It is not unrealistic either. When I was in China, I dined at restaurants that would only accept WeChat Pay as payment. Only because I was a foreigner was I able to get a pass to pay in fiat.

The vendors are the oligarchs in this scenario.

> It is not unrealistic either. When I was in China, I dined at restaurants that would only accept WeChat Pay as payment. Only because I was a foreigner was I able to get a pass to pay in fiat.

WeChat is not the result of a private endeavor, it is state-sponsored and controlled. It would be way worse for the government to manage Libra than for Facebook to do it. Gov has USD. This just plain competes. Competition makes all parties work harder on terms for usage. Its strictly positive.

Wrong, they won't be. See my example above, just wait until everyday merchants only accept this as payment.

>WeChat is not the result of a private endeavor, it is state-sponsored and controlled. It would be way worse for the government to manage Libra than for Facebook to do it. Gov has USD.

Fiat currency is controlled by the Chinese government too. You completely missed the point. The Chinese government does not force businesses in China to only accept WeChat Pay, they choose to do so.

1) Tell people to vote with their feet/wallet

2) Ridicule them for spending more

The dark side of the network effect is that as the network grows it becomes harder and harder to be a conscientious objector. Also abstaining isn't really participating. And by not participating you get no say in the narrative.

When you have a coherent thought on the subject, let us know.

OK, that was a good one. Literally cut through my anger and indignation and made me laugh out loud.

Respect man.

This is a tired, old, fallacious comparison.

Facebook is us: 2.4B users willingly give Zuck the power to make potentially high impact decisions like this.

"I live in and probably even vote in a country that believes I am sovereign, which thus derives its right to wield authority."

and:

"I signed up for Libra so I could more easily use Facebook, which I only joined to keep up with my kids, and thus I accept Mark Zuckerberg's authority over monetary policy, even considering I have no input on it whatsoever"

I live and vote in US and as soon as the majority of US residents decide to vote contrary to my wishes I have to accept the authority of whoever they elect.

Frankly I don’t see much difference.

- run for office

- build a career in monetary policy

- join a campaign

- start a non profit advocacy group

- lobby my representatives

These only have any effect (if they're even possible otherwise) because we're a democracy with elections. Can I personally change the supply of USD? No, but that's because that kind of change affects the entire world, and there should be a serious process around it. But my point is that there _is_ a process, rooted in (if imperfectly) the fundamental liberal democratic belief in humankind's right to self- governance.

Facebook has no such guarantees. It's a serious threat to those principles. There's a huge difference.

1. Build a competing product (social network, cryptocurrency, etc).

2. Build a career at FB, to influence from within.

3. Join/start a campaign against/for Facebook to influence its (potential) users.

4. Lobby your representatives to change whatever you don’t like about FB.

Maybe you have a point but so far it’s not very clear :)

===

Everything on your list is only possible because we live in a free society with representation and authority over corporations. If we start ceding more and more core governing functions to corporations, how long do you think it will be legal to build a competing product? How long do you think you'll be able to lobby your representatives? How long do you think you'll have the right to start a PR campaign against Facebook? Look at your favorite authoritarian regimes for the answers.

But if Libra starts challenging the USD even just in the US, let alone in the rest of the world, suddenly there are two dials to turn: one for USD and one for Libra. As more value is held in Libra rather than USD, US monetary policy becomes less effective.

And this is just the money supply issue. Others have raised all kinds of issues about fiduciary duties, privacy, regulation, confiscation, security, and so on. While I wouldn't at all argue that the US approach to these issues is perfect (far from it), there are at least some laws and so on. Nothing would prevent Facebook from freezing your wallet, or freezing your account, or banning you from their platform, or tracking metadata on your purchases. I would also assume (perhaps incorrectly?) that law enforcement doesn't have to jump through the same hoops to get your payment/account information, so there's potentially more loss of rights there.

This is exactly what Facebook's vision for Libra is: an alternative currency to the USD shared internationally and controlled by their consortium. They say it will be pinned to the USD and other stable currencies, but there's nothing holding them to this (and in fact most cryptocurrencies play with this). I deeply believe allowing this to happen would be a grave mistake for all of us.

But I don't think that that means representative democracy in the US is a sham, equivalent to the level of representation I have at Facebook (again, zero). That would be a strawman.