I read the article as connecting (not conflating) the two. He's saying that the government can no longer be trusted with this power, as evidenced by this particular misuse, and they therefore should lose that ability.
Why must we choose between doing nothing on the one hand and freezing assets without due process on the other? Why can't we just have a functioning liberal democracy that arrests the purported criminals quickly, charges them with a crime, and tries them in a court under the full scrutiny of the voting public?
Canada only enacted the Emergencies Act when things got out of hand.
This was separatist group that for a time took control over the border, threatened and blockaded critical infrastructure and committed thousands of crimes (bribery, threats, assault, setting a fire in a building).
The criminal investigations are ongoing. Due process will be had.
Then arrest the people who are breaking the laws and blockading critical infrastructure, and charge them with a criminal offence. The BLM protests also saw many criminal elements that did looting and assaults. None of this is a valid argument for freezing accounts of people "involved" without due process.
The Emergencies Act is specifically for when there is an urgent and critical public order emergency. It's invocation is going to be ratified by the Parlaiment today.
The police unfortunately dropped the ball, they tried that option too. But just arresting specific people also wasn't enough.
Polling shows that the majority of Canadians supported the use of the act.
Notably, the War Measures Act - which is the original act that was rebranded as the Emergencies Act in 1988 - has only ever been put into effect 3 times in history.
1. WWI
2. WWII
3. FLQ Crisis - an incident that included the kidnapping of federal ministers by a terrorist organization
By contrast, this protest has been incredibly peaceful when compared to other similar protests or occupations. There is a debate happening in parliament right now on whether or not to extend the Emergency powers now that the government has successfully cleared the protestors and taken back control of downtown Ottawa.
I personally don't believe this incident warranted the suspension of civil liberties. It isn't clear to me that the government did what they could to apply the existing laws on the books. If anything the biggest issue was that the Ottawa police appeared reluctant to enforce existing laws on the protestors. That is a different issue and does not justify the imposition of the Emergency act.
This was one year after similar group attacked the American Capitolium. Holding critical infrastructure hostage, threatening the government and harassing people is not peaceful.
Invoking the Emergencies Act after 3 weeks was warranted after the police failed doing it's job.
The government did not have a clear picture or control over the situation. A foreign organization could have used it to supply these people, which is what happened. This was a big hole in Canada's national security.
> This was one year after similar group attacked the American Capitolium.
Assuming you are referring to the January 6th insurrection incident, I don't think the two are comparable. What happened in Canada could fairly be described as an occupation and would therefore be most similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Notably the Occupy movement, despite being equally frustrating for the local and national government as well as the civilian population, was allowed to go on for close to 2 years.
I don't claim that Canada should have allowed this protest/occupation to go on for that long, but I think it is clear that had the Ottawa police had the will to take action, the existing laws were sufficient to put an end to any illegal activity.
Peaceful protest, not occupation, is lawful under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So my hypothesis is that the Canadian Government implemented the Emergency Measures act in order to suspend the Charter so they could suppress an otherwise lawful activity.
> Notably the Occupy movement, despite being equally frustrating for the local and national government as well as the civilian population, was allowed to go on for close to 2 years.
Politically this is probably true, but ows never as far as I recall blocked main roads, and certainly not for extended periods. Whatever you think the legitimacy of that tactic is, it's not the same.
This is not true. The occupy movement did block main roads. When they were doing their thing, my drive to work (and back) tripled. BLM did the same.
Police need to be able to stop those who break the law, while simultaneously protecting those who are merely protesting. Even if they’re part of the same crowd.
This is especially insane because you can no longer distinguish between “protestors legally protesting” and “protestors illegally blocking critical infrastructure.”
I can find some examples of protestors blocking main roads and getting arrested the same day (https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/occupy-wall-s... among others), but no news or reporting on continuous multi-day blockages (probably because, as far as I can tell, there are tons of examples of them being swiftly arrested, same with BLM).
(and there's something to be said for "the police shouldn't be able to put down a large scale protest of involving thousands of people and vehicles. Perhaps if the police force is powerful enough to do that, it's too strong?)
So with BLM there were blockages of one main road, then another, then another. Not continuous. At “protest time” which is when people were getting off work.
Lasted for a few days at most, not like in Canada.
Occupy protestors took a nearby park. Tried to stay out of the way otherwise.
It’s complicated whether they were responsible for blockage. Initially it was police who were in the way. After a while the police left but the activists stayed. The park and area around in became uninhabitable and unnavigable. Garbage in streets.
Very different protests. And very different from what’s happening in Canada.
Remember that these financial controls are about limiting access to donations received from outside of Canada —- over half of the contributions to GiveSendGo were _not_ from Canadians.
Canada has the right (just as the US does) to limit foreign influence in its domestic affairs and its democratically elected government is exercising that right.
But the freezing of accounts wasn't limited to foreign donors, was it?
It wasn't even limited to those who actually broke any laws. Multiple incidents have been reported by Canadians who donated as little as $50 to the protest BEFORE it was declared illegal, having their bank accounts frozen without any formal charges.
Given that they are not even charging these people with crimes, they are denied due process and their economic lives are destroyed for the crime of committing a lawful act that happened to be unpopular with the ruling party.
To portray this as a reasonable step to curtail foreign influence in domestic affairs seems intellectually dishonest. This was government overreach pure and simple.
Canada obviously doesn't have jurisdiction over foreign donors, so depending on how GiveSendGo implemented their money transmission flows it may not have been possible for the government to distinguish between domestic and foreign financing sources. I agree that domestic money flowing within Canada (to e.g. support Charter-protected actions of others) should not be impeded without a higher degree of scrutiny.
This said, I love Canada and don't believe Canada should tolerate one iota foreign interference in our domestic affairs, especially if it sows division or reduces trust in Canada's institutions. Whether you believe the blockading of border crossings, occupation of Parliament Hill, and disruption of peace in Ottawa were peaceful protests or unlawful assemblies, they were amplified and prolonged by foreign money. Canada should rightly do what it takes to nip foreign influence in the bud.
I upvoted your comment as I completely agree. As a smaller nation with a large and powerful neighbor to the south, it is important for Canada to protect against foreign influence in our politics and particularly our elections.
I do wish we would apply those foreign influence and foreign funding rules more consistently though. A few years ago, the prime minister in question, accepted millions in funding from Chinese investors to his WE charity. In order to avoid having to defend those actions he even prorogued parliament.
It would also be nice to limit foreign investment in Canadian real estate so that more Canadians could afford a home in their native land, but I might be dreaming.
> and the majority don't want these Nazi flag waving idiots distrupting their lives.
Slightly off topic but the inconsistent treatment/reporting of these protestors and BLM is what gets me. BLM protestors flying "antifa" flags (let's be honest Marxists) are just as bad as Nazis in my book - seriously misled people with unworkable ideas about how the world should be run.
Anyway if you're coming down hard on protestors who are causing disruption but not to protestors who are setting fire to buildings then there's something seriously wrong.
> BLM protestors flying "antifa" flags ... are just as bad as Nazis
Let's be clear about what you're saying: people who are vehemently opposed to Nazis are just as bad as Nazis. This is the definition of "fake centrism" or (sarcastically) "enlightened centrism". You're really saying that a new flag created to express opposition to Nazis, fascism, authoritarianism, and genocide is as bad as a flag that has been used for almost a century to represent those exact things? They're just as bad as each other? Are there good and bad people "on both sides", too? You need to seriously take a hard look at yourself in a mirror if you believe this. One group is expressly saying "we should subjugate and genocide non-whites" and the other group is expressly saying "we should not tolerate genocide and subjugation" and they are just as bad in your eyes!?
People vehemently opposed to Nazis can be exactly as bad as Nazis. It's not the flag; it's not even really the ideology; it's the actions. If your actions are as bad as the actions of Nazis, then you are as bad as Nazis.
You and CodeGlitch can argue whether that applies in this situation. But the idea itself is perfectly reasonable.
I'm not claiming nobody is as bad as the Nazis. I am claiming that the core belief of "Antifa", represented by both its name and its flag, is "anti-fascism", which is nearly synonymous with being "anti-Nazi". I am also claiming that people who wave the Nazi flag in modern times are explicitly calling for the genocide of other human beings. Finally, I am claiming that being against genocide and being for genocide are not somehow automatically equal, like two poles of some spectrum; rather, that such a belief is a well-known false equivalency known as "enlightened centrism" that is commonly used by people who actually just outright sympathize with Nazis and just don't want to admit it. None of these claims should be controversial in any way whatsoever. So I don't really understand what you're trying to rebut here.
The core belief of antifa is a revolution at any cost. Train for when the time comes. Their actions and tactics mimic those of fascist when coming to power in Italy after WW1.
You're right in that comparing modern antifa against 1940s Nazis, but I was comparing the modern incarnations of both (which wasn't clear in my post). As had been mentioned, the actions of both groups in current times is what I meant.
You've actually brought up a good point, with the overuse of the term "Nazi" it's hard to have a meaningful conversation about the far right and their deeply unpleasant beliefs. Simply calling them Nazis is lazy and unhelpful.
I'm sure you also believe Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democratic country. They must be, if that is what they call them self.
You need to look yourself in the mirror or better yet, read a history book or two about fascism and national socialism and take a good look at antifa again.
Please note that the Canadian government has, in the past, on multiple occasions [0], used agents provocateurs to falsely smear a protest movement by planting their own agents who attempt to inflame a situation. For example, trying to turn peaceful protests violent.
To my knowledge, there was a singular incident of Nazi flag on the very first day of a 25 day protest. There is also some evidence that it may have actually been the PM's personal photographer who took the photos of the Nazi flag [1].
It is also a curious fact that this flag incident took place at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier, a $300/night luxury hotel in the heart of Ottawa, known for hosting foreign dignitaries and heads of state, that now curiously houses a large contingent of police from all over Canada [2]. It seems suspect to think that truckers and racists would choose such an iconic and expensive venue to display this symbol of hate.
Given that most of us never expected the severe curtailing of civil liberties by a liberal democracy such as Canada, I think it is prudent for us all to be skeptical about the facts on the ground in this incident as it almost appear engineered to sow the seeds of hate against the protesters in this case.
I apologize. I overstepped and will correct my previous comment with a note.
I do find it suspect that this all went down at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier which is a hotel most well known for hosting foreign dignitaries and heads of state, as well as more recently large numbers of police brought in from around the country.
This single nazi flag incident has been repeated by the government and it's proponent so many times now to paint this entire movement as racist which is do feel is an unfair characterization of the protesters, most of whom were simply Canadians who felt the need to be heard.
They’re walking up the pedestrian walkway that wraps around the outside of the Chateau Laurier from Major’s Hill Park to Wellington, the street Parliament is on.
You don’t need to be staying at the hotel, or even visiting the hotel to use it. Thousands of pedestrians, including many tourists coming from other hotels downtown, use that walkway every day to access Wellington and the Parliament.
It’s also a great vantage point to be seen from the bridge spanning the canal, where I assume this photo was taken.
So no, this did not “all go down at the Chateau Laurier”, it went down outside it, on a heavily trafficked public walkway.
One idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands does not override the 99%. That's an absurd, lazy smear.
What this episode makes clear is that many people actually love authoritarianism as long as the actions of the state in the moment appear to align with their own ideology. Next time it won't, which is why it must be resisted on a principled basis. This precedent being set is a dictator's dream come true and you will have no leg to stand on as someone that cheered on the tools of oppression.
> One idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands does not override the 99%.
When the blockade is significantly funded from outside the country the policies are supposed to be about [0], when effective mechanics of the protest aren't merely speech but crippling trade, when the stated substance is basically claiming the privilege of unrestrained motion across international borders without regard to vaccination status, even if it were true that "one idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands" were engaging in fundamentally unacceptable (e.g. nazi) performance, there's still be plenty of reasons for sensible and restrained government authorities to intervene.
> This precedent being set is a dictator's dream
Which precedent? That authorities might use authority to stop trade disruption?
Seizure of property from people involved in that disruption? Bigger and far more routine problems in terms of civil forfeiture.
Needing to be vaccinated to cross a border? You may want to look at precedents established over the last century or two and ask yourself why the totalitarian catastrophe you seem to be imagining has only crossed some kind of threshold now, almost as if it isn't coming.
Let's assume that both the blm protests and the convoy both had "a few idiots or provocateurs in a sea of tens of thousands." Now compare the media coverage and government handling of the two things, and compare how those idiots are portrayed compared to the tens of thousands. Do you see a difference? It seems to me that all blm-related events are generally considered peaceful protests (even the ones where buildings are burned down), while the convoy is nothing but a big nazi flag waving party. Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?
And I bet people who watched fox news have a different perspective on how peaceful/violent some BLM protests were. What's even worse is that people getting their news from social media are going to be fed a single narrative and be entirely unaware of it; at least with entities like fox news/CNN or sub-reddits, someone can actively seek out multiple narratives around an event.
> Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?
Interesting to think about. Just imagine the headline of "Donald trump freezes bank accounts of BLM protestors" and the uproar and legal battles that would immediately follow. Different countries (laws, rights, legal precedents), different levels of public support for the underlying cause, "black bloc" obscuring the protestor identities.
Attempting to retroactively and without due process freeze the finances of anyone who donated to the BLM protests would be just as far out of line as doing the same to anyone who donated to the Ottowa protests.
Even in cases like the sanctions on Iran, I don't think we attempt to prosecute people who had financial interactions with Iranian people or businesses before the sanctions were imposed.
Sadly, it most likely will. The left I used to know wouldn't be caught dead cheering on the coordination between federal government and private businesses/banks to deny people the ability to organize and protest. But here we are, and there we'll be when the government decides to label whatever the next movement is as a "threat to democracy."
All the sit-ins in the past 60 years of protesting, ended up in people being arrested. And fines (as well as imprisonment) were levied against the arrested protesters for disruption of government operations and services.
Further these days, often protesters go in expecting to be arrested. Activists will often seek people who aren't afraid of being arrested.
If you cause damage during the protest, you really can't whine about the punishment.
> The left I used to know wouldn't be caught dead cheering on the coordination between federal government...
Oh I think Abbie Hoffman's supporters would still hate the FBI COINTELPRO today. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) Hoover's FBI more or less got away with infiltration and assassination because the enemy was "stinking hippies" or "terrorists".
> Hoover's FBI more or less got away with infiltration and assassination because the enemy was "stinking hippies" or "terrorists".
But don't you see any kind of resemblance to that and what's happening currently with the all the "nazis" and "white supremacists"? It's odd to me that you can mention COINTELPRO and think that things like that don't still happen.
I guess you can rightly say that I have no proof of that. But in 50 years, if we ever get documents released explaining how COINTELPRO was expanded and used against lots of the movements of our time, you owe me a beer.
There's a lot of people that hate the CIA with good reason. The FBI has apparently never met an agent involved killing it didn't like, and sure there's lots of corruption on the local level, from cops to politicians.
But COINTELPRO is the premier example of law enforcement corruption in the US, and those who were affected by it still live with it to this day. And I don't think anyone really wants justice served without due process in the US these days. And arguing that your opponents support that or are willing to look the other way when it happens is rather unfair.
If the truckers staged a boycott instead of an occupation, I feel like their side might have a lot more sympathy.
As to your red herring about the right being labeled as "nazi"s, I think the media does a pretty good job of portraying the "Racist Right" from the "Right". It's also pretty clear whether a politician/person/group/etc is willing to openly denouce racism or not.
Canada did good. The courts will do the rest. It's a democratically elected government, the public gave it this power and approved it's use. This is what the Canadian public wants. The protesters are part of a fringe far-right movement. They had a month to make their case. They made it. It did not do any good for anyone.
> 1) The people begging for the right to die a slow brutal death that resembles a month long water boarding session.
This is a disingenuous interpretation of what is essentially a peaceful worker's sit-in.
> 2) The people that trust that medical doctors around the entire plant earth aren't part of some super secret cabal hellbent on implanting mind-controlling microchips in them
This is a disingenuous character smear of anyone who decides to question the status quo.
> This is a disingenuous interpretation of what is essentially a peaceful worker's sit-in.
That is literally what they are protesting for, so I fail to see how it is disingenuous.
> This is a disingenuous character smear of anyone who decides to question the status quo.
Perhaps you should "research" the difference between "status quo" and "factual". 10.6 billion people have gotten a covid vaccine, it would be pretty hard to hide any signs of deleterious effects in a sample size of 10.6 billion. On the other hand, the statistics on covid are equally clear: it's orders upon orders of magnitude more dangerous to human health that the vaccine could even "possibly" be.
The current world population isn't even 8 billion yet [0]. That coupled with current vaccination rates across the world and the conflicting (and often suppressed) research about the covid vaccine efficacy, I am thoroughly confused.
My apologies, the number I gave was the number of doses given, total number of fully vaccinated people is 4.32B. Each dose is a sample because each dose is a chance for something to go wrong, right? Anyways, the way I stated it was wrong, so nice catch.
Looking at it either way, a sample size of 4.32 billion people or 10+ billion individual doses is more than enough to give a very clear signal if the vaccines were causing harm; harm from the vaccines would be as obvious as the sun, statistically speaking.
> ...the conflicting (and often suppressed) research...
What "research" regarding covid vaccine efficacy is being "suppressed", exactly? The only research that I see being suppressed, is the research that the vast majority of people that are dying of covid are unvaccinated. And it's being suppressed by the cruel FUD campaign led by the anti-vaxer crew, that, tragically, has taken so many of their own number.
I don't see much "conflicting research" regarding vaccine efficacy at all, it's well below the standard level of noise you get from medical studies. For instance, have you seen any reputable studies that point to unvaccinated people dying less often than vaccinated people of covid? Me neither. We know the vaccines provide significant protection from serious complications from covid, including death, we know the protection wanes over time, and we know boosters are extremely effective. Where exactly is the uncertainly here?
The Canadian government can still seize crypto funds from citizens, it just requires them to actually go through a due process, and perhaps get a court order or warrant.
What's going on in Canada right now is a disgrace that perfectly exemplifies why the legacy financial system is morally - and quite literally - bankrupt.
