I was the first to setup a Meshcore room server in my city. New I get pings from all over the place and it's busy. It seems to be extremely popular in Switzerland for some reason.
True but how many times have people sent someone "let me google that for you".
Some people are inherently lazy and unload their laziness to someone else to do the thinking for them.
I still think sending someone an AI answer is terrible but then again, if you are going to ask me for help, at least make some effort first.
EDIT:
By laziness I mean that there are known places (they know of) with documentation that cover what they need but they don't go there first and not something I have some deep domain knowledge of that would take them a long time to find or figure out.
I would personally still not reply with an AI answer but I am tempted sometimes...
Tip: The best coworker I ever worked with had the name of a famous italian pop star and worked at JPL and yes this is a roundabout endorsement.
He would _always_ say "Let's find out together", and then proceed to find the answer in front of me, doing effectively LMGTFY but in a way that was extremely more helpful (by watching his workflow and allowing questions) and empathetic (by taking time politely and starting from what I knew, not what he knew).
It got me the information, AND it taught me to do something AND it helped me trust this person.
Everyone should be like this guy, regardless of the availability of AI.
The kind of people GP is referring to refuse to actually learn from this. I've had several coworkers over the last 15 years that absolutely refuse to 'learn to fish'.
I have often offered to work with folks, and teach them how to develop shipping software. This is something I’m actually fairly good at, having done it, my entire career. I’m retired, now, but continue to develop shipping software. I often offer to do so, with others, so they can learn in an actual production context.
Valuable stuff. They could actually learn skills that could boost their own careers into LEO.
Instead, they invariably ask me to do it for them, or, more annoyingly, say they’ll do it, then never show up, and castigate me for going ahead without them.
Meta: This is why HN attracts curious people. They are rare. Finding and hiring them is hard. The forum cultivates for them, like gardeners tending a garden for pollinators. My best tip for hiring has always been "Hire curious people with a proven ability to build, get out of their way, and retain them as long as you can by meeting their professional expectations (comp, work experience, meaningful work, broadly speaking)."
(strongly agree working with people who do not care or do not want to learn is soul crushing, engineer around it to the best of your ability, or change your operating environment to improve upon it, when able to; your time and energy is non renewable)
As someone who loves helping people to learn things for themselves... you have to identify these "help vampires" and just stop helping them.
I had a coworker who would ask me the same questions over and over and over, despite me trying to show them 10 different ways how to do it or find the answer in the docs or whatever. And eventually I just said I was too busy and they had to figure it out. After a while they actually started figuring stuff out.
Basically if those people aren't your direct reports, your obligation to help them only goes so far. Take care of yourself first. If they figure it out eventually then good for them. If not, it's really not your problem.
You learn to know who are the lazy ones, and at that point you can politely always respond with a, "what were you able to find on this?". You can repeat this ad infinitum since at that point, they're just being lazy and disrespectful of your time. They eventually give up going to you because they know they won't get you to do their work for them.
Good point, and I realize that's what I did in school. When people came to me that I suspected were just looking for easy answers to avoid doing the work themselves, I'd lead them gradually through the chain of reasoning. Like, point out the first step and imply that that should be enough for them to work it out, leading them to ask again ("ok, I get that, but what does that mean for the final answer? What should I write down?"), and I'd give them the next step, leading them to walk away in disgust and bother somebody else. Even better, the next time they start with that person and it's no longer my problem.
Be high friction when you suspect it's warranted. Even if you're not sure someone is looking for a shortcut, the people who aren't won't mind. It's detection and deterrence rolled into one.
(And if possible, find a place to work where you never have to do this.)
You're looking at human nature. We evolved to conserve energy, to take the berries that are growing right here rather than go foraging for something else with less certain outcomes. Even better, someone else collects the berries for you.
There are some exceptional people, who have the drive and curiosity to see what else is out there, but that's not the average.
I've done a similar thing with close friends and family who would constantly ask me things I couldn't possibly know because I always came up with an answer.
Eventually I realized why and explained, "you know, I'm really just going to do a web search for what you just asked me, and maybe a couple more until I have a decent answer and then give you that answer. Let me show you how I would go about that".
