Because there are no dollars involved. If they do as you suggest, at the start:
A holds gold.
B holds dollars.
C holds oil.
A trades B, gold for dollars. A holds dollars, B holds gold.
A trades C, dollars for oil. A holds oil, C holds dollars.
After your suggested trade result:
A holds oil.
B holds gold.
C holds dollars.
If there is no "middle man", party A gets oil, party C gets gold. Party B keeps their dollars. End result:
A holds oil.
B holds dollars.
C holds gold.
Assuming "B" is USA, USA doesn't get to export its inflation/funding for stimulus checks/student debt/pension crisis/(or in trump era - a wall that does nothing) away to "C", whoever that ends up being, meanwhile, Ghana gets the oil it wants, and "C" gets currency without having to pay for the choices of politicians they have no control over.
> What does matter: the NYT's decision to focus skeptical reporting on tech as an "important power center" sure seems to have been vindicated.
So in effect the NYT which have been an "important power center" of American media since the 1800's, decides that another entity that comes along with too much power needs to be "taken down a peg".
Its a power play to discredit a new entrant into a business sector that threatens the inheritors of the incumbents.
So call it vindication, but its only in the same vein of a third generation monarch trying to quell threats to his inheritance. But to that perspective I agree, its definitely the correct power move to keep threats from taking away the power one inherited.
> Twitter’s already headed down the uncool social media curve like Facebook before it. There will be an exodus, but it would have happened either way.
Once the parents get on, it starts the decline. When the grandparents are there…
> The “political” polarization is part of it. The older folks bring it with them. The majority flock to sites for information and escapism. The back and forth is just exhausting.
> It’s clearer for geek sites. Slashdot died when it got corporate and the content went to crap. Digg was the same. Reddit’s in process except niches. It’ll be same here.
> For everything there is a season.
What you sound like:
Yes and there shall be an exodus from the Twitters.
The parents shall come in, then the grandparents shall follow. Once those generations arrive the decline shall start. Not before. Not long after. But right after the grandparents, whence they arrive.
The polarization shall induce the decline. This wrought on by the older generations. And this is when the majority shall flock to sites for information and escapism.
Just as Slashdot, and Digg, declined before it, so shall the Twitters decline as well.
For everything, there is a season.
---
With your prescience, you must be a billionaire. Why don't you just buy Twitter off of Elon?
> My belief is that public forums with reach into the tens or hundreds of millions are fertile ground for nationalist and genocidal movements, and they will be used for that purpose if it is not actively prevented.
Yes, we must crush all opposition so your side can have absolute power!!!
Let them speak?
Not one chance, where shall you draw the line? Where only your side wishes to draw the line, of course. Perhaps, the only choice then is to crush the other side, for if you don't they will use the forum for "nationalist and genocidal movements". So you see, they must be eliminated in their entirety. Wiped from the existence of all forums, wiped from participation in establishing truths. Or maybe, since they always seem to find support, always seem to find people willing to fight for the rights they represent, always seem to come back when you try to silence and silence and silence every mouth that exists, instead of repeatedly ineffectively trying to suffocate a voice that wishes to speak, maybe what you need to do is to eliminate them all, all of them from existence. This is the only way you will ever prevent genocide.
> Otherwise, we would still have child labor, weekend work, dangerous working conditions, etc.
We still do, in countries that don't play on that field.
> If the US government imposed regulations that all business must act in a sustainable fashion (including the supply chain) the rest of the world would have to follow through.
And where exactly is the rest of the world buying its supplies from? Where were the things inside your home, inside your pockets, on your body made? Only the minority of wealthy people buy ethically produced goods.
Disobeying the free market creates inefficiencies in supply and demand which are always taken advantage of. You don't fight the free market, its an equation that can't be changed. You forget the black market exists in which regulations by definition have no domain. Are the goods you bought off amazon suddenly in compliance with US regulations just because you as a US citizen bought them? No, not at all, yet you and millions of americans buy these goods.
Cheaper energy always means cheaper production costs. In the end its up to the side who puts up the regulations to pay for that inefficiency. And we will most definitely be paying for it one way or another whether its through taxes, job losses, currency devaluation, quality of life, meanwhile someone somewhere will take advantage of lower costs to production and put that carbon into the atmosphere. I'm not in denial of climate change, I just don't believe policy will save us from it. Its like trying to put a fence around a forest fire.
Preventing the apocalypse is not going to happen with just the US pursuing green tech, so its a moot point. We have to get the rest of the world on board, and that's simply not going to happen because there will always be a country that wants to improve the lives of their citizens, and thereby want to climb up the economic ladder, and as such will seek the advantages to be gleaned from the disproportionately more powerful fossil fuel.
Sorry to be such a pessimist, but there's nothing that's going to stop climate change except the free market agreeing to pursue sustainability. Politics has no power here. Its just a bad strategy that puts anyone who pursues green tech at an economic disadvantage, a sort of prisoners dilemma. Anything else is just fantasizing that we live in a non competitive world.
Trump did in fact inherit a good economy from Obama, but that's not really what I was talking about. I was talking about actions, not so much where the economy was.
I didn't even know there were claims of fraud or cheating but as I was watching this video of Biden talk of how the president gets elected and smirk about the counting taking place[1], I immediately felt something offputting.
Now as someone who makes judgement not completely off facts but from what I see and feel, my eyes squint and my mouth pouts discerningly because I feel we are not much better off.
What I disliked so much about this election was that I believed based purely on policies drafted by both parties, that the democrats did not bring anything better to the table than what republicans did, and this is against a party that spent billions and counting building a wall that will basically not work as advertised.
What Trump got right and why he won against Hillary back in 2016 is that US is on the brink of losing its hegemony. Nationalistic Americans flocked to his appeals to close off borders, to renegotiate trade deals, back out of agreements that hurt the US, and promise bringing manufacturing back into our borders.
Biden is a career politician so he knows how to say all the right words to appeal to as many people as possible, but where those words fail is in their over-promise in that the sum of policies put forth simply don't add up. Not that trump hasn't made promises he couldn't keep, but he has taken and put into motion a lot of things that represent a very nationalistic ideology.
Personally I think that even with the dysfunctional pathologically lying brain that Trump had, he was on the side with the better economic playbook. Regardless of what one may think about him, Trump is the one with business experience, and Biden is the one with political experience. And as much as I would love to believe that we live in a world where we can make allies, and negotiate, and hand out financial aid, and work together to green the earth, the reality is we live in a Corporatocracy, and that even Biden came to power by its merits.
I was very much on the fence. Lets just say I wasn't feeling very positive about the next four years even before the election was called.
Not as quickly as your politicians are.