The key point is that seizing someone's property needs to be costly.
It's immensely problematic when violating someone's individual rights is not costly, and you can seize the money of tens of thousands of people with the stroke of a pen and the push of a button.
The same argument applies to surveillance. If the FBI has reason to suspect a person of a crime, then they have the right to set up some surveillance apparatus to gather evidence against that person. But this is a costly endeavor and requires many manhours of work. But, if you can automatically surveil every person in the country, and run it all through machine learning to constantly monitor every single person, then that becomes an extremely dangerous slippery slope into an inescapable authoritarian state.
"In just three weeks of honking, blocked streets and bridges, bouncy castles and flag waving, this peaceful protest"
Aside from a billion dollars+ in trade blocked when the protest -- having achieved nothing terrorizing the residents of Ottawa and blasting horns/setting off fireworks around the clock -- branched out to trying to block international borders, they harassed schools, healthcare workers, anyone wearing a mask, and attacked reporters from venues they don't like. The vast majority of businesses in the affected zone shut down entirely because the lawless, selfish crowd at this rally proved such a massive liability that simply closing was a better option.
But they set up a bouncy castle and brought children as shields (stated tactical plan of the group), so I guess that is okay.
They fawned over a Fox News reporter, and then spit on and slurred an MSNBC reporter. You might notice a correlation with another group South of the border, and that isn't accidental. Just as it shouldn't surprise that the main "stage" of this operation's daily speeches were chock full of QAnon gibberish (utterly indisputable -- the crowd cheers as conspiracies about the WEF, the Rothschilds, Bill Gates, 5G, and so on were given the daily reading). Appearances by "Canada First" flags, Red Ensign flags (an old Canadian flag repurposed by white supremacist), and more unfortunate correlations. This isn't accidental. Livestreams and discussions with many of the protestors betrayed just a cosmically misinformed, ignorant group, and it's a perilous demonstration of the future we all face as groups fracture off, conveniently declare anything but a few grifting sources "fake news", and then feed off of each other.
To call this an anti-mandate protest is to seriously miss the plot. If it was -- if it hadn't constructed noise-terrorism devices that saw people measuring 100db+ in their apartment -- and actually saved the "Fuck Trudeau" signs and QAnon conspiracies, or that whole seditious "we're not leaving until the government resigns and the Governor General declares us the new government" bit of nonsense, they could have inspired sympathy. Instead it was simply political terrorism, and is grotesquely anti-democratic. 93% of Canadians wanted this shut down weeks ago.
"Martial law"? After three weeks, weeks past being declared an illegal occupation, they were sent home in the gentlest way possible. After weeks of warnings, then days of warning of an action, the police did their job. The only thing above and beyond normal policing they did was that the Emergency Act allowed other regions to add to the police force without the whole normal process. Calling this Martial Law is *gross* and makes DHH look like a clown, though the entire piece manages that so it's consistent. It should offend anyone with any functioning reason.
"First the Ottawa police department got GoFundMe to confiscate donations with the intention of redirecting them to other causes"
GFM was made aware the cause was being used to fund literal crime breaking (indisputable), so they cancelled it. Good for them. And if someone crowdfunded to have crimes committed against DHH or his property, I hope they would be even quicker (but hey, at least his detractors will have crypto, right?). What GFM decided to do then was entirely on GFM's side.
Now the government wants crowdfunding with targets or sources in Canada to report large or suspicious transactions to FINTRAC, given that currently it is a gap in the financial system. There is nothing surprising or bizarre in that.
And before someone cites BLM or "ANTIFA" thinking that's some sort of "haha got you leftist" retort, a lot of us -- those of us who don't frame everything as "right" or "left", and have remotely consistent values -- are against unlawful blockades and occupati...
You're 100% right. The moment someone blasted their horn -- much less their modified, multi-horn noise-terrorism device -- they should have been warned, fined, and then charged/arrested for mischief. The moment they blocked roadways illegally with regulated, commercial vehicles, they should have been warned, fined, and then charged/arrested, the vehicle towed. The moment the first person stopped near a bridge they should have been...etc.
So we agree, law breakers should have been charged. Police action should have been constant and aggressive.
But it was an occupation. Police barely operated in their lawless zone at all. That's the whole point, and was the intention of the group. It was a bully group, and their rhetoric and claims were often that they would die before they left. There are connotations to that.
> That's the whole point, and was the intention of the group.
That's a point you are making, and it's a point I completely agree with.
But don't dismiss the unrelated point that DHH is raising, which is a concern over the power to freeze anyone's assets without due process, and the power of crypto to prevent that from happening.
Even if DHH is categorically wrong that it's a "peaceful" protest or whatever, his core point still stands.
DHH's piece is clearly just a pro-"trucker" piece -- he has posted others previously -- and he decided to add a crypto narrative as some weak editorial justification. Add that he knows crypto enthusiasts are now going to distribute this nonsense widely. It's a pretty easy group to pander to.
But sure, he brings up classic arguments for crypto. There is nothing new in them. "Avoid government control - use crypto". Sounds great when it's for a cause you support, and DHH supports chaos and lawlessness in foreign cities he has no interests in, so why not. Kind of falls apart when that same mechanism is used for causes you're against.
It's a mistake to think this article is just a rehash of the classic arguments for crypto. The Canadian response is the first piece of hard evidence we have seen that such arguments aren't just fanciful theoretical speculations that could never apply to wealthy, liberal democracies. It is good and useful to point this out. Even if the rest of the piece is ideologically motivated, we shouldn't then close off to this important nugget of truth.
>The Canadian response is the first piece of hard evidence
For two decades the US has frozen and seized accounts in the hundreds of thousands -- billions of dollars in assets -- often with little oversight or checks. Civil forfeiture is rampant. Whole political groups have been declared "terrorist affiliated" and any correlation at all can lead to extremely unpleasant outcomes. No fly lists are flippant and casual.
And you think Canada using financial tools, primarily motivated by large external contributions to illegal activities, is the example?
It's maybe an example, sure. A weak one to me, but sure. It's certainly no precedent. To use this as the kick off point for some crypto advocacy seems...pernicious.
You are correct that freezing accounts and assets is far from unprecedented. It has been used (and abused) as a tool against suspected drug dealers, money launderers, ISIS supporters, and so on.
The difference here is its blank check authority against a reasonable protest objective as a response to certain bad actors within that broader objective and movement. Not everyone involved is creating criminal levels of noise pollution, trying to burn down apartment buildings, or blocking trade routes. Many of them just want good faith protest. If we could just arrest the bad faith actors quickly, and allow the good faith actors to continue protesting, we can simultaneously protect the right to valid protest while protecting the community within which the protest is happening. When you start freezing accounts without due process, that all flies out the window. This is what is importantly different about this particular action by Canada. It is uniquely chilling to the right to political protest in a way that unduly seizing the assets of suspected drug dealers isn't (although I am very much against that too).
The BLM protest movement can be used as an analogy. Would it be reasonable for all BLM support to be effectively criminalized by carte blanche freezing of accounts of people "involved"? No, of course not. The reasonable thing is to arrest those people who are looting or setting up CHOP or whatever, and to allow the real protestors to keep protesting.
,,To use this as the kick off point for some crypto advocacy seems...pernicious.''
There were people who could only afford to pay a lawyer to get back their money taken away from them by civil forfeiture because they had some Bitcoin as well in their portfolio. They got all their money back, as they were innocent, but they would have had to ask lots of money from their friends just to be able to afford a lawsuit. So no, this is not the first time having some Bitcoin is advised against civil forfeiture.
That was the the time when I bought BTC as well. People are too attached to their political views to see that it could be them as well sending $25 to their favourite protest (for example BLM, where there was looting involved as well).
Why would you treat this group of protestors so much more harshly than ones that, say, block railways? Also, I think a lot of what you're saying is very narrow minded. To get a group of people together to protest anything is a miracle and to expect them all to behave like their some sort of hive mind is just willful ignorance. There will always be bad actors, even with proper leadership. I think you need to spend some time reflecting on your world views or how you view groups of people and compare these protestors with others in Canadian history. I also think your news sources are a little biased.
"Why would you treat this group of protestors so much more harshly than ones that, say, block railways?"
Me? I found the railway blockades intolerable lawlessness. Trudeau took well-earned criticism for the soft-handed approach to them, and it cost him a majority government. It had far less of a negative impact on Canada (and touched on a very sensitive aboriginal issue), but those of us with actual value-based positions -- instead of just tribalistically flexing our positions to justify whatever we think "our" group are doing, as seen by DHH here -- are pretty consistent on this.
But can you point out any other protest in Canada that set up hot tubs on city streets, abused commercial vehicles and commercial privileges, terrorized residents, squatted on city parking lots as command and control systems, and operated a lawless zone? Pointing to some CHOP in the US (also GROSSLY unacceptable) isn't an example. Pointing at BLM isn't a counterpoint.
"expect them all to behave like their some sort of hive mind"
Among any group there will be bad actors. The constant citing of a Nazi flag appearance was just boring nonsense...at least until I repeatedly saw Canada First and Red Ensign flags (which are a subtler way of saying the same thing). QAnon nuttery would be just some fringe...if it wasn't the majority of content on their main stage and repeated by the main organizers constantly. The guy saying the flurry of incredibly ignorant misinformation would be just some nut, if it wasn't the same thing that came out of almost every participant's mouth.
"I also think your news sources are a little biased."
Sure. I mean, my news sources don't involved many QAnon blogs, but during the protest I had a video window playing most days featuring one of the sympathetic live streamers who constantly walked up and down the protest, interviewing participants. ZOD, the travel fun guy, some machine guy, etc. It is the words of the participant, and hearing their rhetoric at their stage, that gives me my opinion of this group.
>Aside from a billion dollars+ in trade blocked when the protest -- having achieved nothing terrorizing the residents of Ottawa and blasting horns/setting off fireworks around the clock
I don't think, it is entirely fair to blame it all on one side. What the government could have done is meet with the protestors and solve the problem diplomatically. Agree on a reasonable compromise, like suspending some restrictions conditional to hospital utilization. The protestors with reasonable demands [0] would have then condemned the complete nut jobs, most general public from both political camps would have supported the peaceful resolution and Trudeau would have been known as a good diplomat. After all, it's his direct job - negotiate terms on behalf of people he represents.
Instead, he decided to basically threw a tantrum and declared that it's below his royal highness to go negotiate with some pesky trucker plebs, quickly passing emergency regulation barring public assembly on the Parliament Hill and near "official residences" [1]. This is the most divisive and nonconstructive way of handling the situation, and I do think this is done on purpose.
The Federal government can't agree to compromises on healthcare matters; that's provincial jurisdiction. It can't agree on compromises on border vaccination; that's US jurisdiction.
YouTube videos are not citations. No one is going to watch them or try to read the tea leaves of some third party's interpretation. The literal demand of the organizers of the group (a separatist and a white supremacist) were that the government resign en masse. The trucks are emblazoned with "Fuck Trudeau" flags and signs. The rhetoric coming from the various participants has been aggressive and apocalyptic.
No, Trudeau should never have met with them. I'm no Trudeau fan, but there was zero value in ever meeting with this group. They should have been swept up the moment they broke the first law.
"like suspending some restrictions conditional to hospital utilization"
Like almost everyone who has takes on this here (including DHH), you seem to know perilously little about the actual situation, yet you've got a lot of takes. The vast majority of mandates are provincial, for instance, not federal, just as health systems are managed at the provincial level. Ontario (the province that Ottawa is in), actually has a conservative leader, but the so-called "truckers" didn't target him at all, and their minimal foray into Toronto was immediately squashed by a much more capable police force. Nor did they do much about any other premier. Because it had little to do with mandates. These people simply don't accept democracy. They don't like Trudeau, therefore he's got to go. I mean, they literally said it over and over again. That's cool, but we just had an election so they can take their mini insurrection and go home again.
The linked video has ~750K views and features Benjamin Dichter, one of the 3 convoy leaders, outlining 2 very realistic demands:
1. Abolish federal vaccine mandates for border crossing.
2. Abolish ArriveCAN - the app used to track health/vaccination status during border crossings.
Both are very specific demands. Both will have close to zero effect on the actual COVID deaths. Both are within the federal government's jurisdiction. Both are extremely hard to defend in the public's eye. So what does the government and the news agencies do? Completely ignore the reasonable take, pick up much crazier demands made by a different person, that are easier to refute, and play the usual guilt by association game, implying that everyone against the mandates are supporters of the nuttiest imaginable cause.
The video was made February 15th, weeks into the blockade, and long after it was painfully clear that the public was turning dramatically against the convoy. At this point the Premier of Ontario and the federal government were openly discussing measures to squash the occupation.
A week earlier the organizers had quietly dropped their memorandum of understanding's insurrection demands.
"Completely ignore the reasonable take, pick up much crazier demands made by a different person"
What I described were the demands in effect by the organizers for weeks. In interviews with convoy participants, zero of them seemed to believe that removing a border vaccine requirement (completely and utterly irrelevant given that the US government has their own mandate that makes Canada's extraneous) would be enough for them to go home.
In other words, the organizers managed to agree between themselves and come up with reasonable demands, but the government showed complete unwillingness to reason. So Benjamin Dichter showed himself as a better diplomat than Justin Trudeau.
After a three week long insurrection based on profound ignorance, and thousands of instances of criminality, you think the government -- just as it was about to have the resources available to put it down -- should have shook hands and said "you win" to these people? And just to be clear, even if we though the army of QAnon aficionados would go for it, I assure you they would have expected amnesty.
No, I don't think so. It was *way* too late to suddenly try to eek a win out of this.
No we do not meet with terrorists. That is what the occupation was, terrorists harassing, intimidating and torturing the businesses and residents of Ottawa.
I think everyone has a right to protest, peacefully, and many have in Ottawa. None of them terrorized the city for 3 weeks. Before you say that it was a "peaceful" protest note that there are many types of terrorism [0] and this occupation fits into "Civil disorder – A form of collective violence interfering with the peace, security, and normal functioning of the community.".
Tyrants understand local police may be hesitant to act against their neighbors under questionable orders. This is why tyrants bring in non-local police who don't have local connections. Outside police will crack skulls and not care because they and their families live elsewhere.
'... Emergency Act allowed other regions to add to the police force without the whole normal process.'
Yes, outside enforcers were needed because local police were not doing it.
"Yes, outside enforcers were needed because local police were not doing it."
Ottawa is a relatively small city. They were grossly overwhelmed after letting an occupation setup base. Further, you clearly know absolutely nothing about Canada, or Ontario, or the police involved, or the politics, so your various takes are nonsensical.
"Trudeau is one of Schwab's young leaders and has embarrassed Canada."
A current QAnon conspiracy on HN, stated with a straight face. How absolutely embarrassing.
So everyone else is aware (although this ridiculous stupid essay from DHH thankfully got flagged off the front page, so this post is largely only being seen by "the faithful"), the WEF conspiracy came about because some people with incredibly poor critical skills have derived an inverted relationship between a group and its members. Basically a tail wagging a dog assumption. The world's powerful all are members of Davos / WEF basically as a networking and "say nice things", so the especially gullible conspiratorial swap that relationship and now the WEF is actually the master puppeteer pulling the strings. It's a conspiracy literally beyond parody, and I'm still caught up in Poe's Law, unsure if the above comment is sincere, or some sarcastic example of insanity.
> And that it was the Canadians who brought this on? You might as well have told me that it was really the Care Bears who ran Abu Ghraib.
> Especially since I had some sympathy with fears projected by the US progressive left who spent four years fretting Trump might pull stunts like these. Then it turns out that the worries of an authoritarian overreach would be fulfilled by Trudeu to the North instead? Who's writing this script? M. Night Shyamalan?
The kumbaya "we're all in this together" thing only works until one of the other apes becomes self-aware and remembers we're still living in the jungle.
More often than not in history, the person pushing that message knows exactly what they're doing and has designs on doing exactly what Trudeau has done.
Crypto is an attempt to fulfill a broad yearning for financial freedom. The problem is, as it currently exists --- it just doesn't deliver.
Crypto doesn't displace trust, it misplaces it.
Instead of trusting government and regulated banks, you end up trusting the unregulated gatekeepers to the block chain --- the exchanges.
Who is making sure these gatekeepers are not self serving scammers and con artists? Why no one really.
In other words, block chain automates the accounting but it does nothing to eliminate *trust* as a central aspect of the monetary system. So the question simply becomes, who are you going to trust?
If government suddenly ceased to exist, the first thing people would do is re-invent it. Because left to their own devices, people are not trustworthy.
>you end up trusting the unregulated gatekeepers to the block chain --- the exchanges.
how exactly are exchanges gatekeepers? blockchains would function completely fine without exchanges. In fact, on chain exchanges like uniswap and 0x require zero trust whatsoever.
In fact, on chain exchanges like uniswap and 0x require zero trust whatsoever.
Who determines how much your crypto is worth?
Does uniswap do this? No, not on their own. They can't --- their daily trading volume is too small. They are literally forced to follow the "marketplace".
The 800lb gorillas that make up the crypto "marketplace" are the centralized exchanges --- Binance and others. They set the price using whatever method they choose. And they can easily influence the price by buying and selling themselves. Binance has access to unlimited funds to do so --- by simply minting more Tethers --- which they have done repeatedly --- and the price remains pegged at $1USD (wink, wink, nod, nod).
With unlimited funds, effective control over the pricing mechanism and no regulation --- the centralized exchanges have all the ingredients for the ultimate form of insider trading fraud.
If you trade crypto as it exists today, you are *trusting* the centralized exchanges who have overwhelming influence over the "marketplace". You have no other option.
Sure, pick any exchange you want and I'll bet you a BTC that the price of USDT is effectively $1 USD.
USDT remains pegged at $1 USD regardless of how many new Tethers are minted. Have you ever thought about why or how this happens? Once you do, your *trust* in the crypto exchanges/marketplace will start to unravel.
This is like saying, who gives a shit if the NYSE is minting and selling stocks? Anyone with an IRA or a 401K should.
