201–210 of 277 posts
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Historically, metric was the thing being pushed.
The "pushing" isn't the problem. The nature (good/bad) of the thing being pushed is. The imperial system is objectively inferior since the metric system has been created.
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Then they must have be doing something wrong? Obviously people would not be foregoing free money if it was easy to get. You are arguing that people would not spend "free" 100 usd on their rent if the money/voucher was directed towards rent.
"How bad things must be if the government resorts to giving us free money with an expiration date to force us to spend? I'll spend my 100$ card before it expires but I'll save extra 200$ of my salary compared to before. I have to brace for the worst that it's yet to come, it's going to be really bad before it gets better, especially given that the Government is resorting to giving us free money " The more you use ext…
Whether this is good or bad on the long run is debate-able, but it would shake things up globally.
Private central banks print money out of nothing and lend them to governments at interest. The governments then tax the hell out of you to pay back these privately owned banks. Think you are free and living in a democracy. Think again!
I've not really understood the need for a "digital" pound, the pound is pretty digital already. I can already have an entirely digital bank account from at least three "challenger" banks. There are also now at least two business accounts that also entirely virtual. "Faster Payments" (customer bank transfers) are delivered in seconds. I can see a need for speeding up BACS, and reducing the price of CHAPS, but apart fr…
>I've not really understood the need for a "digital" pound, the pound is pretty digital already. The need isn't for the consumer. It's advantageous for the central bankers. With it they can more easily control demurrage/inflation/deflation/confiscation (like the Chinese government plans to do with the e-RMB).
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> A government isn't ever going to allow a normal citizen to have a anonymous payments system so I don't see them allowing a purely private and anonymous currency (ala-monero) Actually, the UK got pretty close to it in the 1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
I don't know much about UK politics, but the government over there seems to adore surveillance and has no qualms with recording as much information as they possibly can. I simply don't see them accepting the idea of an anonymous payments system.
They should make it work on the 'old money' system of penny, shilling and pound, with twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to the pound, then use the abbreviation 'd' for pence, and then throw in farthings (quarter penny) and half-crowns (two shillings and six pence) because if there's one thing I've learnt about finance, its that the more confusing things are, the easier it is to make a profit.
The funniest thing I've seen on HN in quite a while. You could even monetise it by marketing to those people who are fans of pre-decimal currency for bizarre political reasons.
That being said, a pound is so worthless today that the difference between 1/60th of a pound and 1/100th is meaningless; it would just be a rounding error in most calculations.
I suspect that all fractions of a £ will go the way of the shilling in the next 30 years.
A bunch of comments in this thread claim that the pound is already digital, because you can send and receive pounds using a mobile app or online banking. But these transactions simply transfer obligations (debts) denominated in pounds between parties. They are not operations on actual pounds (i.e. on the central bank currency). You can trade 'pork bellies futures' quickly, and using nothing but a computer. But no one…
You have a point here, but sadly most of the current state of art in CBDC research avoids storing accounts at Central Banks due to the obvious risk of disintermediating banking system. The points of others thread stays: what is the point of CBDC for individuals if the supply is not limited and not stored at Central banks...
I'm curious what is the situation in the UK with regards to the universalness of banking services, especially electronic ones. . In the US we have a large portion of the population that is "unbanked" for a varaity of reasons and have to rely on sketchy and scam financial services like those prepaid debit and credit cards and "check cashing places".
https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/basic-bank...
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>I've not really understood the need for a "digital" pound, the pound is pretty digital already. The need isn't for the consumer. It's advantageous for the central bankers. With it they can more easily control demurrage/inflation/deflation/confiscation (like the Chinese government plans to do with the e-RMB).
I would imagine this could lead to interesting changes in how people are taxed. IE taxes based on savings instead of income.