4 ms·
A lot of discussions I've seen of Libra treat it as 12-dimensional chess where one of the players is a malign entity called "Facebook", looking to maximize reve
by idlewords 7y ago
A lot of discussions I've seen of Libra treat it as 12-dimensional chess where one of the players is a malign entity called "Facebook", looking to maximize revenue, or power, or in some other way malevolently patting a white cat in its lap. I have a different theory to suggest.
What if Zuckerberg is simply a very idealistic person who happens to have full voting control of one of the largest corporations in the world, and insists on pushing it to idiosyncratic ends? This is a guy who a couple of years ago decided that "we will cure all disease" was a non-ridiculous goal to put his and his wife's name on.
A lot of the complexity around Libra can be explained as Zuckerberg pushing for unfettered access to the financial system for everyone, and the many smart legal and technical minds at Facebook trying to protect the company from the regulatory and criminal nightmare such a system would pose in practice.
I may be wrong in this analysis, but in general I think we spend too little time analyzing what vapid thought may have come into Zuckerberg's head this time around, when it is a perfectly sufficient explanation of Facebook's behavior. In this model, the complexity and subtlety of the strategy come from people around the Great Leader trying to mitigate his vision, or adapt it to their own bureaucratic or ideological ends.
- jjeaff 7y agoBesides a few public comments here and there, what evidence do you see that Zuckerberg is altruistic in any way whatsoever? I've seen quite a bit of evidence and stories that he cares little for anything but total world domination. Not so much on the other side. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt too. But his main mantra since forever has been that he wants to connect the world. But if that was really his goal, then facebook wouldn't be such a closed, proprietary system.
- crispyporkbites 7y agoIn the Zuckerberg fan world, that IS altruism
- idlewords 7y agoI don't claim to see into the guy's mind, but I can imagine a power-hungry person telling himself stories about the hunger being justified by all the great things he wants to do for humanity. It doesn't really matter whether the motives are pure or base; my point is more that the system is set up to amplify the wishes of one person with no recourse. So when the pharaoh gets obsessed with something weird, the empire must follow.
- dymk 7y ago> what evidence do you see that Zuckerberg is altruistic in any way whatsoever https://chanzuckerberg.com/ https://chanzuckerberg.com/
- jjeaff 7y agoA non-profit can certainly show altruism. It can also be a vehicle for legal tax evasion, PR, and power. Why create a new foundation when there are certainly existing and efficient organizations that could deploy your money better?
- veratwiger 7y agoAh, but CZI is not a non-profit, it's an LLC, making it an even more efficient vehicle for legal tax evasion, PR, and power. It also allows Mark and Priscilla to make funding decisions affecting entire communities on a whim, without the involvement of cumbersome board members.
- throw20102010 7y agoYou might be right about Zuck being idealistic now, but we have a (much younger) Zuck on record calling his users idiots for trusting him with all their information. He may have matured, but people are justified in being wary. He’s shown some black hat tendencies in the past. I’m a lot more comfortable trusting my money with a bank rather than a company that makes its money selling my information. At least I understand the bank’s incentives.
- idlewords 7y agoDon't mistake my calling him idealistic for any form of praise. I think idealistic people are some of the most dangerous and damaging people in the world.
- OneGearRulesAll 7y agoI'd humbly suggest another rewrite. None of us understands "idealistic" the way you do, and this word choice leads to confusion.
- aptwebapps 7y agoI was going to jump on you to disagree, but I think you're partly right in that some people do understand something different from the word. Still, it's important to understand that there are people who disagree with you, and who do things that you view as objectively wrong, that are driven by idealistic impulses.
- RobertKerans 7y agoDo you conflate "idealistic" with "good"? Similar to the sibling comment, I do understand people have different mental definitions, but idealism [esp + vast power] can and often does lead to fairly awful outcomes, this is afaik well understood. It just seems that you're misunderstanding what idealistic means
- raverbashing 7y agoIt's becoming clearer with each day that Zuckerberg has no concept of morality or humanity. Nor that other countries or people won't share the enthusiasm of his newest big project. Coming up with a project of "we will cure all diseases" show that well, it's just some pipe dream that sounds good for the mere mortals hence why Mark came up with it. Not because curing diseases is good for humanity, but because it will look nice on his CV. Him, together with Bill Gates, look like the kind of people who would sell their own mother to make more money.
- idlewords 7y agoThat's transparently false. The guy has a family, doesn't fire coworkers on a whim, stoops to pet animals in the street etc. The moral here is you can't concentrate power this far, not that Gates or Zuckerberg are history's greatest monsters. No human being should have that level of power.
- raverbashing 7y agoOh they're certainly not monsters, and I don't think they are fundamentally evil More like extremely self centered
- cm2012 7y ago> raverbashing 35 minutes ago [-] > It's becoming clearer with each day that Zuckerberg has no concept of morality or humanity
- raverbashing 7y agoI might have exaggerated, but even this phrase doesn't necessarily imply they are fundamentally evil You might know all about morals and actively go against them. I don't think that's what's happening here
- scottlocklin 7y agoI have a more realistic idea: Zuckerberg is a thief and a resentful little twerp with an inferiority complex, so much so, he even named his dumb project along the lines of the Winkelvii's crypto currency exchange. He needs cryptocurrency like he needs a biological warfare program to achieve the goals of his business, but his well founded sense of inferiority to the Winkelvoss entity he owes his good fortune to causes him to attempt to actually beat them at something. But hey, I could be wrong. Maybe he's doing it because he's an idealist and wants to help the Africans.
- idlewords 7y agoYeah that makes way more sense.
- oska 7y ago> he even named his dumb project along the lines of the Winkelvii's crypto currency exchange I hadn't made this connection before (although I'm sure it has been made many times in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency space already). Just to spell it out: the Winklevi's cryptocurrency exchange is called Gemini, the first air sign in the zodiac and also the sign of twins. Libra is the second air sign and also the sign of scales, or measuring & balance.
- benj111 7y agoOk ill play, (queen to b 3 5 2 9 3 7 1 9 4 0 7 ;) ) Seriously though, assuming this is a zuckerberg brain fart, is that not more reason to be wary, more reason for regulators to close it down. If compliance are doing contortions to make a bad idea legal, that doesn't seem the best basis for a global currency.
- drcode 7y agoIt's simple: Zuck wants to do basic stuff on FB like have an easy link that lets people split a bar bill or have an easy link for buying into a bridal registry, and his lawyers keep telling him stuff like "don't do that or FB will be regulated as a bank" or "don't do that or FB will need to do KYC" and he's sick of hearing that. Libra's sole purpose is to let FB do this kind of stuff while sidestepping the regulatory red tape.