Who said anything about a primary medium of exchange? Should dollars be disallowed as well? How about bitcoin? Starbucks gift cards?
It's not going to be a very amicable discussion.
Doesn't mean its (always) sensible to accuse people you disagree with of course.
2. No. I don't think its available yet. Its not really meant to be a speculative investment since it's backed by a basket of stable currencies. Although it may be like a closed-end mutual fund where the investment could trade below or above net asset value. But I wouldn't recommend speculating on some price increase even if it takes off
3. No, I'm just interest in cryptocurrencies read the white paper [0]. I suggest you do the same. It's pretty interesting. I do have a fair bit of free time though
Their blockchain neither has block nor chain as I seem to recall. If the company is already lying in their whitepaper, what exactly are you expecting from the real thing?
Monetary policy is entirely about currency control for inflation, etc.
There are also small countries that are pegged to the US dollar.
When you are a small-potatoes nation-state, and have a non-diversified or small economy, it is a great idea to use a larger, better established, currency.
* It's more stable * Trade is easier * More than 3 banks accept your currency!
The incentives of the nations controlling the euro are well known to Montenegro, and they trust that those countries will keep the euro stable.
Libra is a whole different ball of wax. It's not just a currency. When you use it, you are tied to Facebook's terms of services, Facebook's desires, and Facebook's fate. Your individual citizens could be locked out of the economy for reasons that have nothing to do with your nation's laws.
If Google and Apple wouldn't agree to use Facebook-dollars for all their transactions, I don't see why a company would agree to.
There's a big difference between having a currency pegged to another, and not actually having a currency at all, and using physical foreign currency for everyday transactions.
Pegs can be broken and may be hedged with FX futures.
The second situation is a much stronger existential commitment, which makes it more reliable and predictable. Reinventing a new national currency is a high barrier, which cannot be hedged directly in the FX markets (although sovereign CDS might be close enough).
Not sure what you’re trying to get at.
My reading of ECB publications makes me believe that they don’t want to block these.
Ultimately, governments are mandated to protect the wealth of their electorate. A system in which they have no recourse, even indirectly, against volatility (the preservation of wealth) and stability (the preservation of payment services) is one that they must supersede.
SWIFT was forced to block transfers to Iran. Libra is like SWIFT, but with more control, as they also act as the RTGS (real-time gross settlement system).
Imagine if your country’s currency stopped working because it was added to sanctions lists. Or got increased fees.
A private company is ultimately subdued by the government of the countries it is incorporated in. They apply laws and executive orders against them. This kind of power asymmetry between countries is dangerous.
People may decide against that.
I don't think there is much chance of Brexit this year, and a pretty good chance that it will never happen.
Mind you - always a chance that we'll simply get thrown out for being incompetent at running a country...
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003570 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003591 for more.
HN mods are not here for justice, they'll never admit they are wrong.
Is the polite and free discussion of ideas not justice?
You go after Jewish people as a class, rather than specific institutions controlled by Jewish people, which I think is bad faith argumentation. If you criticized Israel, for example, or some specific set of banks I would be ok with that.
I admit I would not have the same reaction against another person criticizing “white people” as a class. But I believe I am justified in that because whiteness is not an ethnicity, it is the practice of denial of ethnicity. That makes it a specific institution not a group of people.
I am vulnerable also to accusations of hypocrisy because I sometimes criticize men as a class. Maybe that should be out of bounds, (probably is out of bounds on HN) as men are clearly a real biological group and not a concept.
However, masculinity (as opposed to manhood) is not a biological reality, it is a system of identity constructed to hold childbearing women in a sex class (i.e. submitting to control of their bodies). So to the extent that men identify with masculinity as opposed to just having a penis and some hormones, I would say we are also open to being attacked as a class, and lose our protected status as an actual “tribe” of people.
Although as a side note, I do suspect that when masculinity was originally invented it was quite possibly an identity constructed for the protection of men as an actual ethnographic class of underserved people. Pregnancy does confer actual power and patriarchy I suspect was invented to counterbalance that. However I don’t believe it functions that way today.
I suppose you could argue that Jewishness has crossed that rubicon but I don’t see how you could credibly do without getting into holocaust denial which I would also put in the bad faith category.
Serious apologies to any Jewish people reading this who may feel by engaging these questions I am being blasé about the threat of antisemitism. I really don’t want to do that, but I also want to hold a hand out for people who are having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind the rules of liberal discourse.
> But I believe I am justified in that because whiteness is not an ethnicity, it is the practice of denial of ethnicity.
I fundamentally do not understand what that means. Surely I don't have a choice but to be white? What am I denying? It's true that whiteness is not an ethnicity, since Russians and white Americans are surely ethnically distinct - more so, I think, than white and Asian Americans or white and Asian Russians. But beyond that I can't make sense of your sentence. I wonder if it depends on a particular national interpretation of "white" that cannot be accessed by all people who might want to describe someone as "white". But it seems opaque to me.
