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France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

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Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#751

Post by arcticbull »

Qasaur wrote: post #301
arcticbull wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, holding the same dollar will lead you to purchase more goods at a higher quality than before as the market develops and expands - a higher purchasing power. AKA, a risk-free return on your uninvested, idle, capital that nobody owes you. The poor tend not to have much savings, by definition, which means that all this win goes to the already wealthy. Your argument is simply that your dollars should be wo…

>The poor tend not to have much savings, by definition, which means that all this win goes to the already wealthy. This is not true - saving rates were higher in the past before irresponsible monetary policy took over after the erosion of the gold standard. >Your argument is simply that your dollars should be worth more later because you got your dollar first. This is exactly what happens in an inflationary monetary…

You've kinda dodged the core of my argument: why should your money be worth more later than it is today even though you're not doing anything with it? And further, if you think money should be backed by gold, why is it not sufficient for you to simply buy gold with your fiat as you earn it? I'm having trouble understanding why this fails to meet all your objectives.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#752

Post by dane-pgp »

denton-scratch wrote: post #706
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have tried to swing elections and broke electoral law in UK. How could anyone besides them prove effectiveness or ineffectiveness of this campaign? I don't think it's possible. At the very least, the side they supported won (Brexit) and they should not be trusted.

You may believe Faceache broke electoral law in the UK; but they have neither been charged nor convicted. So your belief would be false. Leave.UK was accused of violating electoral law. I believe the Electoral Commission has now dropped its investigation. Incidentally, to break UK law, you usually have to perform the violating act in the UK (we have a few laws that involve extraterritoriality, but they are far and fe…

> You may believe Faceache broke electoral law in the UK; but they have neither been charged nor convicted. So your belief would be false.

You are correct that they haven't (been charged with having) broken electoral law in the UK, but they have broken data protection laws in relation to the information which was then used by Cambridge Analytica:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/11/facebook-...

Whether that information was then used by Cambridge Analytica as part of a Brexit campaign is open to more questions.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#753

Post by javert »

mrb wrote: post #723
javert wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "monetary power" is "inherent to the sovereignty of nations" (quoting the article), they're also against bitcoin. I doubt the use of the words "private entity" was specifically intended to exclude decentralized currencies. It probably actually means "anyone who is not us."

No, read very carefully the way they worded the sentence. What is "inherent to the sovereignty of nations" is not "monetary power" but "no private entities having control of monetary power". They are not saying governments should have control of this power. They are just saying no private entities should have control.

I don't think you are right.

From the article:

> In a joint statement, the two governments affirmed that “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations”

I parse that as: monetary power is inherent to the sovereignty of nations; thus, no private entity can claim it.

It's like saying: "No dog should be allowed to eat chocolate, which is toxic to animals."

It would be helpful to have the actual original statement, but I wasn't able to find it very quickly and gave up.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#754

Post by IGotThroughIt »

twistiti wrote: post #503
IGotThroughIt wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeedy. My country has 7% inflation. And that calculation is done by the very state that is responsible for inflation so their word on this only means so much. Any other currency or store of value that solves this is more than welcome.

Would it be a solution for you to buy foreign currencies with lower inflation amount (e.g. EUR)?

A lot of wealthy people do that. It isn't as straight forward though. It would be nice to be able to do so on the internet and for smaller amounts.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#755

Post by dane-pgp »

downandout wrote: post #740
StreamBright wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are asking is impossible. How do you want me provide evidence? Fly back in time and stop facebook interfering? I can flip the question, why would politicians use this setup if it was not working?

The point is that Facebook ads, regardless of how precisely targeted they may (or may not) have been, did not sway the 2016 election, and I am not aware of any other election Facebook is even thought to have had any effect on. The whole “it’s Facebook’s fault” narrative was shaped by a liberal media desperate to explain why they were unsuccessful in influencing it themselves. Rather than accept the fact that they had…

Having lost the popular vote, but winning the presidency with a margin of 77,744 votes in specific locations, it is not hard to imagine that Trump's success could have been thanks to carefully targeted political ads.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-elect...

Of course it's impossible to say whether Trump would have won even if he hadn't spent any money on Facebook ads, but we're talking about a campaign that spent hundreds of millions of dollars in total. If this amount of money doesn't include enough to influence 78k people to go out and vote for a specific candidate, then we might as well give up on the very concept of advertising.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#756

Post by javert »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #669
javert wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not obvious what it means. In everyday English, it would be obvious, but regulators and politicians are not bound by that. "It's obvious" is rarely a good argument on this particular site. If it were obvious we wouldn't be talking about it.

"Private entity" is more of a legal term than anything else (than common english). That's is exactly why it's obvious, because it is used in an official document, which is not likely to use the common english definitions and use more legal ones.

Please stop calling me dumb. I'm not dumb. This is my second time asking.

I don't think it's being used in a legal sense in the statement quotes in this article. If it is, I'm not sure how "private entity" is defined in the EU, France, and Germany.

"Private entity" actually is clear in common English, but my experience is that governments tend to take words from common English and use them differently.

If you have specific legal experience with this term in a particular legal jurisdiction---and you very well might---it would be helpful to say so.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#757

Post by merb »

auslander wrote: post #727
surfsvammel wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no forced US intermediaries. What are you referring to?

"U.S. control over transactions within the EU. ..The transaction was automatically routed through the US, possibly because of the USD currency used in the transaction, which is how the United States was able to seize the funds.." [0] Also: "The U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) enforces U.S. economic sanctions programs ... and any person or entity physically located in the United States (including branches…

the whole european region (+ schengen) does not use swift at all (at least not since 2018)

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#758

Post by auslander »

merb wrote: post #757
auslander wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"U.S. control over transactions within the EU. ..The transaction was automatically routed through the US, possibly because of the USD currency used in the transaction, which is how the United States was able to seize the funds.." [0] Also: "The U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) enforces U.S. economic sanctions programs ... and any person or entity physically located in the United States (including branches…

the whole european region (+ schengen) does not use swift at all (at least not since 2018)

Yes, It was noted in this thread few times. I'm talking about all other transfers, not EU-EU. Even then, the wikipedia link shows that one EU-EU transaction which involved USD, was affected.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#759

Post by anon1m0us »

WhoBeI wrote: post #522
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

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…

I was hoping this would happen. It will probably become a EU thing now. The idea of a privately controlled currency needs to die quickly. Never been a fan of crypto currency in general but Bitcoin, and the like, are accepted because they are not centralized. Your Bitcoin won't change in value or disappear because your country and another get in a fight.

But it could if some folks on the bitcoin team fight with others. Bitcoin is still controlled by humans and thus, not a replacement for traditional fiat currencies.

If you want a currency to be spent, it can't increase in value. That's the kind of thing you hold onto -- a store of value.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#760

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bko wrote: post #265
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

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…

That's what they promise today, a cartel of private corporations accountable to no-one, and with a legal obligation to maximise profits.

They will break this promise to maximise profits, and there is sod-all you can do about it.

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