From then on, they started getting into the habit of doing that for themselves. I think now with LLMs, they've kept the habit, but the LLM gives a more complete answer with fewer steps so it becomes the default. I think the magic of AI is two-fold (well, more than two, but two bullets for this conversation).
1. You don't have to "query". You can just braindump, and it'll build a context and figure out what you're looking for
2. It's conversational, so instead of filtering and tweaking results from the first query, your second "query" builds on top of the context from the first question, and you get a stronger result as the conversation continues.
>He would _always_ say "Let's find out together", and then proceed to find the answer in front of me, doing effectively LMGTFY but in a way that was extremely more helpful (by watching his workflow and allowing questions) and empathetic (by taking time politely and starting from what I knew, not what he knew).
> if you are going to ask me for help, at least make some effort first
It's actually the other way around. You should think what makes you feel they didn't make an effort? Why do you think I am asking - because I think you have a better answer than I can get from Google or AI.
But this is where it's apparently going. We will all talk to AI rather than each other. And we will pat ourselves on the back how self-sufficient and non-lazy we all are. :-)
> You should think what makes you feel they didn't make an effort?
Long experience. There are a lot of people out there in the workforce who ask their boss or a more senior coworker a question the moment they think of it, with no attempt to find the answer via tools at their disposal. Maybe not as many as 80%, as implied by @sdoering below in a sibling thread, but quite a few.
Unfortunately this is true; and if you're not careful with your time, a lot can be wasted by people who realize "I can email so-and-so instead of putting in 5 minutes to finding the issue myself".
They're usually pretty courteous in their interaction, which makes it all the more difficult to be "rude", in my case, by adding an exponential falloff in response times - after I realize what's happening, I tend to take a little longer for each reply so they figure out it's faster to just do the research on their own most times.
> after I realize what's happening, I tend to take a little longer for each reply so they figure out it's faster to just do the research on their own most times.
Agreed, and I do the same. They still get a courteous reply, but they also feel a little "pain" when they don't get a timely answer - an effective teacher.
Indeed - I had a team that called this "remote brain execution" (we were a build team that used Bazel, and often fielded questions about why someone's build broke).
My favorite phrase on that team was "What have you tried so far?"
Ironically, I have to edit out my "what I have tried so far" when asking questions, because I'm more likely to go into a long-winded explanation of the headers that I hacked and the kernel module I installed to fake my way around this or that, when the actual answer tends to be "uh... are you sure you're building the code you think you are? That sounds like you're running from the wrong directory or wrong branch."
Not just the workforce, my parents still barely know how to use a computer because any time they hit the slightest snag, they immediately call me for help.
If someone doesn’t make an effort I don’t care what the excuse is “you’ll know faster, I don’t know what to look up” etc. I won’t enable learned helplessness. At best you’ll get a “maybe read up on X” and that’s about it, if I’m in a good mood.
If I can tell you tried to figure it out via vocabulary and things you tried, I’ll do everything I can get help get you across the finish line.
That's a perfectly valid response for the situation you're describing. But that's not the parent's situation, where the party being asked just silently asks AI (or googles) and feeds the result back without any added expertise.
"I don't know, here's what I would do to find out" is teaching someone; returning an AI response is not.
>> what makes you feel they didn't make an effort?
Because everyone has had that person who you help out, and become their path of least resistance to an answer. They are not looking for the BEST or a GOOD answer, just the least effort. It's completely reasonable to push back with "what have you tried so far?"
I think a lot of people are also missing the value-add of asking a person to Google something for you.
Some large fraction of the time when someone asks me a question, I also end up googling it... and then I use my domain knowledge and experience to weed out bad information and outdated information and identify the right references.
And some fraction of the time when I ask someone else an "easily Google-able question", I've googled the question, found a number of sources, maybe even one I think might be right, but want some confirmation that I'm not going down a rabbit hole.
If you're telling them all that and not wasting their time, that's fine.
But if you just ask them the question and don't tell them what you've found or where you got stuck, you're asking them to stop doing what they're doing and spend all that same time you just spent working on your problem.
