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France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

nytimes.com

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Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

#81

Post by walterbell »

rchaud wrote: post #76
walterbell wrote: post #13

Secondary purpose: CBDC / digital euro training wheels for policy-gated currencies with No Buy lists.

Isn't this how EBT vouchers already work in the US?

Hopefully France does not view all French youth as the USA views welfare and other voucher recipients.

In theory, democratic capitalist society offers non-zero paths to upward mobility, for welfare recipients to re-enter normal society and earn national currency for market use.

As WeChat and social credit systems have shown in China, widespread adoption of digital payments tends to reduce acceptance of less-restrictive payment alternatives.

Time will tell if CBDC aspirants can displace incumbent currencies, or if CBDC users can have the same upward mobility hope as EBT voucher users.

Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

#82

Post by walterbell »

vkou wrote: post #39
walterbell wrote: post #13

Secondary purpose: CBDC / digital euro training wheels for policy-gated currencies with No Buy lists.

That's a silly thing to worry about. Businesses would scream bloody murder if their industry ended up on a no-buy list, and given a choice, governments kowtow to their interests. Cui bono? Governments also have far more effective, simpler-to-implement instruments for stopping the operation of undesirable businesses. Tariffs, taxes, and bans.

Some businesses would win, some would lose. Always good to be (friends of the) king. The implications will motivate closed-door debates and public prototypes for data collection. But it will be hard to resist the lure of population-wide transaction data for fintech and social credit analytics married to digital/healthpass identity.

Previously discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709

Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

#84

Post by markus_zhang »

rchaud wrote: post #75
markus_zhang wrote: post #54

This reminds me of a scene from "Yes Minister": > (Sir Humphrey to Bernard)..subsidy..Is for art, for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don't want but ought to have! If they want something they'll pay for it themselves! No, we subsidies education, enlightenment, spiritual uplift. Not the vulgar pastimes of ordinary people.

I thought the same! A funny exchange on the merits of subsidizing highbrow entertainment like opera vs lowbrow 'mainstream' industries like football and films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNw0P5ZMbA

Yeah exactly. And the sex education part is very funny.

Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

#87

Post by mcguire »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #67
mcguire wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to admit that Great Britain has a long-term reputation for boiling food to death. And their sporting culture seems even more Leroy Jenkins than that in the US.

>You have to admit that Great Britain has a long-term reputation for boiling food to death. Not for a long time. >And their sporting culture seems even more Leroy Jenkins than that in the US. Currently 6th in the medal table for the Olympics.

With or without laser pointers? :-)

Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

#88

Post by vkou »

walterbell wrote: post #82
vkou wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a silly thing to worry about. Businesses would scream bloody murder if their industry ended up on a no-buy list, and given a choice, governments kowtow to their interests. Cui bono? Governments also have far more effective, simpler-to-implement instruments for stopping the operation of undesirable businesses. Tariffs, taxes, and bans.

Some businesses would win, some would lose. Always good to be (friends of the) king. The implications will motivate closed-door debates and public prototypes for data collection. But it will be hard to resist the lure of population-wide transaction data for fintech and social credit analytics married to digital/healthpass identity. Previously discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709

As I said, this can all be accomplished through tariffs, taxes, or straight up bans, without engaging some Rube Goldberg contraption of playing whack-a-mole with payment systems and processors.

A sovereign nation resorting to this to ban an undesirable category of business from its borders is swatting flies with a hockeystick. Possible? Yes. But why would it bother, when there are purpose-made flyswatters.

If the government wants to shut your business down, it can trivially do so, by revoking your business license, or banning your category of business outright. It doesn't need to get into this nonsense with payment processing - which has a number of workarounds.

Re: France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books

#90

Post by walterbell »

vkou wrote: post #88
walterbell wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some businesses would win, some would lose. Always good to be (friends of the) king. The implications will motivate closed-door debates and public prototypes for data collection. But it will be hard to resist the lure of population-wide transaction data for fintech and social credit analytics married to digital/healthpass identity. Previously discussed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27805709

As I said, this can all be accomplished through tariffs, taxes, or straight up bans, without engaging some Rube Goldberg contraption of playing whack-a-mole with payment systems and processors. A sovereign nation resorting to this to ban an undesirable category of business from its borders is swatting flies with a hockeystick. Possible? Yes. But why would it bother, when there are purpose-made flyswatters. If the gov…

As stated publicly by the BIS (central bank that governs all other central banks) in the top comment of the referenced thread, the difference with CBDCs would be granularity of targeting, in real-time, at the transactional level.

As to the question of "why bother", one stated reason for CBDCs is to enable nation-state competition with Facebook's Diem cryptocurrency, whose stated reason for existence is to compete with Bitcoin, whose observed reason for existence is to make a small subset of humans more wealthy.

There are also incentives for non-government entities, https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-li...

> First, in January, PayPal blocked a Christian crowdfunding site that raised money to bring demonstrators to Washington on January 6. Then, in February, PayPal announced that it was working with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to ban users from the platform. This week the company announced it is partnering with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate and shut down accounts that the ADL considers too extreme.

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