761–770 of 821 posts
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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.
The difference is that Facebook has millions to pour into resources, marketing, etc, while those other crypto currency companies do not. I would be very very wary of a social media giant issuing crypto. Lots of inherit dangers there.
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 was hoping this would happen. It will probably become a EU thing now. The idea of a privately controlled currency needs to die quickly. Never been a fan of crypto currency in general but Bitcoin, and the like, are accepted because they are not centralized. Your Bitcoin won't change in value or disappear because your country and another get in a fight.
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Which is exactly why you can't risk to have anything even remotely approaching a monopoly in any part of the systems involved in making transactions. Which is why I (also as a German) am very happy that we have a competitive (read: better in literally every way) alternative to credit cards, plus a strong cash culture. Oh and for completeness' sake: if paypal (and libra for that matter) are not regulated according to…
> 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.
Many of my non-mediated transactions go through American institutions (e.g. Mastercard, Visa) but not all.
And if anything does go via USD I don't notice it, even in price; it's clearly cheaper to go AUD->IDR than to go AUD->USD->IDR.
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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.
Your problem was most likely using an Amex. Amex is accepted nearly nowhere in Germany.
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Somehow, that typical German mindset doesn't extend to banning VW after its proven to be acting in bad faith. How come? Ah, nevermind -- HQ: Wolfsburg, Germany. Exempt from regulatory action.
You're making his point for him... waiting isn't helpful, since it either won't work out (and little value would have been lost if banned) or you'll end with regulatory capture and loose your ability to regulate/ban.
Well, at least Germany can get a jump on banning automated driving development. Hopefully BMW, MB, and VW are all banned from working on it since it's still early enough to prevent bad things from happening.
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From a history perspective : the hyperinflation leading up to the 3rd Reich.
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.
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There are lots of privately controlled currencies. Miles, points, certificates, game gold, etc. - they are all private currencies. Most of them aren't legal tender, but neither are cryptocurrencies. The only difference between facebook-coin and miles is that Facebook promises to encourage dealing in their coin and airline would frown on that. Not much difference otherwise. You have some tokens that you can exchange f…
The difference is that those other are not meant to be used as a money replacement. In Pokemon Go there are coins and they are nothing but points to spend in store. If I could transfer them to other player, become a certified shop that accept payment with them, or do any of the many other thing you can do with money that would be probably a legally grey area. (moreover I am not sure how you would tax such a currency)
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It won’t. Germany already doesn’t have control of the monetary policy for the currency it uses (the Euro). Monetary policy != taxation.
It has control as Germany is part of the Eurozone, the ECB is subjected to the EU treaty, operating under its guidelines, and is accountable to the European Parliament, in which the people of Germany have a say. Maybe it is not as accountable as we wish it were, but it is far from what Facebook would be.
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Can you point me to a 'modern war' without armies? I'm interested in what you actually think a war is?
[edit/ downvote this all you like, pretending like warfare requires guns and armies when 2 different government elections have been attacked using social media, namely Facebook.] https://www.thegreathack.com/ > Data has surpassed oil as the world’s most valuable asset. It’s being weaponized to wage cultural and political warfare. People everywhere are in a battle for control of our most intimate personal details. Fro…
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
Was that an act of war against democratic Russia?
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What evidence of bad faith are you referring to? Interesting how you and "other people" going through my comments have no actual objections to the content of what I say. Hard to have a productive conversation when all you have are dismissive remarks and insults.
Sure, I will try to unpack my thoughts. You go after Jewish people as a class, rather than specific institutions controlled by Jewish people, which I think is bad faith argumentation. If you criticized Israel, for example, or some specific set of banks I would be ok with that. I admit I would not have the same reaction against another person criticizing “white people” as a class. But I believe I am justified in that…
> But I believe I am justified in that because whiteness is not an ethnicity, it is the practice of denial of ethnicity.
I fundamentally do not understand what that means. Surely I don't have a choice but to be white? What am I denying? It's true that whiteness is not an ethnicity, since Russians and white Americans are surely ethnically distinct - more so, I think, than white and Asian Americans or white and Asian Russians. But beyond that I can't make sense of your sentence. I wonder if it depends on a particular national interpretation of "white" that cannot be accessed by all people who might want to describe someone as "white". But it seems opaque to me.