Boo! Stamps are way more fun!

At this rate, everyone in Toronto will be homeless by 2050 /s

I don’t have any stats or anything, but I lived in China in 2018 and would see them on my way to work. Usually amputees dressed in very sad attire with a QR code on the ground in front of them. My coworkers told me not to give them money because all the money is going to organized crime groups that manage all the beggars in town. I have no idea if this is true, but I heard it multiple times

In China where digital payments are done mostly via apps like Venmo, there are beggars with QR codes in front of them. However they’re mostly being used by organized crime rings

CBDCs would grant immense power to the state. They would know every purchase you make and have the ability to block specific transactions or even freeze your account fully. It’s an authoritarian’s dream.

Stablecoins have drawbacks too, and the state could exercise control over them somewhat. But blockchains have more property rights and privacy (although not total privacy) built into it by default. It would be much more difficult for a state to overcome those hurdles.

Totally hear you — crypto isn’t perfect, and yeah, hoarding happens just like in any system. But that’s more a human problem than a crypto one.

Crypto is a tool, and how it is used is what matters. It can be used to speculate on ridiculous monkey JPEGs, or scam people or it can be used to send money across borders without middlemen, resist censorship, and invest without being subject to the big banks.

It’s not a silver bullet, but it does open up new possibilities that the current system just doesn’t.

Don’t worry about the downvotes bro. Lemmy has a knee jerk aversion to crypto, even though the ideals of the fediverse and the ideals of crypto are very much aligned

I know lemmy is super anti-crypto, but digital dollars are probably inevitable, and stablecoins are vastly preferable to a CBDC

Milei gets compared to the populist right in other countries a lot (Trump, Orban, etc) but he’s really a more old school libertarian. In a country as rife with corruption and financial mismanagement as Argentina, it seems like a bit of libertarianism was what they needed

To take the other side (not sure I agree):

Iran is unique in that it is run by a government that claims to be Islamic fundamentalists. This could make mutually assured destruction less effective if the ones launching the nukes truly believe that if they die in the retaliation they will go to heaven with their 72 virgins.

I’m not convinced that the Ayatollah is ok dying in the name of killing infidels, but I do see the merits of this argument.

There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they’re ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.

Can you link to some more information on this? I’m curious about alternative education models

If you want to use it in place of airlines, you need high-speed rail. Something that the US has basically none of

Something like 30% of the US lives in the strip between Washington DC and Boston. It’s absolutely achievable for the richest country on Earth to provide high speed rail in that section.

I know lemmy is quite anti-crypto, but CBDCs seem much more dangerous to me

This is definitely a scam. I guess it was inevitable these would come to lemmy, but it’s still a shame

I don’t like it. I might be able to get on board with read-access to my brain (especially if I end up paralyzed or something) if I felt the tech was secure enough, but I’d be very worried about abuse of write access (writing in loyalty to the community party, for example)

There’s a story about how Bill Gates plans to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years (on causes like eradicating polio, decreasing child mortality, etc) and all the Lemmy comments are “he’ll still have a billion dollars” or “he shouldn’t have that money to begin with”. Can’t we appreciate some good in the world?

president of CPA Nova Scotia, said under the bill, member accountants could flock to whatever regulator charged the lowest dues, threatening the association’s very existence

Good! Competition between regulators will mitigate rent-seeking. Professional licensing is (mostly) a tax on everyone for the good of the priestly class of licensed. IMO there are very few professions where a license makes sense, and it seems like the complainers are those who would stand to lose their political power over their profession

I tried to hide my identity as much as possible when I made the account. This included using a pseudo-random email address, fake name, fake address, and (unfortunately) fake birthday, as all of those things could be used as foreign keys to try to match my identity

It asks for your birthday to delete/access your data, but I used a fake one when I signed up…