vec

11 ms·

91.
by vec 9y ago
It appears the intent was to purchase control over the ownership of the companies at prevailing market rates. As far as I can tell, the existing stock owners were entirely free to refuse the state's purchase offer and maintain contro
92.
by vec 9y ago
But didn't they already voluntarily transfer control away by issuing stock? Isn't that what stock is ? The CEO doesn't own a publicly traded company, the shareholders do. And if they don't think a sale is a good idea th
93.
by vec 9y ago
A someone who is broadly sympathetic to the idea of labor ownership of the means of production, could I trouble you to explain what's so obvious about the stupidity of this plan? Taxes on corporate profits are generally seen as reasona
94.
by vec 9y ago
> Serious question, how is Bitcoin fundamentally different from gold? So there are a handful of assets (gold, silver, jewels; generally stuff you'd expect to find in your average pulp fantasy treasure chest) that are essentially anc
95.
by vec 9y ago
> This assumes the data sets of the criminal punishment system are not inherently biased, which is of course a false assumption. It doesn't even require that assumption to go awry. Assume there exists a stereotype, say "people
96.
by vec 9y ago
It shouldn't be that hard, either I write some words in an unpronounceable, inhuman tongue. I speak these words to a special stone covered in tiny, intricate runes too small for the eye to see and animated by bottled lightning. If eit
97.
by vec 9y ago
Okay, then why not using a web site built on a SQL database with a read-only public login?
98.
by vec 9y ago
You've still got the word "unreasonable" to contend with. This is, I think, the place where the metaphor shear between technical limits and legal limits actually happens. Legally, we treat reasonableness as the salient divide
99.
by vec 9y ago
I don't dispute that a Bitcoin is a real, discrete thing. What I'm arguing is that it's a self-contained thing. The price of a Bitcoin is not anchored to anything outside the Bitcoin ecosystem . With other assets, there&#x27
100.
by vec 9y ago
Other assets are tied to real phenomena. With stocks, for example, I can make a prediction about a company's future performance, buy or short accordingly, and expect that if I am correct I will profit. I may be wrong about my predictio
101.
by vec 9y ago
Imagine a raffle where tickets cost $1. After the winner is drawn, the house agrees to buy back the first few losing tickets for $0.99, the next few for $0.98, and so on until they work down to $0. The players don't stand to lose every
102.
by vec 9y ago
But all cryptocurrencies are not equally valuable, and there's no reason to think that all of any given crypto won't eventually equally be worth (arbitrarily close to) $0. I can imagine a lottery where usually nobody wins anything
103.
by vec 9y ago
Sure, yeah, the market is systematically manipulated to my benefit, and those manipulations are done in a largely transparent manner. That makes it a more attractive investment target than a market which is not.
104.
by vec 9y ago
The price is a function of the supply and demand. The supply is mostly a function of time, as defined by the blockchain's algorithms. The demand is a function of what, exactly? Still looks mostly like luck to me.
105.
by vec 9y ago
Bubba can vote, so he's able to represent his own interests. Liu Chu has no voice in the system. It seems to me that if I have any obligation it would be to advocate for those that cannot advocate for themselves first.
106.
by vec 9y ago
> At what point do you feel the USA will have enough immigrants? When net migration into and out of the US approaches zero. Until that point it's about how fast we can acculturate newcomers, which judging from history is "prett
107.
by vec 9y ago
Okay, but what's the endgame? The writing has been in the wall for anyone to see for decades in most of these industries. An American factory shuttering is a disappointment, but I doubt it's a surprise to anyone, including it&#x27
108.
by vec 9y ago
The consensus view on the American left is that the idea you outlined is incorrect. Or, more precisely, that there theoretically exists some tax rate where lowering it would produce more overall revenue, but that empirically we appear to ha
109.
by vec 9y ago
Honestly, the main thing I'm looking for is that they have a Github account that's more than a couple of weeks old and has some sort of content in it. That shows me that the applicant is interested in programming for its own sake
110.
by vec 9y ago
A few reasons: First, they're not opposed to a lower corporate rate per se. They are opposed to a corporate tax rate cut that isn't offset by some tax increase elsewhere. Second, the de facto tax rate is well below the de jure
111.
by vec 9y ago
As a reminder, before the inevitable flame war starts, http://lesswrong.com/lw/gz/policy_debates_should_not_appear_... Policies which are, on net, good can still have some bad effects. Policies which are, on net,
112.
by vec 9y ago
Yeah, sure, what's your point? I worry about getting screwed over by any of a dozen vendors, including but not limited to our payment processor. I also worry about getting scammed, about losing all our money due to a bug, about costly
113.
by vec 9y ago
I think the phrase "motivated individuals" is doing a lot of work there. I don't currently take any steps to try and obscure my transaction history from the authorities, and I presume that most if not all of the merchants I t
114.
by vec 9y ago
I run a midsize ecommerce site and, from where I'm sitting, Stripe looks at least as essential in a crypto economy as they are now. We don't want to handle the mechanics of refunds. We don't want to handle the mechanics of di
115.
by vec 9y ago
If money came in after an hour, they would immediately send an email to the customer asking for a refund address. My understanding is that the customer ate the first fee and Stripe ate the second. We ended up offering free shipping to a bun
116.
by vec 9y ago
Nope. We set a price in USD and get paid in USD, minus their usual fees. The price in BTC was determined by the current exchange rate, hence why they were only willing to honor the price for a short time.
117.
by vec 9y ago
For what it's worth, we just spent two weeks trying and failing to get Stripe's Bitcoin integration working on our site. The short version is that Stripe guaranteed a USD <=> BTC exchange rate for an hour, after which they w
118.
by vec 9y ago
You can! Also relevant, there are no functioning democracies in the world today. There are a bunch of republics and parliaments and representative democracies and such, but without exception they empower some relatively small central instit
119.
by vec 9y ago
> And while these ideologues are busy demonizing the central banks a handful of individuals manipulate bitcoin to levels a central bank could never even attempt... Thank you for putting words to an idea I've had for a while. I agree
120.
by vec 9y ago
https://xkcd.com/538/ I don't know why I have to keep explaining this, but cryptocurrencies can and will be regulated using exactly the same mechanism that basically everything else is. The government makes some r

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