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All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

wired.com

31–37 of 37 posts

Re: All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

#31

Since the article keeps bringing up that everyone involved is "all white," i.e. a 10% minority in SA, that probably means that they won't be able to keep a good relationship with the SA government if it collapses and they'll probably end up with the military stealing all of their stuff. Too bad they can't immigrate to America, they are clearly smart and entrepreneurial. Unfortunately collapsing states tend to turn on…

Its worth mentioning that this is Oranje. Pretty much the equivalent of racist extremely far right preppers in the USA.

The current SA government has so many many issues but it's still better than anything these fools could do.

Re: All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

#32
post #29
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was any actual racial discrimination cited?

Orania is managed as a private company, and the town council retains a tight grip on who can move in. Each prospective resident is carefully screened—not by race, the council claims, but by avowed devotion to Afrikaner culture. Either way, the end result is the same: All of the town’s 1,500 or so residents are white. ------ challenging me to name a country where "blacks have gotten it right" ------ There is a map of…

That's an allusion, not evidence. They're not a gated community in Johannesburg, they're a town in the sticks and every culture on earth self-segregates to some degree or another. It sounds like the Wired author found a peaceful community is wanting to change that because they read racism into where there may not even be any.

Re: All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

#33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing it's more real, I'm arguing you can't cryptographically guarantee how many dollars some entity owns. In this context real life mean off block chain information. Basically the block chain can only verify whats on the blockchain. It can't make any guarantees about off block chain things except that someone with a possession of a certain private key said something at some time.

Sure, a blockchain provides cryptographic consensus about assets on the blockchain, but it can't control things that are not on the blockchain. Things like legal contracts in a filing cabinet, bank databases, gold bars in a vault, or how many coins I say are in my pocket. For all those things, the blockchain can act as a database, but you need to trust someone that the entries in the database correspond to these othe…

Which is the entire issue the op asked about, can you verify a party has enough dollars to back a stablecoin on the blockchain.

Re: All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

#34
As a South African expat, I've long thought that South Africa's poor service provision provides a natural laboratory for libertarian ideas. This piece highlights their strengths and weaknesses: high levels of cryptocurrency speculation (and a currency that's pegged to the rand and hosted on AWS!), but also small-scale local provision of electricity, water, sewage treatment, and security; and financial services based on face-to-face transactions and community trust.

Re: All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

#35
post #12

"all white" in South Africa is a minority struggling against majority. They can't be "far right". Far Right means nativists which in South Africa continues to be black people and not white.

> "all white" in South Africa is a minority struggling against majority. They can't be "far right". Far Right means nativists which in South Africa continues to be black people and not white. I don't think that most people understand 'far right' in that way. For example, are you saying that someone whose political philosophy hasn't changed, but who moves from one place to another, might go from being far-right to not…

Obviously. Radical Christians in India are far left. Hindus are far right. In USA hindus are far left and not on right. White folks are on right.

Omar Ilhan is far left in USA she would be far right in Pakistan.

It is just boggles me how stupid western media is about rest of the world.

Re: All-White Town’s Divisive Experiment With Cryptocurrency

#36
post #23

"all white" in South Africa is a minority struggling against majority. They can't be "far right". Far Right means nativists which in South Africa continues to be black people and not white.

Historically, you're right. But the meaning of right/left changed post WW2 (some would say WW1), at least in most european countries.

South Africa is not in Europe. It would be stupid to use European connotations for non-European countries. At this rate western media might call Hindu temples in India "churches".
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