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I assume most of the HN readers are from USA and I can't believe my eyes what I'm reading here. People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do w

I assume most of the HN readers are from USA and I can't believe my eyes what I'm reading here. People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do with their lawfully earned money. I worked for my money, I paid huge amounts of taxes on them. Why is it ok for somebody to come and tell me what I can and can't do with them, and then telling me it's in my best interest to not be allowed to invest them.

ezVoodoo 9y ago
Interesting! Why the US government punishes trading drugs with my own money? I mean that is my lawfully earned money! Why? Why? Why?
- sametmax 9y ago
  Precisely. The fact something is yours is irrelevant. If it's your gun, i still want the state to make it illegal to shoot your kids with it.
  - rothbardrand 9y ago
    Did you just morally equate investing in a failed startups with shooting kids?
    - dsacco 9y ago
      No, the commenter used an analogy to demonstrate similarity. No one drew an equivalence, moral or otherwise, between investing and murder.
    - cloakandswagger 9y ago
      Reductio ad absurdum seems to be the statists' argument of choice. While all but the most radical libertarians will concede that some level of regulation is required, nearly every collectivist I talk to implies that permitting any level of individual human agency would turn the world into a Mad Max hellscape.
- drcode 9y ago
  Oh yeah, the war on drugs and minority encarceration that has resulted is totally the sort of successful government approach we want to emulate and apply to other sectors. (sarcasm)
- felipeko 9y ago
  I'm also curious about that. If you ever find the answer, please, come back to tell me.
beejiu 9y ago
The clue is in the name government.
subsidd 9y ago
I partly agree with you. Banning ICOs will affect lots of potential disruptive and genuine initiatives. Albeit, it also safeguards the people's hard earned money, which majority of them are going to lose out on. IMO, education and liable regulations for the benefit of both the parties is a much better option, but to speak in favour of a governing body, is a lot more tedious.
CryptoPunk 9y ago
You're intelligent and thus should be free. But the law can't create multiple classes of people with different sets of rights, so to protect the stupid, who can't handle that amount of freedom, your rights need to be limited as well. ^ I assume this is how supporters of such laws think about the issue.
- Nursie 9y ago
  Would you dispute that a lot of people are idiots? Would you dispute that even (otherwise) smart people can and do get taken in by dodgy financial schemes? Regulations are there for good reasons...
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    I would dispute that either of these justify banning people from making decisions for themselves on what to spend/invest their money in. If people really don't want the responsibility of freedom we can bring back indentured servitude, where people sign away their rights.
    - Nursie 9y ago
      Ah, so protecting people from scams is now banning people from their own decisions? I suppose we should drop all laws about fraud really, why should we ban people from freely transacting with "microsoft" support services who just want to help them with their computer?
      - CryptoPunk 9y ago
        But banning them from participating in an entire class of financial transactions is not just protecting them from scams. There are token sales that are not scams. It's prohibiting them from entering into legitimate investments that simply don't have government approval (e.g. a securities sale that doesn't ask them for their ID, and thus doesn't meet securities regulations).
        9y ago
samsonradu 9y ago
Because when the whole system collapses due to gigantic bubbles explodind (caused by the lesser financially educated masses) the government will likely use your tax money to keeps thing afloat and you won't like that either. Your money only has value in an economically stable context.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  First off, bubbles are a side effect of the money cycle which is created by central banking -- both the Dotcom and 2008 bubbles were created by the Fed selling money below cost, building a massive carry trade in, for instance, houses. Secondly, if there is a crash, the best thing to do is nothing. Let the people who invested poorly get wiped out-- it's better for the economy. (There are examples of this too- crashes that happened before the federal reserve which were much worse than the 1929 crash, but which are forgotten to history because they didn't create Great Depressions because there was no Federal Reserve to "bail out the system") The bailouts of 2008 were the worst thing that came out of that. Government shouldn't be bailing out these businesses, especially after those businesses made billions getting below cost money from that same government. IT's not really economics you're talking about here but the corruption in the system. Bailouts are part of the game-- thats how they scam us. Bailouts don't protect us (that's the con.) For an excellent history of money and the last 100 years of bailouts and how this exact same thing has been done dozens of times already-- check out G Edward Griffens "The Creature from Jekyll Island" -- it's a history book about money, but it's anything but dry.
  - tim333 9y ago
    Hmm... bubbles can also happen without central banking - think the original tulip bubble for example. Also not all bailouts are bad, for example the auto bailout was estimated to have saved ~380k jobs. And it wasn't the auto industry's fault the banking system went wonky. The system may not be perfect but it's not all bad.
    - mdpopescu 9y ago
      The tulip bubble is mostly a myth. [1] [2] [1] https://stratechery.com/2017/tulips-myths-and-cryptocurrencies/ https://stratechery.com/2017/tulips-myths-and-cryptocurrenci... [2] https://medium.com/@adam_selene/tulips-and-other-myths-c7f69cf2b59d https://medium.com/@adam_selene/tulips-and-other-myths-c7f69...
adbachman 9y ago
Because the first dozen ICOs that turn out to be scams can break consumer confidence across the whole market. When people stop trusting, the system collapses. This isn't hardship, just put your money somewhere else.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  The reason ICOs were such a boon is that there has been no other path for the middle class to invest in startups. ICOs gave a level playing field and produced a resulting boom. Most people don't even know what a cryptocurrency is.
  - baq 9y ago
    i'd need proof that it's the middle class that invests in ICOs and not money launderers.
  - oblio 9y ago
