However, if you're sitting comfortably in a Western country that runs free and fair elections? This is your "only you can prevent forest fires" moment. It's part of your freedom that you have the responsibility to participate in keeping the fraudulent and incompetent out of your democracy. This includes not letting yourself get seduced by populists or youtubers with weird economic theories. And also not pretending that collapse is imminent simply because oil prices have gone up.
(It's also not clear that actual loss was a big problem of Indian demonetization, just the inconvenience of the exchange process)
As a person who lived through the Zimbabwe crash, this right here was the problem. People voted to throw out the tyrant and he "found the votes he needed." This economy is reeling from all the money that the previous administration printed (which was precisely what started the snowball in Zimbabwe).
What is lost to the crypto crowd is that sometimes "what is good for me" is not always "what is good for us." Voting yourself more money is very good way to contribute to a collapse (as Charles Munger points out[1]). This seems lost to the generally active votebase, too.
It absolutely halted growth and immediately led to a much lower growth level from which India has not recovered, and possibly never will, at least under the current government.
And with high inflation (even pre pandemic) and a huge young population, the destruction of growth was an absolute disaster for India which absolutely needs to cash in on its youth right now before they all grow old and need to be financially supported themselves.
I'm not sure it was actually a net-negative for the long term growth of the Indian economy, as the resulting lack of trust in physical cash accelerated the digitalization of Indian money and faster adoption of e-payments with Rupay and UPI, which should improve economic growth.
My understanding was that everyone could wait in line to exchange their 500/1000 rupee notes for 100 or 2000 notes. The lines were long and the banks were frequently out of money to exchange from, but I thought they could also deposit it to their bank if they had one (letting the bank deal with the demonetized notes).
I know there are also a lot of unbanked in India, but presumably the period for exchanging demonetized notes was long enough to allow them to exchange any cash savings they had.. was this not the case?
4% of the world population, and most of this site's users, live in the USA, where free and fair elections, along with human rights, are being turned down this year.
This is precisely the sort of hyperbole OP is describing.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1107648753/supreme-court-nort...
However, this is not likely to affect the value of the dollar in the medium term.
"Are being" versus "at risk of."
> this is not likely to affect the value of the dollar in the medium term
True. And to the extent it would, crypto is a terrible hedge. (It's a risk asset.)
There is a real problem. It is far from foregone.
Treating hypotheticals as actuals, particularly with risks, shortens one's time horizons and raises one's risk tolerance. It's why people who believe these tales of woe and peril, which occur pretty much every generation in every society, tend to gamble on things like crypto versus investing for the long term.
> where free and fair elections, along with human rights, are being turned down this year
Pure, uncut, refined hysterical hyperbolic nonsense
Republicans ran in elections on "stack the supreme court with people who will enact our values".
Republicans ran in elections on "our values are ban abortions".
Republicans win election.
Republicans winning an election, stacking the court with their people, having them do exactly what they promised to do and enacting their campaign promises is democracy in action, not the suspension of democracy.
If you dont want it, everyone needs to vote for what they do want.
Explain how the popular vote not mattering for president is free and fair?
Why are you choosing only one minority to care about? State citizens of Wyoming? Why not any other minority? Why not minority religions, colors of skin, political views, gender identity, sexuality, disabilities, mental health conditions? What makes not caring about these minorities fair?
Why is Wyoming even a state? Have you read up on the politics of how we got to 50 states? Especially the civil war and post civil war time period? How is that fair?
How is DC not having a voice fair? How is Puerto Rico, Guam, and the other territories not having any sort of proper voice fair?
> There are obvious reasons why you don’t want sparsely-populated stretches of contiguous territory to feel disenfranchised on account of their smaller population.
You and others can’t keep saying this stuff as if it’s true by default just because we are brainwashed into this as kids in school and in every day life. Again I ask. Why is that a worry for minority populations but not any of the variety of other minority populations I listed before?
If you do feel that populations like lgbtq, different minority skin colors, different mental health conditions, disabilities, also shouldn’t feel dosenfranchised, then how come that’s exactly what’s happening with some of these populations with the current system of giving a ton of power to rural low population conservatives? Like lgbtq, some minorites, etc. It’s contradictory logic.
I wonder what exactly would happen if the feelings of these rural people are felt to be disenfranchised. What are the obvious reasons you assert? Why are those reasons better than myself and many others feeling disenfranchised with the current senate and electoral college system who aren’t in rural places?
