But that whole business of singling out India and China is BS. If China was split up into 10 smaller countries that together emitted the same amount in aggregate, those 10 smaller countries would fly under the radar. It's only because China happens to be a single country that people point the finger. Per-capita emissions is the thing to be focusing on.
People are only using the metrics that make them/their country look best. The USA is topping the chart in cumulative GHG emissions, which is objectively the cause of climate change (carbon stays in the atmosphere).
It’s valid to focus on China, because China is where lobbying efforts are best spent. A single huge government making a small change will “do” more than a small government making a small change.
India's greenhouse gas emissions are 50% of those of the US. Per capita they are at 12% of the US.
BTW, per capita is the correct comparison because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary boundaries. To illustrate imaging a world with just 2 countries, one emitting X per year and one emitting 2X per year. The population of first county is P and the population of the second country is 2P. In this example we'll assume little trade between the two countries.
That world needs to get down to a total of 2X per year. If we do thing per country that means each country gets to emit X per year. So the first country is fine where they are and the second country needs to cut emissions in half.
To the people of the first country they just continue their normal lifestyle, which generates X/P emissions per capita. The second country has to go from X/P per capita to 1/2 X/P. They will need to make big changes that will likely greatly reduce their standard of living.
But then separatist parties, upset with such a big blow to the standard of living, come to power in the second country, and it splits into 9 separate countries, each with population 2P/9.
In this new 10 country world, each country's share of the global 2X emission budget is 2/10 X. To meet this the first country has to cut per capita emissions to 20% of what they were before, requiring drastic changes in their economy and lifestyles.
The 9 new countries on the other hand only have to each cut per capita emissions to 90% of what they were before. Their standards of living don't have to change much.
...and now there are strong incentives in the first country to split!
This only ends when you reach a configuration where every country has the same per capita allowance.
Trade complicates it, because now emissions in one country might be going toward doing things for the other country and so should be counted toward the other country's emission budget. That can be dealt with by something like a cap and trade system so countries can trade some of their emissions budget to cover emissions done for them in other countries.
Unfortunately most pro-nuclear talk I see is in form of excuse 'my way or highway'. Like the one you did. As bonus you are trying to shift focus to other actors (which true, are also relevant but still...)
Agreed. China and India put out significantly more and dirtier pollution than the US and nuclear is the only realistic pathway forward for base emissions-free power.
Furthermore, this was the right decision. You can't just have the executive branch make up law. If Congress wants this, they can pass a law. That's how the US works.
Not really, it's secured by Proof of Violence/Imprisonment in partnership with the country's government. And the government spends a lot more energy doing that than bitcoin does
We need the state monopoly on violence in order to maintain an orderly society, regardless of which monetary system we use. The energy used by law enforcement to secure the financial system is a tiny fraction of the total, and switching from fiat currency to cryptocurrency wouldn't reduce that energy use at all.
All I see is an expert in a field, who I can't tell if they are right or not, disagreeing with other experts in the same field, who I also can't tell if they are right or not.
When I was trying to rehab from some injuries I came across someone who very convincingly claimed that one of the primary causes of death in the elderly is falling injuries. The death certificate in these cases usually says pneumonia, but they got the pneumonia because a broken hip makes you bedridden for longer than most of us ever will be in our entire lives, and being bedridden in a hospital is a very effective way to get pneumonia and die.
Most people who die of a gun shot wound don't die instantly, they die from blood loss or organ failure. We write GSW on the certificate because the Rule of Law treats violent assault very differently from self-inflicted injuries. But if you're thinking like a longevity expert, it's bodily instability that is far more likely to kill you.
Covid has a lot of complications. But as an infectious disease, we can argue that we should treat it a bit more like an assault instead of an accident. Perhaps part of the disconnect in thinking between people is that not everyone agrees with that notion, and think of getting Covid like falling in the shower. It's my shower, and my body, if I'd rather die than install bars or get one of those stools then that's my perogative. Of course, your children probably disagree with this and tell you at least once per visit. In an overpopulated world maybe we let people go out their own way.
But you can't make someone else fall in that shower. You can make lots of other people die of Covid by being stupid.
> On a philosophical level, I think the flawed premise you’re presenting here is that inflation is a problem that needs to be solved. Inflation is unpopular because it’s effectively a tax on unproductive wealth. Inflation incentivizes investment because idle wealth will lose it’s value at the rate of inflation.
Inflation is a tax on those without assets or the available capital to invest in assets. It's a form of wealth transfer to those with assets. Increasing economic inequality is not good for anyone, and some would say the US is already close to a breaking point.
Other vaccinations are also given three times (second dose after a short interval, third dose after a longer interval), so it might well be that this vaccine turns out to be one of those, we just do not know. That’s the point.
> Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom
Three years ago I bought an apartment.
I got a loan from a bank over internet and phone. The contract was three pages of clear Swedish that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of i, could understand. The contract signing was intermediated by a person whose job is to make sure everything goes smoothly.
In the end, all of the following was guaranteed:
- I had the money
- money was transfered into the other person's account
- I was not a scammer
- that person wasn't a scammer
- I received actual physical keys to an actual physical apartment (and not to an non-existent address)
(a bunch of other stuff)
So, tell me. What exactly does your crypto improve?
