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France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

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

#691

Post by ClumsyPilot »

littlestymaar wrote: post #677
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referring to a 'century', interesting. What about Hitler's monetary policy, or the Soviet puppet government of GDR?

The hyperinflation crisis of the Weimar republic was 96 years ago. Then it affected the German monetary policy until 1933, and after 1945. So yes, 84 years count as «almost a century»

I am pointing out that everyone has heard about hyperinflation crisis, and many people in this thread are pointing fingers and writing about it as if it a series of contiguous policies followed as a logical consequences. That's not a fair statement because there were several violent changes of government, with different monetary policies. And many gaps in your (and mine) understanding in how these regimes manages economy. Can you, or anyone else here, really comment on monetary policy of nazi germany without looking stuff up? That's why I think, that, to claim it's not fair to reference things that happened "100 years" ago in germany. In US, which does not have such background, that would be more reasonable.

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

#692

Post by StreamBright »

downandout wrote: post #556
StreamBright wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. A $5 billion USD hyperbole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica_d... "The governments of India[30][31] and Brazil[32][33] demanded that Cambridge Analytica report how anyone used data from the breach in political campaigning, and various regional governments in the United States have lawsuits in their court systems from citizens affected by the data breach.[34] On April 25, 2018, Fa…

Nothing you provided is evidence that any Facebook activity has ever swung any election. The very people that paid Cambridge Analytica for their services in 2016 said that the company’s strategies were ineffective at best, referring to it as “snake oil” [1]. You have provided evidence that people attempted to use Facebook to swing an election. Those two things are not the same. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news…

What you are asking is impossible. How do you want me provide evidence? Fly back in time and stop facebook interfering? I can flip the question, why would politicians use this setup if it was not working?

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

#693

Post by celticninja »

greenyoda wrote: post #518
celticninja wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the decentralised nature of most crypto currencies prevent this sort of ban, but a centralised offering from a known entity is a lot easier to block. I would also say it is better to block it, especially with Zuck at the helm, he has proven he cares nothing for regulation or laws in the nation's in which FB operates. At least bitcoin is consensus driven,libra will be driven by Zuck and the tech giants. No thanks…

> Well the decentralised nature of most crypto currencies prevent this sort of ban... Just because Bitcoin is decentralized doesn't mean that a country can't ban it within its own borders. To do that, all a country would need to do is pass a law making it a crime to own or use Bitcoin, while also prosecuting people who didn't report profits from illicit Bitcoin transactions with tax evasion. At that point, no legitim…

You can ban bitcoin from your country but you can't stop it from being used. You could ban Libra from your country AND stop it being used.

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

#694

Post by auslander »

htfu wrote: post #689
auslander wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't risk to have anything even remotely approaching a monopoly in any part of the systems involved in making transactions. AFAIK US is a monopoly for international money transfer. You just cannot bypass a US intermediary bank and US Dollar conversion.

You're likely thinking of the dollar being "unavoidable" as a unit of settlement due to its status as main world reserve currency, but even that's metaphorical and in any case a state & institutional level thing. Just think about it - how would that even work?

Dollar or not is not that important. Forcing US intermediary is.

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

#695

Post by AsyncAwait »

FillardMillmore wrote: post #516
kevingadd wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, on the bright side most democracies are not explicitly about profit-making and/or cost-cutting as their first priority, even if it's the first priority of individual politicians.

I would agree with your statement that most western governments are not explicitly motivated by cost cutting and profit seeking. It would seem evident when we look at the trajectory of the US national debt in the past 40 or so years. However, I do not know if this is a good or bad thing. Will the national debt ever be paid off? And if not, what will the consequences be?

A nation paying its debt would actually not be as beneficial as you think, considering today's society runs on debt, having it is actually beneficial to an extent for relations, trade, to avoid war etc.

Now whether things should be this way am not sure, but a nation simply paying its debt off without significant changes to the role debt plays is not the answer.

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

#696

Post by AsyncAwait »

dantheman wrote: post #457
TuringNYC wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unrealistically limiting to think modern wars are fought only with armies. Most wars are quiet and fought with capital, thought, rhetoric, and policy. Armies only come into the picture if all else fails.

Can you point me to a 'modern war' without armies? I'm interested in what you actually think a war is?

Ask any country under crushing US sanctions.

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

#697

Post by MrGman »

lacker wrote: post #614
zaphirplane wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel there is a conflation here. Facebook is free to apply for a banking license in countries they want to operate as a bank in. Facebook shouldn’t be able to circumvent banking over site and regulations by coming in as a technology company with fancy words. The conflation here is Facebook isn’t being blocked form becoming a licensed bank in Germany - correct me if I’m wrong

But they don’t want to become a bank. They want to build a cryptocurrency. There are already hundreds of cryptocurrencies that operate in France and Germany, and the developers do not have to have banking licenses.

With Libra, Facebook wouldn't just make itself a bank. It would make itself a central bank. A world wide central bank.

Libra = inventing a new fiat currency and then replacing a significant portion of other fiat currencies around the world through a cloak of "we're just here doing the next big thing, also App, p2p payments, online crypto AI blockchain social network Facebook innocent whistling of a song". As a little bonus, they would be selling the Libra nodes (that handle all the payment traffic) to third parties. Initially for 10 million USD per node. That way they can shift the blame of selling payment data to third parties away from Facebook, while still making money by giving third parties the right to do whatever they want with that payment data.

Having a banking license doesn't allow you to replace a countries' fiat currency by some new invented token. The value of Libra in Europe would depend on a promise by an American tech company (led by 1 man). A promise to keep the value of the Libra tied to a predetermined basket of fiat currencies. Assuming that Libra would become popular, this would yield pretty much infinite international political and economical power to Mark Zuckerberg based on the mere perception of the possibility that this promise could be broken by him. This is also why Libra is not comparable to an actual crypto currency like Bitcoin. The value and existence of Bitcoin and the Bitcoin network is not dependent on 1 man and the contracts he has with Bitcoin nodes.

Germany and France aren't stupid. I guess.

Those are my thoughts on what's actually going on.

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

#698

Post by kabacha »

_xnmw wrote: post #657
lucb1e wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a cryptocurrency is unstoppable, but Libra is the same as Visa. Banning Libra is like banning a company like Visa, it's not anything like banning Bitcoin which would be very hard indeed. > Libra will not rely on cryptocurrency mining. Only members of the Libra Association will be able to process transactions via the permissioned blockchain. (From Wikipedia) It's just a payment processor. I don't know why it's…

> “banning Bitcoin would be very hard indeed” It’s hard to take crypto enthusiasts seriously because of delusions like this. Banning bitcoin would be trivial: no legitimate business would accept it, making it useless except to fringe outlaws.

Eh almost no legitimate businesses accept bitcoin right now and yet there it is.

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

#700

Post by withoutboats »

scoobyyabbadoo wrote: post #628
arethuza wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not very much longer an EU member" I don't think there is much chance of Brexit this year, and a pretty good chance that it will never happen. Mind you - always a chance that we'll simply get thrown out for being incompetent at running a country...

Yeah it is very peculiar how the British elites was able to establish the Mandate for Palestine to give Jewish people their own state but haven't been able to establish something giving British people their own state even after it was explicitly requested.

Mods: This user's posting history makes clear they are an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. Why have you not banned them?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20972062

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20918028

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