Who gives a shit if Liberty Reserve was a money laundering operation? Maybe you should have.
More than half of all crypto trades involve tether. The market prices of most crypto is being influenced by it whether you use it personally or not. If/when the price of Tether crumbles, most crypto will have no choice but to follow.
Uniswap is algorithmic liquidity. It doesn't "follow" anybody. It is true that the exchanges have more volume, but that is not necessarily 'real' volume.
The operating model of a centralized exchange is that they get paid to both provide and consume liquidity, so much of the volume is their own. On Uniswap, there is no privileged entity, so everybody pays to consume liquidity. This is a huge damper on volumes.
Note that there are MEV forks that also massively increase the Uniswap volume too, but they have to pay at least the trade fee on both sides of a sandwich.
The uniswap "algorithm" has no other choice but to follow the "market". Otherwise, it would do no trades.
Binance's trading volume is 40-50 times that of uniswap. What Binance does affects the price on uniswap --- way more than the other way around.
If Binance mints USDT and uses it to buy lots of BTC, what happens to the price of BTC on uniswap? Once the price on uniswap and other exchanges starts going up, others see it and jump in to avoid getting left behind --- driving it even higher. What happens when Binance then sells BTC?
This is a classic "pump and dump". It happens all the time because there is nothing to stop it. Binance is the one controlling "the market". Uniswap with their "algorithm " just plays along.
Unless I misunderstand you, I think you need to look into the “automatic market maker” concept. Their paper is the best source to cut through the chatter: https://uniswap.org/whitepaper.pdf
I haven't looked at their paper but I think I understand the concept.
Algorithm or not, they are just a little fish that can't possibly do very much to alter the direction of a marketplace whale they don't control.
The only way for this concept to have any real overall significance is if they establish their own separate crypto and be the only "market maker" for it. But then this is "centralization" all over again.
What happens if the biggest player has an unlimited supply of money they can just mint at will and use it to drive up the price that you pay?
What happens if they also also get to see your order before it is executed and have every opportunity to insert their own in front of yours just to drive up the price that you pay (aka "front running")?
> Yes, so crypto is just like fiat but without regulations or safe guards or insurance.
That's why I'm not a fan of crypto in general, only of Bitcoin
> It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
True, but I guess it's easy to do that with every small market. I'd imagine the bigger the market capitalization, number of participants the harder it would be to manipulate the price.
True, but I guess it's easy to do that with every small market.
It's pretty easy when you can mint Tethers and keep the price pegged at $1 USD no matter how many you print and use them to buy/inflate the price of bitcoin.
> blockchains would function completely fine without exchanges.
I must be misunderstanding, but don't blockchains track references, through sequences of indirection (i.e., encrypted on the chain), to what is ultimately fiat currency?
+1. We "might" need what crypto was supposed to do (and even then arguably not). But we don't need what it is: a bloated worthless commodities ponzi scheme.
Furthermore, its been shown governments can track all transactions. Without warrants (since it isn't money). Even for privacy focused funds. I doubt it would be hard for them to freeze account withdrawal and seriously hurt people trying to circumvent the law with crypto.
The whole idea behind a public ledger of transactions and balances when you're trying to push back against a totalitarian government is nonsense. If you're putting criminal or fringe transactions on the ledger, then handing the ledger to the government saying "I bet you can't figure this out!" You're not making transactions, you're making prosecution futures.
If someone tried to use Bitcoin to evade the PRC I'd say they had a death wish.
Remember, you're not leveraging crypto promises against current deanonymization software, you're using it against all future deanonymization software. That's such a bad idea I can't even.
The only reason it's at all worked in Western democracies is because the anarchocapitalists are "pushing back" against a government that either tolerates or supports them. Worse, when they use the technology against Western democracies their actions are anti-Democratic. They're hoping the minority can overturn the lawful actions of the majority instead of using the courts or electoral processes.
[edit] The folks who truly advocate crypto as a tool to push back against a totalitarian government are the kind of people who read 75% of 1984, closed the book, and assume Winston went home to have a sip of Victory Gin and lived happily ever after.
I think even in that situation it's not clear that something like Monero will keep you safe in perpetuity - or even today - against a well capitalized state actor. The fact folks haven't gotten banged up for it yet isn't an indication it's safe - far from it. A honeypot behaves the same way until it does not.
The biggest mismatch in "needs" here is the apparent "need" of some people to be able to conduct substantial financial dealings without any government being able to either see what's going on or step in if it's blatantly illegal, while most people consider that to be detrimental to the overall functioning of a healthy society.
If you don't want to be part of our modern society, then please go find a way to do so away from all of us who do. Until and unless you separate yourselves from us entirely—including no longer taking advantage of our government-supported infrastructure, our government-supported education, our government-supported enforcement of property rights, and our government-supported military—you don't get to claim a right to evade either our laws and regulations around economic activity, or our taxes.
If you wish for people to stop seeking the protection of their civil liberties, perhaps then you should stop attempting to undermine those civil liberties through the likes of secret courts and secret laws, warrantless mass surveillance, warrantless seizure of property, proprietary software, and other various techniques that western oligarchs have pushed in the interest of preventing so-called "terrorism".
* ... apparent "need" of some people to be able to conduct substantial financial dealings without any government being able to either see what's going on ...*
And crypto mostly fails in this regard. Blockchain maintains a permanent record of everything that goes on for anyone to see.
Well, right. As soon as governments around the world manage to pull their heads out of their collective asses (which some are already doing) and genuinely try to understand cryptocurrencies, they start regulating them like any other asset.
The "Wild West" of crypto is a historical aberration that will absolutely not last.
Honestly, I don't pretend to understand the distinction between "stable coins" and other cryptocurrencies well enough to feel confident answering that question.
The people who sell you stuff usually need guidance on pricing and they will usually want to quickly move the money to a more stable currency once the sale is made.
For all this, they go to the gatekeepers.
And likewise, you need to decide if the price you're about to pay is reasonable and fair. And for this, you go to the gatekeepers --- because there is no reasonable alternative.
Crypto can't escape the influence of the exchanges in the same way fiat can't escape the influence of government.
We don't need "crypto," we need _Bitcoin_. Crypto is the scam he references here. It's clear that DHH has a very thin understanding of Bitcoin and is conflating arguments about the web3/crypto/defi/nft nonsense with it. _That_ is the psyop.
If people think Bitcoin and all of the other junk (sh*tcoins) are the same thing, you're just walking into the same trap as what precipitated the nightmare in Canada.
The thing to watch for is the push for CBDCs which are state-controlled cryptocurrencies which will give authoritarians perpetual hard-on levels of control. You think freezing a bank account is bad? Wait until they can make your money expire or prevent you from transacting with anyone they deem "bad actors."
Perhaps, but it lacks the brand recognition. Playing the technology dick measuring contest will end up confusing people and lead them right into a trap (meaning, they end up distrusting the very thing that can save them).
Bitcoin has all of the necessary pieces to get the immediate problem of government overreach and currency manipulation fixed.
Arguable, because monero's hash power is a negligible fraction of bitcoin's AND it's ASIC resitant, so mining on CPUs is still viable.
This makes it much more vulnerable to nation state 51% attack since they can just temporarily redirect fleets of CPUs (maybe even deputize AWS, Azure, GCP, etc) to attack the network. This kind of rapid response attack isn't feasible on bitcoin because SHA256 ASIC miners are incredibly hard to come by and the electricity required to pull it off would be enormously expensive.
The Canadian Gubmint is issuing orders about seizing crypto assets too.
We need more economic freedom; "cryptocurrencies" are not suddenly a panacea to that end. They're still the scam riddled "but this is stupid at its very base" pyramid schemes they were all along.
See the precedent set by Emperor Norton; community currencies and other alternates can work too. What's needed is a government that admits limits to its powers to interfere with its citizens ability to transact. There's no technical means to make a government live up to that promise... Short of explosives.
> The Canadian Gubmint is issuing orders about seizing crypto assets too.
Sure, but the entire point is that they can't.
If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account.
Crypto people need to work on UX though, so that you don't need to be technically savvy to do so.
>> If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account.
If they want your keys badly enough, they will get them:
There is a big and meaningful difference between being able to freeze bank accounts at scale without violence and only with the cooperation of a centralized finance institution, versus having to physically torture each account owner to get what they want one by one. A government would have to be substantially more evil and use vastly more resources to do the later. And there is a second order chilling effect in the former, where even if a government does not seize asserts, the threat of it will make citizens think about their words.
If the crypto is in the users wallet (i.e. not on some crypto exchange) the canadian government cannot seize it without asking the user to sign a transaction transferring them the crypto.
We are 13 years on from bitcoins inception, and we are on a tech board, how this is still not clear to people boggles me.
How many crypto "owners" don't have a wallet? What do those who do have one do when they get told "cough up the keys or go to jail"? "Crypto" is not some magic "laws don't apply" wand.
There is literally a meme about this my man. It’s called I lost my wallet in a boating accident lol.
Also, that’s why Bitcoin is different than “crypto”. The first thing you hear when you buy Bitcoin, “not your keys, not your coins”.
The point is not to eradicate the law, the point is to make it difficult to freeze 1000 people accounts than pushing a button. It will make people think about other solutions than stealing people money.
Many of them will if the calculus changes and they think the assets may be seized at any moment. Or, we will see the rise of custodians based in countries that won't respect requests from US et al to freeze accounts.
People mostly don't bother with any of this right now because it hasn't been a real threat.
This is nonsense. Canada is starting to classify cryptos as assets [1], and they already are looking into some accounts related to the protests [2]. It's true that you could hide it well, but you could also do so by having gold bars in a bank vault.
Your comment is nonsense. They can seize your gold in a bank vault. They cannot forge a signature transferring your crypto held on your metamask. They would need first physical access to your computer and secondly your metamask password.
They can classify it all they want, but it is completely outside of the control of their legacy systems.
They can seize the gold only if they know where it is. And to convert crypto back into Canadian dollars, you will need to go through the "legacy" banking system at any substantial amount, where it can be flagged with standard tools and you would be arrested.
They can also criminalize accepting Bitcoin for payment for goods, in which case you would have no choice but to convert back to dollars (and taxes will likely always be paid in dollars anyway)
And then there would be a black market, immediately. Prohibition tends to be exceptionally violent. The point being: using a decentralized currency makes authoritarianism harder. This is not exactly a radical idea: foreign currencies have very often been banned from use in dictatorships. Why people kick back on "internet money" being a tool to use against abusive governments is strange: It's more or less it's only real feature, and the feature that makes it's enormous computational cost worthwhile.
I'm aware this is a wildly radical set of statements, and I'm not a bitcoin-carrying-anarchist, but you can't really deny that this is the real application of "internet money", and thus the original point of the article stands.
Regular people in dictatorships aren't hiding money in cryptocurrency, because they don't have money to stash away, usually. The rich in those societies may be, and they're likely rich through being affiliated with the dictator.
You aren't helping liberate the poor and desperate. You're helping oligarchs hide their money from domestic or international seizure after the dictator falls, and a new government steps in.
I don't follow the argument: the oligarchs aren't using crypto, so using crypto helps oligarchs?
If the average person, wealthy or affiliated or not, has a way of avoiding the mandated use of a fiat currency, and that pressure creates an upper and lower bound for how badly the leaders of their country can manipulate the currency supply, yes I believe that helps the poor and desperate. If part of liberty is ownership, then yes, it even helps liberate them too.
Not to start a debate, but my suggestion is to ignore anyone who phrases a sentence such that value can exist inside of objects. Nothing is a store of value, because value doesn't appear to exist - it's like color - it's an interpretation of available information.
Bitcoin is a currency that is hard to stop. That makes it a tool to antagonize authoritarians with.
The problem with cryptocurrencies is not the _idea_ per se, it's that every current and proposed implementation is deeply flawed and utterly fails to deliver on what it promises, to the point that crypto mostly stands afloat only as a mean to enable economical speculation and to facilitate unregulated and illegal transactions.
I also agree with the idea that teleportation and faster-than-light travel would be extremely beneficial if not necessary for the long term success of the human species, but that does not mean that any proposal or attempt to accomplish those should be immediately hailed as a success. Cryptocurrency is definitely a failure at being what it was supposed to be, there's very little doubt regarding that I'm afraid.
Imagine you woke up one day set on the intention of digging a tunnel to China in your backyard by only using cutlery. Would throwing more people in the hole armed with spoons fix the inherent issues with your project?
The reason why there are lots of experts criticizing the current implementations and crypto concepts is because it's vastly easier to realize the flaws in one's idea than coming up with a new proposal. Yes, PoW works but it does not make sense, it's just a very interesting gimmick that makes cryptocurrency doable. That does not mean it actually makes sense or that it represents a stable foundation for a digital currency in practice.
In the digging example, the goal is to complete the tunnel. If the tunnel is not completed, the project would be a failure.
You say that PoW works and makes cryptocurrency doable, yet you conclude that it is a failure. But you don't define what the goal of it is. What specific goal would you want crypto to achieve to falsify your belief that it is a failure?
PoW makes cryptocurrencies doable (i.e. they somewhat work), but not viable. PoW only simulates the creation of value, it does not create it. Yes, sure, fiat currency has also its value made out of thin air, but that value often corresponds to the strength of country's government, economy or fiscal system. Sure, for instance the Yen may become hyper or underinflated, but as long as Japan is an industrial power it's very likely you want Yens to trade with Japan, to travel there, ... and that the Japanese government will do what it must be done on the international markets to keep the value of its currency stable. This gives "real" fiat currency a link with the real economy.
Can you say the same for cryptocurrency? Where does the value of a cryptocurrency come from? The answer is "from its scarcity", but scarcity itself doesn't make something valuable. What makes Bitcoin valuable is its tradeability with real world currencies, such as the Euro and the Dollar, and the fact that people want to spend them to get Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a real currency, is just a very complicated bank with extra steps, based on an asset whose value basically depends by the biggest Ponzi scheme ever known to man.
Scarcity by itself is not sufficient to make something have value, completely agree. But scarcity is necessary for value, so it is still important!
There are two notions of scarcity: Scarcity of bitcoin themselves (21 million), and scarcity around being able to create different cryptocurrency. Clearly the only weakness is in the later. Two points on this: Bitcoin commands a majority of proof of work energy. This does tie the digital scarcity of bitcoin to something in the physical world. You can't create another bitcoin without spending a similar amount on PoW. It's not that the scarcity of energy consumed translates to value in bitcoin directly, but rather it gives a high cost for creating an alternative to bitcoin. This is not unlike state issue fiats-- the Yen has value because Japan is a large state. I wouldn't trust a fiat from a state that was just created and had no citizens. So the scarcity of powerful states translates into a scarcity of fiat. Second, Bitcoin was the original invention of true digital scarcity. This makes it a natural place for a focal point. This by itself does not mean bitcoin has value, but it should be better at becoming valuable than other cryptocurrencies.
But bitcoin is also used for transactions and payments. It has growing links to the real economy just like other fiat currencies. The trend here is growing. If the trend continues-- meaning more and more businesses and workers take bitcoin as payment, surely you must conclude at some point bitcoin would then have real value, just like the Yen example?
> Bitcoin is not a real currency, is just a very complicated bank with extra steps, based on an asset whose value basically depends by the biggest Ponzi scheme ever known to man.
I think this is disingenuous-- A ponzi means that through intentional and planned deception invested funds are stolen. Sure, bitcoin is volatile and might crash again. But there is no structured fraud here, it is a free market, nothing like a Ponzi.
You still didn't define a falsifiable goal-- What would have to happen for you to consider cryptocurrencies to be successful, what is the end of the tunnel? It feels to me like you are assuming it will fail (it is a ponzi!), and then working backwards from that assumption to find how to justify it.
Smart people recognize that the base premise is simply unworkable.
The idea that anyone can create money out of electrons is really no better than the idea that anyone can create money out of paper. There is no real reason to believe the first will be any more successful than the second.
There are close to 10,000 different cryptocurrencies currently in use. And the number is increasing all the time. You don't have to be really smart to see that over time, these are all likely to tend toward the same value. The essential elements that will seal their fate --- trust and consensus --- or the lack thereof.
The part of the idea that does have some merit is "digital" currency. The Fed is working on it. And when it arrives, crypto will likely vanish back into the electronic ether from whence it sprang.
Why do you see the large number of cryptocurrencies an argument supporting their value going to zero? This is like saying that the number of websites is still going up, therefore the value of the internet will go to zero. A more charitable analysis would look at the number of users of cryptocurrency, and especially the number of users of the most prevalent cryptocurrencies, which is indisputably rising.
Why do you see the large number of cryptocurrencies an argument supporting theoretical value going to zero?
If too many people can easily make the product, the market quickly becomes saturated and the value starts to tend toward zero and people losing interest in it.
Also, in this particular case the product is defective. It doesn't actually function as stated --- as a currency that is widely accepted to buy a huge variety of things both large and small with minimal fees, high transaction volume and low wait times?
These are basically just instruments for speculation and fraud. History shows that such schemes can't and won't be sustained over time.
> If anyone can make it, the market quickly becomes saturated and the value tends toward zero and people losing interest in it.
You just restated your previous claim, you still didn't give any reason why the value must go to zero-- By the same logic, the market for websites is also saturated, therefore the value of the internet is going to zero.
Now you're just making up ever more absurd analogies by ignoring most of the context.
You don't have 10,000 companies all producing the same type of product. If you did, the value of most of them would go to zero really fast.
Also, you can't easily clone most listed companies at no cost. There are significant barriers to entry in the stock market --- which explains why you don't have 10,000 companies all doing the same thing.
I'm making analogies so that you have to substantiate your argument. It isn't clear that just because there is a large number of something, the entire ecosystem must be worthless, which is what you originally said.
You can't clone bitcoin at no cost. To clone bitcoin you would have to invest the same amount of energy that has been expended thus far to proof of work.
