France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cryptocurrency-france-german/france-and-germany-agree-to-block-facebooks-libra-idUSKCN1VY1XU <comment><USER2> I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section:

Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to some foobar in the last century, which I'm sure everyone is aware of.

So if Facebook, 10x of Germany's population comes around the corner with a proposal akin to "Hey do you mind if we just skip the paperwork part and just control currency, while actually being a social media tech giant" there going to be up against every trick in the book. This is not hypocrite behavior because Germany allowed some fun regional currency project no one is aware of some time ago. This is much more protecting the idea of the German society.

And personally, as a German, I'm really glad about it. You remember the hundreds of cases of worked with a scummy developer on an app once, now I'm blocked out of my email and all my files stories? Now imagine that, but with _money_ and with a company who never even bothered to pretend it isn't evil - this is gonna be a no, thank you!

<comment><USER3> The strange part to me is just that there are already hundreds of crypto currencies available in Germany. When the government says that yes, these hundreds of currencies are fine, but Facebook can't create one, then it just seems like the policy is anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook.

<comment><USER4> It's legally tricky to be anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook, but I don't think it's morally tricky.

The entire idea of anti-trust (and frankly, the premise of most western democracies) is to prevent the over-concentration of power.

Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now, far more powerful than most nation states. I'm not sure that we as a society have ever dealt with a non-state actor this powerful before.

Germany's response of essentially "yeah no, we're not letting Facebook make money here," seems prudent to me.

<comment><USER5> _Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now, far more powerful than most nation states._

This is hyperbole at best. Facebook does not have an army, weapons, or literally anyone that would be willing to die or even be physically put out to defend it.

I'm no Facebook fan, but let's not let Facebook hysteria overrun these comments.

<comment><USER6> It is unrealistically limiting to think modern wars are fought only with armies. Most wars are quiet and fought with capital, thought, rhetoric, and policy. Armies only come into the picture if all else fails.

<comment><USER7> Can you point me to a 'modern war' without armies? I'm interested in what you actually think a war is?

<comment><USER8> Not op but will take a stab. The comment was in response to:

"This is hyperbole at best. Facebook does not have an army"

Op was pointing out that power != war with guns

"Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now"

The comment was how power could be achieved via other methods of warfare- including the ability to shape conversations.

Another word for this would be competition. He has a point.

<comment> denton-scratch Negative, Spock.

The ability to shape conversations or to compete is not the same as making war (or you are relying on an idiosyncratic definition of "war").

<comment><USER8> It seems we are splitting hairs here on the definition of "war" and missing the actual message. Since you brought it up again.

War (Noun) " \- a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism

      - a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end

      - a struggle to achieve a goal:

"

War (Verb): " \- to be in active or vigorous conflict

\- to carry on active hostility or contention

"

The point still stands. War is an isomorphism for competition, conflict and tension between parties. One could probably use something like category theory and prove it.

References:

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/war)

[https://www.dictionary.com/browse/war](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/war)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the > sovereignty of nations"

What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish.

It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer)

I suspect there's a lot more behind this statement than meets the eye:

Inflation, and the ability of the state to force it upon its citizenry by forbidding the use private money - has come to be viewed as inherent to the sovereignty of nations. The world's governments are now entering a new phase in which none can afford to hold the more valuable currency due to the damage caused to export business. Net importers like the US have been holdouts, but even it too will have to bow to reality.

This conflict means that, no matter how well intentioned, policy makers will be feel compelled to devalue their own currencies. It's a race to the bottom, but without a bottom. Alternatives, especially private alternatives readily available to citizens, will increasingly be viewed as the enemy.

<comment><USER10> We need more financial freedom in the west. Facebook is right to allow its users the ability to protect their assets with Libra - backed by a basket of currencies. I'm very excited about this idea; of course Governments are not going to be comfortable with something they can not control. Whey they go to the printing press to pay for their deficits I certainly want the ability to protect my assets with a stronger currency.

<comment><USER11> Not sure to be more comfortable to rely more on the interests of a private US company that has already been proven un-ethical several times than to trust an elected (so revokable) governement ;-)

But in Europe, we have more trust in our own governement and less in corporation than in the US, where it seem to be the opposite

<comment><USER10> I would rephrase this to say, in America we have less trust in government and more trust in the individual. The distinction is this: No one is forcing anyone to use Libra its your choice. : )

<comment><USER12> > No one is forcing anyone to use Libra its your choice.

Don't be naive.

\- In order to make a choice, you need to be properly informed. Now, most people won't have the time or interest to see what Libra is and what the consequences of widespread Libra adoption would be.

\- Facebook _can_ force a sector of their paying users (mainly advertisers) to use Libra.

\- Facebook also has a lot of influence, most people use at least one of Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp. Those apps can be used to advertise and push Libra.

\- Once Libra adoption reaches a critical point, you'd need to use it because you need to buy things.

\- You don't need to use it to suffer negative consequences due to a private foreign for-profit business controlling monetary policy.

<comment><USER13> > You don't need to use it to suffer negative consequences due to a private > foreign for-profit business controlling monetary policy.

And the track record of public, non-profit entities controlling monetary policy is ... great?

<comment><USER12> Nothing indicates that Facebook would have a better track record in controlling monetary policy (which is admittedly pretty hard), and at least central banks are under clear regulations and guidelines.

Furthermore, Libra would have incentive to move the policy towards further profit for the members, while central banks have incentives to stabilize the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best thing I've read on Libra: [https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/24/971554-facebook- bitcoin...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/24/971554-facebook-bitcoin- libra-crypto-bad/)

<comment><USER15> AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

<comment><USER16> Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?

<comment><USER17> Most banks will charge you extra for the _instant_ payment. It's pretty ridiculous.

<comment><USER18> You're a couple of decades behind the times as far as the EU is concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this action is a symptom of a much larger, and much more serious disease, namely the fall in trust for traditional fiat currencies like the euro and the dollar. Decades of irresponsible monetary policy and runaway inflation (CPI does not capture the whole picture, look at asset prices the past decade) since the abolishment of the gold standard has lead the general public to indirectly feel disenfranchised with the current monetary regime and I truly believe that we will see more of this kind of action in the future as fiat currencies continue to lose value and eventually collapse due to the extraordinary injection of money that most western central banks have been pursuing in the past couple of years.

Governments feel threatened as the power to levy the inflation tax is being eroded with the rise of cryptocurrency, and I think the next couple of years are going to be very interesting as more businesses adopt crypto as a means of payment. And I wholeheartedly support this development, because much of the inequality that we've seen in recent years and general social turmoil is a direct consequence of irresponsible monetary policy.

<comment><USER20> I think you're right about the general unrest but frustratingly we see snake oil bubble to the top.

A new gold standard with rent seekers won't save us from stagnant wage growth.

<comment><USER21> I've never heard anyone say anything nice about Libra. Most likely Libra with be DOA, regardless of this move.

I don't even know why so many people are wasting their time on this stuff. Does the German/French gov not have other more pressing issues?

No need to fantasize about the risks of private mega-corp currencies taking on the monetarists even before it has made any realistic challenge to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I dislike Facebook but I kind of feel sorry for them now because any ambitious thing that they'll attempt will probably be blocked by governments now.

Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though.

