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This is about government deciding how electricity should or should not be used and seems like an extremely bad idea. Cryptocurrency mining doesn't pollute in it

This is about government deciding how electricity should or should not be used and seems like an extremely bad idea. Cryptocurrency mining doesn't pollute in itself. If the idea is that electricity consumption in general is polluting, the law should penalize/regulate electricity consumption in general.

krageon 4y ago
Thank you. A lot of folks in the comments currently seem to focus on whether or not they feel cryptocurrencies are legitimate at all, but this is the real crux of the matter. I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, not based on some holier-than-thou judgement about whether not not I'm applying it right. This reminds me strongly of a house I once rented that had in the rental contract that the rental agency was allowed to "monitor my electricity use" so they could "give me advice on better spending" if I fell out of some undefined norm. Simply uncalled for.
- IanCal 4y ago
  Unless the thing you bought is a fossil fuel based electricity generation facility I don't think this affects you.
  - krageon 4y ago
    I think I can conceptually disagree even with things that don't affect me. Similar to how I'm not a fan of blood diamonds or ethnic cleansing.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  > I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, Government does that all the time. You pay for water from the water utility, but they also have restrictions on lawn watering during droughts. You can buy a car, but there are restrictions on who can drive it and under what circumstances. You can buy alcohol, but there are restrictions on when you can drink (drinking and driving, open container laws).
  - cft 4y ago
    That they already do it doesn't mean they should do more of it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - krageon 4y ago
    It's nice that they do it anyway, but I still don't appreciate it and I don't like it when they do it to more things. I'm not sure why "but they already do it!" should be an argument for liking it (or even tolerating it in novel circumstances). To me that sounds like stockholm syndrome.
uniqueuid 4y ago
Regulation of resources is based on scarcity. When water supplies dwindle, you will prioritize drinking over industrial use and farming. So when the externalities of energy increase, prioritizing (or penalizing) specific uses is (a) straight-forward and (b) not a novel phenomenon.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  > Regulation of resources is based on scarcity. When water supplies dwindle, you will prioritize drinking over industrial use and farming. Is this really true in practice? I don’t live in the US, but there were some threads about quite the opposite happening in California: government regulating availability of water in households while raising prices, and at the same time making water cheaply available and wasting for almond production in a desert.
  - uniqueuid 4y ago
    Well the concrete tradeoffs differ from case to case of course. But grandparent's suggestion that resources should be distributed irrespective of their usage is nevertheless wrong. In the end, you can look at the tradeoffs to try and infer regulatory agencies' priorities. As far as I read, the californian approach does indeed favor agricultural use. At the same time, it is obviously a good idea to limit unnecessary consumer use (lawns, albeit a small share of overall water consumption). That said, imagine there was a drinking water shortage in LA. I guess the policy would change rapidly. So it's a question of the associated costs, and the costs of civil unrest are high. Of course, the US is such a political disaster right now that a lot of really fundamental and trivial societal issues are negotiated through high-stakes (and sometimes violent) confrontations rather than through civilized political means. Woe to thee o land whose electorate is so spiteful.
    - xiphias2 4y ago
      The point I'm trying to make is that if there would be drinking water shortage in LA and the government wouldn't subsidize agriculture, almond production in California would probably get bankrupt, the farmers would move to another state that is more suitable for water intensitive farming, and the market would just solve the issue. Regulations can be beneficial, but harmful as well. In the current case gas prices are high anyways, and Bitcoin miners are dynamic resources in containers that can move easily, so I guess they will just create another wave of demand for solar panel + battery pack installations (just like Blockstream did with Tesla solar+batteries, and what's going on in Texas in the last few years with solar overprovisioning). I'm in favor of this law, just not the title.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> about government deciding how electricity should or should not be used and seems like an extremely bad idea Why? We regulate luxuries differently from productive activities. It makes sense to do similarly for crypto. Energy generation is massively publicly supported. Crypto can be produced abroad and traded here; burning our backyards to produce literally nothing is madness.
endisneigh 4y ago
What does this have to do with the bill? > Section 2 places a moratorium on air permit issuance and renewal for an electric generating facility that utilizes a carbon-based fuel and that provides, in whole or in part, behind-the-meter electric energy consumed or utilized by cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions.
MrMan 4y ago
its a very good idea and if the government doesn't shut these down citizen militias might
alkonaut 4y ago
Governments decide incandescent bulbs aren’t an ok way to use electricity. Governments will soon decide combustion engine cars aren’t an allowed use of gasoline. We can’t ban gasoline and electricity or tax it to oblivion because that’s a better way of reducing waste of electricity in incandescent bulbs.
parkingrift 4y ago
Electricity is a public utility. Government has been deciding how it should be used for decades and decades now. If you don’t want interference or want freedom from legislation you can trivially roll your own local power.

krageon 4y ago

Thank you. A lot of folks in the comments currently seem to focus on whether or not they feel cryptocurrencies are legitimate at all, but this is the real crux of the matter. I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, not based on some holier-than-thou judgement about whether not not I'm applying it right. This reminds me strongly of a house I once rented that had in the rental contract that the rental agency was allowed to "monitor my electricity use" so they could "give me advice on better spending" if I fell out of some undefined norm. Simply uncalled for.