My point is that the number of cryptos/websites/stocks doesn't matter at all. A saturated market does not lead to a failed market, a saturated market just means there is demand for something. Sure, most cryptos are probably going to become worthless, but all it takes is one to work, and one that isn't easy to copy. In the stock example, maybe 9999 companies go bankrupt, but there is still a market, and whoever survives is going to make money.
You are basically saying that there can't ever be consensus because there isn't yet a consensus. That's a possible and maybe even likely outcome, but it doesn't obviously follow.
I am basically saying that allowing anyone to create/clone money at will is an absolutely absurd way to reach a consensus on a currency. On the contrary, it is a really, really good way to avoid one. Don't take my word for it, just look at the current crypto-market.
Could it happen? Sure. In the same way that a monkey with a keyboard could produce a best seller. But there is absolutely zero reason to expect or believe it will happen any time soon.
But invest now to get in on the ground floor --- just in case.
You'd have to exert the same amount of energy to clone Bitcoin as is being used in it's mining. Because the input energy is scarce, it is not trivial to clone as you are saying.
You are also ignoring network effects entirely. Number of users of Bitcoin have increased year after year.
You'd have to exert the same amount of energy to clone Bitcoin ...
The cloner would have to exert the same energy to mining that Satoshi Nakamoto did/does --- zero. Others will do this for you.
But thanks for pointing out the absurdity/weakness of Bitcoin and one of the reasons why it fails as a currency. You do know there are other options for cloning.
That would be true if you could time travel to 2008. In 2022 you have to compete with what already exists, not with how what already exists was created. There are no other options for cloning a PoW blockchain. You would not easily get "others to do this for you" to the same degree that bitcoin already has.
I generally agree with you though that cloning a PoS blockchain is easy in this regard, those ones also are protected by network effects.
That would be true if you could time travel to 2008.
It's more true in 2022, no time travel required.
Unlike 2008, the awareness and the operations needed to mine a bitcoin clone are already in place, fully setup and operational, running 24/7. Just offer rewards like bitcoin did back in 2008 and the existing miners will be all over it like white on rice.
There is very little additional expense to mining a clone alongside bitcoin. The equipment will be running either way.
To offer rewards you would need users and a vibrant market, otherwise the price would collapse and mining would not be profitable, or you are going to have to personally subsidize the rewards yourself, which would not qualify as cloning bitcoing for free. Bitcoin has these things which is why bitcoin mining is profitable, and why the majority of PoW mining is for bitcoin.
You're missing the idea of network effects. Yes, you an easily make a clone of Bitcoin (or other cryptos), but you cannot easily clone the network effect it has. The value of a crypto is in the network, not the code, and this value grows exponentially with the number of the people using the network (Metcalf's Law[0]). Despite the increase in total number of cryptocurrencies, the number of people using the big networks (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) is growing, and thus their network values are growing.
This really shouldn't be surprising to anyone familiar with the growth of the web. Just like cloning a crypo, it'd be trivial to make a new Twitter, but extremely difficult to gain the same level of network effect.
Just like cloning a crypo, it'd be trivial to make a new Twitter, but extremely difficult to gain the same level of network effect.
If Elon Musk wanted to make "MuskCoin", he could and instantly have a huge number of people jump on board. He has already proven this just by meddling in the current crypto market for his own amusement.
Lots of other companies/individuals with clout and name recognition could easily do the same.
The only reason they don't --- they recognize the ultimate futility of it. Musk has even poked fun at the absurdity of it all.
And likewise, if Elon Musk wanted to make a Twitter clone with better free speech he could get a lot of users. What's your point, that's literally the opposite of low barrier to entry. Being Elon Musk is NOT a low barrier to entry. Anything you say can be re-framed to the web, so if your point is valid then how can websites like Twitter be so valueable?
What's your point, that's literally the opposite of low barrier to entry.
It's just one example of how your "network effect" could be overcome very quickly.
Any individual or company with market presence and name recognition could do this if they were so inclined. You could easily have ChaseCoin, FordCoin, FidelityCoin, NFLCoin and 10,000 more if they thought it was practical and profitable and would be successful over the long term.
But allowing anyone to "mint" their own money is really an argument *against* the basic concept of a "currency". The world has already been there, seen that and done that. And most "smart people" (and companies) recognize that this is not in the best long term interests of themselves or the overall economy.
Smart people recognize that money can never be anything but a consensual agreement between humans.
How you symbolize that agreement is actually irrelevant.
There is no limit to the agreements that humans can make so the idea of limiting them by decree is absurd.
The most problematic part is that holding onto money is a onesided arrangement that requires no consent or agreement. You can literally leave the other party hanging.
It is kinda like doing homework in a group and waiting on the results of the second guy so you can work on your part. You will eventually stop waiting and just borrow the homework from another group so you can finally get started with your damn part of the homework.
There is no limit to the agreements that humans can make so the idea of limiting them by decree is absurd.
No one is limiting the number of cryptocurrencies. If you and your friends want to make your own "CryptoNickel" currency, go for it. No one is stopping you.
No one is stopping others from doing the same too --- and therein lies the problem --- the exercise is self defeating outside your unique circle of friends. Just a wild guess but you probably won't be using "CryptoNickel" to pay rent or buy groceries. Why is this?
Because as I noted above, "CryptoNickel" is missing essential elements of a truly functional currency --- trust and consensus --- not just among your friends but society at large. And a distributed electronic accounting system is no substitute for these missing elements.
I've long stopped believing the smartest people in the world accomplish much at all besides doing extremely well in systems others have designed. Certainly the vast amount of time I've spent thinking about monetary policy offers me no real gains in my life. I know a group of medical doctors and they are brilliant, but they are brilliant critics.
They are smarter than me - they focus on what matters. Small things, that they can control. God forbid the world does fly apart at the seams, and maybe some of these epistemological economic thoughts will have been worth thinking - I sure hope it doesn't happen and the smartest people can continue living in tiny boxes. It means a better world, a more stable world. And we do need smart people studying a set of ligaments their whole lives.
I find it no surprise that those of us who grew up in extremely chaotic situations tend to think 'bigger' and have a harder time thinking 'smaller'. I do not know the world will remain stable enough to support my career - but all the doctors I know are sure of it.
You'll get replies from very well employed, very smart people, who can probably write you an excellent simulation of our discussion, but who will refuse to conceptualize an abstract theory of value, or a world were currency creation happens in a slightly different way. Why would they? It's of no practical value unless the world ends - and you don't want the world to end, do you?
People who fought for monarchy because the alternative is chaos were probably smart people. People who fought for heliocentricism were probably very smart, but didn't feel like uprooting the foundation of their world view. Being dumb enough to think thoughts like "well, but what if", in the face of replies like "but it hasn't in a long time!" is only useful if only a tiny subset of us do it. The right strategy for most humans is to ignore that kind of talk. So be it.
If your accounting point of reference is permanence in a world that has a limited lifespan due to entropy you are going to make a lot of absurd conclusions and decisions. From the perspective of someone whose accounting reference has a limited life span you might even be considered insane and psychopathic.
For example, gold is a store of value so firing an employee lets you avoid associated with that employee and you can still hire that employee as long as the gold exists, right?? Right?? Everyone knows that gold stops aging and fired peoplee don't need food or shelter.
"You're too negative, stop telling people that they can't jump off their roof and fly and start being helpful and figuring out how to solve the problem."
Honestly we have way too much of this going on in our society. Management with delusional ideas about how to run a company is often spouting more or less this exact same line. Not everything you can dream of is possible in reality.
I don't support these policies, but they are already well in place in the USA. They don't need Canada to perform a trial run.
The US has has a long history with warrantless asset seizure, the most recent being the laws passed in the 1980s and still used today with the stated intention of curbing the illicit drug trade. In short, officers can size cash, valuables, vehicles, and property they believe might be used in a crime. Simply traveling with a few hundred dollars or more can be considered suspicious. Hundreds of millions of dollars are sized every year by police this way.
The US government can also freeze bank accounts of people they believe to be involved in crimes.
In all these cases, victims can go to court to reclaim what was taken from them and to get their accounts unfrozen. The same is true with what happened in Canada. There is very little difference with what is already the reality in the US.
The thing with democracies is, their rot and death is often not visible from within the democracy. As a sad spectator outside the North America, I can confidently predict the end of democracy in this continent is continuing at a rapid pace.
Due to the nature of resentment, you can never extinguish it by more ruthless measures. Small periodic eruptions is what keeps a volcano from having a bigger bang. When you close every vent, you just create a lot more pressure inside. My prediction would be civil war in both countries in coming decades if the current schism between the left and right doesn't get filled soon. Media and politicians started this fire for their own gains and its raging in every heart without anyone in control.
Grifters gonna grift anyway they can. For anyone interested in knowing what the emergency act actually entails, and why it's not the war measures act, Elizabeth May has a fairly decent, if not long, speech during the debate: https://youtu.be/-iPsgfuum2c
Not to a protest, to an unlawful occupation of the capital. I'm 100% behind that. I'm sorry. And so are over 2/3 of Canadians. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
[edit] I would be just as glib about someone who donated $50 to Hezbollah and got their accounts shut down.
[edit2] Trudeau has a minority government, and minority governments both require another party to prop them up - and have an average tenure of 1 year and 140 days. It's been 154 days already. There will be an election in less than a year, on average. We have courts, we have ballot boxes. Use them.
[edit3] I say this as someone who did not vote for the Liberals, and is open to revisiting restrictions.
> I would be just as glib about someone who donated $50 to Hezbollah and got their accounts shut down.
When the truckers start lobbing rockets into population zones, this comparison might be reasonable. The increasingly common habit of comparing everyone with Wrong Political Opinions to terrorists does not sit well with me.
I'm not - I'm saying that contributing to an unlawful activity after being warned not to, very publicly ("playing stupid games") is subject to winning stupid prizes.
People donate to a protest when they believe what they stand for, like being against mandatory vaccination, not when they made sure that every protester is following the law
Besides how can a peaceful protest be unlawful? I hear that in China when protests are "unlawful" when they disagree with the great leader
There was a court case that settled this if you're curious to learn more. [1] Not only did they rule it unlawful, they gave the truckers a few hours after the ruling came down to vacate the area before it went into effect. They have been given every opportunity. They decided that rather than following the lawful orders of the court, they would simply continue their occupation.
This isn't a protest, it's an unlawful occupation. Canada has a long history of peaceful protest. If they'd picketed on the streets in front of Parliament Hill as hundreds of thousands have done over the last century nobody would have batted an eyelash. In fact the government gave them three full weeks of outright occupation before they began to ask them to leave - then eventually told them to in no uncertain terms.
After all there have been tens of other anti-vaxx protests in Canada over the last two years. None were treated this way.
> Nobody batting an eyelid probably isn't the goal of a protest though.
Indeed, but the protests made national news basically each time. There's a lot of folks from outside Canada suddenly paying attention when they were not, at all, paying attention to Canada over the last few months, years or even decades. Context matters and a lot of folks. I don't know if you're Canadian or not, but most commenters have none - but still insist on raising their pitchforks over something they either do not understand or do not have any context on.
"The injunction was filed by the city of Windsor and the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, which argued that they were losing as much as $50m ($39m; £29m) per day because of the convoy"
Really? A protest deemed illegal because some company is loosing money? That's one of the points of peaceful protest, making non violent pressure where possible. If there was no more food and they were blocking it I could understand, but this is just keeps getting more ridiculous. Please call in the emergency act used only 3 times in the past, 2 of them world wars
BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
You asked, and I answered. It was deemed an illegal protest by a court of law. Canada is a rule of law country. If you don't like the ruling you can appeal. You are also free to disagree.
It's not that they were protesting, it's how.
> BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
This feels a lot like whataboutism.
I didn't vote for Trudeau last election and I do not plan to vote for Trudeau this election. That doesn't change my opinion of the lawfulness or correctness of the actions taken here. Only 1/3 of Canadians voted for Trudeau last election but 2/3 of Canadians support this decision. So clearly it can't just be LPC voters or "Trudeauphiles."
I don't think I can get 2/3 of my coworkers to agree on a dinner spot for an offset. It's only slightly less than the percentage of dentists who think Oral B makes your teeth fall out. Politically speaking that's a heck of a support base.
> And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
Obviously I do not support this behavior. I believe in broad-based police and prison reform.
I don't wish any harm on the protestors. I think they're misguided, but I do believe they want for what they think is best. I do however wish them a speedy GTFO the capital and border crossings.
I hope that once things are cleared out and order is restored that they return to parliament, without trucks - but instead, with their signs. They deserve to be heard.
Not only is it unconfirmed, it has been explicitly denied by banks, the government and the RCMP. Sanctions have only been levied on organizers and direct participants in the illegal occupation.
The MP either lied, or got played by someone who knew he was a gullible tool.
It's called a lie by a conservative MP who is pandering to a very gullible base. I am deeply concerned for the rational judgment of anyone who actually believed that bit of nonsense.
Every level of government has asked the MP to give details, because clearly it isn't true. He hasn't because the person does not exist.
Ultimately he should resign. Either he was trolled and played, or he simply has so little respect for the public that he invented a tale to play on (largely foreign) beliefs.
He did not in theory or in practice impose martial law. The comment adjacent to yours contains a video that explains the provisions under the Emergency Act in detail.
Semantics aside - the Act does allow for the suspension of civil liberties that should be troubling to everyone. The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society. Likewise, retroactively labelling a behaviour as a crime, then punishing individuals for it is explicitly against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Being 2022, most financial transactions are electronic. Locking people out of their bank accounts is severely restricting their ability to buy essential goods such as food, shelter, transportation, etc.
Remember, it's not about the individuals, it's about the precedent it sets. If the government can do it to those you disagree with, they can (and will) do it to you.
When a conversation starts with accusations of "martial law," you don't get to wiggle out of that by wringing over "semantics": "martial law" means something specific, and using it in the first place belies either an incorrect understanding or a dishonest attempt to portray the Canadian government's actions in terms that nobody can disagree with.
> The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society.
No, it isn't. The US uses SARs[1] on a daily basis, and has since the passing of the Bank Secrecy Act in the 1970s. There is virtually no recourse to a SAR levied against your account: virtually every bank in the US will simply close your account and refuse to disclose any further information.
It's not an argument. The GP claimed that the act of freezing bank accounts was unprecedented in Western societies; I showed that there is, in fact, ample precedent.
There isn't even remotely a due process concern here, in the US constitutional sense (which isn't the Canadian sense!) of the phrase. When someone receives a SAR, their bank account is frozen and they are given steps to liquidate the account. No deprivation of property, the necessary condition for due process, occurs.
Link? I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report but this describes a process where a bank makes a report to the feds, not a process where the feds make a report to the bank. And account closure is not mentioned.
The federal government does not make a report to the bank. They mandate that the bank makes reports on any currency transaction over $10,000 USD, including special activity reports when the transaction is flagged for other reasons. The liability associated with maintaining a bank account after submitting an SAR is high, which is why banks immediately freeze those accounts.
> The liability associated with maintaining a bank account after submitting an SAR is high, which is why banks immediately freeze those accounts.
Again, do you have a source on this? It would seem to be at odds with the requirement that a bank keeps the filing of SARs secret from the accountholder. Skimming the BSA, there seem to be a lot of liability carveouts for banks that file SARs. I can't find anything that would increase bank liability in a situation where a SAR is filed.
> It would seem to be at odds with the requirement that a bank keeps the filing of SARs secret from the accountholder.
If you have a SAR filed against your account, your bank will not tell you. They'll tell you that they've closed your account for internal policy or compliance reasons. And they won't be lying: the BSA doesn't require them to close the account.
The liabilities in question are both regulatory and financial.
On the regulatory side: bank employees are instructed never to tell a customer about the presence of a SAR, but mistakes can happen (and thus open the bank up to regulatory scrutiny or punishment). Similarly, the FDIC and Fed track SAR patterns, and may increase their scrutiny of a bank if customers who have historically received SARs at other banks successfully maintain accounts with a different bank.
On the financial side: SARs are filed for all kinds of crimes, including crimes against financial institutions themselves. It's a financial risk to keep those accounts around, because their rotating value might not reflect their actual "ultimate" settled value.
As for sources: here is a FAQ on SARs from the NCUA[1]. I don't have a pre-existing source for banks immediately closing accounts on SARs. Here's one I randomly found that states that a little over 1/4th of all SARs lead to account closure[2].
,, The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society.''
Technically you are right, but for me the bail-in in Cyprus in 2013 was scary enough to diversify into physical gold and Bitcoin (I stopped the gold part since then), as I realized that I'm just a ,,creditor'' to a bank, I don't own the money that exists in my bank account, and this can happen inside the EU.
Call it what you want, it is abuse of power by the government to deal with a peaceful protest that has a vast support if not the majority of the people
Support of the majority? 93% of Canadians wanted to see the protests cleared. 2/3rds wanted participants jailed.
A majority of Canadians agree with a lifting of mandates, but this was true before this protest, and if anything the protest set it back. Support for the protest was extremely low.
This whole episode is a lesson about the danger of unchecked, centralized power. Any government that has the power to act unilaterally to destroy (financially or otherwise) and imprison anyone they deem "bad" is a government that is a threat to the freedom of everyone. It doesn't matter how benevolent you think they are, or they claim to be. The existence of this power itself is the problem. That's why transparency, checks and balances are so important. Far too many people who claim to believe in freedom and civil rights are actually authoritarians who are merely content that the authoritarians in charge are currently aiming their unlimited power at people they don't like (in many cases, having been conditioned not to like by media arms of the state). It shouldn't matter how much you dislike the truckers or their cause to be aghast at the actions of the Canadian government.
I completely agree. I never thought I'd see so many blatant authoritarian would-be tyrants coming out of the woodwork as I've seen here on HN since the protest began.
Anti-vaccine pro-crypto CEO who spends his time retweeting bored ape avatars on Twitter telling everybody about how crypto will save us. Please tell me more!
I wonder if the chaotic noise dominates social awareness because people are simply unaware of the macro trends influencing them, or the more charitable explanation that they are aware they exist but accept they are helpless to change them. Either way, this entire ordeal has basically solidified my position that as a society we are woefully unequipped to solve any of the major problems that threaten us.