    > The reason ICOs were such a boon is that there has been no other path for the middle class to invest in startups. You know what they say about forgetting history... The middle classes (or lower class) aren't really allowed to invest in business because it's really risky (see: Great Depression). When 1 rich person loses $1 billion, that's sad. When 100000 grandpas lose $10000, that's a national tragedy.
justonepost 9y ago
Anarchy is not a lot of fun. it usually ends up in pure might makes right. North Korea is a timely example of what the philosophy of might makes right leads us to.
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  Are you saying that North Korea is an example of what happens when individualism runs amok? On the contrary, North Korea seems like a collectivist's paradise. Total state control with omnipresent regulation. I wonder what the punishment for trading cryptocurrencies looks like there.
igorgue 9y ago
I'm from the US and I'm not a Neocon... I don't cheer any bans. Not all of us are like that... What's happening here is people are butthurt cause ICOs are more successful and friendly to funders, so they took a very bad deal with the traditional investment route so everything negative against ICOs they are happy. The HN community just like Reddit is just a bunch of children.
- omarchowdhury 9y ago
  Yeah, you'd think the HN crowd would be the ones to welcome ICO with open arms.
negamax 9y ago
This is much welcome ruling and US should follow suit. Current modus operandi is of pump and dump to lure unsuspecting people. Some ICOs are borderline scams. Using Facebook ads to promise the riches. It's almost disgusting
- slowmotiony 9y ago
  Yeah well there's also shitty companies which are publicly traded, I'm supposed to make my own choice here aren't I? Isn't that the point of investing?
  - negamax 9y ago
    So current situation is like using Google and Facebook ads (literally) to raise money. Exchanges on which these ICOs are traded are not regulated. So volume can be fake and likely is. Furthermore money could be coming from anywhere. It could be money laundering simply. So it's not as simple as government is stopping me from burning my money
- croon 9y ago
  I'm always torn in these debates. I'm all for shutting down assholes tricking people, but at what point does it begin/end? Short incomplete list off the top of my head of organisations tricking people out of money with scams: * Most (if not all?) nootropics * Prosperity gospel * Nutritional cereal * Other low fat/diet food stuffs * Fashion * Art * Diamond industry * etc etc
heymijo 9y ago
What I'm seeing is the classic regulation vs. non debate. What's missing is recognition of the historical precedent of regulating what people can/cannot do with their money in the USA and China's proposed plans to follow suit. Before the JOBS Act, for 70+ years the American Securities and Exchange Commission was very specific about what non-accredited investors could do with their money. [0] While China does not have an "accredited investor" status, its version of the SEC put forth a proposal in 2014 that would create accredited investor regulations almost exactly in line with the American SEC's regulations. [1] Intent may be worth looking at here. China sites terrorist financing and money laundering as problems with ICO's. I don't know the veracity of that concern, but I do know that citing terrorism, child pornography, prostitution/human trafficking, etc. are nearly impossible to argue against and thus can be used as a means to pass regulations/legislation that is rife for abuse (see the USA Patriot Act). On the other hand, China banned exchanges allowing people to buy bitcoin in Yuan back in 2013, but today support for buying bitcoin has returned (from the article). It seems both China and America (via the SEC) are trying to figure out what to do with ICOs. Regulation seems inevitable, but each country has thus far taken a different tact. Does any of this make regulating/banning ICOs right or wrong? I don't know, but that seems like a different debate. [0] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967d69c024485029d968ee737&r=SECTION&n=17y3.0.1.1.12.0.46.176 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967... [1] https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2015/10/75384-crowdfunding-in-china-potentials-challenges-risks-and-solutions/ https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2015/10/75384-crowdfunding-... (See "Challenges: Policy and Regulatory Challenges) section)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thefosk 9y ago
  > China sites terrorist financing and money laundering as problems with ICO'e You can maliciously use your paper money right there in your leather wallet to do all sort of criminal activity, should we ban regular money too?
dsacco 9y ago
> People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do with their lawfully earned money. Are you okay with laws about how money is earned? Why? If yes, why are you not okay with laws about how money is spent? There are a vast number of regulations imposed on how you spend your money is spent in any government. Do you categorically disagree with them or are you okay with some of them? EDIT: Every time a thread pops up like this, Hacker News seems to decide it's time to reinvent socioeconomic policy from first principles. Often libertarian principles. I'm trying to inject basic questions in here because much of the comment-response activity in the thread seems to be reactionary debating without substantive proof or rebuttal. Outrage is fine! Your opinions are (probably) fine! But please try not to use personal opinions as axioms. Deconstruct your reasoning just a bit folks.
- felipeko 9y ago
  The principle is pretty simple, if it's two consenting adults doing something that does not impact a third person rights, they should be allowed to do it. So I would be okay with laws about how money is earned, if there's a third person being impacted (pollution, for example), and i am okay with laws about how money is spent if there's a third person being impacted (idk, hiring a assassin) Of course when one of the two consenting parties does something outside of the contract (false advertising, fraud, etc.), it should also be unlawful. Everything else someone does to limit my choices/actions I do disagree.
  - mrep 9y ago
    Except scams and bubbles cause negative externalities [1] such as systematic risk [2] so they do impact other people. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_risk
  - dsacco 9y ago
    Do you agree that certain activities that don't directly impact specific individuals can introduce risk for other people in general? If so, how do you feel about laws designed to limit your ability to take part in those activities?
paulsutter 9y ago
Wait, so you're in China?