<comment><USER23> They probably should have started it without that huge buzz and in a couple of selected countries.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately cryptocurrencies are all about buzz, buzz is valuation and adoption. Such as crypto showman Justin Sun, he will seize on any oppotunity to get as much eyeballs as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They say: > "no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations"

They mean, "When the establishment rigs the economy by diluting the national currency, then the establishment must not let their citizens escape the damage".

People talk about a "rigged economy". Where I found in economics it really happens is 3% inflation that comes from constantly printing money. Low income and the middle class often don't get 3%+ yearly pay increases. When they accept a job, the economy is rigged against them by 3% inflation based loss in their pay level, every year (over and over). When people stay at jobs 10 years, 3% year-over-year devistates people.

1801 to 1899 had ~0% inflation when it was on the gold standard with sound money. 3% yearly inflation came after moving off of the gold standard and with printing money.

Printing money hurts workers.

<comment><USER26> In the late 1800s the Democratic party under William Jennings Bryan was campaigning for bimetallism, which would cause inflation, in order to help farmers because inflation would make their debts less significant. This is one case of people wanting inflation.

Actually if you look at the history of the gold standard in the United States, and the bimetal gold/silver standard, you'll see that the gold standard is far from a simple solution and it had a lot of problems.

One of the biggest problems: how should the government decide how much gold/silver/whatever a dollar should be worth, and when should that decision be re-evaluated?

Similarly you can look at the economic damage caused by Britain bringing back the gold standard in the 1920s, and also how absurd the Bretton Woods system became over the years as the exchange rates pegged to gold started diverging more and more from economic reality. The gold standard has tons of problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a European I'm very happy about this decision. I'm not against Cryptocurrencies but Libra is an attempt by some of the most corrupt and unethical entities in the world (Facebook,...) to control financial flows.

I can only hope other countries will follow soon.

<comment><USER28> It's a _centralized_ cryptocurrency. That is where the problem is. It's (IMO) not even the corruption of Facebook et al. which is the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish they just blocked facebook altogether.

It has caused people more pain than good

<comment><USER30> Blocking a communication platform doesn't sound right in a free society. There's nothing inherently wrong with connecting people. On the other hand, there should be heavy regulation and enforcement in place so that users don't get their data unknowingly exploited for commercial interest.

<comment><USER31> Facebook has turned out to be a potential threat to free society. I'm not just talking about the mass manipulation that goes on mostly unregulated, but also the fact that it has quite a lot of personal information on our citizens.

Maybe that wouldn't be an issue if Europe was the best of friends with America, but as that's obviously not the case. I don't think our relationship will fully deteriorate, but we can't ignore the fact that we may have to prepare for a Europe which is less reliant on American tech companies.

<comment><USER32> All problems from big tech stem from their centralization.

If Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook were broken up into collections of smaller, independent companies... a lot of the ills would simply disappear, and the market as a whole would be a lot healthier.

<comment><USER33> This is a trope that has little basis in fact. Please explain concretely why breaking each of those companies would be better.

<comment><USER32> Amazon - See data hoarder [1]. Other than that, debatable because Amazon organizationally seems to optimize for efficiency (e.g. compressing margins). However, by cracking it into a logistics company and an online retail company, users would benefit from broader access to Amazon's efficient supply chain. Furthermore, the incentive for Amazon to abuse its logistics advantage to muscle out competition (e.g. Amazon Basics + first-party product offerings) would be lessened.

Apple - Probably the most debatable of the group. See first-party app store [2]. The biggest case for Apple would be about how lazy they've recently been for non-margin generating offerings. Since iTunes, and then the app store, they've gotten lazy about relentlessly innovating. You've seen it in the iPhone and the MBP. To say nothing of their server offerings.

Google - See data hoarder [1]. See first-party app store [2].

Facebook - See data hoarder [1]. See first-party app store [2].

Google and Facebook are essentially the Valves of everything. They're spitting out cool things here and there, while rolling in the mountain of cash they're taxing from the rest of the economy. You'd be hard pressed to convince me that cash wouldn't better be spent by other companies.

[1] Data hoarder. By centralizing collection of user / customer data (usually by first-mover advantage, leveraging that to buy any existential threats), these firms have created a dominant market position. They control the platforms, so they collect the data, so they have more data, so they can more efficiently monetize that data, so they can afford to buy competitors (repeat). This cycle is unlikely to be broken without regulatory intervention.

This is firstly a sub-optimal state of affairs because it allows these companies to rent seek from all downstream consumers of this data (most clearly: advertising). By leveraging their position as the sole source of an ongoing data feed for "their" users, they position themselves as the only place to obtain that data in a functional manner. Ergo, all downstream consumers are compelled to purchase it from them, or do without.

The counter-argument is that they perform this function more efficiently than a hypothetical freer market of numerous competitors. However, I leave it to you to decide how often an entity without external competitive pressure has chosen to operate in the most globally efficient manner for their customers.

Secondly, this impacts product development, whereby the data owners may choose at their sole discretion not to share this data with competitors. As a result, there are products that only these parties are capable of creating. Because of the scale of these organizations, there are many opportunities they will not see as worth their time. Consequently, those opportunities will never be pursued, as the smaller companies interested in doing so simply can't without access to that data.

One might argue that that's sub-optimal, and that eventually the data owners would awaken to the profit opportunity in selling that data to the interested companies. To which I would retort something along the lines of "GM, Ford, and Kodak all recognized new market opportunities, and did they pursue them?" Institutional conservatism and inertia at scale is a lazy thing.

[2] First-party app store. By owning the underlying hardware platform / presentation interface (in Facebook's case), there's a clear conflict of interest. First-party app store owners face a substantially lesser incentive to innovate, secure, or respond to customer demands than they would in a free marketplace. As a result, app store management practices and technical functionality rot in comparison to a free market in which they were forced to compete with competitor's app stores.

Without going in depth, there is an obvious financial component, whereby first-party app stores with a monopoly are able to rent seek and extract a greater-than-optimal cut of app revenue. In a free market of alternatives, greater portions of app revenue would flow through to developers (note: in individual, the aggregate case is admittedly more complex).

Additionally, this extends to app censorship and policies. By controlling app stores as the gateway to "their" customers, the underlying owners can shape the kinds of apps they allow to exist. This produces negative outcomes in at least two ways. (1) Apps' responsiveness to actual customer demand is suppressed, as they must first and foremost satisfy app store rules. This can be seen in censorship policies (e.g. issues with distributing open source or "PR sensitive" apps), as well as functional abilities (e.g. the variety of always-on / background execution use cases precluded for all but first-party apps). (2) The app market is distorted to optimize for revenue in the current system, as opposed to revenue from actual customer demand. If there were a freer app store market, I offer that you wouldn't see 1,000 clones of "flashlight w/ ads" apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the trend of demonopolizing currencies is unstoppable, just take time. I argue that this can be part of a new cold war dimension between countries and when some countries block financial initiatives others fund an opportunity. I wrote a little bit more about this vision in [1].

[1] [https://blog.coinfabrik.com/libra-association-a-menace- and-a...](https://blog.coinfabrik.com/libra-association-a-menace-and-an- opportunity-for-blockchain-ecosystems/)

<comment><USER35> Perhaps a cryptocurrency is unstoppable, but Libra is the same as Visa. Banning Libra is like banning a company like Visa, it's not anything like banning Bitcoin which would be very hard indeed.

> Libra will not rely on cryptocurrency mining. Only members of the Libra > Association will be able to process transactions via the permissioned > blockchain.