IME it usually means they have some good reason to ask, which you are not aware of. For example, people might believe you are an expert or can give a better answer in the context.
Frankly I find it flattering when people asked me certain kinds of questions!
Maybe I’m just more generous with my time than others (or perhaps I don’t value it), but all these responses saying friends and colleagues asking you questions they could’ve theoretically looked up are “wasting your time” are rather perplexing. If somebody’s asking me, like you said, I generally assume they have a reason for asking. Or maybe they’re just tired and don’t want to spend an hour looking it up and verifying it because they know I have a quick answer that takes me little to no effort. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I get asked camera questions all the time, and frankly I just see those as opportunities to stay sharp. No better way to learn/reinforce your knowledge than teaching others
Yes, they might believe you are an expert, but they often ask "experts" trivial questions they should just have Googled. As evidenced by how just using Google to answer them will often make people think you are an expert even at topics you're clueless about.
The pattern I notice more frequently at work now is:
"I'm working on X problem, I tried Y solution, AI thinks Z is wrong and W could be better, human opinion?"
This way there's never space for ambiguity, you showed you did your homework to the best of your extent, you already asked AI, all that's left is explicit request for human input.
It works quite well, and I appreciate it from both ends, as it saves everyone time.
I've noticed this on IRC. You are generally expected to have at least made a basic effort to solve the problem on your own before wasting someone else's time.
On Discord there does not appear to be such a culture. People get stuck and they just immediately give up and go bother someone else. I don't have numbers but that seems to be the default strategy.
I heard it's a personality thing. Some people like figuring stuff out on their own... for some people it appears to be physically painful.
For me the thought that I'm wasting someone else's time when I could have figured it out on my own in five minutes, that's the painful thing. But many people don't seem to have that.
90% of the time I ask a question of a coworker that could be googled or clauded what I’m actually asking for is their confirmation that they agree with the answer. So use the AI, but at least read the reply and/or reword it so it’s clear that you agree.
In our case we're completely allowed to use AI, but if you do, you carry the responsibility for it's output (not in a legal sense obviously). So if your LLM says "Sure, go ahead and run that code" and it deletes the production database, that's your fault, just as much as if you reviewed it manually and said the same thing.
> you carry the responsibility for it's output (not in a legal sense obviously)
why not in a legal sense? If someone asks me what cleaning supplies are safe to mix, and i just ask some chatbot, don't vet the output, copy the response, and they end up poisoning themselves, am I not responsible?
If I'm a lawyer, and pass unvetted AI legal advice to my client, and they go to jail, should i keep my license?
Typically if you develop a software product for a company, the company resumes responsibility. No one would develop anything for any high risk business, if they were to assume personal responsibility of the end result. LLMs don't really chance that, and any serious bug would be an error of process.
Developers are perfectly capable of creating dangerous or expensive mistakes even without LLMs. If we accept that LLMs are just tools, the developer should be no more responsible that if they choose to use Visual Studio over Vim and Visual Studio refactors something wrong.
Theres's then the question of gross incompetence, and were the developer could be fired or perhaps even sued by their employer, the same as if they hadn't used an LLM.
However the case I had in mind was in regards to the legality of the way the AI models acquire and reproduce code. We're not held personally responsible for any license violation created by the tool.
If you're not that smart, then it's not worth learning how to do something. Learning is harder and even if you learn about a topic, you can't make use of this knowledge that effectively.
Even more meta, learning how to learn is worth less, since you learn slower.
If that is the case, is it really a bad idea to offload the work onto someone smarter?
It's not PC and it's not a nice thing to think, but if someone is doing it to the point where you think they are being obnoxious, you should probably also consider the possibility that they could do better, but maybe not much better.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. If you don't understand, you aren't smart enough to and shouldn't try? If you learn slow, just stop because you're... slower? What are you talking about?
I see a ton of this inherently lazy behavior. A big part of my job is supporting a ticket system for employees to ask questions about a pretty complex employment contract. The number of questions that come in where it's so clear the submitter didn't even attempt to answer on their own is dumb founding.