IanCal 4y ago
Unless the thing you bought is a fossil fuel based electricity generation facility I don't think this affects you.
- krageon 4y ago
  I think I can conceptually disagree even with things that don't affect me. Similar to how I'm not a fan of blood diamonds or ethnic cleansing.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, Government does that all the time. You pay for water from the water utility, but they also have restrictions on lawn watering during droughts. You can buy a car, but there are restrictions on who can drive it and under what circumstances. You can buy alcohol, but there are restrictions on when you can drink (drinking and driving, open container laws).
- cft 4y ago
  That they already do it doesn't mean they should do more of it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- krageon 4y ago
  It's nice that they do it anyway, but I still don't appreciate it and I don't like it when they do it to more things. I'm not sure why "but they already do it!" should be an argument for liking it (or even tolerating it in novel circumstances). To me that sounds like stockholm syndrome.

uniqueuid 4y ago

Regulation of resources is based on scarcity. When water supplies dwindle, you will prioritize drinking over industrial use and farming. So when the externalities of energy increase, prioritizing (or penalizing) specific uses is (a) straight-forward and (b) not a novel phenomenon.

xiphias2 4y ago
> Regulation of resources is based on scarcity. When water supplies dwindle, you will prioritize drinking over industrial use and farming. Is this really true in practice? I don’t live in the US, but there were some threads about quite the opposite happening in California: government regulating availability of water in households while raising prices, and at the same time making water cheaply available and wasting for almond production in a desert.
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  Well the concrete tradeoffs differ from case to case of course. But grandparent's suggestion that resources should be distributed irrespective of their usage is nevertheless wrong. In the end, you can look at the tradeoffs to try and infer regulatory agencies' priorities. As far as I read, the californian approach does indeed favor agricultural use. At the same time, it is obviously a good idea to limit unnecessary consumer use (lawns, albeit a small share of overall water consumption). That said, imagine there was a drinking water shortage in LA. I guess the policy would change rapidly. So it's a question of the associated costs, and the costs of civil unrest are high. Of course, the US is such a political disaster right now that a lot of really fundamental and trivial societal issues are negotiated through high-stakes (and sometimes violent) confrontations rather than through civilized political means. Woe to thee o land whose electorate is so spiteful.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    The point I'm trying to make is that if there would be drinking water shortage in LA and the government wouldn't subsidize agriculture, almond production in California would probably get bankrupt, the farmers would move to another state that is more suitable for water intensitive farming, and the market would just solve the issue. Regulations can be beneficial, but harmful as well. In the current case gas prices are high anyways, and Bitcoin miners are dynamic resources in containers that can move easily, so I guess they will just create another wave of demand for solar panel + battery pack installations (just like Blockstream did with Tesla solar+batteries, and what's going on in Texas in the last few years with solar overprovisioning). I'm in favor of this law, just not the title.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> about government deciding how electricity should or should not be used and seems like an extremely bad idea Why? We regulate luxuries differently from productive activities. It makes sense to do similarly for crypto. Energy generation is massively publicly supported. Crypto can be produced abroad and traded here; burning our backyards to produce literally nothing is madness.

endisneigh 4y ago

What does this have to do with the bill? > Section 2 places a moratorium on air permit issuance and renewal for an electric generating facility that utilizes a carbon-based fuel and that provides, in whole or in part, behind-the-meter electric energy consumed or utilized by cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions.

MrMan 4y ago

its a very good idea and if the government doesn't shut these down citizen militias might

alkonaut 4y ago

Governments decide incandescent bulbs aren’t an ok way to use electricity. Governments will soon decide combustion engine cars aren’t an allowed use of gasoline. We can’t ban gasoline and electricity or tax it to oblivion because that’s a better way of reducing waste of electricity in incandescent bulbs.

parkingrift 4y ago

Electricity is a public utility. Government has been deciding how it should be used for decades and decades now. If you don’t want interference or want freedom from legislation you can trivially roll your own local power.