This is as wrong as everytime someone says "the benefit of Bitcoin is you can just walk all your assets across the border!"
It fundamentally misunderstands how foreign exchange works, or how government backed currency works.
You cannot "opt out" of the local currency: period. It is the only currency which can extinguish tax obligations. And even if it wasn't government backed, you can't trade in a currency no one wants in the first place.
This should be trivially obvious from the observation that how much water a gold bar in the desert buys you is going to be pretty highly variable.
Just because badly managed local currency is required for taxes doesn't mean that most people in that country _must want_ to hold it. Plenty of trivially obvious evidence to the contrary
I assume you've never experienced hyper-inflation? If you have, do you think it's fair that you were forced into a hyper-inflationary currency? And, if given the means to, do you think it's fair that people _should_ have the ability to choose?
That's not the point: the point is "how do you buy the coin in the first place?"
If you live in a place then you have to trade in whatever the local currency is. You didn't "opt in" to a particular stable coin: someone has to be willing to accept that specific coin as payment.
And they can't just exchange it to another: the exchange has to want to sell that coin in exchange for the coin you transact with.
And to interact locally with the government, you need someone who is willing to sell coins in exchange for the currency you don't want.
In practical alternate market economies, the only currency which trades tends to be USD and the exchange rate will be bad because it's a grey market. I would go further and posit that where crypto has any impact, it's people because it's a window into being able to hold USD.
Certainly the only question anyone asks about Tether is whether they actually have the USD to cover their position: no one wants a Yuan based see stable coin.
I think it's pretty easy to buy the coins, regardless of government intervention. Countries (ie China, Nigeria) have tried and failed to restrict access to cryptocurrencies. Whether you get good execution is a separate issue- my point is that stablecoins enable you to execute these trades in the first place.
Agree with the posit- stablecoins grew a lot during periods of strict monetary policy (ie capital outflow from China starting in 2015, hyperinflation in 2023).
Note my original post said disruptive, not good. Meant it in the truest sense of the word; both good and bad comes out of it.
you’ll note that many countries that impose capital controls have large informal economies. this is not a question of theory, there are many countries where millions of people do hold significant sums in dollars and other foreign currencies, regardless of whether they fulfill tax obligation. enough people do this and you also get the informal economy transacting in these currencies. you are “proving” the non-existence of something that in actuality is practiced by millions of people every single day.
And now western countries can also have ultra corrupt, opaque and controlled by a small oligarchy group currency system, just like some 3rd world countries. Yay, progress :)
Same reason as in real life over time everyone will be a renter.
We subsidize landlords and as a result they have effectively unlimited capital to throw at additional properties meaning the price perpetually goes up and they have more assets to loan against to buy more properties.
Then we allow them to take a depreciation value off their taxes on a asset that is appreciating in value.
As a “land pauper,” I disagree. I have renters in Seattle and lose $1k a month because HOA and property taxes. I get zero tax breaks on the loss. Nothing. I’d kick them out and sell, but apparently Seattle is still recovering from COVID. Who knows. It was a bad investment and I learned a lot. That education was expensive. Not all landlords do well.
I don't cry about the money I lost investing in startups I just keep investing. Why are you crying about the money you are losing like you are supposed to be absolutely guaranteed to make money?
The reason you aren't selling is because you are lying or you believe the government should bail you out of your bad decisions.
Who is going to buy a house occupied with tenants and a negative $1k/month cash flow?
Only someone who would pay less than the same house without tenants, which might not be enough to cover the outstanding balance of the mortgage, which means a short sale, which means you need the lender to approve (which they won’t).
What incentive is there to own a negative income asset unless you are lying and you actually are net positive. Unless of course you are the latter and you are claiming that someone should bail you out?
"I'm completely underwater on this asset but if I sell I lose money" yeah that's how that works it's called an investment you can win or lose.
Negative cash flow is usually situation dependent. Is the OP negative because they got a mortgage for 100% of the price at 8%, hoping to quickly flip or refinance at lower rates? Ok - I'll pay cash, and without massive interest payments, I'll be positive $1k/month immediately.
Are you claiming you're having a loss based on the cash outflow that is going towards paying down the mortgage principle? Because otherwise property taxes, HOA protection money, mortgage interest, and the rest of your expenses are all deductible. If you had an actual loss on your schedule E, you'd be getting a tax break from subtracting (not just deducting) that loss from the rest of your income. So if my suspicion is correct, you are not actually "losing $1k a month" but rather that $1k plus your profit is essentially going into a non-optional savings account.
you are simultaneously complaining about your loss, doing nothing to stop it, and postulating either that you cannot sell(?) or that continuing to seek rent will ultimately be a net profit for you.
I mean there is absolutely no reason to think that AI (broadly) and blockchain are going to follow similar trajectories.
I agree that every company becoming an "AI company" is not in the cards. However, I think there is going to be a slow ramp where every startup just throws a few annoying problems at a LLM instead of hiring ML people.
And kinda like the internet it's just a tool that you use when appropriate, but the things where it's appropriate will continue to expand.
He's not just out of touch he's actively pushing pretty horrific shit like the abolition of the state. He also agrees with Balaji about everything and therefore should not be trusted.
"Abolition of the state"? In the very article this thread is about he pushes for regulation against big tech, that does not sound like it could be achieved by abolition of the state
Well really think about the mindset of someone who collectively hates “the state” do you think that person is going to be honest about their actions? Of course not everything is about yourself over everyone else. This is free speech and not a personal attack.
The people who say this garbage would never let any other ideology weasel its way out of the effects of their system in practice, but for some bizarre reason, the giga brains at Reason are allowed to get a pass and say that this is not true capitalism.
The type of capture by regulation outlined in the article is the direct result of a political landscape that prioritizes corporate power over government power. There is nothing "crony" about it; it's just capitalism.
P.S. This is not pro or anti-capitalist; it's anti-shitty argument.
You write a bot that is able to look for similar content from the past and copy paste the top comments and replies. THis has been happening since the beginning of time. I remember seeing this on college humor.
This is a super easy non expensive way to get an account with a ton of karma.
If configuring a router into bridge mode is too burdensome of a step, then Comcast is actually providing that person a service by forcibly managing equipment for them at that point. If only the stalking component of it could be made illegal with proper privacy laws instead of piecemeal app bans.
What a weird way to think about it. I often wonder why I have to take those brain-dead ethics courses at work, then someone like you comes along and reminds me. Comcast can only fully take advantage of people who don't have the technical skills to not get fucked, that is what is happening.
As opposed to no regulation where you can't? I don't understand this sentiment at all.