People are so preoccupied with the audacity of x doing y that dominates the news cycle, but nobody seems to actually care why x is doing y. They just slap some shallow explanation like they are white supremacists, or they are mad George Floyd was killed because of police brutality and consider that level of understanding to be satisfactory while simultaneously being concerned about how increasingly divided, populist and radicalized western society is becoming.
I think that there are answers out there, many coming from Stephen Kotkin, a man who destroyed his eye sight studying Stalin, who is an expert on the collapse of the Soviet Union, and who is trying to reboot the American diplomatic service.
He talks about how we in the west must stop demonizing each other. We have the ability to solve our problems, but our political parties make it impossible to get the right people on our ballots. (In Canada I just join all the parties and vote within them, since a vote within is worth 50 votes without).
This is full of factual errors, and garbage on the face of it.
Canada is a rule-of-law, democratic society. The so-called protestors blocked off major ports of entry leading to material harm to businesses. They also violated the rights of individuals living within the downtown core (including my family) for weeks on end. They brought weapons with them, they built shanties and filled them with kerosene and propane.
The plurality of Canadians voted for the government and the imposition of its lawful and constitutional restrictions in re: COVID. Were they unlawful or in violation of Charter rights, they could have used the courts but elected not to. Because they are lawful and in keeping with the Charter.
Two thirds of Canadians support the use of the Emergencies Act in breakup up the unlawful protests.
As the elder Trudeau said in the October Crisis re: the use of the military (which the junior Trudeau is not planning on doing):
Yeah, well there's a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it's more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier's helmet.
If you want to change the Government, vote. Trudeau's Liberals are a minority government meaning they require the support of another major party to continue to be a government. If they fail to pass a confidence bill they will immediately be dissolved and face an election. The average tenure of a minority government in Canada is 1 year, 140 days.
The use of Bitcoin in this manner is anti-Democratic as it seeks to overturn the lawful, constitutional decisions of the plurality - and to overturn the last election.
We have ways of sorting this out in Canada. You vote.
If you see yourself supporting these anti-Democratic viewpoints, ask yourselves: "Are we the baddies?"
[edit] Not only did I not vote for the Liberals in the last election, I'm open to re-evaluating the COVID restrictions too. But not with a boot to the neck. The unlawful protests must end. Then we can talk.
> There's voting in Democratic Republic of Korea too.
Wow that's a really interesting fact about North Korea that has absolutely and unequivocally nothing to do with Canada.
> It doesn't help if anyone speaking against the mass propaganda is silenced.
Except they're not. So. After all, I can hear you now, Comrade Phil. Consider than rather than being silenced, people may just not agree with these fringe positions?
> Wow that's a really interesting fact about North Korea that has absolutely and unequivocally nothing to do with Canada.
Except it's all the same everywhere. Maybe you habe never been out of your well so you don't know. Just so you know, free speech is protected right as per the North Korean constitution... except in practice, it's just like Canada.
> Consider than rather than being silenced, people may just not agree with these fringe positions?
What fringe position? That vaccines without long term data and questionable efficacy against the prevalent variant should not be mandated? Which other country has mandated it?
> Except it's all the same everywhere. Maybe you habe never been out of your well so you don't know. Just so you know, free speech is protected right as per the North Korean constitution... except in practice, it's just like Canada.
I grew up all over the world, including having lived in the US, Canada, KSA, and plenty of other places. I've also traveled to 50 countries or so. I strongly suspect I have seen more of the world than you have.
I can tell you that you are unequivocally wrong if you think that NK is anything like CA. It's a fun narrative of the uninformed.
> What fringe position? That vaccines without long term data and questionable efficacy against the prevalent variant should not be mandated? Which other country has mandated it?
Yes this is a fringe position that the science does not support.
It is clear that the hospitalization and death rates are orders of magnitude higher in the unvaccinated, and at the moment, I support policies which keep ICUs and hospital resources at or below capacity. Your positions are not in keeping with that.
I support mandatory vaccination campaigns until removing all restrictions would keep hospitals from being flooded, then lifting all restrictions.
> I can tell you that you are unequivocally wrong if you think that NK is anything like CA. It's a fun narrative of the uninformed.
Also real democracies have real elections and real candidates and peaceful changes of power between politicians.
The DPRK, Russia, PRC, Venezuela all claim to be democracies -- but really they use assassination and imprisonment to quash dissent.
If the truckers wanted to protest with signs and march up and down sidewalks, or strike against carrying transport, those are all legal things they can do. But they can't block commerce...
How familiar are you with Canada, Comrade Phil? We enjoy a vibrant, multi-party parliamentary democracy with all sorts of different opinions represented. We have five major parties, not two. An even an up-and-coming nutbag 6th.
That's like saying Firefox is a competitor to Chrome... while Google pays Mozzila millions to keep it alive.
Just so you know, North Korea has 4 political parties, China has 8, Russia has dozens. In faux democracies, small parties are paid for by the very same people who keep the big ones alive. Controlled opposition is very handy. People in power don't want to lose it just because half of the peasants don't like a face in an election.
It sounds like you know an awful lot about NK and the PRC and very little about Canada. I do wish you well, but your argument, to my point, is a highly fringe view.
You know in most countries like Canada, where healthcare is actually a public cost centre, the financial incentive is the opposite of what you state. The public health systems would be incentivized to discover that this is in fact a "sham" and stop administering the vaccines to better allocate their budgets. All this has been incredibly expensive. However, they have found the opposite of your claims - all over the world - in billions of instances.
Consider in the areas of Canada with the lowest vaccination rates and with the lowest compliance (Alberta, I'm looking at you) ICUs are full, and they're having to send patients to high-vaccination/high-compliance provinces like Ontario. Once again burdening those who comply with the selfish, capricious actions of those who do not. [1]
These are fringe views that most Canadians simply do not subscribe to. I know it's tough to hear. For those of us living in reality, though, these actions are unpleasant but necessary.
> You know in most countries like Canada, where healthcare is actually a public cost centre,
Good point... except that the policy makers aren't paying out of their pocket. It's public money either way. They'll take whatever option helps them in the short run because if they don't, someone else is willing to take that money and bring them down in the next faux election.
You might want to look up what people who are actually putting money in it think. Hint: "pfizer stock price".
No, they're freezing accounts of folks who contributed financially to the unlawful occupation of Ottawa. An action that's supported by over 66% of Canadians. These aren't ex-post facto laws.
Canada is freezing the accounts of people who organized or directly participated in this illegal occupation. Any news you've read to the contrary has been, as some groups like to scream, "fake news". Literal fake news.
It would be such political hay if a single such case came forward. A minority government hangs in the balance, and can be ousted (insofar as a new election is called) immediately. Do you know why no verifiable case has come forward? Because the cases you heard of were lies.
> If you see yourself supporting these anti-Democratic viewpoints, ask yourselves: "Are we the baddies?"
I think only in the domain of history the "baddies" term make sense. Until then (historical perspective and taking the survival bias into consideration), the majority is "just" that. Not to dismiss it, of course, being a basis of democracy.
In 2011 I gave a talk in Germany at the Chaos Communications Camp entitled "Financing the Revolution" which makes the argument that uncensorable payment systems are an essential prerequisite for a free society, as without them, you cannot exercise basic rights:
I cited the banking blockade by Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal used against Wikileaks/Assange as evidence that, at the very least, publishers need to be able to send and receive payments that the state does not wish them to be able to send or receive.
Last week, I wrote about how we as a society need to be prepared specifically for user-friendly, widespread unstoppable payments, as the technology now exists for actually private, uncensorable payments to reach a wide audience.
Canadians have a right to protest. Canadians also have a right to the enjoyment of their property. The former does not override the latter, and the latter was severely infringed upon by the occupiers.
These protests caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. There is a $300M lawsuit against the occupiers in Ottawa, similar ones will happen against the occupiers of the Ambassador bridge.
The bank accounts have been frozen via two different mechanisms -- by the use of the Emergency Measures Act, and by a preliminary ruling in the civil court.
The freezing via the EMA would thaw after the EMA expires in a few days. The freezing by the civil court will not, and will likely result in the loss of those bank accounts.
The first option is criminal, which is fine/imprisonment or both.
The second option is civil, which are lawsuits against the protesters to recoup losses by businesses.
And then if crypto is a possibility, one could say you have to seize the assets now before they can be laundered, in other words, you're pre-empting the potential of illegal behavior.
> The freezing via the EMA would thaw after the EMA expires in a few days.
The PM is on the record admitting he is considering extending the Emergency Measures Act, potentially for months.
His Minister of Finance has already declared she now plans to make some of the financial controls permanent.
Whether or not you believe these measures to be appropriate, it is incorrect to claim they will expire in the next few days.
Question: "Hello from the CBC, the truckers could come back in 2 months, 3 months, so does that mean we would have to keep it for another 2, 3 months?"
Trudeau: "Indeed. This is something we are thinking about, of course."
"Governors in the USA" are not subjects of the Canadian government, and there's no particularly valuable conclusion to be drawn from the structure and legal backing of emergency orders in the US in this circumstance.
If you're worried about the groups using crypto to launder their money due to fines/lawsuits, then freezing accounts seems reasonable as well.
Laundering money is a great way in the US to get your account frozen without being arrested/tried/convicted. Because if you waited for the conviction, the money would be long gone.
Thousands of people were out of work for most of a month. For example, the Rideau Centre, which employs 1500, was shut down.
Thousands of people had to move out of their homes because they couldn't sleep with the continuous honking. One idiot even brought a train horn.
And that was just Ottawa. The ambassador bridge shutdown was much worse. For instance, Ford shut down an Ohio plant employing 1600 due to lack of parts made in Canada.
Were businesses pressured to close by the city and the police because people were allegedly flouting mask mandates, or to deny the protestors food, water, heat, and washrooms in -20 Celsius weather? The business closures advised by the city and police certainly furthered their war of attrition against the protestors, despite the lack of evidence of any real threat. On the contrary, a number of small businesses remained open during the protests and experienced relatively few disruptions.
The border protests were certainly more economically disruptive, and it's remarkable that it took days to clear out a handful of vehicles.
It's fundamentally non-serious to claim the protestors were following all applicable mask mandates. You're the first person I've seen to claim that. Take a look at any picture in the news, or that the protestors have posted.
I'm sure some people were ignoring the mask mandates. My point though was that it's fundamentally non-serious to claim that is sufficient reason to shut down blocks of businesses for weeks during a non-violent protest. I find the alternative explanation, that it was a tactical move to starve the protestors out, far more compelling.
It's amazing to me the rhetoric used regarding people going honk honk, when just a year ago we were downplaying the burning and looting of cities, and brushing the deaths that happened in those protests under the rug.
It's rather straightforward though for any further away observer; if you're referring to the BLM protests they were clearly embodying a concrete universal in the historical moment, whereas here it is much harder to argue that having been the case.
Moreover, American political movements against vaccination have to my mind without much doubt led to many, many avoidable deaths in the past few years, even if direct causality is harder to establish. So it is not so puzzling or amazing to observe where people's sympathies align at this point of the pandemic.
These protests can be incredibly intrusive and damaging to real people in real Canadian cities. That has nothing to do with the (largely) US BLM protests.
335 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 264 ms ] threadIt is a different thing whether or not the Canadian government should lose the ability to seize funds, in general, from its citizens.
This article conflates the two.
This was separatist group that for a time took control over the border, threatened and blockaded critical infrastructure and committed thousands of crimes (bribery, threats, assault, setting a fire in a building).
The criminal investigations are ongoing. Due process will be had.
The police unfortunately dropped the ball, they tried that option too. But just arresting specific people also wasn't enough.
Polling shows that the majority of Canadians supported the use of the act.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/191-arrests-later-ottawa-polic...
Maybe freezing accounts contributed to this particular outcome, but I don't accept that it was necessary.
1. WWI
2. WWII
3. FLQ Crisis - an incident that included the kidnapping of federal ministers by a terrorist organization
By contrast, this protest has been incredibly peaceful when compared to other similar protests or occupations. There is a debate happening in parliament right now on whether or not to extend the Emergency powers now that the government has successfully cleared the protestors and taken back control of downtown Ottawa.
I personally don't believe this incident warranted the suspension of civil liberties. It isn't clear to me that the government did what they could to apply the existing laws on the books. If anything the biggest issue was that the Ottawa police appeared reluctant to enforce existing laws on the protestors. That is a different issue and does not justify the imposition of the Emergency act.
Invoking the Emergencies Act after 3 weeks was warranted after the police failed doing it's job.
The government did not have a clear picture or control over the situation. A foreign organization could have used it to supply these people, which is what happened. This was a big hole in Canada's national security.
Assuming you are referring to the January 6th insurrection incident, I don't think the two are comparable. What happened in Canada could fairly be described as an occupation and would therefore be most similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Notably the Occupy movement, despite being equally frustrating for the local and national government as well as the civilian population, was allowed to go on for close to 2 years.
I don't claim that Canada should have allowed this protest/occupation to go on for that long, but I think it is clear that had the Ottawa police had the will to take action, the existing laws were sufficient to put an end to any illegal activity.
Peaceful protest, not occupation, is lawful under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So my hypothesis is that the Canadian Government implemented the Emergency Measures act in order to suspend the Charter so they could suppress an otherwise lawful activity.
Politically this is probably true, but ows never as far as I recall blocked main roads, and certainly not for extended periods. Whatever you think the legitimacy of that tactic is, it's not the same.
And fwiw the ottowa police claimed that they didn't have the resources: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/16/ottawa-protest..., though I too question that claim.
Police need to be able to stop those who break the law, while simultaneously protecting those who are merely protesting. Even if they’re part of the same crowd.
This is especially insane because you can no longer distinguish between “protestors legally protesting” and “protestors illegally blocking critical infrastructure.”
That is very much the government being stupid.
But not, like literally making roads impassable at all hours for days (https://www.dw.com/en/canada-court-orders-protesting-trucker...).
(and there's something to be said for "the police shouldn't be able to put down a large scale protest of involving thousands of people and vehicles. Perhaps if the police force is powerful enough to do that, it's too strong?)
Lasted for a few days at most, not like in Canada.
Occupy protestors took a nearby park. Tried to stay out of the way otherwise.
It’s complicated whether they were responsible for blockage. Initially it was police who were in the way. After a while the police left but the activists stayed. The park and area around in became uninhabitable and unnavigable. Garbage in streets.
Very different protests. And very different from what’s happening in Canada.
This is what I don’t get. The Canadian police had the power to stop the protestors who crossed the line from protest to riot.
But they didn’t.
I don’t understand why. Why did they allow the ambassador bridge to be shut down so long?
They had the power to stop it. They just chose not to.
Only that the protest turned into an occupation and/or a blockade that caused economic damage and negatively impacted the residents of Ottawa.
These were remarkably peaceful protests, for the most part, by both the protesters and the police.
However it’s not acceptable to shut down public roadways.
The majority of southerners supported slavery and breaking away from the union.
Canada has the right (just as the US does) to limit foreign influence in its domestic affairs and its democratically elected government is exercising that right.
It wasn't even limited to those who actually broke any laws. Multiple incidents have been reported by Canadians who donated as little as $50 to the protest BEFORE it was declared illegal, having their bank accounts frozen without any formal charges.
Given that they are not even charging these people with crimes, they are denied due process and their economic lives are destroyed for the crime of committing a lawful act that happened to be unpopular with the ruling party.
To portray this as a reasonable step to curtail foreign influence in domestic affairs seems intellectually dishonest. This was government overreach pure and simple.
This said, I love Canada and don't believe Canada should tolerate one iota foreign interference in our domestic affairs, especially if it sows division or reduces trust in Canada's institutions. Whether you believe the blockading of border crossings, occupation of Parliament Hill, and disruption of peace in Ottawa were peaceful protests or unlawful assemblies, they were amplified and prolonged by foreign money. Canada should rightly do what it takes to nip foreign influence in the bud.
I do wish we would apply those foreign influence and foreign funding rules more consistently though. A few years ago, the prime minister in question, accepted millions in funding from Chinese investors to his WE charity. In order to avoid having to defend those actions he even prorogued parliament.
It would also be nice to limit foreign investment in Canadian real estate so that more Canadians could afford a home in their native land, but I might be dreaming.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10535361/Canadian-M...
Canadians only have two hands. Even the Quebecois.
Slightly off topic but the inconsistent treatment/reporting of these protestors and BLM is what gets me. BLM protestors flying "antifa" flags (let's be honest Marxists) are just as bad as Nazis in my book - seriously misled people with unworkable ideas about how the world should be run.
Anyway if you're coming down hard on protestors who are causing disruption but not to protestors who are setting fire to buildings then there's something seriously wrong.
Let's be clear about what you're saying: people who are vehemently opposed to Nazis are just as bad as Nazis. This is the definition of "fake centrism" or (sarcastically) "enlightened centrism". You're really saying that a new flag created to express opposition to Nazis, fascism, authoritarianism, and genocide is as bad as a flag that has been used for almost a century to represent those exact things? They're just as bad as each other? Are there good and bad people "on both sides", too? You need to seriously take a hard look at yourself in a mirror if you believe this. One group is expressly saying "we should subjugate and genocide non-whites" and the other group is expressly saying "we should not tolerate genocide and subjugation" and they are just as bad in your eyes!?
You and CodeGlitch can argue whether that applies in this situation. But the idea itself is perfectly reasonable.
You've actually brought up a good point, with the overuse of the term "Nazi" it's hard to have a meaningful conversation about the far right and their deeply unpleasant beliefs. Simply calling them Nazis is lazy and unhelpful.
You need to look yourself in the mirror or better yet, read a history book or two about fascism and national socialism and take a good look at antifa again.
To my knowledge, there was a singular incident of Nazi flag on the very first day of a 25 day protest. There is also some evidence that it may have actually been the PM's personal photographer who took the photos of the Nazi flag [1].
It is also a curious fact that this flag incident took place at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier, a $300/night luxury hotel in the heart of Ottawa, known for hosting foreign dignitaries and heads of state, that now curiously houses a large contingent of police from all over Canada [2]. It seems suspect to think that truckers and racists would choose such an iconic and expensive venue to display this symbol of hate.
