271–280 of 821 posts
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Think this is less about liberalism (it doesn't argue for government to be run like a business) and more about US-inspired thinking where businesses are better than governments.
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Think this is less about liberalism (it doesn't argue for government to be run like a business) and more about US-inspired thinking where businesses are better than governments.
Which, to be clear, is an idea that I detest. But governments do hate competition.
I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…
> Hey do you mind if we just skip the paperwork part and just control currency, while actually being a social media tech giant This is a gross mischaracterization of what Libra is. Libra is a token that's backed 1 to 1 on some basket of currencies and mostly government bonds. The Libra foundation makes money by taking a portion of the investment return to fund themselves, much like a brokerage takes a bit of the retu…
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I'm not sure France and Germany fully get what they are trying to ban exactly. Most politicians only have a very rudimentary understanding of this stuff and probably lots of misconceptions. Libra is several things; most of which already exist in other forms in the EU. That makes it hard to block as a whole. At least not without also impacting a lot of other companies and people doing similar things because the law sh…
> without also impacting a lot of other companies and people doing similar things because the law should apply equally to all. Other blockchains have not been blocked outright because they don't pose a threat and are developing slowly, so EU countries are working towards more or less sensible regulations. Facebook has far more power to drive adoption, so in order to avoid a situation where Facebook screws up (intenti…
France and Germany are being quite vague about what exactly they will block, what the scope is of that, or even how they imagine this would work. Also, Facebook itself has not been very clear about their actual intentions or those of the Libra legal entity that is supposedly governing all of this. Depending on how you read their announcements, Libra the coin might be considered as an experimental/optional part of an overall solution or vision that could also involve euro/dollar tokens (just like others trade on Stellar, Ripple, etc.).
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Pretty much everything Academi/Xe/Blackwater ever did was at the behest of the US government. GP was talking about a scenario such as Apple hiring Academi to destroy Samsung's factories. So far we have private companies providing security/defensive services, but we have yet to see private companies providing mercenary/offensive services without the explicit involvement of a government.
> but we have yet to see private companies providing mercenary/offensive services without the explicit involvement of a government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
The British empire was explicitly on board with the East India Company, and passed laws clarifying what they were allowed to do.
Libra is not all that bad. While there are problems with Facebook gaining yet another source for information that takes advantage of privacy terms, I think a stablecoin by GAFA is in the right direction. It speeds up the adoption of cryptocurrency by a lot. Paypal and other "digital cash" solutions are fully centralized which makes it impossible for devs to build on top of their platform. This means that problems tha…
When major government policy proposals are brought into the public discourse, we argue endlessly about the edge cases, downstream effects and hypothetical scenarios that may in turn cause future problems. Universal healthcare is too expensive, the green new deal won't work, bring the troops home, etc. People argue forever around the hypotheticals of these ideas.
But when one of the most powerful and consistently nefarious companies in the world starts to build a system to cut out the global banking system, we're fine to say that we "might be able to" find a way around major problems facing the platform if they gain too much control.
The inconsistency in the level of scrutiny that we levy at companies compared to governments is shocking given the influence that the public has over government policy and operations compared to a private, multi-billion-dollar company.
"might be able to" isn't good enough when it comes to building systems that undermine the current financial system. All aspects of the system need to be spelled out in concrete terms, and safeguards must be put into place to ensure proper implementation and alignment of incentives. This must be regulated, without question.
Yes, big banks are greedy and corrupt and aren't looking out for the little guys. But neither is Facebook, and if there's an institution out there that is less fit than the banks to control the global financial system, it's Facebook.
I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…
Maybe if they'd turn their minds towards what ruling parties have had a monopoly on government for decades as to not allow one club to get control of everything.
Germany is deconstructing itself by attacking irrelevant topics like this with excessive rigor while ignoring millenium problems in governance, such as unchecked mass migration.
What I want to say is: your idealistic POV does not reflect the realities of governance, just the realities of partisan opportunism. That's it.
I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…
> not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision I think Monsieur Macron has put this onto the agenda when Libra was announced. I'm not disagreeing with the decision and have similar concerns as you, but I'm still uncertain whether the state should even have the ability to block these and other things in general. Most of all, I miss a British voice here (as, sadly, not very much longer an EU…
I don't think there is much chance of Brexit this year, and a pretty good chance that it will never happen.
Mind you - always a chance that we'll simply get thrown out for being incompetent at running a country...
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Ironic that the German government wants to avoid irresponsible monetary policy through a private entity when it is literally printing money to stimulate growth through the ECB.
Monetary and fiscal policy is not the same as us balancing a checkbook at the end of the month. Money is created over time for many reasons, on a micro scale for stimulus, and on a macro scale because the economy grows over time and money represents a slice of economic activity. Keeping it from going up and giving disproportionate gains to money holders past is part of the job. There's nothing ironic about it, this i…
This is a candidate for most tired meme on the internet and I really don't understand what it even has to do with this discussion as I've never met a household with a printing press (running the press is exactly what GP was referring to).