Many "pure capitalists" would argue that you only achieve competitive capitalism through "pure capitalism." The idea applies a cynical view to human nature but is interesting none the less. The idea can be boiled down to one simple point; everything can be bought for the right price. If there is a governing body that has the power to regulate any and every business then it only follows that the biggest of those businesses have every resource and incentive to guide regulation to enforce their monopolies.
We may think about these as backroom deals between senators and lobbyists but I'd argue that you actively participate in such deals by just sitting in front of your TV or surfing the web. In America the biggest governing body is voters.
> The white paper explicitly gives the Libra Association (i.e. Facebook and its partner validators) governance control over the cryptocurrency.
> Here's an easy scenario to imagine that shows how incentives would get misaligned: Facebook and the other validating nodes of Libra are financially compensated by interest from the collateral for Libra tokens. If Libra is successful in its mission, it will become a global currency that's stronger than the assets that underly its collateral.
> When this happens, suddenly Libra being a collateralized stablecoin stops making sense. Kind of like when the US Dollar no longer needed to be backed by gold since it was a strong enough currency/unit of financial measurement on its own. The US then got rid of the gold standard and has since saved itself untold money in custodial expenses they would have been paying to hold all that gold.
> The Association would never do this for the Libra however since it is literally how they are funding their own operation. Even if it's in the best interest of all Libra users, the centralized governance association with all of the authority to make this improvement would choose not to because it's not in their best interest to do so.
> There's no leap of imagination there - it's just how power and incentives work.
Your basing this argument on the fractional reserve monetary policy that the libra association is hedging against. I believe we are moving towards a world in which global currencies become the norm. There will be 2 types of global currencies, corporate currencies and decentralized currencies, aka Libra and Bitcoin.
Both forms will have to have a mechanism that prevents inflation, Libra will do that by being fully backed, Bitcoin does that through Nakamoto consensus.
With digital currencies it becomes possible to move your entire "cash" holdings in a matter of minutes, so a fixed supply currency like Bitcoin insures that Libra will never dilute it's supply because the barrier to exit the currency is so low. In democratic countries like the US the mechanic that prevents massive inflation is mostly voters' influence over the federal reserve. Of course it isn't perfect the dollar has been inflated ~300% since leaving the gold standard. With corporate global currencies we don't have such voting powers.
No, it doesn't matter if everyone thinks of it as 'the Facebook money thing' if that's not what it is. The only thing that people's perception effects is whether or not governments influenced by said perception allow Facebook to build a wallet in with their service in those regions. Libra the currency will be a thing regardless.
Yes, there are many Bitcoiners who believe that everyone will become their own bank but I believe a more common sentiment is the idea off full backed reserved. But a great I feel that a more common belief held by Bitcoiners is that the "inherent" issues with capitalism come from fractional reserve banking. Now for the first time in history there is a form of money that you can prove in a matter of seconds that your money didn't move when you gave custody to the bank. In fact with multisignature transactions banks would simply act as a escrow service for those, I imagine a most people, who do not feel comfortable managing their own keys.
In no doubt are consumers expectations of cryptocurrency market adoption wildly over speculated but make believe? People who invest is cryptocurrencies are in essence shorting the current global financial system.
Why not? Being straight takes on the form of having a sexual desire to the opportunity sex. Being gay takes on the form of have sexual desires for the same sex. Why should pedophilia, or zoophilia, or any other the other niche sexual attractions be treated differently?
#3 is an extremely important point that most people just gloss over when looking at blockchain use cases. A blockchain should only be used if immutability is essential. If immutability is essential people will pay a premium for that service. Thus a token becomes necessary because it is the tool which users interact with the immutable ledger while simultaneously the tool that creates the profit incentives for nodes to secure the chain.