Given that most of us never expected the severe curtailing of civil liberties by a liberal democracy such as Canada, I think it is prudent for us all to be skeptical about the facts on the ground in this incident as it almost appear engineered to sow the seeds of hate against the protesters in this case.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur#Canada
[1] https://twitter.com/McloughlinGuy/status/1489468112009408514...
[2] https://twitter.com/GuitarBill609/status/1495447010291372034...
I do find it suspect that this all went down at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier which is a hotel most well known for hosting foreign dignitaries and heads of state, as well as more recently large numbers of police brought in from around the country.
This single nazi flag incident has been repeated by the government and it's proponent so many times now to paint this entire movement as racist which is do feel is an unfair characterization of the protesters, most of whom were simply Canadians who felt the need to be heard.
You don’t need to be staying at the hotel, or even visiting the hotel to use it. Thousands of pedestrians, including many tourists coming from other hotels downtown, use that walkway every day to access Wellington and the Parliament.
It’s also a great vantage point to be seen from the bridge spanning the canal, where I assume this photo was taken.
So no, this did not “all go down at the Chateau Laurier”, it went down outside it, on a heavily trafficked public walkway.
I retract the following claim in my parent comment.
> There is also some evidence that it may have actually been the PM's personal photographer who took the photos of the Nazi flag [1]
Correction: There is NO evidence that the PM's personal photographer was a party to this photo incident. I regret making that unsubstantiated claim.
What this episode makes clear is that many people actually love authoritarianism as long as the actions of the state in the moment appear to align with their own ideology. Next time it won't, which is why it must be resisted on a principled basis. This precedent being set is a dictator's dream come true and you will have no leg to stand on as someone that cheered on the tools of oppression.
When the blockade is significantly funded from outside the country the policies are supposed to be about [0], when effective mechanics of the protest aren't merely speech but crippling trade, when the stated substance is basically claiming the privilege of unrestrained motion across international borders without regard to vaccination status, even if it were true that "one idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands" were engaging in fundamentally unacceptable (e.g. nazi) performance, there's still be plenty of reasons for sensible and restrained government authorities to intervene.
> This precedent being set is a dictator's dream
Which precedent? That authorities might use authority to stop trade disruption?
Seizure of property from people involved in that disruption? Bigger and far more routine problems in terms of civil forfeiture.
Needing to be vaccinated to cross a border? You may want to look at precedents established over the last century or two and ask yourself why the totalitarian catastrophe you seem to be imagining has only crossed some kind of threshold now, almost as if it isn't coming.
[0] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/where-things-stand-majo...
Do you feel the same about the BLM protests?
Let's assume that both the blm protests and the convoy both had "a few idiots or provocateurs in a sea of tens of thousands." Now compare the media coverage and government handling of the two things, and compare how those idiots are portrayed compared to the tens of thousands. Do you see a difference? It seems to me that all blm-related events are generally considered peaceful protests (even the ones where buildings are burned down), while the convoy is nothing but a big nazi flag waving party. Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?
> Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?
Interesting to think about. Just imagine the headline of "Donald trump freezes bank accounts of BLM protestors" and the uproar and legal battles that would immediately follow. Different countries (laws, rights, legal precedents), different levels of public support for the underlying cause, "black bloc" obscuring the protestor identities.
Yes.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/17/amazon-suspends-black-lives-ma...
Even in cases like the sanctions on Iran, I don't think we attempt to prosecute people who had financial interactions with Iranian people or businesses before the sanctions were imposed.
Sadly, it most likely will. The left I used to know wouldn't be caught dead cheering on the coordination between federal government and private businesses/banks to deny people the ability to organize and protest. But here we are, and there we'll be when the government decides to label whatever the next movement is as a "threat to democracy."
> to organize and protest.
All the sit-ins in the past 60 years of protesting, ended up in people being arrested. And fines (as well as imprisonment) were levied against the arrested protesters for disruption of government operations and services.
Further these days, often protesters go in expecting to be arrested. Activists will often seek people who aren't afraid of being arrested.
If you cause damage during the protest, you really can't whine about the punishment.
> The left I used to know wouldn't be caught dead cheering on the coordination between federal government...
Oh I think Abbie Hoffman's supporters would still hate the FBI COINTELPRO today. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) Hoover's FBI more or less got away with infiltration and assassination because the enemy was "stinking hippies" or "terrorists".
But don't you see any kind of resemblance to that and what's happening currently with the all the "nazis" and "white supremacists"? It's odd to me that you can mention COINTELPRO and think that things like that don't still happen.
I guess you can rightly say that I have no proof of that. But in 50 years, if we ever get documents released explaining how COINTELPRO was expanded and used against lots of the movements of our time, you owe me a beer.
But COINTELPRO is the premier example of law enforcement corruption in the US, and those who were affected by it still live with it to this day. And I don't think anyone really wants justice served without due process in the US these days. And arguing that your opponents support that or are willing to look the other way when it happens is rather unfair.
If the truckers staged a boycott instead of an occupation, I feel like their side might have a lot more sympathy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
As to your red herring about the right being labeled as "nazi"s, I think the media does a pretty good job of portraying the "Racist Right" from the "Right". It's also pretty clear whether a politician/person/group/etc is willing to openly denouce racism or not.
This is a disingenuous interpretation of what is essentially a peaceful worker's sit-in.
> 2) The people that trust that medical doctors around the entire plant earth aren't part of some super secret cabal hellbent on implanting mind-controlling microchips in them
This is a disingenuous character smear of anyone who decides to question the status quo.
That is literally what they are protesting for, so I fail to see how it is disingenuous.
> This is a disingenuous character smear of anyone who decides to question the status quo.
Perhaps you should "research" the difference between "status quo" and "factual". 10.6 billion people have gotten a covid vaccine, it would be pretty hard to hide any signs of deleterious effects in a sample size of 10.6 billion. On the other hand, the statistics on covid are equally clear: it's orders upon orders of magnitude more dangerous to human health that the vaccine could even "possibly" be.
[0] https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
[edit for additional thoughts]
Looking at it either way, a sample size of 4.32 billion people or 10+ billion individual doses is more than enough to give a very clear signal if the vaccines were causing harm; harm from the vaccines would be as obvious as the sun, statistically speaking.
> ...the conflicting (and often suppressed) research...
What "research" regarding covid vaccine efficacy is being "suppressed", exactly? The only research that I see being suppressed, is the research that the vast majority of people that are dying of covid are unvaccinated. And it's being suppressed by the cruel FUD campaign led by the anti-vaxer crew, that, tragically, has taken so many of their own number.
I don't see much "conflicting research" regarding vaccine efficacy at all, it's well below the standard level of noise you get from medical studies. For instance, have you seen any reputable studies that point to unvaccinated people dying less often than vaccinated people of covid? Me neither. We know the vaccines provide significant protection from serious complications from covid, including death, we know the protection wanes over time, and we know boosters are extremely effective. Where exactly is the uncertainly here?
His books are more relevant today, as the state is re-establishing its authority to define "friend" and "enemy". "Good" and "evil".
Tolerating the "other" side's views is no longer acceptable.
The state is re-establishing its authority (and monopoly?) to determine public "friend" and "enemy".
What's going on in Canada right now is a disgrace that perfectly exemplifies why the legacy financial system is morally - and quite literally - bankrupt.
It's immensely problematic when violating someone's individual rights is not costly, and you can seize the money of tens of thousands of people with the stroke of a pen and the push of a button.
The same argument applies to surveillance. If the FBI has reason to suspect a person of a crime, then they have the right to set up some surveillance apparatus to gather evidence against that person. But this is a costly endeavor and requires many manhours of work. But, if you can automatically surveil every person in the country, and run it all through machine learning to constantly monitor every single person, then that becomes an extremely dangerous slippery slope into an inescapable authoritarian state.
Already done: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/17/citizens-grou...
Aside from a billion dollars+ in trade blocked when the protest -- having achieved nothing terrorizing the residents of Ottawa and blasting horns/setting off fireworks around the clock -- branched out to trying to block international borders, they harassed schools, healthcare workers, anyone wearing a mask, and attacked reporters from venues they don't like. The vast majority of businesses in the affected zone shut down entirely because the lawless, selfish crowd at this rally proved such a massive liability that simply closing was a better option.
But they set up a bouncy castle and brought children as shields (stated tactical plan of the group), so I guess that is okay.
They fawned over a Fox News reporter, and then spit on and slurred an MSNBC reporter. You might notice a correlation with another group South of the border, and that isn't accidental. Just as it shouldn't surprise that the main "stage" of this operation's daily speeches were chock full of QAnon gibberish (utterly indisputable -- the crowd cheers as conspiracies about the WEF, the Rothschilds, Bill Gates, 5G, and so on were given the daily reading). Appearances by "Canada First" flags, Red Ensign flags (an old Canadian flag repurposed by white supremacist), and more unfortunate correlations. This isn't accidental. Livestreams and discussions with many of the protestors betrayed just a cosmically misinformed, ignorant group, and it's a perilous demonstration of the future we all face as groups fracture off, conveniently declare anything but a few grifting sources "fake news", and then feed off of each other.
To call this an anti-mandate protest is to seriously miss the plot. If it was -- if it hadn't constructed noise-terrorism devices that saw people measuring 100db+ in their apartment -- and actually saved the "Fuck Trudeau" signs and QAnon conspiracies, or that whole seditious "we're not leaving until the government resigns and the Governor General declares us the new government" bit of nonsense, they could have inspired sympathy. Instead it was simply political terrorism, and is grotesquely anti-democratic. 93% of Canadians wanted this shut down weeks ago.
"Martial law"? After three weeks, weeks past being declared an illegal occupation, they were sent home in the gentlest way possible. After weeks of warnings, then days of warning of an action, the police did their job. The only thing above and beyond normal policing they did was that the Emergency Act allowed other regions to add to the police force without the whole normal process. Calling this Martial Law is *gross* and makes DHH look like a clown, though the entire piece manages that so it's consistent. It should offend anyone with any functioning reason.
"First the Ottawa police department got GoFundMe to confiscate donations with the intention of redirecting them to other causes"
GFM was made aware the cause was being used to fund literal crime breaking (indisputable), so they cancelled it. Good for them. And if someone crowdfunded to have crimes committed against DHH or his property, I hope they would be even quicker (but hey, at least his detractors will have crypto, right?). What GFM decided to do then was entirely on GFM's side.
Now the government wants crowdfunding with targets or sources in Canada to report large or suspicious transactions to FINTRAC, given that currently it is a gap in the financial system. There is nothing surprising or bizarre in that.
And before someone cites BLM or "ANTIFA" thinking that's some sort of "haha got you leftist" retort, a lot of us -- those of us who don't frame everything as "right" or "left", and have remotely consistent values -- are against unlawful blockades and occupati...
Then arrest the specific people doing this and charge them with a crime.
So we agree, law breakers should have been charged. Police action should have been constant and aggressive.
But it was an occupation. Police barely operated in their lawless zone at all. That's the whole point, and was the intention of the group. It was a bully group, and their rhetoric and claims were often that they would die before they left. There are connotations to that.
That's a point you are making, and it's a point I completely agree with.
But don't dismiss the unrelated point that DHH is raising, which is a concern over the power to freeze anyone's assets without due process, and the power of crypto to prevent that from happening.
Even if DHH is categorically wrong that it's a "peaceful" protest or whatever, his core point still stands.
But sure, he brings up classic arguments for crypto. There is nothing new in them. "Avoid government control - use crypto". Sounds great when it's for a cause you support, and DHH supports chaos and lawlessness in foreign cities he has no interests in, so why not. Kind of falls apart when that same mechanism is used for causes you're against.
For two decades the US has frozen and seized accounts in the hundreds of thousands -- billions of dollars in assets -- often with little oversight or checks. Civil forfeiture is rampant. Whole political groups have been declared "terrorist affiliated" and any correlation at all can lead to extremely unpleasant outcomes. No fly lists are flippant and casual.
And you think Canada using financial tools, primarily motivated by large external contributions to illegal activities, is the example?
It's maybe an example, sure. A weak one to me, but sure. It's certainly no precedent. To use this as the kick off point for some crypto advocacy seems...pernicious.
The difference here is its blank check authority against a reasonable protest objective as a response to certain bad actors within that broader objective and movement. Not everyone involved is creating criminal levels of noise pollution, trying to burn down apartment buildings, or blocking trade routes. Many of them just want good faith protest. If we could just arrest the bad faith actors quickly, and allow the good faith actors to continue protesting, we can simultaneously protect the right to valid protest while protecting the community within which the protest is happening. When you start freezing accounts without due process, that all flies out the window. This is what is importantly different about this particular action by Canada. It is uniquely chilling to the right to political protest in a way that unduly seizing the assets of suspected drug dealers isn't (although I am very much against that too).
The BLM protest movement can be used as an analogy. Would it be reasonable for all BLM support to be effectively criminalized by carte blanche freezing of accounts of people "involved"? No, of course not. The reasonable thing is to arrest those people who are looting or setting up CHOP or whatever, and to allow the real protestors to keep protesting.
There were people who could only afford to pay a lawyer to get back their money taken away from them by civil forfeiture because they had some Bitcoin as well in their portfolio. They got all their money back, as they were innocent, but they would have had to ask lots of money from their friends just to be able to afford a lawsuit. So no, this is not the first time having some Bitcoin is advised against civil forfeiture.
Anyone paying attention has some btc just in case.
Me? I found the railway blockades intolerable lawlessness. Trudeau took well-earned criticism for the soft-handed approach to them, and it cost him a majority government. It had far less of a negative impact on Canada (and touched on a very sensitive aboriginal issue), but those of us with actual value-based positions -- instead of just tribalistically flexing our positions to justify whatever we think "our" group are doing, as seen by DHH here -- are pretty consistent on this.
But can you point out any other protest in Canada that set up hot tubs on city streets, abused commercial vehicles and commercial privileges, terrorized residents, squatted on city parking lots as command and control systems, and operated a lawless zone? Pointing to some CHOP in the US (also GROSSLY unacceptable) isn't an example. Pointing at BLM isn't a counterpoint.
"expect them all to behave like their some sort of hive mind"
Among any group there will be bad actors. The constant citing of a Nazi flag appearance was just boring nonsense...at least until I repeatedly saw Canada First and Red Ensign flags (which are a subtler way of saying the same thing). QAnon nuttery would be just some fringe...if it wasn't the majority of content on their main stage and repeated by the main organizers constantly. The guy saying the flurry of incredibly ignorant misinformation would be just some nut, if it wasn't the same thing that came out of almost every participant's mouth.
"I also think your news sources are a little biased."
Sure. I mean, my news sources don't involved many QAnon blogs, but during the protest I had a video window playing most days featuring one of the sympathetic live streamers who constantly walked up and down the protest, interviewing participants. ZOD, the travel fun guy, some machine guy, etc. It is the words of the participant, and hearing their rhetoric at their stage, that gives me my opinion of this group.
I don't think, it is entirely fair to blame it all on one side. What the government could have done is meet with the protestors and solve the problem diplomatically. Agree on a reasonable compromise, like suspending some restrictions conditional to hospital utilization. The protestors with reasonable demands [0] would have then condemned the complete nut jobs, most general public from both political camps would have supported the peaceful resolution and Trudeau would have been known as a good diplomat. After all, it's his direct job - negotiate terms on behalf of people he represents.
Instead, he decided to basically threw a tantrum and declared that it's below his royal highness to go negotiate with some pesky trucker plebs, quickly passing emergency regulation barring public assembly on the Parliament Hill and near "official residences" [1]. This is the most divisive and nonconstructive way of handling the situation, and I do think this is done on purpose.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8tzXazvyHQ&t=44s
[1] https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
No, Trudeau should never have met with them. I'm no Trudeau fan, but there was zero value in ever meeting with this group. They should have been swept up the moment they broke the first law.
"like suspending some restrictions conditional to hospital utilization"
Like almost everyone who has takes on this here (including DHH), you seem to know perilously little about the actual situation, yet you've got a lot of takes. The vast majority of mandates are provincial, for instance, not federal, just as health systems are managed at the provincial level. Ontario (the province that Ottawa is in), actually has a conservative leader, but the so-called "truckers" didn't target him at all, and their minimal foray into Toronto was immediately squashed by a much more capable police force. Nor did they do much about any other premier. Because it had little to do with mandates. These people simply don't accept democracy. They don't like Trudeau, therefore he's got to go. I mean, they literally said it over and over again. That's cool, but we just had an election so they can take their mini insurrection and go home again.
1. Abolish federal vaccine mandates for border crossing.
2. Abolish ArriveCAN - the app used to track health/vaccination status during border crossings.
Both are very specific demands. Both will have close to zero effect on the actual COVID deaths. Both are within the federal government's jurisdiction. Both are extremely hard to defend in the public's eye. So what does the government and the news agencies do? Completely ignore the reasonable take, pick up much crazier demands made by a different person, that are easier to refute, and play the usual guilt by association game, implying that everyone against the mandates are supporters of the nuttiest imaginable cause.
A week earlier the organizers had quietly dropped their memorandum of understanding's insurrection demands.
"Completely ignore the reasonable take, pick up much crazier demands made by a different person"
What I described were the demands in effect by the organizers for weeks. In interviews with convoy participants, zero of them seemed to believe that removing a border vaccine requirement (completely and utterly irrelevant given that the US government has their own mandate that makes Canada's extraneous) would be enough for them to go home.
After a three week long insurrection based on profound ignorance, and thousands of instances of criminality, you think the government -- just as it was about to have the resources available to put it down -- should have shook hands and said "you win" to these people? And just to be clear, even if we though the army of QAnon aficionados would go for it, I assure you they would have expected amnesty.
No, I don't think so. It was *way* too late to suddenly try to eek a win out of this.