(From Wikipedia)

It's just a payment processor. I don't know why it's called cryptocurrency. If the bar for that is "it uses cryptography" then Paypal is a cryptocurrency because they use HTTPS.

<comment><USER36> > "banning Bitcoin would be very hard indeed"

It's hard to take crypto enthusiasts seriously because of delusions like this.

Banning bitcoin would be trivial: no legitimate business would accept it, making it useless except to fringe outlaws.

<comment><USER37> Eh almost no legitimate businesses accept bitcoin right now and yet there it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Private tech companies should not be issuing currency. I can't believe we have to have this conversation.

<comment><USER35> I can't believe it either, but for a different reason. If Facebook had announced that they're going to launch their own version of Paypal, nobody would have wanted to use it for privacy concerns. But because cryptocurrency is trendy and supposed to have a positive effect on privacy and not supposed to be controlled by a single party, all of those concerns fall away. Except that (Wikipedia):

> Libra will not rely on cryptocurrency mining.[20] Only members of the Libra > Association will be able to process transactions via the permissioned > blockchain.

It's not a cryptocurrency at all. It's a cryptocurrency to the same extent that, because your credit card cryptographically signs the transaction at the POS terminal, euros can be said to be a cryptocurrency.

Somehow they get away with calling it cryptocurrency when it's really just another Visa or Paypal. Nobody should want to use this and that should be obvious, but 'crypto magic' is involved and so we need to have the conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think Libra is a fine digital currency. It explores semi-centralized/semi- decentralized category. The main problem with Libra is its timing. It's too early. I don't think the market is ready for it.

Most people think Bitcoin is working as a digital native currency. In reality, Bitcoin is not doing anything much. Bitcoin community is sticking with digital gold, Store of Value narrative. That makes Bitcoin uninteresting. Normal people cannot really use it.

There is a big gap between digital native crypto like Bitcoin and government issued currencies. The market needs to evolve to fill in the gap before we can use a currency like Libra.

I outline the problem I see in the below article. I think we need a digital native stablecoin to connect Bitcoin to the real world.

[https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link- to...](https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to-the- world.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> What other times in history have private corporations taken on government entities and succeeded? Have any of these attempts been on this scale and against an entity of this power (i.e. proposing a new monetary policy against the US Federal Reserve)?

<comment><USER41> Private entities attempting this would always have been shut down with violence. The prevailing violence established itself as "the state".

<comment><USER40> What time period? In the US? In communist countries? I would imagine what you said has been the case in many time periods in many different countries, but I am sure there are other scenarios. Do you have anything specific in mind?

<comment><USER41> the East India company comes to mind

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Can someone familiar with Libra speculate how a ban can be implemented? What comes to my mind is forbidding Facebook selling and processing it for EU users but beyond that, I am not sure how a "black market" could be prevented.

<comment><USER43> Very simple. Facebook is a company. You can legislate laws that determine what companies are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. Particularly if it concerns financial instruments.

A "ban" doesn't need to be technological.

<comment><USER42> How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet? Is libra tied to an account like game money? AFAIK it's a cryptocurrency? Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure why you think this is so hard?

You pass a law. Most people don't break the law.

You make it illegal for banks to transfer to known Libra things. You audit people. You apply big fines.

Murder is illegal but that doesn't mean _nobody can commit murder_.

<comment><USER45> Murder is also immoral.

Libra is hardly morally questionable. If you want a better comparison take (software) piracy.

Piracy is illegal and while I'm sure Steam, Spotify, and Netflix has reduced it a lot it is still thriving and many people break the law if not daily at least monthly.

Best thing you can do is to make a law that forces banks to prevent payments to known Libra sellers, but again if there is value in Libra this hardly makes a difference.

For one unless there is official list of every entity that sells them and they get instantly blocked you could just buy them before they get blocked. Secondly you could just use PayPal to transfer the money (first to your PayPal wallet and then to the seller), EU is not crazy enough to block PayPal without an alternative in sight.

Secondly take any gray-market on the Internet. On these markets you can already use a range of payment methods starting with freaking Starbucks Gift Cards to just plain old cash.

Yes, yes, just like most laws it will keep the honest people honest and we can assume that at least in the start that will be most of the population, but such a law would be so trivial to bypass that if there is any benefit of having some Libra people will have it and outside of completely breaking privacy of EU citizens there is nothing they can do about it.

<comment><USER46> If murder is immoral, what are death penalty and soldiers killing other soldiers (when it's not civilians)?

Besides the context (and the legal aspect), they are the same act, homicide with intent. Their morality seem to be different depending who you ask.

And as for Libra being made illegal, I don't see what value it provides in EU to make it worth breaking the law.

<comment><USER45> >If murder is immoral, what are death penalty and soldiers killing other soldiers (when it's not civilians)?

Death penalty is not moral. How you got this out of my message is beyond me.

Killing enemy soldiers to defend your life or land is justifiable. They are trying to destroy you. But I guess this is weird from American point of view (I'm just assuming since I don't think anywhere else has death penalty still in use and other countries haven't been involved in war in foreign countries for past two decades), but killing people who don't look like you in their own land because they are firing at you because you have invaded them is actually immoral in more ways than one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> nations also used to be convinced it is inherent to their sovereignty to tell us who to worship and who to marry. this is no longer the case.

not sure there is a principled reason why the power to govern the exchange of goods and services (which is what money facilitates) should be up to them.

<comment><USER11> > nations also used to be convinced it is inherent to their sovereignty to > tell us who to worship and who to marry. this is no longer the case.

Except in some theocraties where you're 2nd class citizen when you don't worship the official God (Israel, some Muslims countries...)

And in the US, the President oauth is on the Bible and "under God" if I remember clearly. So, in a way, it is still the case: how would a Jew or Muslim or Buddhist be able to do that?

Governements are elected to provide services for the good of the nations. That include security: physically (police, army) and economically... so the money is a way for a state to provide security for the trade

<comment> en-us > And in the US, the President oauth is on the Bible and "under God" if I > remember clearly. So, in a way, it is still the case: how would a Jew or > Muslim or Buddhist be able to do that?

Federal public officials in the US can swear on anything they want to, the Bible is not a requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What do they mean to "block Libra"? To block merchants using it?

If yes, I think it won't matter at all. EU already have real-time electronic payments and mostly everyone uses contactless cards or appley/android pay.

I think the benefit of Libra, as peer-to-peer money is valuable for countries in Africa or other parts of the world where cash is king and unsafe (due to high crime rate).

<comment><USER35> > [p2p money may be useful for] parts of the world where cash is king and > unsafe (due to high crime rate).

How is this going to make a difference? Either I steal your wallet or I steal your... wallet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This was a political statement.

It is far from clear that Libra would be in conflict with existing laws. Probably new laws would need to be written to forbid it. Germany has not had any capital controls after WW2, so I don't take it for granted that such law would pass. On the other side Facebook's reputation in Germany might be even worse than in many other countries, so that could create political pressure, even if Libra is legally not the same as Facebook.

