonds at a low cost.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

Post by kevingrahl » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #450

Tomte wrote: post #360

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Strange, I'm living in Germany, hailing from Baden-Württemberg and now been living in Northrhine-Westphalia for almost ten years, and I cannot remember a single restaurant that doesn't accept credit cards. And I'm paying almost everything with credit card. Sure, the ice cream stand at the swimming pool only accepts cash, as does the local discotheque, but restaurants? Never a problem.

Munich was much worse. 3 lunch cafes, coffee shop, bar, and one of the beer gardens. Luckily I was warned and asked the places before I went. Even the cab to the Munch airport would only accept cash. I had to walk across the airport to get it. His payment app was “not working”. In Stuttgart it was only the smaller places. Although we made sure find places that took corporate Amex using a website.