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If Facebook or Google create their own currency, they can control our lives
- michael-ax 7y agoIs this obvious only to Europeans?
- feanaro 7y agoI'm not sure whether geography is a significant factor in this, but I've definitely noticed a trend against such thought on HN. For instance, whenever I mention the dangers of a single corporation owning everything, including money, and how indistinguishable it makes it from a government, it gets downvoted with no discussion.
- mehrdadn 7y agoI'm guessing this is because corporations will still obviously be different from governments. For one thing they won't have cops arresting you.
- zamazingo 7y agoThey do though.
- mehrdadn 7y agoWhat?
- tshanmu 7y agoHow can you be sure - if they almost become quasi-goverments - they will surely have quasi-law-enforcement? A ban by facebook could literally be lifethreatening?
- mehrdadn 7y ago> How can you be sure Same way I can be "sure" my bank is going to keep my money safe and give it to me when I need it?
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoCould you be more clear about your intended meaning. From this you might mean "I can't be sure", or you might mean "the government will step in to prevent it", or you might actually think your bank will keep your money safe, or ...
- rakoo 7y agoGovernments keep control on people by the usage of force, but corporations have the means to control people by the use of pleasure. You might not get in jail but if you're not allowed to go where you want/do what you want/talk to who you want, if your life revolves around a single thing and that is removed from you, would you still do it ? This comic about Orwell's and Huxley's vision of things really lays it in simple terms (https://twistedsifter.com/2010/06/the-saturday-strip-week-13/ https://twistedsifter.com/2010/06/the-saturday-strip-week-13...). The source is, of course, very interesting to read.
- mehrdadn 7y ago> would you still do it? Between "do it" and "don't do it"? Well obviously no. But compared to getting thrown in jail? Obviously it's better?
- rakoo 7y agoOf course the difference in "punishement" is huge, but the important and scary part is that corporations can have a huge control on how people behave without any threat other than "you won't be able to use our service". That was my point.
- empath75 7y agoDon’t be so sure.
- sharedfrog 7y agoWhile true now, remember that companies used to own armies[1] and territories[2]. Their motives -- shareholder profit -- have not changed. They do and will strive to grow their power. It's not a stretch from today to imagine living on company-built cities with private security, paying rent and utilities to the company, with contracts and EULAs serving as laws in all but name. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India
- empath75 7y ago> You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. —- From the movie Network, 1976
- mantap 7y agoEuropean countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands are at the forefront of submitting themselves to a cashless economy, giving control of the payments infrastructure to Visa and MasterCard. So it's certainly not obvious to all Europeans.
- the-dude 7y agoIn NL creditcards are not very popular, but paying 'by PIN' is. The network is owned by the Dutch banks, which also provide the online payment platform iDeal. The fees are low and fixed. Offline, between 15cts and a couple of cents ( I don't know how low for the big retailers, 5cts ? ) The online fees are a bit higher, starting at 29cts. There are no variable fees. There is no 'refund' or 'insurance'. Lots of shops do not accept creditcards ( I know of no big retailer which does ).
- martin_a 7y agoThe same is true for Germany. We have a vast number of different systems for cashless payment, with every bank trying to push its own system. It's not like Visa and Master Card are the two major players.
- the-dude 7y agoExcept we don't have a vast number of systems. We have 1.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- martin_a 7y agoTalking about NL or DE?
- whereistimbo 7y agoNL of course. It's the same commenter.
- lm28469 7y ago> Facebook will know the people and companies with whom its users have financially interacted, and that is likely to only be the start As if it wasn't already the case. People simply don't care, they wouldn't be on any of these platforms otherwise, and governments don't understand, or chose not to understand for X reasons. They'd sell their soul for more (perceived) convenience or a better way to fill their narcissistic ego trips. It's like giving chocolate to 3 years old kids, they only stops when they gets sick, and so far "users" aren't sick.
- skohan 7y agoI don't think it's fair to blame users. These corporations hire some of the smartest people in the world to design their products in such a way that they maximally retain and engage users. You can't expect a normal individual to stand against billions of dollars worth of investment in a system designed to make them act against their own self-interest.
- lm28469 7y agoAt some point you have to own up your actions. I'm not a super human, I managed to quit facebook just fine, people are not tools, they know what they're doing. You don't have to stand against it, simply don't use it. Just like most people don't do heroin or control their sexual urges.
- skohan 7y agoThat's fine for any given individual, but in aggregate you should not be surprised that systems which are designed to take advantage of human psychology to achieve a result perform exactly as intended. You bring up heroin, but heroin is a heavily regulated controlled substance precisely because it's an example of something which people in general cannot be reliably trusted to control themselves with.