Put another way:
The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and Electoral College in:
1992 1996 2008 2012 2020
The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and the Republican candidate won the Electoral College in:
2000 2016
The Republican candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College in:
2004
E.g. if popular vote was what mattered, more Republicans in California would bother voting.
So you can’t really claim “Democrats would win the popular vote elections”
That said, I'm not opposed to eliminating EC. I think both EC and popular vote have their pluses and minuses. But then, I'm not an American, so...
That isnt about fairness of the elections, that is fairness of the system of representational democracy implemented.
Democracy for me, not for thee.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2018/09/11/many-democrats-...
Democracy for me, not for thee.
In their study of voter confidence in national elections 2000 through 2012, Michael Sances and Charles Stewart found that while most supporters of both the winner and loser of an election are very confident in that their own vote was counted correctly, the confidence of those on the losing side slightly decreases. Moreover, the confidence of those on the winning side increases significantly from its pre-election level.
Touché, the "Russians forced deplorables to vote for Trump" is another mass delusion.
Pretty much the only good thing you can say about Hillary is that she didn't lead a mass of cannon fodder democrats, and a select group of conspirators to assassinate her own VP.
Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?
Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties. Of the remaining places, a voter can choose between either of only two parties. If neither represent them, then they have no one to vote for. This situation is not “free” in the true sense of the word. You do not have a free vote, and in most places your vote is meaningless.
Worse still is the fact that one of your political parties openly attempted to overthrow the result of the election in order to stay in power, and the other party has not brought the full force of the law to bare for fear of speaking civil unrest.
It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in, nor of its inherent weakness due to the rather antiquated voting system it uses.
Stacking a court goes against the separation of power that the three estates were supposed to uphold. No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom.
America is sailing very close to the wind and Americans should not be complacent about the risks they face
Tho their optimism point is to be happy with what you have and calm down and so on. As if the way we have our current rights was gotten by calming down.
Sure, that's fair, I'll even agree that the tone of many of these pieces is hyperbolic. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that things can't go bad, because that's a sure fire way to ensure they eventually do go bad.
As if America doesn’t have so many people paycheck to paycheck, in poverty, etc. and that’s just America
You are aware that the competition is for the most electoral college seats. I am fairly certain that the Democrats were aware of this for the election as well. Yet armed with this knowledege they still lost to the worst run campaign in a century fronted by an actual clown.
> Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?
I mean, the people elected to office litterally promised to gerrymander. If the people elect someone who brings in proportional representation will you have a problem with that?
> Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties.
Hang on, those "safe" districts are "safe" because an overwhelming majority of people vote for the party that wins... That is democracy! Are you arguing for or against democracy?
> No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom
Litteral campaign promise, and people voted for it in numbers, it is the will of the people.
> It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in
The problem is democracy itself. People are voting for shitty hacky demi-gods selling them a used car that runs on snake oil.
Every side of every agenda has become infected with this horrible disease, but what is happening is the logical conclusion of what happens when you combine democracy with an erosion of education. It didnt start this year or with trump etc. It has been happening for decades.
The population is now so poorly equiped to navigate the most basic of tasks that a foreign power can swing an election by spending $100,000 on some facebook ads.
If one goes back and listens to Trump speeches from the 2016 race he actually sounded a lot like a bonkers version of Bernie Sanders in terms of the way he tried to appeal to the economic distress of many potential voters. If there was a more representative voting system – such as that in Germany – you might end up with policies that Americans actually want by having multiple parties that can represent all Americans.
A politician is only as good as your ability to fire them. You can't fire yours very easily.
And if you think democracy is the problem, why not take a look at the difference between two oil-rich nations, Norway and Libya, or two neighbours, North and South Korea.
What changed this year? The most commone argument for the election not being free and fair here is "electoral college vs popular vote". Some have even backed up the very point by showing that this situation has been persistent for the last 20 years, so ... what changed this year? Did they add electoral college votes to red states or something?
Free and fair elections - personally I think of elections not being free and fair someone standing next to you as you vote saying vote for vlad or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin. As far as I am aware none of that is happening.
Its pretty bad faith to say Republicans claiming electoral fraud is the Big Lie but when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence and vice versa. Simultaneously holding the belief that the elctions are Not Free and Fair while claiming that they are indeed Free and Fair depending upon which party is claiming it is rank hypocracy at best.