Personally as a consumer I see the biggest problem is customer support and accountability. Banks are not known for closing customers accounts and keeping the money. Internet giants are known for no customer support and (automatic?) deactivation of accounts for unspecified violations of terms of service. (Has happened to my Microsoft Drive where I stored 1 file, an encrypted backup. And HN readers have read about more cases)

</comment><comment><USER50> I will show this comment to my grand kids one day - Do whatever you can, think whatever you like - By the end of this decade, we will have at least half a dozen such currencies with a couple of them in active circulation. Whether Facebook succeeds or fails - they have covered so much ground in pushing existing establishment on value of an universal currency, offered by firms that provide services directly to customers - that it now becomes hard to ignore.

Crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin will ride on the coat tails of these currencies to be truly first class citizens of the banking world.

</comment><comment><USER51> There is a relatively low understanding among the public of how money is created and how the economy expands in today's modern economy after 1971 Gold standard deviation.

If some part of the monetary system is taken over by something that is not money, it is almost impossible to be able to control the amount of money in circulation or inflation or the need for new government money will be uncalculatable.

I can not comprehend any country allowing this unless it has got some extremely high tech mechanism to control the amount of money that goes into crypto/libra.

<comment><USER52> One key difference between a government issued currency and a distributed cryptocurrency is that the former is based on a _promise_ and the latter is based on _trust_.

A government issued currency is based on the promise [1] given by a state that this money must be accepted by everybody else. Everyone can enforce his rights by law.

A distributed cryptocurrency is based on trust given mutually by the users. The trust relays on the circumstance that no significant number of participants will abandon their precious investment may it be acquired through mining or purchasing of coins.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promissory_note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promissory_note)

<comment><USER36> It's still "trust" in both cases. One must trust the power of the government making the promise, or rather the global system of governance.

<comment><USER51> Exactly. If a substantial amount of people stop trusting the "promissory state money", then the inflation will be uncontrollable (or not controllable by the state) and the state won't be able to give anything in return of their promissory notes.

<comment><USER52> It's not that easy.

The trust system only works between participants. Trust can't be enforced.

The promise works with a third party. When two parties to lose confidence/ _trust_ into each other they can relay on a thrid party (the gov.) to enforce a prommise between two participants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I find how Facebook continues to _actually_ push for Libra astounding.

I was at Best Buy the other day, and as I was browsing through the home automation shelves, my eyes were quickly attracted by an ugly logo, blue over white with an atrocious font -> "Facebook Portal".

While I did remember hearing about Facebook plans to just, build this home camera+microphone connected thing, never would I imagine a remote universe where this product would actually hit the shelves. In fact, I naively always thought there are these teams called product and marketing that among other things are supposed to analyse the market and predict consumer reactions. I might be entirely wrong of course but I never ever imagined a world where such a product could be sold to a customer while being branded Facebook at the same time.

I have exactly the same feelings about Libra. A currency controlled by a corporation is a "no thanks" to begin with, but in the case of Libra we are talking about the last corporation anyone with a sane mind would ever consider (a bit of exageration here but let's say, one of the worst). I seriously have a hard time understanding how those evidences are not determined internally before communicating such plans publicly. It is either trolling, or there is a serious problem of isolation and there might be a yes men plague in this company.

</comment><comment><USER54> Problem solved, use USDC. Not invented here but what did you really have to add anyway? A non-sovereign unit-of-account was just a bad idea for consumer adoption anyway. We still have issues with financial literacy here, why not seek simplicity? I'll tell you why not, because it doesn't satisfy someone's career advancement metrics forced on them by a misguided peer-review/stack- ranking system. What other justification was there to use Libra in lieu of anything else?

</comment><comment><USER55> Libra is backed by real world assets, to try and prevent wild fluctuations! Having it backed by real world assets make no sense! Defeats the whole purpose of crypto!

</comment><comment><USER56> "no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations" \- very bizzare statement. What's "monetary power"? If it's the power to make certain medium of exchange legal tender, Facebook certainly didn't claim that, moreover, by very definition of it such power can not belong to a private entity - a private entity can not force German government to accept taxes in Libra, for example. The power to set legal tender is inherently governmental power, and there's no need to proclaim this banality as something that isn't obvious by definition.

On the other hand, there are thousands real and virtual moneys that exist and can be exchanged for real and virtual goods - from game money to crypto tokens to vouchers to points and miles, and so on. There is literally thousands of entities that create means of exchange that later can be exchanged for goods, and commonly are - and nobody has ever had trouble with that, at least not in any free countries (in USSR, you'd got no miles for flights :). So what changed?

</comment><comment><USER57> I think the biggest threat that the US government sees in crypto currencies is the ability of adversarial countries (Russia, Iran, etc) to avoid sanctions. If you want to conduct international financial transactions, you must do it in US dollars, and the US government controls that.

In the future, if governments (or private entities) can get around that, then the US doesn't really have any non-military leverage. The US government seems interested in Libra because if it grows and becomes the de facto crypto currency in the future, and they have a good amount of control over it, then they don't lose any power.

Then again, they might lose control over it while Facebook just hustles everyone for their data and money. France and Germany are probably interested in the international financial systems being stable, but are probably a lot less inclined than the US to bet on Libra because they don't control the US dollar right now anyways, and if anything goes sideways they can't really control FB either.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is pretty much exactly what I said the response would be:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252375)

Currency and sovereignty are inseparable, have been for all of human civilization.

</comment><comment><USER59> With a16z, eBay, Mastercard, Stripe, Visa, Spotify, PayPal, Uber, and many others, this is not just about Facebook.

[https://libra.org/en-US/partners/](https://libra.org/en-US/partners/)

<comment><USER35> I guess that's indeed how Facebook likes it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Good. Nobody wants Facebook money. Countries like Germany and France have a better track record being trustworthy than a company like Facebook. Facebook has been proven several times over its very short lifetime to not be trusted.

</comment><comment><USER41> What if facebook allowed libra holders to hold elections and vote for the leadership of the project? They could build the worlds first virtual state, arguably a very popular and populous one.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is EUR a threat to souverinity of the nations then? What is the difference between libra and BTC if not the sad state of affairs wrt to btc's usefulness as an everyday currency?

<comment><USER35> > What is the difference between libra and BTC

Libra is owned by a company and Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.

But I guess we now not only lost the war on the definitions of 'hacker' (media word for cracker) and 'crypto' (media word for cryptocurrency), but also cryptocurrency (media word for digitally exchangeable currency, e.g. Paypal credits / gift cards / Facebook Libra). We'll have to find a new word to distinguish Facebook-issued digital credits (Libra) from a distributed payment network running on cryptography and rough consensus (Bitcoin).

<comment><USER61> to be honest, I am not entirely sure about the precise definition of permissioned-blockchain-based, assets-backed, electronic currency that is also mostly vaporware at this time. The ownership is also non-linear. So, IMHO France and Germany are banning something that not only does not exist but also not even clearly defined. which feels like either a "fu Zuck" or "we are scared"

<comment><USER62> > fu Zuck > we are scared

In my opinion both completely reasonable reactions to Facebook attempting to set up a private currency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> As a french, this is exactly what I expect from my government. Libra is a putsch by a (vampiric) private sector entity that want to concentrate powers.

</comment><comment><USER64> The beginning of the article reads... "In a joint statement, the two governments affirmed that "no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations". Is this irony in the US that a private entity, the Federal Reserve, is in just such a position of monetary power. It's all smoke and vaping, chickens and eggs, hemp and da kine.

<comment><USER65> Although the Federal Reserve formally is privately owned, it is a government entity. It was established through a law and is controlled by the Board of Governors, appointed by the US President and approved by the US Senate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the > sovereignty of nations

Well said, that should be self-explainable enough.

