Facebook Libra Is Architecturally Unsound

Yes, that’s the failing. Ideally, justice should be cheaper in both time and monetary costs.

I don’t know of any state that has ever tried to optimize for a low-overhead justice system “in the small” (e.g. many, more efficient, more convenient small-claims courts; or the introduction of another triage layer of “medium-claims” courts, where most all civil contractual disputes would land) which is an interesting fact all by itself. Speedy+cheap justice goes somewhat hand-in-hand with things like red-tape reduction, in that both are attempts to “oil the wheels” of the state apparatus—yet you’d never hear the same people (e.g. libertarians) espouse both.

Anyone saying blanket "we don't need consumer protection mechanisms" because it's a "failing" of something or the other must be taking the piss.

As a parent of children, consumer protections are overall a "good thing" to help prevent bad actors from doing harm. It goes for any space that can do harm to you or your family in any way.

It's why you have exchanges like Gemini in place that seek to be the "most regulated" crypto exchange - to instill trust in the service and market... and your investment.

That being said there is still a ways to go... it will be interesting to see if the market can solve some of these issues through natural growth and competition.

I don't disagree with the article per se, but I think many technologists are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to the motivations here. Or perhaps they're being charitable and are evaluating Libra on purely on its stated motivations rather than the ulterior motive that Libra can't name out loud. For example, take this quote:

"The possibility that a Libra node run by Mastercard or Andressen Horrowitz would suddenly start running malicious code is such a bizarre scenario to plan for and is better solved by simply enforcing protocol integrity and through non-technical (i.e. legal) means."

It goes without saying that Libra isn't concerned about any sort of security event at Mastercard or a16z. The purpose here is simply to evade and arbitrage different regulatory regimes. The plan is to build a ledger that no single party (or coalition of parties in a single legal jurisdiction) has the capacity to edit or alter, and to make such alterations so technically challenging that it's beyond the capacity of any single court or legislature to do so. Once this chain is up and running, it becomes a "fact of nature" that courts and policymakers will simply have to deal with.

It's a brilliant strategy from that perspective. It's going to be alternately fascinating and horrifying to see if it works.

The legacy monetary system may have nice consumer protections on the micro scale, but it fails on the macro scale:

1. Inflation eats 2-4% of everyone's purchasing power each year, disproportionately affecting the poor. This inflation is desired by the central planners.

2. The American system of banking regulations introduces systemic risk into the financial sector.

Sure, if you can prove that your transaction was fraudulent, you can get a couple thousand bucks back into your savings account. But you'll have to gamble your money in the market to beat inflation just to break even. And then, every so often, the entire system will collapse and destroy trillions of dollars of wealth.

As an aside, you also get the bonus of having political control of banking relationships, so you can conveniently freeze and take the money of those who find the political winds aren't blowing their way.

Edit: PLEASE don't take this is an argument for Libra (sorry I wasn't clear), merely an argument for sound monetary policy and decentralization.

> Not many people who work on financial infrastructure speak publicly about their work...

What pieces of financial infrastructure do you want to know about?

Mastercard and Visa (for example) publish a lot of information about their technology and standards, and certainly people aren't prohibited from talking about implementing them or interfacing with them.