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I think the proposal here is very simple. Pass a law against proof of work crypto currencies, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and deal with the next big

• beaner 5y ago
  You answered literally nothing that the person you're responding to asked.
  • Garlef 5y ago
    You are right. Instead, they explained why these questions are (partially) misguided. That's also an answer.
    • beaner 5y ago
      They didn't do that either. It reads more like avoidance. The semblance of an answer by posting anything, rather than a plain, direct response. Which gives the original questions more weight: why were they not able to be responded to directly? Are the questions potent? Your reply here is just shifty on shifty.
      • stale2002 5y ago
        You really don't understand the problem with asking questions like "well who decides?!?" To literally every proposal of legislation ever? Because that is what always happens. Every time someone make s a general proposal, for any law at all, there are people making the same old, dumb argument, of "well who decides?!?" Every single time. Sure you do not believe that all laws ever are wrong, right? Because the answer to this dumb question is the same as for every law ever. That makes it valid, unless you believe that all laws ever are bad.
        • beaner 5y ago
          I don't understand. We clearly have general laws like "don't shoot people," rather than 320 million individual laws like "John Edmund Smith IV of Springfield, Ohio cannot shoot people." And we didn't start with laws targeting individuals and then broaden it later. "Don't shoot people" was the proper, general rule that addresses the problem of shootings. Laws like this seem to be pretty effective and desirable. I don't know why we wouldn't take the same approach with something like carbon emissions.
          • stale2002 5y ago
            > And we didn't start with laws targeting There are absolutely many laws, that are very targeted and specific. Were you unaware of this? For a random example, there are laws that probably say something like "A truck, of this size, must follow these specific environmental regulations". That would be a specific law, that applies to a truck, and required it to do a specific thing, like have a certain mileage efficiency, and it is not general. It is pretty specific, and it is not a general law that applies to all environmental related things. The world is full of many specific laws, all over the place.
  • mcdonje 5y ago
    They answered it. The person they were responding to was trying to broaden the scope too much. Many laws purposely have narrow scopes in order to handle problems that arise without setting too much precedent.
    • beaner 5y ago
      They did not answer it. "Broaden the scope too much" - why? The question seems completely appropriate if you're actually trying to solve the climate problem. The response didn't address this, it targets crypto specifically, which makes it seem like the motivations are not climate but something else. The question was about how to choose who is using too much and how, and the response was basically "don't think about it, we will exist in the future and can think about it then." But we exist now. And even if we were to wait, it's still a question we can answer now to have enacted later. The response provided was a bypass, a non-answer.
• bko 5y ago
  > The law doesn't need to try and anticipate the actions that occur in the future That's an incredibly dangerous idea.
  • hjek 5y ago
    Bitcoin is an incredibly dangerous idea because of its contributions to the climate crisis.
    • matheusmoreira 5y ago
      It's not even 1% of global energy consumption. Surely there are far more dangerous things to worry about out there.
      • Shaanie 5y ago
        Isn't it still quite insane that around 0.5% of our global energy usage is spent on bitcoin, though?
        • matheusmoreira 5y ago
          Bitcoin? Yes, it's a useless coin. I wouldn't mind even higher amounts of energy being spent on Monero though. It's good that Ethereum is moving to proof of stake. Not because of some environmental impact though. Mining is just really expensive, it results in huge fees making the coin almost unusable for normal people.
          • reedjosh 5y ago
            100% Monero is amazing. 1500+tps and it's just getting started. Faster transaction speeds, privacy, just awesome!
            • matheusmoreira 5y ago
              Yeah. It's essentially a perfected version of bitcoin. It should be the number one currency.
• chii 5y ago
  > Pass a law against proof of work crypto currencies once again, you have merely just assumed the role of arbitor. What makes this opinion better than the opposition? What needs to be addressed isn't energy usage, but the cost of energy in the first place. Why isn't the fix be passing a law to tax carbon properly? Tax the externalities, and the rest would follow. I don't care if people burn up energy for crypto, as long as they pay for the cost properly.
  • gpm 5y ago
    > once again, you have merely just assumed the role of arbitor. What makes this opinion better than the opposition? This is literally the role of legislators. What makes "my" opinion better, is in the event that this sort of legislation passed, the majority of the elective representatives in both houses agree we should ban proof of work crytpo currencies, nothing less, nothing more. > [alternative proposal] I mean, I happen to like this proposal too, but you haven't given any reason not to do both...
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    > What makes this opinion better than the opposition? Nothing about the opinion is better than any other. But the only thing we have to achieve is that it is a majority opinion, which frankly doesn’t seem all that hard to me.
  • gamegoblin 5y ago
    I think OP is suggesting that a targeted ban on proof of work crypto will be more politically feasible -- particularly in the US -- than a carbon tax. Even the state of Washington (which is far more left/democratic/liberal than the US as a whole) failed to pass two different modest carbon taxes in recent years. So while carbon pricing would be a more ideal solution, OP is suggesting that a targeted ban on POW crypto is a good-enough bandaid that might actually pass.
• selfhoster11 5y ago
  > Pass a law against proof of work crypto currencies, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and deal with the next big waste of power when it comes about by passing a law about it. If we won't legislate it now, it's possible we won't get a chance to do it later thanks to bickering from lobbyists and fossilised laws and practices. See IPv4.
  • gpm 5y ago
    You seem to be proposing that not passing a law against proof of work cryptocurrencies somehow makes it more likely that we will quickly pass a law generally "solving the climate issues" ... I think that is highly unlikely, and in fact I think the opposite direction is more likely, that passing a law banning PoW cryptocurrencies makes us more likely to pass another law which solves climate issues in other ways. Banning PoW cryptocurrencies is not a big enough priority for anyone that it will be a motivating factor to move past the other issues surrounding the climate debate, especially not anyone on the side of "don't do [thing] to fix the problem". I don't see any other mechanism by which it makes passing other climate legislation harder. Banning PoW cryptocurrencies removes money that is currently on the side of "don't pass climate legislation because it will harm my PoW cryptocurrency business" from the table. That makes passing future legislation easier. In general, trying to solve all the worlds problems at once doesn't work. It's too complex, you paralyze the decision making body with too many tradeoffs. When something is obviously bad, banning it immediately not only has the effect of meaning it's gone immediately (and doesn't hang around until you solve the whole problem), but it simplifies the remaining problem for the decision making body. This makes them more likely to come to a consensus on exactly what to do in a finite amount of time.
    • jude- 5y ago
      > Banning PoW cryptocurrencies removes money that is currently on the side of "don't pass climate legislation because it will harm my PoW cryptocurrency business" from the table. That makes passing future legislation easier. Does it? And, do you have data that backs this up? It stands to reason to me that PoW miners only want cheap power; they don't really care too much how it gets generated. Considering that the cheapest power source you can build out today is green energy, it sounds like a win-win to me for them to put their money into "advocate for more cheap power."
• jedimastert 5y ago
  > don't let perfect be the enemy of good I don't think this applies to laws. In fact, I'd claim the opposite. Laws are something you REALLY want to get right
  • bidirectional 5y ago
    It applies to laws in the sense being discussed here. Ban X which is really bad while not banning Y which is totally unrelated but happens to be bad in the same way. Why does that need to be perfectly right?
• LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  > The law doesn't need to try and anticipate the actions that occur in the future But that’s exactly what the law should do...