181–190 of 216 posts
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It can be a bond or a cash payment, but either way, the money is locked up and not available to use for operations, or gone.
It will feature on your balance sheet as an asset, though.
Today I learned Hacker News is filled with libertarian ideologues. It's amazing that people who pride themselves in critical thinking and problem solving (hackers), can actually be so naive as to believe this nihilistic Ann Rand crap. HN is starting to look more like Reddit every day.
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It will feature on your balance sheet as an asset, though.
Which, if true, only further demonstrates the nonsense that is modern accounting practice.
Doesn't all regulation stifle innovation? If I wanted to sell a homes in a skyscraper made of papier-mâché, building codes would prevent me from doing that. But that's not necessarily a bad thing: the first time someone leaves their soldering iron on while they're not using it, the building burns down and we have five hundred dead families on our hands. "Innovators" tend to think about the good aspects of their ideas…
there are regulations and there are regulations.
>"make any new innovative money transmission system you want, but keep $100,000 in an account so when you fuck up someone's paycheck,
just for example, a reasonable regulation would just limit the per-transaction(or per-month per-person, etc, ...) amount to, lets say, $100 for unlicensed/unbonded companies.
On the other side, the regulation that have the same $500K bond for any company is just very favorable for big established players. The $500K is nothing for AMEX or PayPal, and provides virtually no coverage for the risks these companies presents to consumers. Ie. if any of these companies fucks up the paychecks in their system, the $500K would be just a drop in the bucket.
Even current banking regulation is designed way much better - basically it forces to keep reserves as percentage of the liability amount.
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Slow deflation at first, rapid inflation eventually. That tends to be how bubbles work. (Not to be confused with physical bubbles, which are the other way around...)
Exactly. The deflationary period will come when most people liquidate their Bitcoin holdings because they realize it's essentially useless. Or try to liquidate, anyway. At that point there won't be many buyers.
While I agree with other commentators that the prose is a bit over the top, its an interesting move on the part of financial interests. (there was a great report in the Murky News that special interests are writing the laws [1]) Clearly financial transactions have provided a means for the state to both detect and to a lesser degree mitigate criminal activity. The phrase 'follow the money' works because such activitie…
They want companies that operate like banks, such as PayPal, to be licensed. I'm not sure I see the downside. PayPal has a shocking record of abusing it's customers, and it can only do so because it isn't bound by the same laws as banks are. Personally, I think if you rely on PayPal/etc for your business, you're asking to get financially raped.
Some might argue that they can only continue to do so due to a lack of competition, competition which is stifled by the very legislation ostensibly aimed at helping consumers.
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Exactly. The deflationary period will come when most people liquidate their Bitcoin holdings because they realize it's essentially useless. Or try to liquidate, anyway. At that point there won't be many buyers.
Deflation is an increase in the value of a currency. You're describing an eventual decrease in the value of Bitcoin, which would be inflation.
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That's an interesting thesis, but can you name one good building material that you can't actually use to build a house? People talk about regulation in the US like it's hindering any form of innovation, but there is surprisingly little terrible regulation that's actually enforced. Which is not to say you can't point to regulation that harms individuals but rather it's much harder to find things that harm society over…
> can you name one good building material that you can't actually use to build a house? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKH0qoaXR88 Discusses how building codes hinder new and "natural" building methods. In particular, the speaker mentions that older codes have failed to keep up with better techniques for strawbale building. The deeper issue is not whether new materials can be used to meet code requirements, but wheth…
In that video he is trying to build long term structures and he complains not about the building codes, but the fact that there is no data to support the safety of new building ideas. The whole point of a building code is you get to avoid running the numbers, if you build a structure using these methods with these materials it's safe. There are rules for temporary structures like tents, but if you want it to last for 50 years you need to demonstrate it's safe. And, if he was capable of demonstrating he could build a safe house out of toothpicks and spit he could have done so because the only limit on his construction was providing number so an engineer could demonstrate the safety of the structure. And, the compromise of "build a load baring structure from well understood materials and fill it however you like" is vary open.
PS: You can build a floating house.
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Government regulation is in just about every case either not needed at all or better provided through non-coercive institutions. Since government innovates more slowly than private industries, government regulation tends to become outdated, going from common-sense prudence to arbitrary burden on innovation. For example, right now the Mississippi River in the US is flooding, destroying many homes. This is a huge loss…
You wrote: "Since government innovates more slowly than private industries, government regulation tends to become outdated, going from common-sense prudence to arbitrary burden on innovation. " The space program spawned a tremendous amount of innovation. Public research universities throughout the nation innovate on a grand scale. The internet is an example of government innovation. Regulation does not reflect a lack…
Which brings up the basic issue, the incentives of car makers / home builders / bankers to create safe products does not line up with society's benefit from safe products without some external input.