</comment><comment><USER41> That's like the best Ad for libra? I think we should investigate whethere these politicians are being secretly paid by zuck

</comment><comment><USER67> I for one welcome Libra, but only for exactly one purpose.

The next time governments bail out another bank, they should just hand them a zillions Libras and ask the banks to collect the actual money from Facebook when they need it. Don't know if that is technically possible, but I would certainly support such a bailout scheme. :-)

</comment><comment><USER68> Pride comes before the fall. Facebook should have spent much of their energy fixing their image first and not tackling anything like Libra. If they need money they need to focus on products that provide real value without intruding on privacy. They need to study how Microsoft turned around their image. It takes time.

<comment><USER69> I think the last thing _anybody_ wants is a vast perceivable immoral entity such as Facebook, which is involved in so many scandals and should likely be broken up if anti-trust enforcers had any bite left to them, insinuating themselves into a fundamental function such as the issuance of money and the transactions thereof. It's like a hybrid of _The Circle_ and _Mr Robot_ 's Evil Corp's eCoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Countries don't want a foreign company controlling the currency their citizens use. Surprise surprise.

</comment><comment><USER71> Imagine the power of the United States if it controlled the world's currency through Facebook's Libra as a reserve currency? Oh wait the U.S. dollar is already the world's reserve currency and is included in over 50% of the world's FX transactions. Not much would change.

</comment><comment><USER72> Does the use of cryptocurrency allow people to evade taxes? Does it allow bad actors to transact dangerous goods? People have good and evil within them. If you give people complete freedom, there will be those who allow evil free reign. Trust but verify./

</comment><comment><USER73> The problem lies in the unit of account. If Libra becomes one of the global unit of accounts with own money supply outside of other monetary sovereigns reach while still keeping the impact on their economies, then Libra is a direct threat to their economies.

</comment><comment><USER74> Libra is not all that bad. While there are problems with Facebook gaining yet another source for information that takes advantage of privacy terms, I think a stablecoin by GAFA is in the right direction. It speeds up the adoption of cryptocurrency by a lot.

Paypal and other "digital cash" solutions are fully centralized which makes it impossible for devs to build on top of their platform. This means that problems that arise cannot be solved by devs looking at the problem from the outside.

Libra gets around this by having an open platform that anyone can build on. Anyone can create a Libra wallet, and anyone can build Libra services. If we have a big privacy problem with Libra in the future, we might be able to find a way around it. Libra supports scripting on-chain which would make atomic swaps possible. If something like atomic swaps are possible, can we hide information from Facebook et al? Or what about mixing Libra on-chain?

<comment><USER75> > If we have a big privacy problem with Libra in the future, we might be able > to find a way around it.

When major government policy proposals are brought into the public discourse, we argue endlessly about the edge cases, downstream effects and hypothetical scenarios that may in turn cause future problems. Universal healthcare is too expensive, the green new deal won't work, bring the troops home, etc. People argue forever around the hypotheticals of these ideas.

But when one of the most powerful and consistently nefarious companies in the world starts to build a system to cut out the global banking system, we're fine to say that we "might be able to" find a way around major problems facing the platform if they gain too much control.

The inconsistency in the level of scrutiny that we levy at companies compared to governments is shocking given the influence that the public has over government policy and operations compared to a private, multi-billion-dollar company.

"might be able to" isn't good enough when it comes to building systems that undermine the current financial system. All aspects of the system need to be spelled out in concrete terms, and safeguards must be put into place to ensure proper implementation and alignment of incentives. This must be regulated, without question.

Yes, big banks are greedy and corrupt and aren't looking out for the little guys. But neither is Facebook, and if there's an institution out there that is less fit than the banks to control the global financial system, it's Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Excuse the ignorance... but what do France and Germany specifically fear? That if Libra would become more popular than the mainstream fiat currencies Facebook could have more control over the economy than governments?

<comment><USER19> It's the fear that people may prefer using other currencies than their own, which collapses the regime of spending through inflation.

<comment><USER76> Thanks, not sure why I'm being downvoted...

<comment><USER35> Not sure either, it's a legitimate question. A lot of people seem to find it obvious, but to me it seems like there is a lot of subtleties in why something is or isn't a threat. Bitcoin, Paypal, Ethereum, gift cards, and other online payment systems didn't get this reaction, it's just the Facebook-issued credits (which, for the record, isn't really a cryptocurrency, that's just the marketing department).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I thought, whatever is not explicitly banned is allowed. The article is just a fragment, it is not clear if it is just a politician voicing an opinion, or the declaration of policy by the governments.

<comment><USER35> > I thought: whatever is not explicitly banned is allowed

I can't find it anymore but I remember reading a story, either on or linked from HN (probably linked), where someone recalls a realization they had in their teen years. It went something like this:

Rules do not exist because people like making arbitrary rules for no reason. It is sometimes even okay to break rules, so long as people do not mind what you are doing. Only when you make people angry, new rules are made to stop you from doing that. You can abide by the rules or break them, but you only get in trouble if you make someone unhappy.

(The original was a lot more coherent/consistent, I'm just paraphrasing / mixing wordings that might have been in there.)

So in the legal sense, yeah, you are technically right. But if you make a country's rulers angry, they'll just decree a new law. (Which is why I never really understood trias politica, by the way: the elected rulers can just make a law for something when the court case didn't go the way they wanted, and the unelected lawyers can create case law with far-reaching changes. But that's another topic.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Why will they ban such a new wave? I don't agree to their policies.

</comment><comment><USER79> California pats itself on the back for passing massive social reform measures while its flagship tech corporations are going to town picking apart people's lives and profiting from them.

</comment><comment><USER20> That Zuck...is he really trying to turn the crypto community from wanting to abolish banks towards appointing Facebook as the biggest too big to fail bank in history?

People seem to be swallowing it, though.

</comment><comment><USER80> What technical distinctions between Libra and cryptocurrencies running on other permissioned blockchains (like Lumens/Stellar) would prompt this type of regulatory response?

</comment><comment><USER81> This is probably one of the reasons why Satoshi Nakamoto didn't use their real name - If there's a single entity for governments to target, they will.

</comment><comment><USER82> What are they blocking exactly? Does Libra even exist yet or is it vaporware still? Are they also blocking other crypto currencies?

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm wondering if the EU and/or the US would ever release their own government- backed crypto and ban the use of all others.

</comment><comment><USER83> Not sure what they were expecting, Libra is a direct threat to the power of nation states and their fiat currencies.

</comment><comment><USER84> I thought it was irresponsible of FB to announce this thing. All over the world the question is not whether or not to regulate Facebook. It is _how_ to do so. So, it strikes me as some kind of supreme arrogance or dishonesty to announce a _currency_ without expecting it to be immediately shut down by governments. How does this pass internal review?

</comment><comment><USER85> what does facebook's libra have to offer that current cryptocurrencies don't already?

</comment><comment><USER86> It reminds me of this off shore city facebook wanted to build or something like that.

The problem with big money and big idea people, is that at some point they want to build a new world, but if you ask them about the old world, they don't have a solution, and deep inside they would rather see the old world burn to the ground. They're not even obsessed with power, they just want to build new things like they built an app in 1 month, to see if it could work, because the idea is sound and that it might solve many problems.

