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100 years of whatever this will be

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Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#481

Post by kelseyfrog »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #358
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal Healthcare doesn't particularly threaten corporate interests either. Remember when centrist Obama tried to implement the Heritage foundation approved version and everyone went a little crazy for no obvious reason? It would be comforting to think that some evil geniuses were holding back universal healthcare for their own benefit, but it's mostly just lingering stupidity and racism that's holding America bac…

Health insurance is what holds back universal health care, along with hospitals themselves. Both of them are incentivized to raise costs for consumers.

Is it possible to de-capitalize heathcare? Not in this economy.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#482

Post by Veelox »

thurn wrote: post #225
Veelox wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem absolutely certain you are right about certain issues. One of the big draws of America originally was that is was huge and open and you could join a community that agreed with what you mostly. Yes some people view abortion as a right, others view it as murder. The process shouldn't be to gain enough power to force everyone to follow what you want. It should be to establish rules we can all live by and then l…

I assume you'd also have felt this way about e.g. segregation? An equally controversial issue in its time?

"All men are created equal" is a pretty compelling reason to end segregation. "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is a pretty compelling reason to end gun control. "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" is a pretty compelling reason to require a trial to have an abortion.

You can make really good arguments from our established principles for and against most controversial issues. There is a clear method to add rights to the Constitution. I would say that happened for segregation and it took awhile to be enacted. If someone wants to change something for abortion or gun control let's amend the founding document otherwise let people live within the rules we have set.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#484

Post by mcguire »

moffkalast wrote: post #347
soco wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a store charged me twice for the same item last month I was very happy to be able to reverse the transaction.

Maybe it's just me, but we all place an awful lot of trust giving vendors essentially all credit card details possible AND where we live so that they're capable of skimming a self defined sum off by themselves. It's like an inherently insane system. We're supposed to be the one wiring the cash, not the vendor themselves with our data.

"...they're capable of skimming a self defined sum off by themselves."

I wonder what happens if someone does that?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#485

Post by micromacrofoot »

_yid9 wrote: post #408
micromacrofoot wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a strong proponent of socialism, but this seems like an outrageously loaded response to a genuine question.

It was a genuine answer. Is force not linearly related to the gravity / undesirability of the mandate? Are increasingly draconian mandates not rebuffed by more and more people? Are there not plentiful examples of "Socialist" societies attempting to enforce more and harsher mandates, against anyone not willing to "give their fair share"? If people are allowed to leave such systems for ones more to their liking, do the…

>Are there not plentiful examples of "Socialist" societies attempting to enforce more and harsher mandates, against anyone not willing to "give their fair share"?

You mean like if you don't pay taxes you go to jail? or if you don't work you live on the street?

There are certainly harsher places to be, but the US is not friendly to people who do not "give their fair share." It's already mandatory.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#486

Post by mcguire »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #229
notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

The difference here is that the existing codebase isn't just broken, it's structurally resistant to being fixed. Fixing your old legacy software takes time, but probably less time than starting over from scratch. Fixing the legacy financial system doesn't just take the time to fix that system; first you have to fix the system of politics and corruption that makes that system what it is. And fight all of the people wi…

Software development is not always the best metaphor for everything.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#487

Post by andrekandre » 

  > We have, in Western society, managed to simultaneously botch the dreams of democracy, capitalism, social coherence, and techno-utopianism, all at once. It's embarrassing actually. I am embarrassed. You should be embarrassed.
maybe i'm crazy, but it just seems weird to lump these all together like they are expected to work well together

democracy: one person, one vote (egalitarianism)

capitalism: money is power, and capital is used to accumulate more of it (competitively and socially)

if you base your society on those two contradictory ideas, it seems inevitable a competitive system that encourages commodification and selling anything and everything to make increasing profits will cause all sorts of havoc on society and warp institutions to support those who "have" vs "have not"

  > We don't need deregulation. We need better designed regulation.
this sounds good at first, but we used to have "good regulation" and obviously we are where we are because those "good" regulations were torn down.... running the clock back on regulation will just put us back in the same place again because those with power and influence (monetary and social capital) will warp them for their own ends

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#488

Post by entropicdrifter »

UncleMeat wrote: post #471
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the analogy, but in many cases the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). Also, the protectors of the status-quo are putting a lot of software people to work in protecting that status quo, so tempting them to the other side means compatibility with their skillset. Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo m…

How would decentralized finance affect the advertising driven business model of web applications?

Perhaps even more relevantly, how would any sort of decentralization help when the issue is an excessively unregulated market simply moving to the logical conclusion of its evolution?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#489

Post by dkasper »

tcgv wrote: post #424
ErrantX wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in finance myself, I totally agree with you on the regulators lint. Everyone arguing regulators are evil is genuinely tech and finance savvy. The regulator is not there to protect them. They are there to protect the vast majority - not only from the outright criminals but also the slightly evil financial services companies (see the Wonga and payday loans debacle in the UK). Say what you like about regulators…

I agree that regulation can and should be a good thing, to protect the participants of the financial system. But in the past decades we've seen a (lobbied) shift towards deregulation, with catastrophic results: > Say what you like about regulators - and they regularly mess up big - but they ensure that 99% of consumer finance companies have the cash to back up deposits because they are forced to! In the 2008 subprime…

I think you're missing a key point that because of the 2008 crisis the regulations were updated. Bank reserves are higher now than pre-2008. So in fact this is basically like the OP said, regulators regularly mess up, and then update the regulation.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#490

Post by lisper »

throw10920 wrote: post #231
lisper wrote: post #103

This essay seems deep and profoundly insightful but I don't think it actually is. Its ultimate call for "better designed regulation" is the no-true-scotsman fallacy in sheep's clothing. How do you know if your regulations are "properly designed?" If they produce good outcomes. But the problem is that there is no consensus about what a good outcome is. Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite lit…

Almost all of the stuff said in this comment ranges from misrepresentation ("A significant contingent -- significant enough to swing elections -- of one of the two major political parties in the most powerful nation on earth would prefer to literally deny the laws of physics than admit that anything said by a "liberal" might actually be true.", "Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite literally…

> And it's not even on-topic.

It's an illustration of how we as a society cannot agree on what a good outcome looks like. If we can't agree on that, then there is no hope of agreeing on what "better designed regulation" looks like.

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