Because of this work, I'm seen by many of my peers as a "guy with all the answers". A friend of mine recently asked me about a policy at work to which I replied I was about 90% certain of the answer. I then explained to get to 100% I'd go to the company Intranet and look up the policy, something he could have done in the time it took us to have this exchange over text messaging.
It seems like we're slowly losing the ability to go and do research on our own. I suspect many never really developed these skills that well to begin with and now with an all knowing "oracle" they're even less inclined to work on them.
I also knew people who have some social dysfunction, and they seem to rely on LLMs as a crutch. The belief seems to be "there's no way I'll phrase this right, I need to let the LLM do it for me."
The troubling thing is they are at least partially correct. But, like everything else, they're letting a skill atrophy.
If you are really concerned with that, you should take a first stab at it, then ask AI to proofread it for you and change the tone if necessary. I have no problem with that; thinking was still done by a human, you just needed help proofreading, which has always been something that's valid to outsource.
> True but how many times have people sent someone "let me google that for you".
Sure, but that's for reddit comments. No one would do that at work or they would be fired.
The OP is talking about people using ChatGPT to speak for them at work, perhaps out of laziness, but I've also seen comments where people were trying to look smart in meetings (or cover up their lack of attention).
You also made a good point that answers at work often rely on institutional knowledge, existing infra, or policies. So that makes it even more unlikely that an AI answer is appropriate.
People actively do that at work. My employer is a large [US] government financial entity, that likely holds your mortgage and the mortgage of people you know. Our profit this last quarter was publicly reported as 3.6 billion dollars. Most people will respond to any question with an OpenAI-generated answer, and you'll notice it most when 3 or 4 people in a teams chat all reply with a near-identical answer to a question you ask in the channel. I can't overstate how much AI is used here, or how zealous the leadership is in pushing us to use it for...everything.
Just wanted to point out that people are doing it at work, not getting fired, and this isn't some 2-bit business you haven't heard about.
Is it laziness? Or is it frustration from answering the same basic beginner questions over and over again?
It should be considered common courtesy that when you ask a question you have at least attempted a bit of research to find the answer on your own. Then you can explain why your attempt to Google for the answer failed.
Of course that may be breaking down, as search engine results quality has declined dramatically in recent years.
It may not be laziness, but it is definitely entirely lacking in empathy.
Using AI reflexively assumes that you have a tool that they do not, or that they are not motivated or smart enough to use before coming to you. LMGTFY is directly a laziness-rebuff for this reason - everyone has and already uses google. Why would you assume that your coworkers are lazy or not smart as a first step in any interaction?
There are millions of reasons a genuine conversation should happen when a coworker reaches out, and many of these, if exercised in good faith, would be a trust-building interaction. LMGTFY and AI copypasta both are snide, cost-free rebuffs of a coworker who approached you with a question - and that's just shit culture if it becomes common.
I’m using ai to answer questions, but I instruct it in draft what answers to include, what info to include from my llm wiki (second brain). Saves time to write a correct response, can easily refer to past conversations, but definitely not 100% outsources to AI.
If you need to find information to answer a colleague, use AI if that's helpful.
I have no idea why anyone would let an AI dictate the response - you lose your entire voice and depersonalize your response. Do you keep a markdown of your communication style and past inside jokes? Or did you start so early with AI that you dont even have those to keep?
Because it’s often hard to find the right voice? because it’s often hard to describe something in the correct way? Communication is hard, finding the correct tone of voice often takes me a long time, so using AI makes me more efficient in a busy day?
That "hardness" is what brings value to the interaction, in almost every sense of value except "speed", and with AI, speed is suspect because of the investment imbalance - it's too easy to prompt for a response then fire that response and expect the reader to do the hard work.
I notice you didn't use an AI to debate this, just as I didn't use an AI to refute it. Does this make the interaction more or less meaningful for you? That you cared enough to actually read and reply, and I did, too? I didn't have too reply, nor did you, but we felt the need to exchange ideas together, not spawn agents to fight.
I don’t care who wrote it, as long as it is a good message, communicating what the sender intents to communicate, well articulated. I prefer it above a self written piece that is hard to understand, contains unclear wording, and could be interpreted in an incorrect way.
