nhaehnle

94 ms·

811.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Taxation is a non-circular source for demand for fiat currency. The value of fiat currency is backed by taxation.
812.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
The more important backing of the USD is the fact that the US federal and state governments demand that you pay your taxes in USD. The (exchange) value of anything depends on supply and demand. Demand for USD comes from many places, but m
813.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
As for the military: That may well be true, but who is willing to spend that kind of money in a sustained fashion just to have a system that is safe from government takeover? Libertarian ideology only gets you so far. Will libertarians put
814.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
So... you'll have miners who have sunk huge investments into powerful computers who are unhappy to see their investments become worthless, and who have the computer power to force high transaction fees onto Bitcoin users. That'll
815.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
M0 would work as a comparison only if nobody saved in BTC. If people did save in BTC, you'd need a much broader definition of money supply as comparison, and cshimmin's comparison makes sense. And since that's a common object
816.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
What I find interesting is the chart where they estimate daily mining revenue to be on the order of $10 million/day, assuming current prices. Probably, that computation should be easy to verify using the various Bitcoin websites. Funda
817.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Use a browser add-on for exporting/importing passwords, transfer the exports on an encrypted USB stick.
818.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
I don't think that paints the image that smsm42 wanted to portray. That's quite possible because of course I was going from my impression and trying to read between the lines. That was kind of the point of my comment: If he&#x
819.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
No we do not control the rules. This is a bad way to start your comment because it is an absolutist, indefensible statement. It is plain wrong, in part because you are not explicit about the quantifiers that are involved. Might I suggest
820.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
That seems like grasping at straws to me. The problem is that smsm42 started his comment with a completely indefensible absolutist statement: "No, we do not control the rules." This is obviously wrong, because we (as society) cont
821.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Self-driving cars don't fix the congestion problem, though. Actually, it is quite plausible that congestion might get worse with the introduction of self-driving cars, because being stuck in traffic will no longer be such a terribly
822.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Well-intended advice from another non-native speaker: You probably meant "sensitive" instead of "sensible" in your P.S.
823.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
In practice, 99% of use cases do not have to worry about a MitM attack that is successful 100% of the time. The probability of a MitM attack remaining successful for all your interactions (and that's what would be required for it to
824.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
This highlights a huge problem of the PGP/GPG web of trust: It mostly solves the wrong problem. I don't care whether a Linux kernel release is signed by a guy who has government-issued ID that says "Linus Torvalds" on it
825.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
> the most relevant example here is their model's assumption that governments can and do spend money into existence There are three points here. First of all, they are very clear that this only applies to monetarily sovereign govern
826.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
The gist is that even though movements between banks tend to balance fairly well, they don't balance exactly. Therefore, banks can end up with excess reserves or a shortage of reserves, which they are then interested in lending out &#x
827.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Not to be an asshole about it, but if you really have a law degree, then perhaps that explains your inability to see the moral dimension of what is going on here. Time to take off your lawyer hat and read again what I wrote. I have not wr
828.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Your point about the complexity of EU law is irrelevant. If there is even one single EU country in which the law is implemented in such a way that the standard referenced by the EU document becomes de facto law, then that standard ought to
829.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
That's the kind of talk that will lead to lawyers being the first against the wall when the revolution comes, right after the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. The morality of the situation is very clear: Th
830.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Thank you for the explanation. Let me offer a tl;dr: Standards bodies found a bureaucratic loophole allowing them to make their standards into de facto -law while avoiding that those standards then become part of the public domain as they
831.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Perhaps, but it does make it moral to publish the work. And law ought to follow morality rather than the other way around.
832.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Even if everybody were forced to be equally open with their data, this would serve to amplify power imbalances that already exist. We have fancy technology for analyzing social graphs and sifting through messages, but using this technology
833.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
What matters in the banking system are capital requirements . The amount of money a bank can lend out is a multiple of the bank's capital, because when a loan defaults, the corresponding amount is subtracted from the bank's capit
834.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
> Or to restate, one of fractional reserve banking's key purposes is to influence the money supply. No. There were experiments with trying to influence the money supply in the past, but it doesn't work. Today, the money supply
835.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
> Sort of. Banks under fractional reserve are limited by a "reserve requirement" [1]. This limits the amount a bank can loan at any time. Slightly tangential to the main topic, but this is a common misunderstanding and incorrec
836.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
When you pay down bank debt, the money just disappears, hence no recipient. Similarly, if you save money at your bank, your bank doesn't actually get more money. At best, you're shifting it from a checking account to a savings acc
837.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
" ... such as the World Bank ... " Just keep in mind the World Bank is considered by many as an instrumental part of a quasi-colonial system of institutions that is set up to exploit the third world through their advocacy for unfa
838.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
Ignoring for the moment that you're engaging in a false dichotomy, central planning actually worked very well for Russia in the 20th century. Russia had fewer (if any) recessions compared to Europe and the US and faster economic growth
839.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
In many cases there is no recipient of the money because we're talking about the bottom 80% in terms of wealth who typically just end up leaving the money in some form of savings account or paying down some debt. That is probably a wis
840.
by nhaehnle 13y ago
The interesting point here is that even though the universe may be entirely deterministic --and quantum theory says that it is, if you consider the universe as a single gigantic "wave function" -- that may still be irrelevant for

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