petestream

None of these are a reason to not to also have a different number that you can publish publicly without giving someone your phone number. You can have your phone number for everyone in your phone book and a one way derived or random number for everyone else.

> When I first reach out to someone on Signal I know the person I'm reaching out to is the owner of the identifier I used unless their phone carrier is actively compromised when I exchange the first message.

Compromising is in this case rather common in sim swapping and spoofing (you can barely even call it spoofing). Phone numbers are not useful as some sort of continued point of trust. And I doubt Signal uses it like that under the hood.

> What more do people want?

Before you complain about other people maybe you should give other people the courtesy of reading what they wrote first. I have already said what I want, a public id I can publish on for example GitHub without the implications of publishing a phone number. Implications which anyone with a relevant opinion should already understand.

You sound like people defending PGP when everyone knew there were major downsides and usability issues. How can keeping phone numbers as the only option be more important than everyone being able to publish "Signal:39475638" on someplace like GitHub? Is the phone numbers part of the encryption somehow and you absolutely can't use some other number even in addition to it? Because I refuse to believe you don't understand the downsides of phone numbers and I know you understand the protocol is good enough were it is relevant. So surely then there has to be some technical limitation because what other legitimate reason is there?

I've learned the hard, or at least slow, way that this discussion is mostly futile. All I can say is that a large part of the world doesn't use phone numbers like that anymore. One of the major benefits of messaging services is that they aren't tied to a country, carrier, area, address, personal identity or even your phone. It doesn't end up in random databases of shopping websites or advertising networks. You can share it with someone you briefly met, someone unknown or even have someone else share it for you.

I've found, and I think more than me have, that the overlap between having an immediate need for security and wanting to share you phone number is surprisingly small. And even just a subset of those people are on Signal.

It's just never been very useful for me when other services are.

As far as I know one of the arguments for defunding the police is that the police is used as a way for those with the ability to change things to externalize the consequences of their actions.

When for example a lack of housing leads to an increase in crime a well funded police prevents those who could increase housing from being affected by the crime and they will therefor not increase housing. Especially as they get many benefits from poverty like cheap labour, a decrease in competition and larger premiums on attractive real estate.

So yes I would say they are thinking about the second-order effects. At some point I might read some of Thomas Sowell's writings but from what I've seen so far he honestly seems more of a theologist than a scientist to me.

> Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

They aren't, that's the point. Countries like China, Japan and South Korea are very good at pulling everyone in the same direction by following rules, having hierarchies, exchanging favors, working long hours, handing out punishments and whatnot. Far better than any western country could because we aren't at that point in time (and maybe Japan isn't now either). What they end up lacking is things like creativity. The problem is that western countries are also increasingly lacking opportunities to exercise creativity. There is few ways these days to in good faith drop out of school and crash on someones couch to do something else you rather want. Which has to some extent been the foundation of new industries.

It's more like the endgame.

1. Western companies moves production of components to China. 2. Chinese companies becomes good enough to produce their own products. 3. Western companies starts rebranding Chinese products. 4. Chinese companies buy western companies. 5. Chinese companies open factories in western countries.

Manufacturing isn't industry in itself and the growth of industry is orders of magnitude more in China. Most people just have no idea how supply chains work or how many R&D centers are opening up elsewhere. Many western countries are no longer great industrial economies but still far from real knowledge economies. Western countries don't really have the infrastructure, housing or education necessary and increasingly not alternative ways of competing either like creativity, influence or equality.

There is a documentary called "American Factory". It isn't the best but it is something.

Most of the inherent cost of a startup is salaries (offices usually second). Most of salaries goes for paying for housing (with market rate and education usually being the other major costs).

Say you have two startup environment. One where it is affordable with housing, education and most people could try to start a startup and another where those things are expensive and few can. Which one requires more capital and which one is more successful?

Investments are something you get when attractive companies are being created. Not something that creates attractive companies in itself. Plenty of countries have plenty of rich people but most don't stand out in terms of successful startups.

I would say it is true but more the entire environment. ~15 years ago in Sweden it was relatively easy to become middle class. It was for its time accessible and affordable to have things like education, housing and a family. At the same time it was relatively hard to become upper-middle class because of progressive income taxes, career paths and overall competition. That meant there were a relatively large number of people capable of starting and joining startups with low opportunity cost of doing so. Which also meant there were more startups who were interested in building something that is viable long-term rather than to cash out quickly.

(This isn't really true anymore but that is a different story)