100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#451

Post by moistrobot » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

histriosum wrote: post #420

moistrobot wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, as long as the reasons the banks have are valid. The problem is that that decision is made by people. Standards of conduct are not universal. What if political affiliation or COVID vaccination status affects your ability to transact with a bank, even though those things have nothing to do with buying or selling real estate

Even within crypto/defi, it's still people making the decisions. People wrote the algorithms. The only advantage I see there is that, in theory, you should be able to see what rules are encoded in that algorithm, so it's slightly more transparent in that sense. On the negative side, though, there's essentially no rule of law to prevent the people making the decisions in DeFi from doing things that are bad/illegal/inv…

> Even within crypto/defi, it's still people making the decisions. People wrote the algorithms. The only advantage I see there is that, in theory, you should be able to see what rules are encoded in that algorithm, so it's slightly more transparent in that sense.

Agreed. People still create the system, but they have zero to little sway in each individual transaction. So, the system can be biased, but with increased transparency, that should become apparent.

> On the negative side, though, there's essentially no rule of law to prevent the people making the decisions in DeFi from doing things that are bad/illegal/invalid.

Very true, there's a lot of scamming going on. It's still very bleeding edge and not ready for mainstream adoption.

> In the regulated finance world, these sorts of restrictions would be disallowed by the rule of law. You can sue them if they try to enforce those rules, and depending on your jurisdiction, you may win and indeed win damages. What's the equivalent in DeFi? Who do I sue? What court do I ask for relief?

At least in the US, this is not the case for payment processors. Banks may be under more strict regulation. Visa/Mastercard can revoke the ability for anyone to process transactions on their network, even if the activity is completely legal. E.G. OnlyFans/Pornhub recently.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#452

Post by kiklion » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #365

moffkalast wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but we all place an awful lot of trust giving vendors essentially all credit card details possible AND where we live so that they're capable of skimming a self defined sum off by themselves. It's like an inherently insane system. We're supposed to be the one wiring the cash, not the vendor themselves with our data.

I find it insulting how we are at the mercy of subscription services charging us for cancelled memberships. How come our bank won't give us a dashboard with all of our monthly charges and cancel them at will?

Because your contract here is with the subscription service, not the bank.

Just as you can’t cancel your brothers subscriptions, the subscription service has no reason to accept a cancellation request from your bank.

Even if the service was no longer able to charge your card, you would still owe the money. The debt you incurred monthly is separate from your choice of how to pay that debt.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#453

Post by rustmachine » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

gtsop wrote: post #57

Excuse me for the dismissive tone, but this looks a dog chasing his tail. Does anyone REALLY believe that "things don't work"™ because the systems put in place are flawed? No sir, the systems in place work flawlessly for those who put them there, enjoy the benefits of those systems and make damn sure these systems keep benefiting them no matter what. As long as one doesn't acknowledge this very simple fact, they have…

I dont know. I think you underestimate how difficult it is to make big organisations work well. As soon as any organisation grows large enough (say, a large municipality), it becomes an incredibly difficult task to run it perfectly. Everyone trying their best, but still people from office A have no idea what people in office B does, bosses make the wrong decisions because they dont have access to correct knowlegde and are overworked, employees stop taking responsibility because their bosses are overworked and the decicions making structures are opaque and feel futile.

None of this is evil or bad faith. Its simply very hard problems that are hard to solve individually. We try to organize or build systems to fix these things, but its a very hard problem.

I'm not denying that there are powerful people doing evil things to benefit themselves, and that this is huge part of why everything is bad. Im just saying we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that a lot of our troubles come down to our problems being extremely complex and human nature doesnt interact that great with that kind of complexity. Our biggest problem i think is not nefariouss badguys, but the immense scale of our issues and our inability to tackle them at the proper level.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#454

Post by ericls » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

I don't think it's a good idea to make more and more solutions to problems that we don't understand.

What about we spend more time to study the problems, to study us.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#455

Post by _alex_ » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

It's not a coincidence that a lot of cryptocurrency projects are started and maintained by relatively young and inexperienced programmers.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#456

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #316

maerF0x0 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all, and thusly would include "gay" marriage (all marriage is marriage if it's undefined)... We don't have a government definition of prayer or baptism, but for some reason we have have codified that one religious practice into our government? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Also why do they get varyingly get tax incentives or disincen…

Marriage is not a religious practice. Proof: non-religious people get married all the time.

[deleted]

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#457

Post by haxiomic » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #360

haxiomic wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are examples of good, helpful regulations There's some fairly obvious ones: we had a problem where a chemical we were using in many products (CFCs) was destroying a critical part of our atmosphere – ozone. CFCs were cheap, so in free market competition, companies were optimizing for short term success with the unaccounted for externality of increasing skin cancer rates in humans and other animals. Regulation i…

"Free market capitalism" does not mean there should be no laws whatsoever. It is a trivial realization that markets have to operate within their given environment, including laws. Nevertheless you can aim for as much freedom as possible. You can make it illegal to shoot people, without having to set prices for goods and labor in law. I don't think regulations is synonymous with basic laws in such discussion. And ther…

A more complicated challenge is climate change, which is like the CFC example taken to the extremes. Since every company uses energy the responsibility is spread among everyone. However, every group, from countries to companies stands to lose competitively from using more expensive but less damaging sources of energy – the market pressures drive towards companies that take advantage of externalities like this

So a solution could be global regulation, where we all unilaterally agree to transition to better energy sources, however this has massive resistance and is the battle of our time

This sort of regulation is certainly more subtle than don't steal or shoot people but ultimately leads to a system that's better for all the players

More immediately and on the nose, in the UK companies have been increasingly dumping waste in our rivers since a relaxation of rules after leaving the EU regulations https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/09/the-raw-sewage-...

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#458

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

jspaetzel wrote: post #306

All of this is just pessimistic complaining. Flip this and be optimistic and you'll find life isn't all that bad. Think about the last hundred years... * Rich people are still rich and poor people have access to more food, medicine, and opportunity then any time in human history. * Families have and always should lookout for themselves first. That's the way things work and should work. * Society is able to support mo…

>> * Rich people are still rich and poor people have access to more food, medicine, and opportunity then any time in human history.

Back in the day slaves had to transport ice from mountains so that the king could have his chilled wine every evening, whereas today most people in the West have fridges at home.

This does not mean that those who have fridges should just put aside their feelings of malaise and adopt an optimistic outlook, because at the end of the day that malaise is a result of one's wealth and power relative to others who occupy the same time and space.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#459

Post by lisper » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

thurn wrote: post #214

what_is_orcas wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And BTW, the person making that argument before the Supreme Court yesterday was a woman, and one of the justices who is going to vote to eviscerate Roe is a woman, so this is not just the patriarchy at work. That conclusion doesn't necessarily follow the supporting statements, though I agree with your overall sentiment.

(also the person, Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, does not to my knowledge identify as a woman)

My mistake apparently. I remember reading yesterday amongst all the coverage that the person arguing for Mississippi was a woman, but now I can't find that story. (Maybe it was retracted because it wasn't true.) I'd edit my comment but the deadline has passed.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#460

Post by suriyaG » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #385

k__ wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I questioned basic assumptions, my life got better. Not suddendly, but in the long run.

Interesting, I just got more depressed every time.

I like to think of it as a dark tunnel with light at the end. Helps me bear with the depression. But somedays it just feels imposssible to see the light, I gotta agree.