I think everyone has a right to protest, peacefully, and many have in Ottawa. None of them terrorized the city for 3 weeks. Before you say that it was a "peaceful" protest note that there are many types of terrorism [0] and this occupation fits into "Civil disorder – A form of collective violence interfering with the peace, security, and normal functioning of the community.".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism#Types
'... Emergency Act allowed other regions to add to the police force without the whole normal process.'
Yes, outside enforcers were needed because local police were not doing it.
Trudeau is one of Schwab's young leaders and has embarrassed Canada. https://www.weforum.org/people/justin-trudeau
Ottawa is a relatively small city. They were grossly overwhelmed after letting an occupation setup base. Further, you clearly know absolutely nothing about Canada, or Ontario, or the police involved, or the politics, so your various takes are nonsensical.
"Trudeau is one of Schwab's young leaders and has embarrassed Canada."
A current QAnon conspiracy on HN, stated with a straight face. How absolutely embarrassing.
So everyone else is aware (although this ridiculous stupid essay from DHH thankfully got flagged off the front page, so this post is largely only being seen by "the faithful"), the WEF conspiracy came about because some people with incredibly poor critical skills have derived an inverted relationship between a group and its members. Basically a tail wagging a dog assumption. The world's powerful all are members of Davos / WEF basically as a networking and "say nice things", so the especially gullible conspiratorial swap that relationship and now the WEF is actually the master puppeteer pulling the strings. It's a conspiracy literally beyond parody, and I'm still caught up in Poe's Law, unsure if the above comment is sincere, or some sarcastic example of insanity.
> Especially since I had some sympathy with fears projected by the US progressive left who spent four years fretting Trump might pull stunts like these. Then it turns out that the worries of an authoritarian overreach would be fulfilled by Trudeu to the North instead? Who's writing this script? M. Night Shyamalan?
The kumbaya "we're all in this together" thing only works until one of the other apes becomes self-aware and remembers we're still living in the jungle.
More often than not in history, the person pushing that message knows exactly what they're doing and has designs on doing exactly what Trudeau has done.
None of this is a surprise.
Did someone say otherwise?
Crypto is an attempt to fulfill a broad yearning for financial freedom. The problem is, as it currently exists --- it just doesn't deliver.
Crypto doesn't displace trust, it misplaces it.
Instead of trusting government and regulated banks, you end up trusting the unregulated gatekeepers to the block chain --- the exchanges.
Who is making sure these gatekeepers are not self serving scammers and con artists? Why no one really.
In other words, block chain automates the accounting but it does nothing to eliminate *trust* as a central aspect of the monetary system. So the question simply becomes, who are you going to trust?
If government suddenly ceased to exist, the first thing people would do is re-invent it. Because left to their own devices, people are not trustworthy.
how exactly are exchanges gatekeepers? blockchains would function completely fine without exchanges. In fact, on chain exchanges like uniswap and 0x require zero trust whatsoever.
Who determines how much your crypto is worth?
Does uniswap do this? No, not on their own. They can't --- their daily trading volume is too small. They are literally forced to follow the "marketplace".
The 800lb gorillas that make up the crypto "marketplace" are the centralized exchanges --- Binance and others. They set the price using whatever method they choose. And they can easily influence the price by buying and selling themselves. Binance has access to unlimited funds to do so --- by simply minting more Tethers --- which they have done repeatedly --- and the price remains pegged at $1USD (wink, wink, nod, nod).
With unlimited funds, effective control over the pricing mechanism and no regulation --- the centralized exchanges have all the ingredients for the ultimate form of insider trading fraud.
If you trade crypto as it exists today, you are *trusting* the centralized exchanges who have overwhelming influence over the "marketplace". You have no other option.
Sure, pick any exchange you want and I'll bet you a BTC that the price of USDT is effectively $1 USD.
USDT remains pegged at $1 USD regardless of how many new Tethers are minted. Have you ever thought about why or how this happens? Once you do, your *trust* in the crypto exchanges/marketplace will start to unravel.
Would I hold funds in USDT myself? No, I learned my lesson after losing 50k with Liberty Reserve.
And you know this how? Trust?
Be honest. If the people running things used all the funds to buy a private island in the South Pacific, you wouldn't have any way to know.
This is like saying, who gives a shit if the NYSE is minting and selling stocks? Anyone with an IRA or a 401K should.
Who gives a shit if Liberty Reserve was a money laundering operation? Maybe you should have.
More than half of all crypto trades involve tether. The market prices of most crypto is being influenced by it whether you use it personally or not. If/when the price of Tether crumbles, most crypto will have no choice but to follow.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2019/03/14/tethe...
The operating model of a centralized exchange is that they get paid to both provide and consume liquidity, so much of the volume is their own. On Uniswap, there is no privileged entity, so everybody pays to consume liquidity. This is a huge damper on volumes.
Note that there are MEV forks that also massively increase the Uniswap volume too, but they have to pay at least the trade fee on both sides of a sandwich.
The uniswap "algorithm" has no other choice but to follow the "market". Otherwise, it would do no trades.
Binance's trading volume is 40-50 times that of uniswap. What Binance does affects the price on uniswap --- way more than the other way around.
If Binance mints USDT and uses it to buy lots of BTC, what happens to the price of BTC on uniswap? Once the price on uniswap and other exchanges starts going up, others see it and jump in to avoid getting left behind --- driving it even higher. What happens when Binance then sells BTC?
This is a classic "pump and dump". It happens all the time because there is nothing to stop it. Binance is the one controlling "the market". Uniswap with their "algorithm " just plays along.
Algorithm or not, they are just a little fish that can't possibly do very much to alter the direction of a marketplace whale they don't control.
The only way for this concept to have any real overall significance is if they establish their own separate crypto and be the only "market maker" for it. But then this is "centralization" all over again.
As with other things - the people who want or don't want to buy it.
What happens if they also also get to see your order before it is executed and have every opportunity to insert their own in front of yours just to drive up the price that you pay (aka "front running")?
That's the situation we are in with fiat currency. That's what central banks do.
The question remains, who are you gonna trust?
That's what central banks do, and a lot of cryptocurrencies. It's very very hard to do though with Bitcoin.
Yes, so crypto is just like fiat but without regulations or safe guards or insurance.
It's very very hard to do though with Bitcoin.
It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
That's why I'm not a fan of crypto in general, only of Bitcoin
> It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
True, but I guess it's easy to do that with every small market. I'd imagine the bigger the market capitalization, number of participants the harder it would be to manipulate the price.
It's pretty easy when you can mint Tethers and keep the price pegged at $1 USD no matter how many you print and use them to buy/inflate the price of bitcoin.
Yes and anyone can easily make money just like Bitcoin --- just clone it.
How many Bitcoin clones and forks are being used in the crypto-market right now?
Too many to easily keep inventory in your head.
I must be misunderstanding, but don't blockchains track references, through sequences of indirection (i.e., encrypted on the chain), to what is ultimately fiat currency?
I will say otherwise. We do not need crypto.
Furthermore, its been shown governments can track all transactions. Without warrants (since it isn't money). Even for privacy focused funds. I doubt it would be hard for them to freeze account withdrawal and seriously hurt people trying to circumvent the law with crypto.
The desire and *idea* behind crypto is reasonable. It's just that the implementation falls way short of the idea.
If someone tried to use Bitcoin to evade the PRC I'd say they had a death wish.
Remember, you're not leveraging crypto promises against current deanonymization software, you're using it against all future deanonymization software. That's such a bad idea I can't even.
The only reason it's at all worked in Western democracies is because the anarchocapitalists are "pushing back" against a government that either tolerates or supports them. Worse, when they use the technology against Western democracies their actions are anti-Democratic. They're hoping the minority can overturn the lawful actions of the majority instead of using the courts or electoral processes.
[edit] The folks who truly advocate crypto as a tool to push back against a totalitarian government are the kind of people who read 75% of 1984, closed the book, and assume Winston went home to have a sip of Victory Gin and lived happily ever after.
If you don't want to be part of our modern society, then please go find a way to do so away from all of us who do. Until and unless you separate yourselves from us entirely—including no longer taking advantage of our government-supported infrastructure, our government-supported education, our government-supported enforcement of property rights, and our government-supported military—you don't get to claim a right to evade either our laws and regulations around economic activity, or our taxes.
And crypto mostly fails in this regard. Blockchain maintains a permanent record of everything that goes on for anyone to see.
The "Wild West" of crypto is a historical aberration that will absolutely not last.
Government should start by auditing "stable coins".
What do you think would happen to the crypto market if they did this?
Mine your own coins, and buy stuff with crypto. I don't see why you need to pass through gatekeepers.
And when you can buy things with crypto, there is also another end that sells things for crypto.
Ok, maybe it's a minority, but it serves the niche pretty well.
For all this, they go to the gatekeepers.
And likewise, you need to decide if the price you're about to pay is reasonable and fair. And for this, you go to the gatekeepers --- because there is no reasonable alternative.
Crypto can't escape the influence of the exchanges in the same way fiat can't escape the influence of government.
https://coingeek.com/terra-ust-is-now-the-biggest-decentrali...
If people think Bitcoin and all of the other junk (sh*tcoins) are the same thing, you're just walking into the same trap as what precipitated the nightmare in Canada.
The thing to watch for is the push for CBDCs which are state-controlled cryptocurrencies which will give authoritarians perpetual hard-on levels of control. You think freezing a bank account is bad? Wait until they can make your money expire or prevent you from transacting with anyone they deem "bad actors."
Recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Altern...
But Monero is objectively better than Bitcoin if you just want to pay for things.
Bitcoin has all of the necessary pieces to get the immediate problem of government overreach and currency manipulation fixed.
This makes it much more vulnerable to nation state 51% attack since they can just temporarily redirect fleets of CPUs (maybe even deputize AWS, Azure, GCP, etc) to attack the network. This kind of rapid response attack isn't feasible on bitcoin because SHA256 ASIC miners are incredibly hard to come by and the electricity required to pull it off would be enormously expensive.
We need more economic freedom; "cryptocurrencies" are not suddenly a panacea to that end. They're still the scam riddled "but this is stupid at its very base" pyramid schemes they were all along.
See the precedent set by Emperor Norton; community currencies and other alternates can work too. What's needed is a government that admits limits to its powers to interfere with its citizens ability to transact. There's no technical means to make a government live up to that promise... Short of explosives.
Sure, but the entire point is that they can't.
If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account.
Crypto people need to work on UX though, so that you don't need to be technically savvy to do so.
>> If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account.
If they want your keys badly enough, they will get them:
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png
We are 13 years on from bitcoins inception, and we are on a tech board, how this is still not clear to people boggles me.
There is literally a meme about this my man. It’s called I lost my wallet in a boating accident lol.
Also, that’s why Bitcoin is different than “crypto”. The first thing you hear when you buy Bitcoin, “not your keys, not your coins”.
The point is not to eradicate the law, the point is to make it difficult to freeze 1000 people accounts than pushing a button. It will make people think about other solutions than stealing people money.
People mostly don't bother with any of this right now because it hasn't been a real threat.
[1] https://fcpablog.com/2021/06/21/canadian-courts-assist-crypt... [2] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/16/canada-sanctions-...
They can classify it all they want, but it is completely outside of the control of their legacy systems.
the ultimate goal is to never convert back
I'm aware this is a wildly radical set of statements, and I'm not a bitcoin-carrying-anarchist, but you can't really deny that this is the real application of "internet money", and thus the original point of the article stands.
You aren't helping liberate the poor and desperate. You're helping oligarchs hide their money from domestic or international seizure after the dictator falls, and a new government steps in.
If the average person, wealthy or affiliated or not, has a way of avoiding the mandated use of a fiat currency, and that pressure creates an upper and lower bound for how badly the leaders of their country can manipulate the currency supply, yes I believe that helps the poor and desperate. If part of liberty is ownership, then yes, it even helps liberate them too.
Bitcoin is a currency that is hard to stop. That makes it a tool to antagonize authoritarians with.
Store cash under the mattress if you don’t like it. Just understand that the people who in it aren’t stupid or in a Ponzi scheme.
Personally, living without insurance in case centralized financial instruments lock me out out is an insane risk to take.
What makes Bitcoin a ponzi scheme is its economics and the way that it is promoted. That you find some use in the token is almost incidental
I also agree with the idea that teleportation and faster-than-light travel would be extremely beneficial if not necessary for the long term success of the human species, but that does not mean that any proposal or attempt to accomplish those should be immediately hailed as a success. Cryptocurrency is definitely a failure at being what it was supposed to be, there's very little doubt regarding that I'm afraid.
The reason why there are lots of experts criticizing the current implementations and crypto concepts is because it's vastly easier to realize the flaws in one's idea than coming up with a new proposal. Yes, PoW works but it does not make sense, it's just a very interesting gimmick that makes cryptocurrency doable. That does not mean it actually makes sense or that it represents a stable foundation for a digital currency in practice.
You say that PoW works and makes cryptocurrency doable, yet you conclude that it is a failure. But you don't define what the goal of it is. What specific goal would you want crypto to achieve to falsify your belief that it is a failure?
Can you say the same for cryptocurrency? Where does the value of a cryptocurrency come from? The answer is "from its scarcity", but scarcity itself doesn't make something valuable. What makes Bitcoin valuable is its tradeability with real world currencies, such as the Euro and the Dollar, and the fact that people want to spend them to get Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a real currency, is just a very complicated bank with extra steps, based on an asset whose value basically depends by the biggest Ponzi scheme ever known to man.
There are two notions of scarcity: Scarcity of bitcoin themselves (21 million), and scarcity around being able to create different cryptocurrency. Clearly the only weakness is in the later. Two points on this: Bitcoin commands a majority of proof of work energy. This does tie the digital scarcity of bitcoin to something in the physical world. You can't create another bitcoin without spending a similar amount on PoW. It's not that the scarcity of energy consumed translates to value in bitcoin directly, but rather it gives a high cost for creating an alternative to bitcoin. This is not unlike state issue fiats-- the Yen has value because Japan is a large state. I wouldn't trust a fiat from a state that was just created and had no citizens. So the scarcity of powerful states translates into a scarcity of fiat. Second, Bitcoin was the original invention of true digital scarcity. This makes it a natural place for a focal point. This by itself does not mean bitcoin has value, but it should be better at becoming valuable than other cryptocurrencies.
But bitcoin is also used for transactions and payments. It has growing links to the real economy just like other fiat currencies. The trend here is growing. If the trend continues-- meaning more and more businesses and workers take bitcoin as payment, surely you must conclude at some point bitcoin would then have real value, just like the Yen example?
> Bitcoin is not a real currency, is just a very complicated bank with extra steps, based on an asset whose value basically depends by the biggest Ponzi scheme ever known to man.
I think this is disingenuous-- A ponzi means that through intentional and planned deception invested funds are stolen. Sure, bitcoin is volatile and might crash again. But there is no structured fraud here, it is a free market, nothing like a Ponzi.
You still didn't define a falsifiable goal-- What would have to happen for you to consider cryptocurrencies to be successful, what is the end of the tunnel? It feels to me like you are assuming it will fail (it is a ponzi!), and then working backwards from that assumption to find how to justify it.
The idea that anyone can create money out of electrons is really no better than the idea that anyone can create money out of paper. There is no real reason to believe the first will be any more successful than the second.
There are close to 10,000 different cryptocurrencies currently in use. And the number is increasing all the time. You don't have to be really smart to see that over time, these are all likely to tend toward the same value. The essential elements that will seal their fate --- trust and consensus --- or the lack thereof.
The part of the idea that does have some merit is "digital" currency. The Fed is working on it. And when it arrives, crypto will likely vanish back into the electronic ether from whence it sprang.
If too many people can easily make the product, the market quickly becomes saturated and the value starts to tend toward zero and people losing interest in it.
Also, in this particular case the product is defective. It doesn't actually function as stated --- as a currency that is widely accepted to buy a huge variety of things both large and small with minimal fees, high transaction volume and low wait times?
These are basically just instruments for speculation and fraud. History shows that such schemes can't and won't be sustained over time.
You just restated your previous claim, you still didn't give any reason why the value must go to zero-- By the same logic, the market for websites is also saturated, therefore the value of the internet is going to zero.
You don't have 10,000 companies all producing the same type of product. If you did, the value of most of them would go to zero really fast.
Also, you can't easily clone most listed companies at no cost. There are significant barriers to entry in the stock market --- which explains why you don't have 10,000 companies all doing the same thing.
You can't clone bitcoin at no cost. To clone bitcoin you would have to invest the same amount of energy that has been expended thus far to proof of work.
You're misinterpreting my original statement and ignoring my explanation.
There are not 10,000 companies listed in the stock market all producing the same type of product.You are basically saying that there can't ever be consensus because there isn't yet a consensus. That's a possible and maybe even likely outcome, but it doesn't obviously follow.
Could it happen? Sure. In the same way that a monkey with a keyboard could produce a best seller. But there is absolutely zero reason to expect or believe it will happen any time soon.
But invest now to get in on the ground floor --- just in case.
You are also ignoring network effects entirely. Number of users of Bitcoin have increased year after year.
The cloner would have to exert the same energy to mining that Satoshi Nakamoto did/does --- zero. Others will do this for you.
But thanks for pointing out the absurdity/weakness of Bitcoin and one of the reasons why it fails as a currency. You do know there are other options for cloning.
I generally agree with you though that cloning a PoS blockchain is easy in this regard, those ones also are protected by network effects.
It's more true in 2022, no time travel required.
Unlike 2008, the awareness and the operations needed to mine a bitcoin clone are already in place, fully setup and operational, running 24/7. Just offer rewards like bitcoin did back in 2008 and the existing miners will be all over it like white on rice.
There is very little additional expense to mining a clone alongside bitcoin. The equipment will be running either way.
This really shouldn't be surprising to anyone familiar with the growth of the web. Just like cloning a crypo, it'd be trivial to make a new Twitter, but extremely difficult to gain the same level of network effect.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
If Elon Musk wanted to make "MuskCoin", he could and instantly have a huge number of people jump on board. He has already proven this just by meddling in the current crypto market for his own amusement.
Lots of other companies/individuals with clout and name recognition could easily do the same.