- skohan 7y agoIn spite of the numerous problems which have manifested themselves with cryptocurrency, I find have always found the idea of a monetary system not owned by the state to be interesting. A monetary system owned by corporations is downright horrifying.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoIt used to be common. It was called "company scrip". You got paid in Wonka Wooden Dollars, nominally the same as regular dollars, and then could only spend them at a Wonka grocery store. No matter what you did, the company clawed back a bit more and a bit more, because they had a controlling hand in the entire ecosystem.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWhich is why there are "Truck" acts on the books in the UK and USA. Though I suspect the current US president would like to revoke those and I am not sure that Boris wouldn't
- dannykwells 7y ago... Who did you imagine would have the resources and credibility to create a non - state currency, except for a (large) corporation??
- sjtindell 7y agoThe Bitcoin project is a great example of the potential for something like this. To this day the creator or creators have never been identified. Key word potential.
- scarface74 7y agoAnd the value fluctuations of bitcoin compared to stable currencies isn’t something that should give users confidence in it.
- feanaro 7y ago
- magwa101 7y agoStates conquered each other and fight for currency supremacy, withness US dollars and oil. Crypto would end a lot of wars. It would however introduce a lot of instability for some time as people adjusted to the freedom.
- simion314 7y agoHow would this help if the companies behind this can be controlled by US, if you are from country X and US decides that from tomorrow we do not do business with X then you are fucked. So you would have to keep a very amount of value and crypto and transform it in real money , gold or something material ASAP. Were there any wars fought for money and not for something more material like resources,lands, strategical territories, ideology ? If you are referring that weapon makers need wars to make money then crypto won't fix that anyway
- laurent123456 7y agoIf they don't like it, governments could block the use of that currency, make it illegal, or force people to exchange it for a state-backed crypto currency. There's no reason to think crypto currencies will make people freer or end any war. Eventually governments and corporations find ways to control all these tools that are supposed to give people freedom.
- skywhopper 7y agoThis is incredibly naive. Using cryptocurrency changes none of the incentives nor the power structure. The very network and electricity supplies that cryptocurrency relies on are ultimately controlled by governments. If cryptocurrency becomes an actual important source of power, then governments will fight to control it. There is no freedom in money that relies on the Internet to exist and freely operate.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> withness US dollars and oil The petrodollar conspiracy gets causation backwards. People don’t use dollars because oil is mostly dollar denominated. International trade is priced in dollars because American consumers put lots of dollars in exporters’ pockets. That drives demand for dollar financial products which powers a varied financial services system. (Oil is regularly traded in pounds sterling and Euros with limited fanfare.)
- langitbiru 7y agoI wonder would it make any better if Apple is the one which creates their own currency. As we know, the track record of Apple respecting privacy of its users is significantly better than Facebook/Google.
- digitalengineer 7y agoNot required. All Apple needs to do is allow the purchase of said item through your "Apple account". The retailer won't know who exactly bought what, neither will your bank. (In the Netherlands the banks are going to sell the 'who-bought-what-from-who'. The bank will simply receive your monthly list of purchases without the data). The question is: would that work?
- efaref 7y ago1 iBuck: $999.
- basicplus2 7y agoOr $1.333820449136241002 = 1.333739068902037589 PentiumSX837$
- inapis 7y agoIt's not exclusively about privacy. At the end of the day Apple is still a corporation beholden to its shareholders.
- langitbiru 7y agoSo if we cannot trust the company, we are left with two options. 1. Nobody (decentralized), like Bitcoin. 2. USD cryptocurrency, created by the US government.
- forgone 7y agoUSD (and all other currencies) are already a tokenised currencies
- samdung 7y agoYou do a one time exchange of your Government issued currency for Libra. Then you start exchanging Libra for goods and services in a p2p way == which means Governments can't tax these goods and services == which means Governments will no longer have the power == which means they will not allow it. (I have not read the Libra papers fully. Im doing a far speculation here.)
- lukevdp 7y agoYou’re forgetting that governments regulate the companies behind Libra, and can and will regulate it.
- mschuster91 7y ago> You’re forgetting that governments regulate the companies behind Libra, and can and will regulate it. Well... let's say you're a politician wanting to regulate Facebook, and let's say you have an affair with whom you communicate on Facebook or in Instagram DMs. If I were Facebook, I'd simply let an investigation team check if any dirt can be mined out of the troves of data - anything, even the dataset of GPS or other location pinpoints, can be enough to get a first hint. And now I discretely contact you and advise that there may be information around and that it would be a pity if that information were to get public. This is the ultimate problem with the size and capabilities that companies such as Facebook have.
- dalbasal 7y agoThe idea of a corporate currency is pretty unpalatable. The idea of a pegged cryptocurrency is interesting though, potentially. We really need a lot more/bigger/better institutions that aren't companies or governments.
- ForHackernews 7y ago> We really need a lot more/bigger/better institutions that aren't companies or governments. So...churches? What are you proposing?
- hoseja 7y agoHopefully without the imaginary sky friends and child rape.
- dang 7y agoYou've posted a lot of unsubstantive and even inflammatory (like this one) comments to HN. We ban accounts that do that. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using this site as intended? We'd be grateful.
- hoseja 7y agoI wouldn't say a lot but I suppose I could try to be more civil. Thanks for your moderation.