ezVoodoo 9y ago

Interesting! Why the US government punishes trading drugs with my own money? I mean that is my lawfully earned money! Why? Why? Why?

sametmax 9y ago
Precisely. The fact something is yours is irrelevant. If it's your gun, i still want the state to make it illegal to shoot your kids with it.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  Did you just morally equate investing in a failed startups with shooting kids?
  - dsacco 9y ago
    No, the commenter used an analogy to demonstrate similarity. No one drew an equivalence, moral or otherwise, between investing and murder.
  - cloakandswagger 9y ago
    Reductio ad absurdum seems to be the statists' argument of choice. While all but the most radical libertarians will concede that some level of regulation is required, nearly every collectivist I talk to implies that permitting any level of individual human agency would turn the world into a Mad Max hellscape.
drcode 9y ago
Oh yeah, the war on drugs and minority encarceration that has resulted is totally the sort of successful government approach we want to emulate and apply to other sectors. (sarcasm)
felipeko 9y ago
I'm also curious about that. If you ever find the answer, please, come back to tell me.

beejiu 9y ago

The clue is in the name government.

subsidd 9y ago

I partly agree with you. Banning ICOs will affect lots of potential disruptive and genuine initiatives. Albeit, it also safeguards the people's hard earned money, which majority of them are going to lose out on. IMO, education and liable regulations for the benefit of both the parties is a much better option, but to speak in favour of a governing body, is a lot more tedious.

CryptoPunk 9y ago

You're intelligent and thus should be free. But the law can't create multiple classes of people with different sets of rights, so to protect the stupid, who can't handle that amount of freedom, your rights need to be limited as well. ^ I assume this is how supporters of such laws think about the issue.

