France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by dnautics » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

WanderPanda wrote: post #83

aazaa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has profited immensely from the use of the euro in foreign trade. Had it kept the Deutschmark, German exports would be by some esteems 25% more expensive than they are now, given the strong fiscal position of the country. Germany is in a unique position of being able to jawbone about devaluation and monetary policy while reaping the rewards of spendthrift member states.

When you replace "Germany" with the german state or its tax revenue I would agree. Having a low value / devaluing currency goes to the disadvantage of people getting their salary in that currency.

it's also great for people running businesses which exist to nominally try to protect wage earners of that currency from inflation, e.g. pension funds, investment firms, CEOs.

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

#102

Post by dontbenebby » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #27

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…

>What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish.

Private security firms are also not ideal.

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

#103

Post by pier25 » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

Excuse the ignorance... but what do France and Germany specifically fear? That if Libra would become more popular than the mainstream fiat currencies Facebook could have more control over the economy than governments?

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

#104

Post by clintonb » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

throwawaywindev wrote: post #44

aniforprez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

US banks created Zelle, with free instant transfers via your banking app. It’s a shame more people don’t use it. Otherwise people just use credit cards for paying for stuff.

Zelle is only for P2P payments, and was not initially available at every bank. Additionally, some banks market it differently. Not everyone knows the service they are using is Zelle.

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

#105

Post by thinkloop » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #14

mrtksn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet? Is libra tied to an account like game money? AFAIK it's a cryptocurrency? Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

I'm not sure why you think this is so hard? You pass a law. Most people don't break the law. You make it illegal for banks to transfer to known Libra things. You audit people. You apply big fines. Murder is illegal but that doesn't mean nobody can commit murder .

Yes but so is weed and downloading pirated movies, poster is asking how it could be more like murder than mp3's.

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

#106

Post by jackvalentine » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #26

aniforprez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?

Australia has the New Payments Platform (Osko to consumers) that is basically instant.

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

#107

Post by logicchains » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #69

moksly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has turned out to be a potential threat to free society. I’m not just talking about the mass manipulation that goes on mostly unregulated, but also the fact that it has quite a lot of personal information on our citizens. Maybe that wouldn’t be an issue if Europe was the best of friends with America, but as that’s obviously not the case. I don’t think our relationship will fully deteriorate, but we can’t ign…

All problems from big tech stem from their centralization. If Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook were broken up into collections of smaller, independent companies... a lot of the ills would simply disappear, and the market as a whole would be a lot healthier.

Since big tech companies seem to have an advantage over smaller ones (otherwise smaller ones would already be dominating the market), presumably they'd just be replaced by large Chinese equivalents, which wouldn't be broken up as they have much more cooperative relationships with their government. TikTok is already quite popular in the west, proving it's possible. Unless the west tries to ban all Chinese social networks, which would require some kind of national firewall, in which case it'd lose any moral high ground it had over China for China's banning of WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.

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

#108

Post by charles_f » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #27

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…

> Alternatives, especially private alternatives readily available to citizens, will increasingly be viewed as the enemy.

Trust is the central component of the monetary system, you must trust the notes and systems used to exchange money. Creating a framework that brings this trust has been a central component since the invention of money[0], thru issuing that money and having the king or whatever passed as authority sign the coins. This is why issuing forged money has also always been such as an important crime - because that was forging the signature of the king/queen/emperor/minister of treasury.

So it's not that surprising to see that guaranteeing that trust and trying to prevent the issuance of alternative currencies is a role that governments attributed themselves in that framework.

One question is whether it actually is their role to say "you should not trust anyone else's signature" - aka your enemy reference

The more important one to me is, accepting this is now a thing, whether they should instead regulate what issuing organizations need to provide as guarantees under that signature.

I personally think so, because I don't trust FB one bit, and I'd love them to be bound to a set of rules

[0] Sapiens- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens?

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

#109

Post by olivierduval » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

sergefaguet wrote: post #63

nations also used to be convinced it is inherent to their sovereignty to tell us who to worship and who to marry. this is no longer the case. not sure there is a principled reason why the power to govern the exchange of goods and services (which is what money facilitates) should be up to them.

> nations also used to be convinced it is inherent to their sovereignty to tell us who to worship and who to marry. this is no longer the case.

Except in some theocraties where you're 2nd class citizen when you don't worship the official God (Israel, some Muslims countries...)

And in the US, the President oauth is on the Bible and "under God" if I remember clearly. So, in a way, it is still the case: how would a Jew or Muslim or Buddhist be able to do that?

Governements are elected to provide services for the good of the nations. That include security: physically (police, army) and economically... so the money is a way for a state to provide security for the trade

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

#110

Post by kerng » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #27

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…

The example with the German money is flawed, I read a bit of German and these are vouchers!

It has written something like "club internal voucher" on it!