Those guys always have big big ideas but the truth is that they have absolutely no clue how the actual real world have been working for centuries and what are the real cogs of human society. It's like history doesn't matter, and that silicon made everything completely obsolete.

If you understand this, in a way, you can definitely understand why China has a big firewall. And frankly it sounds like the internet has just turned into a big advertising, political propaganda machine that just turn people into consumerist monkeys. Of course it's serving american hegemony pretty well, especially if you look at how google is siphoning data all over the world. I'm glad that countries are realizing that internet is not the cool thing of the 90s anymore.

What's weird is that facebook is now a thing for old people, the young doesn't even use facebook. I stopped using facebook in 2010 so I would never have known anyway.

Frankly there are days I wish the internet would collapse. GDPR is already setting a big fight, the battle against US digital giants is far from being over and I hope it keeps going.

<comment><USER87> Thanks, this resonates. But "there are days I wish the internet collapse" made me laugh! After how long will the internet be part of the old world, which the young disrupters wish would burn down so they could build something new instead? Maybe since it existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Dumbest move ever by Facebook to preanounce and give governments time to complain. They should have moved fast and dealt with the consequences later. They had a reasonable chance of being the dominant cryptocurrency, and instead they get to spend a year apologizing and backtracking before they ever deploy.

<comment><USER89> Alternatively, they should have worked with governments to make sure to address their worries before announcing it publicly.

<comment><USER90> There is no "working with government", for any proposed money substitute that gives normal people a place to hide from central bank inflationary policies.

<comment><USER12> Our current capitalist system does not work without inflation.

<comment><USER90> Correct. What's going to be really fun, is when normal people _do_ have powerful, practical, scalable and unstoppable non-debasable options.

The poor slobs left holding the Fiat waste-paper...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Typical government don't want:

* easy cross-country payments

* non-government money institutions

'Cause money always been the major element of government power.

For typical people, I think, Libra and similar are more positive. If you can pay someone in Africa from Japan with minimal fees/headache, it's very cool.

<comment><USER92> Until Zuckerberg changes his mind, or something else happens. Then it's back to bitching about governments failing to protect your rights.

Money is power, as you imply, and I don't want any of it in Zuckerberg's hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> If it were a real cryptocurrency, that wouldn't be possible.

</comment><comment><USER94> Who doesnt want a currency controlled by a private company?

<comment><USER95> or better yet, controlled by a conglomerate of Silicon Valley Tech companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Libra is a joke. I am glad they blocked it in all honesty

</comment><comment><USER97> Wait until they find out they can't block Bitcoin.

<comment><USER35> Wrong thread: this is about Libra, not Bitcoin. Libra is owned by a company and Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.

It looks like we not only lost the word 'crypto' (to cryptocurrency instead of cryptography), but we'll have to find a new word to distinguish Facebook- issued digital credits (Libra) from a distributed payment network running on cryptography and rough consensus (Bitcoin).

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Internet giants should not be able to circumvent or manipulate the economy of any country, by creating a currency. It's fucking mad and wrong by design.

</comment><comment><USER99> The great firewall of EU :D

</comment><comment><USER100> eventually Facebook will need to use something like Ethereum or Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER101> I applaud this decision

</comment><comment><USER102> If the Internet was invented today, it would probably be banned in Europe too

</comment><comment><USER103> Meanwhile, Bitcoin still hasn't returned their calls.

</comment><comment><USER104> I'm surprised at the amount of hate that libra seems to be getting, even on the tech-startup forum of HN. Are we all becoming a bunch of Luddite conservatives? When I look my own life an experiences, I can't really say I feel any of the alleged horrors cast down upon us by big tech. I get that privacy is an issue, but ... it is avoidable. I host my own cloud(nextcloud), use tracking blockers, avoid signups...etc.

Personally, I think its an interesting project, with both interesting technical, monetary, and political problems that will be encountered. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

</comment><comment><USER105> AI.

Investors > Intelligence.

Artificial Inflation.

AI.

</comment><comment><USER106> this is not good

</comment><comment><USER107> Other than the fact that they have some sort of block chain backend, how is Libra even different from Venmo?

Seems like they're just banning it because they don't understand it.

</comment><comment><USER108> Anybody have any information what will Indonesian govt do about Libra?

</comment><comment><USER109> is good? is bad? i don't know... :/

</comment><comment><USER110> Ok but can we have a digital euro? I don't like facebook coins but something(digital money) is better than nothing.

<comment><USER111> we have digital euro's? the fact that it is a physical note or a database record does not matter for fiscal policy.

ever used a digital system to transfer money? like ideal, bancontact or giropay or just plain SEPA?

<comment><USER110> I mean something like digital cash so that I can choose how I spend it and when I spend it without a bunch of terms & conditions</comment></comment></comment>


The Scientific Way to Slice a Cake - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/the-scientific-way-to-slice-a-cake-1592582129

<comment><USER2> I also hear Hitler made a mean strudel.</comment>


The Story of Me-A real programmer - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/the-story-of-me-a-real-programmer-ba37a720395b?gi=6a3688a606f9 <comment><AUTHOR> It does seem similar to my experience when changing jobs or changing stacks, but I don't see this happening after the settling in period. I am not working in web dev though, so maybe the experience is different.

Another thing that stuck me was about the use of a semicolon, comma etc to get working. It is a common pet peave when searching for documentation.

For example for a command

$ program <file_name>

Is file name in quotes, <>, or something else? What to do if there are quotes in the filename? Single or double quote? Two examples in the documentation, one simple, and one as complex as possible would be great. This is one thing I end up going to stack overflow again and again.</comment>


There's a $799 hack-proof smartphone designed to keep your cryptocurrencies safe - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/27/sikur-cryptocurrency-wallet-smartphone.html <comment><USER2> Last I heard of Sikur's phones, their marketing material was full of fluff.</comment>


U.S. Births Fall to Lowest Rates Since 1980s - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-births-fall-to-lowest-rates-since-1980s-11557892860 <comment><USER2> Crippling student debt, lack of parental leave (and on top of it - lack of healthcare for the unemployed), inaffordable childcare, it being increasingly hard to rent (not even own) enough space to comfortably support a family, double-income being practically a necessity to support a family of _two_ for the vast majority of people, and that's just to start --

\-- but _surprisingly_ , the US birth rate is falling to new lows! Who would've thunk? Inexplicable!

The article is behind the paywall, but I wonder what surprising reason they find for the decline.</comment>


New Technology Makes SPORTS FANS Smarter Than the EXPERTS - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/fans-are-now-smarter-than-experts-65b0d09c63fb#.rht707nyg <comment><USER2> Cortexia: the HN guidelines ask "Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase" and "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait".

The original title for this is "FANS are now SMARTER than EXPERTS". On HN that would be changed to "Fans are now smarter than experts", to de-linkbait the original title.

Earlier today you posted "A.I. Technology Being Used by SB NATION to Rank FANTASY FOOTBALL PLAYERS" when the original title is "UNU's Picks: QB, RB, WR Rankings by an Artificial Intelligence"

In general the titles you have submitted differ from the original title.

Such modifications are likely to incur the wrath of the HN swarm intelligence. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> From the guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _In Submissions_

> _Please don 't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or > exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an > article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's > important. _</comment>


Timeline of a Car Crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=56781

<comment><USER2> Link to full original content that was used for this blog-rip:

[http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?Article...](http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=56781)

</comment><comment><USER3> From time to time I stop and think about how blindingly FAST computers are.