Nursie 9y ago
Would you dispute that a lot of people are idiots? Would you dispute that even (otherwise) smart people can and do get taken in by dodgy financial schemes? Regulations are there for good reasons...
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  I would dispute that either of these justify banning people from making decisions for themselves on what to spend/invest their money in. If people really don't want the responsibility of freedom we can bring back indentured servitude, where people sign away their rights.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    Ah, so protecting people from scams is now banning people from their own decisions? I suppose we should drop all laws about fraud really, why should we ban people from freely transacting with "microsoft" support services who just want to help them with their computer?
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      But banning them from participating in an entire class of financial transactions is not just protecting them from scams. There are token sales that are not scams. It's prohibiting them from entering into legitimate investments that simply don't have government approval (e.g. a securities sale that doesn't ask them for their ID, and thus doesn't meet securities regulations).
      - 9y ago

samsonradu 9y ago

Because when the whole system collapses due to gigantic bubbles explodind (caused by the lesser financially educated masses) the government will likely use your tax money to keeps thing afloat and you won't like that either. Your money only has value in an economically stable context.

rothbardrand 9y ago
First off, bubbles are a side effect of the money cycle which is created by central banking -- both the Dotcom and 2008 bubbles were created by the Fed selling money below cost, building a massive carry trade in, for instance, houses. Secondly, if there is a crash, the best thing to do is nothing. Let the people who invested poorly get wiped out-- it's better for the economy. (There are examples of this too- crashes that happened before the federal reserve which were much worse than the 1929 crash, but which are forgotten to history because they didn't create Great Depressions because there was no Federal Reserve to "bail out the system") The bailouts of 2008 were the worst thing that came out of that. Government shouldn't be bailing out these businesses, especially after those businesses made billions getting below cost money from that same government. IT's not really economics you're talking about here but the corruption in the system. Bailouts are part of the game-- thats how they scam us. Bailouts don't protect us (that's the con.) For an excellent history of money and the last 100 years of bailouts and how this exact same thing has been done dozens of times already-- check out G Edward Griffens "The Creature from Jekyll Island" -- it's a history book about money, but it's anything but dry.
- tim333 9y ago
  Hmm... bubbles can also happen without central banking - think the original tulip bubble for example. Also not all bailouts are bad, for example the auto bailout was estimated to have saved ~380k jobs. And it wasn't the auto industry's fault the banking system went wonky. The system may not be perfect but it's not all bad.
  - mdpopescu 9y ago
    The tulip bubble is mostly a myth. [1] [2] [1] https://stratechery.com/2017/tulips-myths-and-cryptocurrencies/ https://stratechery.com/2017/tulips-myths-and-cryptocurrenci... [2] https://medium.com/@adam_selene/tulips-and-other-myths-c7f69cf2b59d https://medium.com/@adam_selene/tulips-and-other-myths-c7f69...

adbachman 9y ago

Because the first dozen ICOs that turn out to be scams can break consumer confidence across the whole market. When people stop trusting, the system collapses. This isn't hardship, just put your money somewhere else.

rothbardrand 9y ago
The reason ICOs were such a boon is that there has been no other path for the middle class to invest in startups. ICOs gave a level playing field and produced a resulting boom. Most people don't even know what a cryptocurrency is.
- baq 9y ago
  i'd need proof that it's the middle class that invests in ICOs and not money launderers.
- oblio 9y ago
  > The reason ICOs were such a boon is that there has been no other path for the middle class to invest in startups. You know what they say about forgetting history... The middle classes (or lower class) aren't really allowed to invest in business because it's really risky (see: Great Depression). When 1 rich person loses $1 billion, that's sad. When 100000 grandpas lose $10000, that's a national tragedy.

justonepost 9y ago

Anarchy is not a lot of fun. it usually ends up in pure might makes right. North Korea is a timely example of what the philosophy of might makes right leads us to.

cloakandswagger 9y ago
Are you saying that North Korea is an example of what happens when individualism runs amok? On the contrary, North Korea seems like a collectivist's paradise. Total state control with omnipresent regulation. I wonder what the punishment for trading cryptocurrencies looks like there.

igorgue 9y ago

I'm from the US and I'm not a Neocon... I don't cheer any bans. Not all of us are like that... What's happening here is people are butthurt cause ICOs are more successful and friendly to funders, so they took a very bad deal with the traditional investment route so everything negative against ICOs they are happy. The HN community just like Reddit is just a bunch of children.

omarchowdhury 9y ago
Yeah, you'd think the HN crowd would be the ones to welcome ICO with open arms.

