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A comment on Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned. Parent comment

Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by Jensson on Saturday November 06, 2021 @04:38AM (#29128449)
I don't see how banning mining will have any negative consequences at all. What benefits would a country get from having a lot of miners? A few people would get rich at the cost of everyone else getting less electricity or higher prices. The miners relocate, and you can enjoy using bitcoin without any of the local externalities of having miners around.
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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by roenxi on Saturday November 06, 2021 @08:26AM (#29129635)
That is an argument against having most non-service industries. Indeed, a similar argument would have been used for off-shoring huge amounts of manufacturing from Western societies to China (why put up with the pollution externalities when the Chinese could pick those up for us?).

The upshot is lots of the know-how now lives in China, the wealth is being generated in Shenzhen instead of the west. The argument was correct, but in hindsight it does look like the positive externalities were greater than the negative. China's growth has been much more impressive than the EUs.

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