All of those guarantees are under threat of legal punishment enforced through court systems.
All of those guarantees are given to you based on good standing with various institutions. The bank, the intermediary, the seller.
If you were a person who was not in good standing with a bank, but you still had the money, could you have completed the transaction?
Technology has a trend of destroying middleman industries, as they don't provide value and take a portion of the proceeds for themselves.
DeFi, in this case, is targeting the financial institutions because we now have technological means to replace banks and lenders. Does that mean this process is smooth? or ready for mass adoption? Not necessarily, but the destruction of banks by technology is inevitable. It's just a matter of when
If I'm a person who has money but is in bad standing with the banks, maybe I shouldn't be able to do financial transactions at all. It's that, or I'm imagining the wrong reasons why a person with money would have trouble with banks.
Could you get more specific about the reasons or the definition of a financial transaction? Not being able to do financial transactions seems like a slow-motion death sentence.
Totally agree, as long as the reasons the banks have are valid.
The problem is that that decision is made by people. Standards of conduct are not universal. What if political affiliation or COVID vaccination status affects your ability to transact with a bank, even though those things have nothing to do with buying or selling real estate
It is I think vastly better for people to make those decisions than for them to be made by smart contract. The institutions we discuss now are at their core social systems.
Even within crypto/defi, it's still people making the decisions. People wrote the algorithms. The only advantage I see there is that, in theory, you should be able to see what rules are encoded in that algorithm, so it's slightly more transparent in that sense.
On the negative side, though, there's essentially no rule of law to prevent the people making the decisions in DeFi from doing things that are bad/illegal/invalid.
> What if political affiliation or COVID vaccination status affects your ability to transact with a bank, even though those things have nothing to do with buying or selling real estate
In the regulated finance world, these sorts of restrictions would be disallowed by the rule of law. You can sue them if they try to enforce those rules, and depending on your jurisdiction, you may win and indeed win damages. What's the equivalent in DeFi? Who do I sue? What court do I ask for relief?
> Even within crypto/defi, it's still people making the decisions. People wrote the algorithms. The only advantage I see there is that, in theory, you should be able to see what rules are encoded in that algorithm, so it's slightly more transparent in that sense.
Agreed. People still create the system, but they have zero to little sway in each individual transaction. So, the system can be biased, but with increased transparency, that should become apparent.
> On the negative side, though, there's essentially no rule of law to prevent the people making the decisions in DeFi from doing things that are bad/illegal/invalid.
Very true, there's a lot of scamming going on. It's still very bleeding edge and not ready for mainstream adoption.
> In the regulated finance world, these sorts of restrictions would be disallowed by the rule of law. You can sue them if they try to enforce those rules, and depending on your jurisdiction, you may win and indeed win damages. What's the equivalent in DeFi? Who do I sue? What court do I ask for relief?
At least in the US, this is not the case for payment processors. Banks may be under more strict regulation. Visa/Mastercard can revoke the ability for anyone to process transactions on their network, even if the activity is completely legal. E.G. OnlyFans/Pornhub recently.
> > On the negative side, though, there's essentially no rule of law to prevent the people making the decisions in DeFi from doing things that are bad/illegal/invalid.
> Very true, there's a lot of scamming going on. It's still very bleeding edge and not ready for mainstream adoption.
Could you elaborate how you think this problem will be fixed for mainstream adoption?
I wish I could. If I knew how, I would be implementing this as fast as humanly possible. The first person to fix this problem will make $1 billion, easy
That's nice and I hope it works out for them, given how difficult it can be to get physical objects properly tracked in a digital system when the people responsible for entering data into the system can be corrupt. But getting the third world digitized is the very opposite of the "very interesting innovation" that everyone else in this thread keeps referring to; it is just making some thing that already exists again. That is not innovation, that is an incremental improvement at best.
For those of us living in prosperous Western countries (and let's not kid ourselves, that is at least 90% of HN), the biggest attraction of cryptocurrencies seems to be "if you buy this, it might be worth more in the future". Which is nice, but hardly innovative.
If you wake up one day and find that your society is disintegrating with that speed, you're going to need food, water, ammo - all of which are tradeable - and a good support network - not a bunch of fake computer monopoly money tokens.
You don't wake up into a disintegrating society, you wake up into a society that's a little worse every day for decades. See: other highly developed countries that are no longer considered highly developed.
How does it improve the process in a disintegrating third world country right now? Lay it out, which steps in the process does it improve or replace? Do you know anyone who's utilized it that way, or are there case studies?
That is an exceptionally well designed purchase process. In my case, I had to go through 3-4 months of wrangling banks and other paperwork. I still don't understand my mortgage contract fully. I just hope it doesn't have any "surprises" in it.
Unfortunately very few people live in a democratic country with the rule of law like Sweden. For the rest, crypto can be a good place to keep their funds without the fear of losing.
The overwhelming majority of people live in countries with representative government and functioning legal systems. Yes, the US and Russia and China and India and Brazil all meet this description. Why do you believe otherwise?
The "kingdom" as you say it, involves instutions AND people that depend on it, if only, by habit, but also by trust. Be these habit and trust be misplaced or not is not much relevant: a new system just does not have a hint of these either just because it's new.
and putting more pressure on countries like China and India