It's easy enough to click "refresh" on a web server running on your desktop and wait half a second for a refresh...but then when you ponder that not only might you be executing a few THOUSAND or TENS OF THOUSANDS of lines of your own code, but you're executing a few hundred SQL queries, each of which is doing mind-bendingly complex stuff over in the SQL server ... running the same CPU ... it just boggles the mind.

I remember when I was amazed at how many computations my overclocked Apple IIe (running at 2.5 MHz !!!) could do in an eyeblink.

<comment><USER4> I had a similar realization when it dawned on me that my computer performed about twenty instructions before the light from my monitor arrived at my cornea...

(edit: light travels about a foot in a nanosecond, or 6 inches per clock cycle in a standard 2ghz pc. multiple simple additions can be done in a single clock cycle; multiple by number of cores)

<comment><USER5> Tthe speed of light is starting to impact how fast cores can be. They need to take it into account when routing signals on the core. And it's one reason asynchronous cores work a lot better, since at high hz it's impossible to keep the entire core synchronized.

<comment><USER4> As I understand it, it has been an issue and a major reason for actual cores being as small as they are. The time a signal takes to propagate from one section of the core to another is significant.

<comment><USER6> Chip sizes are a function of yield and performance. Core sizes are designed to optimize performance for a given chip size. (Yes, there's a circular dependence but yield is a huge factor in chip size.)

That said, it's been at least a process generation since a given clock signal could be used to synch events on the opposite sides of a core, let alone a (high performance) chip. This is due to both increasing clock frequency and the fact that propagation speed has gone down as feature size decreased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Airbag systems are fascinating. They sit around for years, perhaps decades, deciding over and over again whether or not a crash is occurring. Then, when a collision does occur, they have to make a decision -- the right decision -- and take action within a few milliseconds.

A false-negative could exacerbate the injuries of the passengers. A false- positive could cause a fatal crash. No room for error.

Amazing stuff.

<comment><USER8> Your comment reminded me of the Neal Stephenson short story Jipi and the Paranoid Chip: <http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html>

Worth a read, and very apropos.

<comment><USER9> Hilariously appropriate!

I enjoyed that a lot, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Extremely interesting stuff here. Was impressed with how fast the computer reacts compared to how long it takes a person to be aware they were just hit.

Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Also: A videogame running at 60 fps has to calculate everything associated with rendering a frame, and get the image on the screen, in 16.6ms.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, but the occupant is probably already aware of the collision before the two cars touch.

<comment><USER13> A) Not always

B) I think they're just making the point that all this occurs before the brain can register what's going on to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is unlocking the doors so late on the list? I would think that instructing the doors to begin unlocking could be done relatively early in the process. Perhaps they meant at that point the doors were completely unlocked.

<comment><USER15> Maybe the doors are stronger when locked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm just glad to see Ford doing engineering.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would love to see it with Illustrations. Excellent Posting, well done.

<comment><USER18> I was thinking of doing one, but the few stock images of car cutaways I could find (<http://www.khulsey.com/stockimages.html>) are $1500 =(.

<comment><USER19> Ouch - nice images though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1000 ms - infinity: Occupant stops being aware of collision.</comment>


The Diderot Effect: Shopping One's Way to Financial Misery - <AUTHOR> https://businessmellow.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/the-diderot-effect-avoid-shopping-your-way-to-financial-misery/ <comment><USER3> I think the meta concept here is "congruence".

Once one gets something nice, you're trying to maintain parity between that part of your life, compared to the other parts of your life, and you're willing to spend moeny to do so.

From C.S. Lewis:

"The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favor of the "best" people, the "right" food, the "important" books. I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions."

If you really like something, with a strong sense of self, you stop caring about how all your stuff matches together.

<comment><USER4> For context, the exerpt is from the book The Screwtape Letters. A demon named Screwtape mentors an inexperienced demon in how to torment humans (and drag them down to Hell): [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters)

The book is in the public domain.

<comment><USER5> Interesting aside: The book is dedicated to his best friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien convinced Lewis to become a Christian: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien)

<comment><USER6> A _Catholic_ , even.

<comment><USER7> Tolkien was Catholic, Lewis was Church of England. Although I'm not sure what bearing that factoid has on the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just spent a few thousand dollars on new furniture for an apartment I just moved into.

But I know I don't have this problem because my credit card company immediately blocked the transaction and called me to make sure it was me because it was "not in line with my previous purchase history."

If I keep it up, something tells me they won't call back to warn me I might be succumbing to the Diderot effect. Hmm. Funny how that works.

<comment><USER9> I'd like my cards to glow green or red depending on my rate of incoming vs outgoings, not sure the card issuer would approve...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well off people become bankrupt because of impulse buying decisions. Sounds like marketers are pretty smart people, not stupid as the video at the end of the article implies.

<comment><USER11> Marketing methods actually working says more about customers being dumb/irrational, than it says about marketers being smart, imho...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is made worse by tech I think. Got an Xbox, now I'd like to upgrade the TV so it looks better with fast moving games.

Got a new laptop for work, but now my home desktop feels a bit slow by comparison...

<comment><USER13> I subscribed to Maximum PC and PC Gamer and my wallet has never been the same :( Every issue I feel like my peripherals and hardware are out-of-date.

<comment><USER14> This is why I don't visit my local Microcenter unless I have something specific I need to buy. Even then I typically put it off for a bit to see if I really wanted that item or if it was more of an impulse/luxury purchase I lose interest in.

When I got my current job (and matching salary bump) I built a new PC. It had been 4 or 5 years since I built the last one and that one was assembled on something of a budget. With the raise, I decided to go (for me) more high-end because I wanted to celebrate my raise in a way that wouldn't really break the bank if I later decided it was maybe a bit foolish.

So instead of my usual ~$800 budget for something that could handle all of the "boring" daily stuff like web browsing, email, and file storage as well as give a nice boost to rendering times when playing around with video, graphics, and animation projects, I spent around $1500. Incidentally, it would also be great for games so that covered all the bases for my computer uses.

It's been less than 4 years since I built that PC and I occasionally consider an upgrade but I like to force myself to no less than 5 years between "elective" upgrades. The PC is running smoothly. I don't have any real bottlenecks outside the stuff you can't avoid without spending several thousands of dollars (oh, boo-hoo, I have to play games at 2560x1440 even though the TV/monitor is 4K native).

The incremental updates of processor generations and RAM speeds are certainly nice but since I also suffer from this Diderot Effect, I like to do new PC builds with all new parts to take advantage of all the improvements of the past 5+ years.

I think on some level, I just like to occasionally take stock of the current state of the art and put together a parts list, do the assembly, and feel the satisfaction of a nice, clean setup that is running faster than the last thing. So instead I just offer to build for friends when they are in need of an upgrade. I still get to enjoy the hobbyist aspect and even though I don't typically charge for the effort, they always leave me with a case of good beer or a bottle of some nice Scotch.

<comment><USER13> > I think on some level, I just like to occasionally take stock of the current > state of the art and put together a parts list, do the assembly, and feel > the satisfaction of a nice, clean setup that is running faster than the last > thing. So instead I just offer to build for friends when they are in need of > an upgrade. I still get to enjoy the hobbyist aspect and even though I don't > typically charge for the effort, they always leave me with a case of good > beer or a bottle of some nice Scotch.