negamax 9y ago

This is much welcome ruling and US should follow suit. Current modus operandi is of pump and dump to lure unsuspecting people. Some ICOs are borderline scams. Using Facebook ads to promise the riches. It's almost disgusting

slowmotiony 9y ago
Yeah well there's also shitty companies which are publicly traded, I'm supposed to make my own choice here aren't I? Isn't that the point of investing?
- negamax 9y ago
  So current situation is like using Google and Facebook ads (literally) to raise money. Exchanges on which these ICOs are traded are not regulated. So volume can be fake and likely is. Furthermore money could be coming from anywhere. It could be money laundering simply. So it's not as simple as government is stopping me from burning my money
croon 9y ago
I'm always torn in these debates. I'm all for shutting down assholes tricking people, but at what point does it begin/end? Short incomplete list off the top of my head of organisations tricking people out of money with scams: * Most (if not all?) nootropics * Prosperity gospel * Nutritional cereal * Other low fat/diet food stuffs * Fashion * Art * Diamond industry * etc etc

heymijo 9y ago

What I'm seeing is the classic regulation vs. non debate. What's missing is recognition of the historical precedent of regulating what people can/cannot do with their money in the USA and China's proposed plans to follow suit. Before the JOBS Act, for 70+ years the American Securities and Exchange Commission was very specific about what non-accredited investors could do with their money. [0] While China does not have an "accredited investor" status, its version of the SEC put forth a proposal in 2014 that would create accredited investor regulations almost exactly in line with the American SEC's regulations. [1] Intent may be worth looking at here. China sites terrorist financing and money laundering as problems with ICO's. I don't know the veracity of that concern, but I do know that citing terrorism, child pornography, prostitution/human trafficking, etc. are nearly impossible to argue against and thus can be used as a means to pass regulations/legislation that is rife for abuse (see the USA Patriot Act). On the other hand, China banned exchanges allowing people to buy bitcoin in Yuan back in 2013, but today support for buying bitcoin has returned (from the article). It seems both China and America (via the SEC) are trying to figure out what to do with ICOs. Regulation seems inevitable, but each country has thus far taken a different tact. Does any of this make regulating/banning ICOs right or wrong? I don't know, but that seems like a different debate. [0] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967d69c024485029d968ee737&r=SECTION&n=17y3.0.1.1.12.0.46.176 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967... [1] https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2015/10/75384-crowdfunding-in-china-potentials-challenges-risks-and-solutions/ https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2015/10/75384-crowdfunding-... (See "Challenges: Policy and Regulatory Challenges) section)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thefosk 9y ago
> China sites terrorist financing and money laundering as problems with ICO'e You can maliciously use your paper money right there in your leather wallet to do all sort of criminal activity, should we ban regular money too?

dsacco 9y ago

> People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do with their lawfully earned money. Are you okay with laws about how money is earned? Why? If yes, why are you not okay with laws about how money is spent? There are a vast number of regulations imposed on how you spend your money is spent in any government. Do you categorically disagree with them or are you okay with some of them? EDIT: Every time a thread pops up like this, Hacker News seems to decide it's time to reinvent socioeconomic policy from first principles. Often libertarian principles. I'm trying to inject basic questions in here because much of the comment-response activity in the thread seems to be reactionary debating without substantive proof or rebuttal. Outrage is fine! Your opinions are (probably) fine! But please try not to use personal opinions as axioms. Deconstruct your reasoning just a bit folks.

felipeko 9y ago
The principle is pretty simple, if it's two consenting adults doing something that does not impact a third person rights, they should be allowed to do it. So I would be okay with laws about how money is earned, if there's a third person being impacted (pollution, for example), and i am okay with laws about how money is spent if there's a third person being impacted (idk, hiring a assassin) Of course when one of the two consenting parties does something outside of the contract (false advertising, fraud, etc.), it should also be unlawful. Everything else someone does to limit my choices/actions I do disagree.
- mrep 9y ago
  Except scams and bubbles cause negative externalities [1] such as systematic risk [2] so they do impact other people. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_risk
- dsacco 9y ago
  Do you agree that certain activities that don't directly impact specific individuals can introduce risk for other people in general? If so, how do you feel about laws designed to limit your ability to take part in those activities?

paulsutter 9y ago

Wait, so you're in China?