The only reason they don't --- they recognize the ultimate futility of it. Musk has even poked fun at the absurdity of it all.
https://futurism.com/elon-musk-mocks-dogecoin-crypto-scams
It's just one example of how your "network effect" could be overcome very quickly.
Any individual or company with market presence and name recognition could do this if they were so inclined. You could easily have ChaseCoin, FordCoin, FidelityCoin, NFLCoin and 10,000 more if they thought it was practical and profitable and would be successful over the long term.
But allowing anyone to "mint" their own money is really an argument *against* the basic concept of a "currency". The world has already been there, seen that and done that. And most "smart people" (and companies) recognize that this is not in the best long term interests of themselves or the overall economy.
How you symbolize that agreement is actually irrelevant.
There is no limit to the agreements that humans can make so the idea of limiting them by decree is absurd.
The most problematic part is that holding onto money is a onesided arrangement that requires no consent or agreement. You can literally leave the other party hanging.
It is kinda like doing homework in a group and waiting on the results of the second guy so you can work on your part. You will eventually stop waiting and just borrow the homework from another group so you can finally get started with your damn part of the homework.
No one is limiting the number of cryptocurrencies. If you and your friends want to make your own "CryptoNickel" currency, go for it. No one is stopping you.
No one is stopping others from doing the same too --- and therein lies the problem --- the exercise is self defeating outside your unique circle of friends. Just a wild guess but you probably won't be using "CryptoNickel" to pay rent or buy groceries. Why is this?
Because as I noted above, "CryptoNickel" is missing essential elements of a truly functional currency --- trust and consensus --- not just among your friends but society at large. And a distributed electronic accounting system is no substitute for these missing elements.
They are smarter than me - they focus on what matters. Small things, that they can control. God forbid the world does fly apart at the seams, and maybe some of these epistemological economic thoughts will have been worth thinking - I sure hope it doesn't happen and the smartest people can continue living in tiny boxes. It means a better world, a more stable world. And we do need smart people studying a set of ligaments their whole lives.
I find it no surprise that those of us who grew up in extremely chaotic situations tend to think 'bigger' and have a harder time thinking 'smaller'. I do not know the world will remain stable enough to support my career - but all the doctors I know are sure of it.
You'll get replies from very well employed, very smart people, who can probably write you an excellent simulation of our discussion, but who will refuse to conceptualize an abstract theory of value, or a world were currency creation happens in a slightly different way. Why would they? It's of no practical value unless the world ends - and you don't want the world to end, do you?
People who fought for monarchy because the alternative is chaos were probably smart people. People who fought for heliocentricism were probably very smart, but didn't feel like uprooting the foundation of their world view. Being dumb enough to think thoughts like "well, but what if", in the face of replies like "but it hasn't in a long time!" is only useful if only a tiny subset of us do it. The right strategy for most humans is to ignore that kind of talk. So be it.
For example, gold is a store of value so firing an employee lets you avoid associated with that employee and you can still hire that employee as long as the gold exists, right?? Right?? Everyone knows that gold stops aging and fired peoplee don't need food or shelter.
Honestly we have way too much of this going on in our society. Management with delusional ideas about how to run a company is often spouting more or less this exact same line. Not everything you can dream of is possible in reality.
This is a warmup/trial to implement the same policies in the USA.
The US has has a long history with warrantless asset seizure, the most recent being the laws passed in the 1980s and still used today with the stated intention of curbing the illicit drug trade. In short, officers can size cash, valuables, vehicles, and property they believe might be used in a crime. Simply traveling with a few hundred dollars or more can be considered suspicious. Hundreds of millions of dollars are sized every year by police this way.
The US government can also freeze bank accounts of people they believe to be involved in crimes.
In all these cases, victims can go to court to reclaim what was taken from them and to get their accounts unfrozen. The same is true with what happened in Canada. There is very little difference with what is already the reality in the US.
Due to the nature of resentment, you can never extinguish it by more ruthless measures. Small periodic eruptions is what keeps a volcano from having a bigger bang. When you close every vent, you just create a lot more pressure inside. My prediction would be civil war in both countries in coming decades if the current schism between the left and right doesn't get filled soon. Media and politicians started this fire for their own gains and its raging in every heart without anyone in control.
No, he didn’t.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iPsgfuum2c
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10535361/Canadian-M...
[edit] I would be just as glib about someone who donated $50 to Hezbollah and got their accounts shut down.
[edit2] Trudeau has a minority government, and minority governments both require another party to prop them up - and have an average tenure of 1 year and 140 days. It's been 154 days already. There will be an election in less than a year, on average. We have courts, we have ballot boxes. Use them.
[edit3] I say this as someone who did not vote for the Liberals, and is open to revisiting restrictions.
When the truckers start lobbing rockets into population zones, this comparison might be reasonable. The increasingly common habit of comparing everyone with Wrong Political Opinions to terrorists does not sit well with me.
Besides how can a peaceful protest be unlawful? I hear that in China when protests are "unlawful" when they disagree with the great leader
This isn't a protest, it's an unlawful occupation. Canada has a long history of peaceful protest. If they'd picketed on the streets in front of Parliament Hill as hundreds of thousands have done over the last century nobody would have batted an eyelash. In fact the government gave them three full weeks of outright occupation before they began to ask them to leave - then eventually told them to in no uncertain terms.
After all there have been tens of other anti-vaxx protests in Canada over the last two years. None were treated this way.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60356461
Indeed, but the protests made national news basically each time. There's a lot of folks from outside Canada suddenly paying attention when they were not, at all, paying attention to Canada over the last few months, years or even decades. Context matters and a lot of folks. I don't know if you're Canadian or not, but most commenters have none - but still insist on raising their pitchforks over something they either do not understand or do not have any context on.
Really? A protest deemed illegal because some company is loosing money? That's one of the points of peaceful protest, making non violent pressure where possible. If there was no more food and they were blocking it I could understand, but this is just keeps getting more ridiculous. Please call in the emergency act used only 3 times in the past, 2 of them world wars
BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
It's not that they were protesting, it's how.
> BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
This feels a lot like whataboutism.
I didn't vote for Trudeau last election and I do not plan to vote for Trudeau this election. That doesn't change my opinion of the lawfulness or correctness of the actions taken here. Only 1/3 of Canadians voted for Trudeau last election but 2/3 of Canadians support this decision. So clearly it can't just be LPC voters or "Trudeauphiles."
I don't think I can get 2/3 of my coworkers to agree on a dinner spot for an offset. It's only slightly less than the percentage of dentists who think Oral B makes your teeth fall out. Politically speaking that's a heck of a support base.
> And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
Obviously I do not support this behavior. I believe in broad-based police and prison reform.
I don't wish any harm on the protestors. I think they're misguided, but I do believe they want for what they think is best. I do however wish them a speedy GTFO the capital and border crossings.
I hope that once things are cleared out and order is restored that they return to parliament, without trucks - but instead, with their signs. They deserve to be heard.
The MP either lied, or got played by someone who knew he was a gullible tool.
Every level of government has asked the MP to give details, because clearly it isn't true. He hasn't because the person does not exist.
Ultimately he should resign. Either he was trolled and played, or he simply has so little respect for the public that he invented a tale to play on (largely foreign) beliefs.
Remember, it's not about the individuals, it's about the precedent it sets. If the government can do it to those you disagree with, they can (and will) do it to you.
> The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society.
No, it isn't. The US uses SARs[1] on a daily basis, and has since the passing of the Bank Secrecy Act in the 1970s. There is virtually no recourse to a SAR levied against your account: virtually every bank in the US will simply close your account and refuse to disclose any further information.
"But the US discards due process, too!"
There isn't even remotely a due process concern here, in the US constitutional sense (which isn't the Canadian sense!) of the phrase. When someone receives a SAR, their bank account is frozen and they are given steps to liquidate the account. No deprivation of property, the necessary condition for due process, occurs.
Link? I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report but this describes a process where a bank makes a report to the feds, not a process where the feds make a report to the bank. And account closure is not mentioned.
Again, do you have a source on this? It would seem to be at odds with the requirement that a bank keeps the filing of SARs secret from the accountholder. Skimming the BSA, there seem to be a lot of liability carveouts for banks that file SARs. I can't find anything that would increase bank liability in a situation where a SAR is filed.
If you have a SAR filed against your account, your bank will not tell you. They'll tell you that they've closed your account for internal policy or compliance reasons. And they won't be lying: the BSA doesn't require them to close the account.
The liabilities in question are both regulatory and financial.
On the regulatory side: bank employees are instructed never to tell a customer about the presence of a SAR, but mistakes can happen (and thus open the bank up to regulatory scrutiny or punishment). Similarly, the FDIC and Fed track SAR patterns, and may increase their scrutiny of a bank if customers who have historically received SARs at other banks successfully maintain accounts with a different bank.
On the financial side: SARs are filed for all kinds of crimes, including crimes against financial institutions themselves. It's a financial risk to keep those accounts around, because their rotating value might not reflect their actual "ultimate" settled value.
As for sources: here is a FAQ on SARs from the NCUA[1]. I don't have a pre-existing source for banks immediately closing accounts on SARs. Here's one I randomly found that states that a little over 1/4th of all SARs lead to account closure[2].
[1]: https://www.ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2021/ncua-federa...
[2]: https://bpi.com/the-truth-about-suspicious-activity-reports/
From what I saw, the language specifically allows them to continue using their account for regular daily purchases (food, etc).
Technically you are right, but for me the bail-in in Cyprus in 2013 was scary enough to diversify into physical gold and Bitcoin (I stopped the gold part since then), as I realized that I'm just a ,,creditor'' to a bank, I don't own the money that exists in my bank account, and this can happen inside the EU.
We can all understand what this really is in spirit, though, and I don't think anyone is claiming literally that the military is in charge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_GnClytz34
A majority of Canadians agree with a lifting of mandates, but this was true before this protest, and if anything the protest set it back. Support for the protest was extremely low.
https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1375128958056988673
People are so preoccupied with the audacity of x doing y that dominates the news cycle, but nobody seems to actually care why x is doing y. They just slap some shallow explanation like they are white supremacists, or they are mad George Floyd was killed because of police brutality and consider that level of understanding to be satisfactory while simultaneously being concerned about how increasingly divided, populist and radicalized western society is becoming.
Kotkin is non-partisan, and we should all take notice of what he says. video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul1gsIdlJFs transcripts: https://www.hoover.org/research/5-questions-stephen-kotkin-1
Canada is a rule-of-law, democratic society. The so-called protestors blocked off major ports of entry leading to material harm to businesses. They also violated the rights of individuals living within the downtown core (including my family) for weeks on end. They brought weapons with them, they built shanties and filled them with kerosene and propane.
The plurality of Canadians voted for the government and the imposition of its lawful and constitutional restrictions in re: COVID. Were they unlawful or in violation of Charter rights, they could have used the courts but elected not to. Because they are lawful and in keeping with the Charter.
Two thirds of Canadians support the use of the Emergencies Act in breakup up the unlawful protests.
As the elder Trudeau said in the October Crisis re: the use of the military (which the junior Trudeau is not planning on doing):
If you want to change the Government, vote. Trudeau's Liberals are a minority government meaning they require the support of another major party to continue to be a government. If they fail to pass a confidence bill they will immediately be dissolved and face an election. The average tenure of a minority government in Canada is 1 year, 140 days.The use of Bitcoin in this manner is anti-Democratic as it seeks to overturn the lawful, constitutional decisions of the plurality - and to overturn the last election.
We have ways of sorting this out in Canada. You vote.
If you see yourself supporting these anti-Democratic viewpoints, ask yourselves: "Are we the baddies?"
[edit] Not only did I not vote for the Liberals in the last election, I'm open to re-evaluating the COVID restrictions too. But not with a boot to the neck. The unlawful protests must end. Then we can talk.
Wow that's a really interesting fact about North Korea that has absolutely and unequivocally nothing to do with Canada.
> It doesn't help if anyone speaking against the mass propaganda is silenced.
Except they're not. So. After all, I can hear you now, Comrade Phil. Consider than rather than being silenced, people may just not agree with these fringe positions?
Except it's all the same everywhere. Maybe you habe never been out of your well so you don't know. Just so you know, free speech is protected right as per the North Korean constitution... except in practice, it's just like Canada.
> Consider than rather than being silenced, people may just not agree with these fringe positions?
What fringe position? That vaccines without long term data and questionable efficacy against the prevalent variant should not be mandated? Which other country has mandated it?
I grew up all over the world, including having lived in the US, Canada, KSA, and plenty of other places. I've also traveled to 50 countries or so. I strongly suspect I have seen more of the world than you have.
I can tell you that you are unequivocally wrong if you think that NK is anything like CA. It's a fun narrative of the uninformed.
> What fringe position? That vaccines without long term data and questionable efficacy against the prevalent variant should not be mandated? Which other country has mandated it?
Yes this is a fringe position that the science does not support.
It is clear that the hospitalization and death rates are orders of magnitude higher in the unvaccinated, and at the moment, I support policies which keep ICUs and hospital resources at or below capacity. Your positions are not in keeping with that.
I support mandatory vaccination campaigns until removing all restrictions would keep hospitals from being flooded, then lifting all restrictions.
Also real democracies have real elections and real candidates and peaceful changes of power between politicians.
The DPRK, Russia, PRC, Venezuela all claim to be democracies -- but really they use assassination and imprisonment to quash dissent.
If the truckers wanted to protest with signs and march up and down sidewalks, or strike against carrying transport, those are all legal things they can do. But they can't block commerce...
I completely agree. And fake ones have faux elections with controlled oppositions where voting doesn't matter... like in the U.S. or Canada.
Just so you know, North Korea has 4 political parties, China has 8, Russia has dozens. In faux democracies, small parties are paid for by the very same people who keep the big ones alive. Controlled opposition is very handy. People in power don't want to lose it just because half of the peasants don't like a face in an election.
If you think that they are even a tiny bit different, you are brainwashed into thinking that. There is no other explanation.
>Yes this is a fringe position that the science does not support.
"Science" supports whatever most scientists are paid to support. Lots of scientists supported the use of tobacco for a very long time.
Consider in the areas of Canada with the lowest vaccination rates and with the lowest compliance (Alberta, I'm looking at you) ICUs are full, and they're having to send patients to high-vaccination/high-compliance provinces like Ontario. Once again burdening those who comply with the selfish, capricious actions of those who do not. [1]
These are fringe views that most Canadians simply do not subscribe to. I know it's tough to hear. For those of us living in reality, though, these actions are unpleasant but necessary.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/covid-alberta-deena-...
Good point... except that the policy makers aren't paying out of their pocket. It's public money either way. They'll take whatever option helps them in the short run because if they don't, someone else is willing to take that money and bring them down in the next faux election.
You might want to look up what people who are actually putting money in it think. Hint: "pfizer stock price".
Flat out wrong. Canada is freezing accounts of people who weren't violating any law, with ex post facto laws.
They outright lost in court.
It would be such political hay if a single such case came forward. A minority government hangs in the balance, and can be ousted (insofar as a new election is called) immediately. Do you know why no verifiable case has come forward? Because the cases you heard of were lies.
I think only in the domain of history the "baddies" term make sense. Until then (historical perspective and taking the survival bias into consideration), the majority is "just" that. Not to dismiss it, of course, being a basis of democracy.
https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolutio...
I cited the banking blockade by Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal used against Wikileaks/Assange as evidence that, at the very least, publishers need to be able to send and receive payments that the state does not wish them to be able to send or receive.
Last week, I wrote about how we as a society need to be prepared specifically for user-friendly, widespread unstoppable payments, as the technology now exists for actually private, uncensorable payments to reach a wide audience.
https://sneak.berlin/20220213/unstoppable-payments-are-comin...
These protests caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. There is a $300M lawsuit against the occupiers in Ottawa, similar ones will happen against the occupiers of the Ambassador bridge.
The bank accounts have been frozen via two different mechanisms -- by the use of the Emergency Measures Act, and by a preliminary ruling in the civil court.
The freezing via the EMA would thaw after the EMA expires in a few days. The freezing by the civil court will not, and will likely result in the loss of those bank accounts.
The second option is civil, which are lawsuits against the protesters to recoup losses by businesses.
And then if crypto is a possibility, one could say you have to seize the assets now before they can be laundered, in other words, you're pre-empting the potential of illegal behavior.
The PM is on the record admitting he is considering extending the Emergency Measures Act, potentially for months.
His Minister of Finance has already declared she now plans to make some of the financial controls permanent.
Whether or not you believe these measures to be appropriate, it is incorrect to claim they will expire in the next few days.
Question: "Hello from the CBC, the truckers could come back in 2 months, 3 months, so does that mean we would have to keep it for another 2, 3 months?"
Trudeau: "Indeed. This is something we are thinking about, of course."
It’s not unreasonable to expect power to not easily be relinquished.
If you're worried about the groups using crypto to launder their money due to fines/lawsuits, then freezing accounts seems reasonable as well.
Laundering money is a great way in the US to get your account frozen without being arrested/tried/convicted. Because if you waited for the conviction, the money would be long gone.
Is this real damage or "opportunity cost"?
Thousands of people had to move out of their homes because they couldn't sleep with the continuous honking. One idiot even brought a train horn.
And that was just Ottawa. The ambassador bridge shutdown was much worse. For instance, Ford shut down an Ohio plant employing 1600 due to lack of parts made in Canada.
The border protests were certainly more economically disruptive, and it's remarkable that it took days to clear out a handful of vehicles.
So spare me your pity on their sleeplessness.
Its hardly comparable.
And it's amazing what gets the sympathy based on nothing more than what political wing finds that pity advantageous as opposed to inconvenient
Moreover, American political movements against vaccination have to my mind without much doubt led to many, many avoidable deaths in the past few years, even if direct causality is harder to establish. So it is not so puzzling or amazing to observe where people's sympathies align at this point of the pandemic.
And yet, you're the one making the comparison?
These protests can be incredibly intrusive and damaging to real people in real Canadian cities. That has nothing to do with the (largely) US BLM protests.