Not everyone is gifted with the ability to write well, so using tools to achieve that is no shame in my opinion. And no, practicing more is not always going to get you to a higher, sufficient level. We all have our limitations that cannot be crossed by just practicing more. Practice does not make Einstein.
I quite often send messages where I later think “i should have phrased it differently, maybe it was misunderstood”. And often I’ll respond way too late because lack of time.
I feel AI is a tool that helps me communicate better, and I expect that holds for many others as well.
Not understanding that some feel more effective using tools is also a sign of lack of empathy.
You're expressing your opinion, I'm expressing mine.
And you're leading me on a long goose chase here. We started with LMGTFY and are now debating whether some people can study to the point that they can reach AI levels of writing quality (absolutely yes they can, btw), and whether they need to because you, personally, would rather talk to an AI because you have in the past experienced anxiety about messages you have sent.
If you like using AI to communicate, just consider taking into account the various comments here and in above thread, from the people you likely work with or will work with, saying that using LLMs to craft messages for you is fraught with danger of coming off the wrong way and pushing your reader away.
I have nothing else really to say about it, this has been a really consistent thread.
In my line of work, its certain peoples' jobs to know certain things. If I need a piece of information that somebody else is responsible for understanding, I'm just going to ask directly for what I need instead of trying to research it myself. To research it myself would mean attempting to do somebody else's job, which is just unhelpful for everyone.
I figure from the context of the post they are asking sincere questions to their co-workers where they think their experience and knowledge is appropriate, but otherwise I agree that people should do a little legwork on their own before asking out loud.
The bigger issue I feel is knowing the medium for the question/help you need. If you need their experience and knowledge then talk to them. Email as a medium is already a wrong choice most of the time in these situations. Expecting them to give you the context that helps you grow from their experience in an email is placing a huge burden on them.
The best "hack" to appearing smart and knowledgable in the average organisation used to be to not just not say "I don't know" until after Googling things, because 80% of the time the person asking you didn't bother doing that first, and in doing so you learn something as a result, and end up looking good.
The line to that and coming across as an ass is whether you bother to read the result and put it in your own words (which also helps in actually learning something) vs. cutting and pasting the result...
With AI it's much the same - if you take the time to ask the question, and take the time to read, understand and put it in your own words you'll look good. The ones who cut and paste the AI answer will increasingly look passive-aggressive and rude.
I already feel disrespected if a colleague makes me feel like sending it. If a friend tells me to get him a beer from the fridge because they're too lazy to get up, 7/10 times I'm going to do it. They're not going to be insulted when I don't because they know that they don't deserve anything, and they'll probably more often than not get up if I asked them the same thing.
If somebody at work tells me to do something for him that would take the same amount of time to do themselves, we're literally in a context where time is money and they're telling me that my time is worth less than theirs. It literally better be (some people are higher up than you, or currently managing a larger thing than you are), or else it's an insult, and I mean to be insulting them back. I'm actually saying that I think that they're either lazy or stupid, or spacing out and need to wake up.
edit: there's a parallel in Spanish forms of address where the way you ask friends to do something is to just announce that it's currently being done, and the way you formally ask someone to do something (like a work colleague) is to use a hypothetical (the subjunctive) basically saying "this is something that could be done." It's important not to presume the right to spend a colleague's (or superior's) time.
> Some people are inherently lazy and unload their laziness to someone else to do the thinking for them.
Exactly this. I am not willign to be the "can you google this for me" person to anybody's laziness. And when I get a BS request, I just screenshot that, put it in a chat interface, have the bot slop out a reply and paste it back. If they try a DOS attack on my time and sanity, I can reciprocate.
If they want a human, they need to invest at least a decent amount of time. Anything they can ask AI themselves, I am not willing to answer anymore in a human voice.
> I still think sending someone an AI answer is terrible
This is (see above) where I tend to differ. Anything, really anything people ask me, they could have asked a bot, I am not willing to reply in kind to. To me, using AI daily for about 60% of my day, this is where I built my Iron Curtain so to speak, my red line. I have that as a clear warning in my MS Teams status (not that anybody ever reads it - like the nohello I had in there for years). I am in a kind off cold war, mutual assured dAIstruction mode in that regard.