Are you an anthroplogist?
I bet not.
Many white Americans have slavic blood just like russians.
Is whiteness a social construct or a genetic one?
Just to revisit my original comment you are referring to:
>Yeah it is very peculiar how the British elites was able to establish the Mandate for Palestine to give Jewish people their own state but haven't been able to establish something giving British people their own state even after it was explicitly requested.
I am referring to the state of Israel here, though I don't have a disagreement with Israel's existence nor with the Jewish people themselves in whole or in part, instead I am criticizing that the British elites do seem to have the ability to give a people their own state (as they did in the example of Israel here) however they are reluctant to extend that same work towards the British people. So here my discussion of Israel and Jewish people is not an objection to them in whole or part, but rather an example of what can be accomplished, so as to acknowledge but stave off some arguments that throw Brexit up as if it were somehow not possible. In hindsight, I see how the explanation I gave here would have more effectively prevented any interpretation of animosity, so thank you for making that thought clear.
>I admit I would not have the same reaction against another person criticizing “white people” as a class. But I believe I am justified in that because whiteness is not an ethnicity, it is the practice of denial of ethnicity. That makes it a specific institution not a group of people.
I think I agree about what whiteness is but for different reasons, mainly because the only concrete definition of "whiteness" that I can surmise from how "white people" are treated is "white people are the only unprotected class in law and are the only ethnic group of people ineligible for any race or ethnic protections or ethnic/racially based government programs, academic opportunities, or civil rights protections". Whiteness is imposed on to "white people" by society who say that they can not apply for any protection or benefit based on their white status while all other race or ethnic groups can.
>I am vulnerable also to accusations of hypocrisy because I sometimes criticize men as a class. Maybe that should be out of bounds, (probably is out of bounds on HN) as men are clearly a real biological group and not a concept.
>However, masculinity (as opposed to manhood) is not a biological reality, it is a system of identity constructed to hold childbearing women in a sex class (i.e. submitting to control of their bodies). So to the extent that men identify with masculinity as opposed to just having a penis and some hormones, I would say we are also open to being attacked as a class, and lose our protected status as an actual “tribe” of people.
I think you've brought this up as an example of talking about people in groups and how some groups can lose protected status even if membership in that group is determined biologically. While I agree that there are biological reasons that women and men sometimes need different accommodations in both private and public institutions, if some group is being declared unworthy of "protected status" then I am weary of what you mean by that.
>Although as a side note, I do suspect that when masculinity was originally invented it was quite possibly an identity constructed for the protection of men as an actual ethnographic class of underserved people. Pregnancy does confer actual power and patriarchy I suspect was invented to counterbalance that. However I don’t believe it functions that way today.
That's an interesting analysis, clearly a Marxian perspective in how you tally up what attributes give who power and how social institutions can be counterweights to that power. However if you historically look at the founding of major institutions the fundamental units are the families/communities counterbalancing the power of other families/communities, not sexes counterbalancing each other. Democrats vs Republicans, Labor Union vs Management, Army vs Army, State vs State, Religious institution vs Vice, Religious Institution vs State, Religious Institution vs rival Religious Institution, Academy vs Ignorance, Media viewpoint vs Media viewpoint, etc. etc. etc. The logistics to even support the idea of men and women wandering freely such as stable and safe states plus enough economic opportunity for men and women to wander around freely independently from the families and communities they grew up in is a fairly recent and I think still tenuous phenomenon.
>I suppose you could argue that Jewishness has crossed that rubicon but I don’t see how you could credibly do without getting into holocaust denial which I would also put in the bad faith category.
I don't think Jews should lose any "protected status", instead I am usually point out that Jews are showing us what is possible for a community to accomplish and other groups should be able to follow the same roadmap.
>Serious apologies to any Jewish people reading this who may feel by engaging these questions I am being blasé about the threat of antisemitism. I really don’t want to do that, but I also want to hold a hand out for people who are having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind the rules of liberal discourse.
Why do you feel you should apologize to the Jews for engaging in the free discourse of your ideas? Do you feel they may enact retribution on you? Do you feel the same about other groups like the men you discussed before?
They were never fully in on the EU as France and Germany are ( i'm Belgian).
So i'm not sure if a agree as much with your opinion as you want :)
it could have been a better, less irrational, EU partner (it was never a full member)
I think Monsieur Macron has put this onto the agenda when Libra was announced. I'm not disagreeing with the decision and have similar concerns as you, but I'm still uncertain whether the state should even have the ability to block these and other things in general. Most of all, I miss a British voice here (as, sadly, not very much longer an EU member), and see this as a preview for where things are going with France getting more weight as the UK is leaving.