> …not being free and fair…vote for vlad…or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin…
You gave an extremely specific coercive tactic and basic corruption. How does it follow if neither happening, then, what, things are fine?
This is reminiscent of the neoliberal moderate to conservative status-quo-seeking intellectual and incredibly lazy common talking point. A point echoed by Bill Maher to Jordan Peterson to Bill Gates. “Things aren’t so bad. So be okay with that.” The classic Stephen Pinker elitist “optimism”. So a point made since forever.
> Its pretty bad faith…when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence…
If Dems say they are ‘Free and Fair’ with anything, they are liars, as usual. I am going much farther than you in my denigration of the Dems. What’s the point of this paragraph being written to me?
your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system and ignores the many non-hyperbolic, very real and very rational concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.
the dems want to murder babies
Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable? It is a concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.
> your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system
Actually the system is functioning shockingly well in the face of a rabid population hooked on fox/cnn talking heads then voting in bad actors promising to be bad actors.
For some absolutely baffling reason the will of the people at this point in time is to elect batshit crazy representitives of all stripes. The best spent dollar of the billion or so spent on a presidential election cycle would be to try and figure out why that is and what you can do to get people to vote in their self interest and not against.
> Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable?
obviously that is hyperbolic, irrational, and unreasonable.
assuming that you’re referring to abortion—those are not babies and it is absurdly hyperbolic to imply that an entire segment (81,268,924 people voted Dem in 2020) that more than 81 Million people want to murder babies. Obviously you can see how ridiculously hyperbolic and irrational your statement is.
as for the rest of your comment, it would appear like you agree that we have anything but a perfectly functioning system, even if you chose to ignore the larger obvious systemic problems which have been repeatedly and reasonably addressed by countless rational citizens.
so, with that said, even tho it’s clear that you are not engaging at all in good faith, and it would seem you are indeed attempting to paint entire massive segments of our citizens and their absolutely legitimate concerns as if they are all somehow unreasonable—your gp post still assumes a perfectly functioning system, and i believe a very convincing and strong argument can (and has repeatedly) been made that this is not currently the case.
I concur with the sibling comment. It’s hard to respond to this or my last comment because of how it appears your comments are made in bad faith.
The overview & illustrative scenario of the R plan to implement minority rule. [0]
The SCOTUS conservative group has already indicated that this is next.
This is very far under the radar and not even close to hyperbole. Kind of like COVIT-19 in Dec-2019/Jan-2020 - the only people saying this was serious were treated like hyperbolic cranks. Same in Hungary before Orban took over - democracy is already dead there.
[0] https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-election/?utm_source=...
Does HN publish this statistic? My guess is that >50% of users/traffic to this site is outside of the USA
The currency they held didn't lost it's value. It was just wholly lost. But the lost currency kept it's value.
Enslaved to work because of scams, such a dream world.
The argument that the crypto people can make (and I am still one) is that over a lifetime I feel I am certain to lose ~40% of my cash to government inflation (possibly more), people who are incompetent will get automatic handouts every so often to stay in charge & vast sums will go to fighting wars in places I don't want to fight wars.
I'd rather take a system where there is a 10% chance to lose everything and people can only create money according to pre-agreed rules. No stealth taxes, I want to know who is paying and how much. If that involves concentrating the risk it is worth it. Depending on how much you lost you might still come out ahead in such a world.
I'd be perfectly eager to take that side of the debate if you want to argue about it, but that isn't really what the topic was in this thread. I was observing that subjecting yourself to a voluntary wealth tax could reasonably be a worse option than taking a risk of losing everything in one ugly crash.
That isn't a crazy position. It does require a tolerance of risk.
> Without printing money we need to raise government revenues by close to 50% which is a rather drastic increase in taxation.
People are already paying that tax though - the wealth that the government is moving around had to come from somewhere. We know the government isn't creating it otherwise there'd be no need for the money printing to happen. We just aren't sure who specifically is paying how much.
So it would be a drastic increase in observed tax, but probably not a big change to most people's lifestyles.
There's no system which benefits from frauds and scams.
Governments and banks can fall, or change their monetary policies, at any time - and your currency today can literally have no value tomorrow (recent examples include Indian demonetization, Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe) How do you know it won't happen to your country?
The irony is rich in this one.