I understand what you mean. I had waay more fun building my PC than using it. Once it was all done and I had Windows 10 installed I had nothing else to do and it was just sitting there. Let's just say that I was underwhelmed with the final outcome, especially since I don't game much these days due to time constraints.

I am thinking of getting a new case later this year and installing an aftermarket cooler because this is the one thing I never got to do for my current build, but oh boy the boredom afterwards :(

I would definitely be down to build a PC for anybody who was interested - <USER2> charge. The work would be its own reward for me.

But yea, it is impossible to chase that high you get when putting together a parts list perpetually as building rigs is an expensive hobby.

<comment><USER14> It's not something I want to do all the time. The last one I did reminded me that it can still be a hassle when dealing with someone else's build. Thankfully he was receptive to my advice regarding reasonable budget for what he expected (no more requests for high-end gaming PCs under $600) and where to put his money.

Still, a few months later it's like "hey, so there's sometimes this "ticking" sound in the back of the PC. I think it's the power supply but I'm not sure."

"OK, well see if you can blow some canned air in there in case some bit of plastic or paper got sucked in."

"No, it's not that."

"OK, well if it's defective, I still have the receipts so you can RMA it."

"Nah, that's too much of a hassle. I'll just order one. When can you swap it out?"

Then I proceed to realize that he has no interest in doing this and I have no free weekends to spend taking apart this PC and rebuilding it with another PSU. It's one reason why small-time PC building businesses have always been tough to run and why I never bothered to do it professionally. Any time something is not working, I'll fix my own setup but when you build something as a favor, it becomes your responsibility for life :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I understand this, but also not understand this at the same time.

Personally, I spend ridiculous amounts of money on things that are important to me, while spending virtually nothing on items that I must have but do not care about. However, I also err for quality over quantity.

What this describes is some sort of effect where everything in your life, by my standards, becomes important.

Example: I own $500+ headphones, $2000+ in computer gear (computers, laptops, monitors). I own a middle of the road phone (Nexus 5). I don't really upgrade my computer, and replace it when it finally starts breaking down, so, about every 6 to 8 years, which then I build another massively overkill machine. It generally takes an average mid-tier computer all of those years to catch up to mine. GPUs are the exception, and I used to upgrade those every 2 years until everyone got stuck at 28nm; I've been stuck on a 7970 for awhile, due to nothing really worth upgrading until later this year (Geforce 1000 series _just_ came out, Polaris family Radeons in another 2-3 months), and I don't even game like I used to, so I may just keep the 7970.

I own clothes I bought from Walmart that I replace every 3-5 years, the grand total of nice clothes I own is two shirts and two pairs of pants, that I bought on sale at JC Penney, and spent about $120 on, and I hardly ever wear them.

I own a 7 year old 42" TV that I hardly watch, but has good enough visual quality that the final generation of 1080p TVs are hardly different (better blacks than anything else). The higher end 4k TVs ($1k+) are clearly better, but I won't buy a new TV until a) mine actually dies, b) tomorrow's $500 4k TVs look as good as today's $1k+ ones. This is assuming I even bother keeping a TV. I do not own a game console.

I do not own speakers. I own extremely small library of Blurays that I am considering selling. I hardly watch them. I own a $150 all in one printer. Some of the furniture I own is as old as I am, or maybe older, and was left to me when my mother passed away, it is solid wood and in good condition (all the damage done to it, I did personally as a kid).

I own Victorinox Fibrox knives, but only four, only the ones I use (chef's, mini granton-edge santoku, carving, boning), not a useless "complete set". I do not expect to ever have to replace these, and I own a fine enough synthetic wetstone to sharpen them myself, and generally keep them sharper than factory sharp.

I own a single 10" Lodge frying pan, a 12" pan, 8" pan, and 4 quart saucepan Mauviel M150S, usually insanely expensive (the 4 quart usually goes for $360), picked up at a tiny fraction from a chef supply store dumping their discontinued stock on Amazon. These, too, will last forever. I put more mileage on my Lodge than I do on the rest.

I own a pair of normally $150 running shoes that I picked up for $60 that I absolutely adore and try to treat well. I put about 5 miles into them every day, so they probably will last 2 years at the absolute very most.

I don't eat out. I cook my own food, and aim for nutrition and flavor over weird exoticness. I don't buy premade food generally, I avoid refined sugars, grains, and non-foods ("junk food") frequently sold in stores. I aim for foods that are in season or simply on sale this week, and then stock up and freeze stuff. Bulk packages get turned into meal sized blobs frozen in good freezer bags (never get the cheap shitty ones, good bags hinder freezer burn).

I don't own a car, yet I live in an area that you need a car. I am considered low income for an area that it itself is considered low income. Although, the irony, is I own a business, but I put my business before myself and pay myself very little; I pay myself what I need to, not what I want to.

So, I don't know. Maybe I do understand this, maybe I don't. I generally buy the best of something that meets my needs and is not too grossly overkill (I like products that can grow with me) (my main computer is the exception to this rule: overkill is best kill), and then own it as long as possible. I am a staunch believer in the Buy It For Life movement. I do not Keep Up With The Joneses. Their life is theirs, and I do not live their life, instead, I live mine.

So, I don't know. I almost want to interpret the article as simply not being an adult (not that I'm claiming I'm an adult, I'm only 33, too young to be one of those yet), and letting childhood insecurities grab ahold of them and take them for a ride. I don't resonate with that behavior.

<comment><USER16> >> own a pair of normally $150 running shoes that I picked up for $60 that I absolutely adore and try to treat well. I put about 5 miles into them every day, so they probably will last 2 years at the absolute very most.

don't running shoes last about 300-500 miles? If you're running 5 miles a day you're probably going to want to replace them in 4 months

<comment><USER15> Walking. Does far less damage to both my legs and the shoes. It just takes longer, yet burns almost the same amount of calories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> James Clear posted a great post about the diderot effect.

Why We Want Things We Don't Need — And What to Do About It.

You may check it out here [1].

[1]: [http://jamesclear.com/diderot-effect](http://jamesclear.com/diderot- effect)

</comment><comment><USER18> Never had any of this. Do not know many people who have that either. Does this happen more in some places than in others?

</comment><comment><USER19> I didn't make it all the way through the post. Too many exclamation marks - after every sentence, it seems - and quoting Miley Cyrus was the breaking point for me.

But seriously, do people really buy new watches to match their new cars? New wardrobes to match a new pair of jeans? I never even knew this was a phenomenon. Definitely first-world problems.

<comment><USER20> Don't know about watches, but my wife has needed a new pair of shoes just because she had nothing that matched a new dress, and then a new purse and belt to go with the shoes, and then a jacket or a coat...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> rich people problems.

<comment><USER22> Not really. If people were rich enough, it wouldn't be a problem for that. The problem is with people who have some liquidity, but spend it on the Diderot effect and thus become poor.</comment></comment>


Top 5 Reasons Why China Is Hacker Heaven - <AUTHOR> http://www.ridehelios.com/blog/top-5-reasons-why-china-is-hacker-heaven/

<comment><USER2> The article seems to actually talk about it being " _Hardware_ Hacker Heaven."

That is something I definitely believe, although I would then be interested more in a practical guide to / report on on how to pull off actually building something there.</comment>