441–450 of 611 posts
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> a certain part of which involves paying influencers, extremists, shady media outlets, maybe a Representative or three in America to push their agendas, foment discontent aiming to destabilize and control the United States. Doesn't this describe every political party and megacorp in the US too...?
Political parties and mega corps don’t strive to undermine the fabric of democracy itself though.
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People prefer centralized services until they enshittify, after which people move to the next thing, thanks to the decentralization.
> people move to the next thing, thanks to the decentralization This does not quite follow. Care to explain more? What I observe in practice is that people move from one centralized service to the next centralized service (e.g., X->BlueSky) but rarely from centralized to decentralized.
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No offense to your father but I've always felt like the "innocent until proven guilty" philosophy is expansive and fundamental privacy rights are part of that principle. That is, the underlying principle isn't "innocent until proven guilty" but something more akin to "your complete autonomy should be assumed by default, and the government should have to clear an extremely high threshold to constrain it". I also reall…
This is the crux of my belief system on the topic too. Along with the associated “burden of proof” and how making it less burdensome should not be anyone citizens goal or responsibility. The irony is that it’s precisely why GPs dad had a job, with full transparency there’s essentially no need for any type of forensics.
I have deep disagreements with my father on this subject. He worked as a federal agent for 30 years, mostly in digital forensics. He does not believe in the right to privacy in any of the same ways I do. Whereas I believe a right to privacy in your tools and communication is essential, he believes they infringe on the government's ability to catch criminals. Classic justification of "if you're not a bad guy, what do…
To you, he seems to believe Yes, and to him, I think you seem to believe No. Historically, the answer has been Yes, and crypto has fundamentally changed that. I think crystallizing exactly why you believe the right answer is No is essential, otherwise you're just not going to convince people on that side -- in their mind, I think, you're demanding more rights than you historically had, and at the cost of protecting the rest of the population.
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Really hope they ban it in the US so it can flourish in countries that actually need and respect it
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For nearly quarter of a century.
Longer than that. I feel like people have completely forgotten things like Iran-Contra, or the Gulf of Tonkin.
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> Actually that's a problem for a lot of libertarian minded tech, it starts being thought of as enabling freedom from oppressive governments and ends up being adopted by criminals - Bitcoin, Tor, etc. This is such a sham though. You have some privacy-protecting technology everyone would benefit from. Ordinary people don't really understand it but would use and benefit from it if it was the default. Laws are passed th…
I'm not disagreeing with your general point but in the specific case of Bitcoin I can't think of any laws that have been passed which make it highly inconvenient to use relative to other financial assets. If anything, it seems like legislators (at least in the US) have taken something of a laissez faire attitude toward the technology. Regulators have been more aggressive (e.g. the Treasury) but they're largely just e…
The issue is that it's treated as a "financial asset" to begin with, which de facto inhibits its use as a currency. You want to pay for a sandwich with cash? Hand them bills, get sandwich. You want to pay with cryptocurrency? File securities paperwork. Who is going to do that?
By comparison, things like foreign currencies that float against the dollar aren't reported when the transaction amount is below a threshold.
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> Actually that's a problem for a lot of libertarian minded tech, it starts being thought of as enabling freedom from oppressive governments and ends up being adopted by criminals - Bitcoin, Tor, etc. This is such a sham though. You have some privacy-protecting technology everyone would benefit from. Ordinary people don't really understand it but would use and benefit from it if it was the default. Laws are passed th…
Criminals use privacy protection that is not illegal too.
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Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?
He was sabotaged by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said that the nomination process was rigged by the DNC. Absolute corruption and the world would absolutely be a different place. But his support of ratcheting up the Ukraine war disappointed profoundly. That’s not the Bernie I would have voted for.