- dalbasal 7y agoI'm not proposing anything. But I suppose churches are existence-proof of a thing which isn't a company. It's notable we're now in a time where that's something which requires an existence proof. Incidentally... "things that make currency shouldn't be companies" is not necessarily a rare or new idea.
- smackay 7y agoSeems it's a rather old idea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoImagine this situation: you sell online courses. FB says hey, users can pay directly via Libra thus streamlining checkout to a few clicks. Now Facebook takes a cut of every transaction. If I were PayPal I’d be very scared.
- tshanmu 7y agoPaypal is also part of the libra foundation and they operate nodes - so they might also take a cut. FB has done something clever by coopting most of the bigincumbents - Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, PayU and even stripe! edit: corrected typo
- no1youknowz 7y agoExactly. I cannot recall the CNBC video right now. But one of the top guys of Libra was there and he said although the fee structure hasn't been worked out yet. Taking a cut on the partners side would be where fees are taken. So imagine the current status quo is that either paypal or visa/mastercard are the principle payment methods and they charge the current rates. But with libra, you still pay with paypal or visa/mastercard but using libra coin instead of fiat coin and % of the fee also goes to facebook. What I can't wait for. Is the raft of people who will be denied creating wallets. How many people have had their accounts frozen by Paypal, kicked off using Visa/Mastercard and even Stripe! Quite a few I can tell you. Think the situation will be different from Libra? Doubtful...
- ckastner 7y agoThis current trend of of "disrupting" the market by flouting or circumventing regulations may have worked for Uber, AirBnB and so on, but Libra might just be a step too bold. Unless Libra aims to uphold the same regulations that banks must, then at some point, I predict that there is a huge amount of trouble coming for them. Financial services can be both used and abused, and regulators have forced banks to address the abuse (eg: AML/KYC practices) to protect participants. Circumventing these regulations is equivalent to rolling back these protections. The same could be said about any other industry that might profit from using Libra, be it investment advisors to casinos to who knows what else.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> there is a huge amount of trouble coming for them Apparently neither the House Financial Services committee nor Senate Banking Committee were given a heads up on this launch. From a government relations perspective, this is a whiff of fresh breeze for those of us advocating for a break-up.
- ckastner 7y agoThinking about your comment, I've started to become skeptical of my own position: Sure, financial regulators are probably extremely upset about this, and are probably going to fight it. However, the data Facebook would be collecting here would extremely valuable to other regulators; data they cannot currently access precisely because it is protected by financial regulation. If Facebook were to offer access to this data (on National Security grounds, or 'think of the children' grounds, etc.), agencies could have immediate access to immense amounts of data from potentially every user, whereas currently, they'd probably need a court order (or National Security Letter, etc.) to access the data of just one. Would any of the committees you listed prevail against these interests?
- swalsh 7y agoI sometimes wonder if Zuck, at some point realized he didn't have the charisma to become president, but then realized he didn't need it. Facebook could start using its ability to mint currency as a way to bring in the government policies not otherwise viable in today's world. Maybe they start a basic income. It could boost the currency's use... but also be a path to be a world government without checks and balances. As our government falters, there's an opportunity for someone else to pick up the responsiblity. Which is frightening. The unbanked just happen to have less functional governments than our own, so it's a good test bed.
- amyboyd 7y agoSounds like what happens in Mr Robot, where Zuck = Philip Price.
- rangeofmotion 7y agoHow crazy is it that we allow companies to take a percentage cut of EVERY transaction we make? How often do you NOT use a credit card or some other payment system with a middleman? It's become so commonplace that the idea of replacing cash entirely seems normal to people. And yet this normal state of things involves a middleman taking a cut of EVERY transaction! Jurisdictions literally have to enact laws today to prevent businesses from going completely cashless, which essentially means jurisdictions have to enact laws to prevent middlemen from taking a cut of EVERY transaction made. The cash system does not require middlemen in order to transact. And people have historically not been denied the ability to handle cash, as they are denied credit cards or bank accounts today (yes, a sizable number of people are denied even bank accounts and/or are forced into bank accounts with high monthly fees in order to just get a debit card, which is arguably the most basic requirement for purchasing most things today). With cash, people who had some financial difficulty do not get extorted even more (in the form of having to pay for "subprime" services) on top of an already existing percentage cut of every transaction that the middlemen already take. Unless a new platform can reliably offer a no-fee or at least an absolutely ridiculously low fee transaction platform that absolutely does not deny anyone access nor extort anyone for the ability to gain access, AND we can be reasonably assured that no central organization is using it as a tool to load people onto its platform for later extortion....essentially unless we can get almost exactly the same open access as cash...unless we can get that, I don't support it, and probably neither should you. (Disclaimer: I admittedly haven't looked into the details of Libra yet)
- chii 7y agocash is legal tender right now, so a business cannot refuse cash as payment.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> cash is legal tender right now, True. > a business cannot refuse cash as payment. Or, rather, it cannot collect additional legal penalties for nonpayment of debt for the time period after a tender of payment in legal tender is made. A business may refuse payment offered in exchange for goods and services that have not yet been provided.