> And when I get a BS request, I just screenshot that, put it in a chat interface, have the bot slop out a reply and paste it back. If they try a DOS attack on my time and sanity, I can reciprocate.
Maybe it's because I haven't worked in gigantic corporations, but things like this seems really passive-aggressive, and the times I've experienced that, I've literally asked them "Did you try to look this up yourself before asking me? Just so I don't spend time doing something you probably could find the answer to yourself", and when it has happened repeatedly, bring that up in a face-to-face conversation asking them to stop.
Why not be upfront about how you're feeling, instead of "I'm gonna reciprocate this behavior they might not even know I think is bad"? People are generally clueless about how other's perceive them and their behavior, and you can actually influence this directly by providing them with constructive feedback, and then eliminate what's troublesome upfront instead of "They're bad to me, I'm gonna be bad to them because of that".
Can you not say "sorry but I think you should try Claude first" and send the slop next? If someone treated me like that I'd either look for a new job, walk to their desk and do conflict management, or try to work out how I'd offended them.
I highly doubt you never ask questions that you could’ve looked up yourself. “Go Google it” translates to “this isn’t worth my time,” which is a pretty rude way to be.
But sometimes it isn't worth my time. If I'm being asked something about what I'm working on, fair enough. If I'm being asked what a command-line switch for curl does (and that's not related to what I'm doing) the total cost is less to look at the docs, rather then asking me to look at the docs.
Not weighing my time and effort into the equation is rude on behalf of the asker.
Nobody said you must answer any and all questions sent your way or that everyone is allowed to dismiss the value of your time. We’re veering away from the original discussion here.
What I'm trying to say is that the cost of answering the question might look like 30 seconds to the person asking.
What really happened is, you context switch, answer a mundane question, and now spend 30 minutes to get back to the mental state that you were in that made you productive
There’s a difference between “people should not ask me questions they can look up” and “people should know when it is an appropriate time to ask questions.”
if they aren't presenting proof of doing research or they don't have the benefit of doubt (e.g. a new hire, etc.) they're being rude by not doing the research in the first place.
I’m sorry but nobody behaves this way. Nobody sits around in every conversation showing their homework/proving they tried to find an answer before asking somebody else. It is incredibly common to just ask somebody a question and expect an answer regardless if you could’ve looked up yourself.
It’s important to not make everybody do your research for you, but what you’re describing is not at all typical.
I'm not particularly sorry, but when I ask questions out of the blue over email or chat, I always explain what I've already tried. The two exceptions are when it's urgent, in which case I briefly explain the urgency ("prod is down did you deploy just now?"), or when it's part of an ongoing conversation.
If this is not typical for you, then you are surrounded by people who disrespect you and your time.
steelman, don't strawman. pushback on someone being rude by requesting something they could have looked up doesn't look like "let me google that for you" 95% of the time. it's far more likely to come out as "I'm not sure, honestly. I worked on X, but I didn't really need to get in to Y, so I'm not as familiar. Personally, I'd just do a google search, since I'm a little behind on that."
not rude. not implying anything about the questioner. still the general sentiment of "google it; that's not my job". if you admonish people as being "incredibly rude", you should be talking about things that people actually do with enough regularity to make the point worth making. that is pretty widely understood.
Meanwhile Switzerland is being taken to the cleaners. F35s that had a fix cost in contract with Lockheed are no longer fixed cost because the US says so.
Patriot systen permanently delayed and price going up and up. Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...
> Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...
Which Switzerland then reluctantly agreed was allowed under the terms.
As you say, totally being taken to the cleaners, and it is unclear how they escape in the short term.
The more this happens though, the more deals like Italy's make senese, irrespective of the performance comparison of the two planes.
If the US is going to be an unreliable partner, that will filter through in many many ways, and the US can hardly blame anyone but themselves (well, I'm sure some fingers will get pointed internally).
It’s not just Europeans who are beginning to realize that the U.S. can’t be trusted; Australians are still waiting for a hypothetical delivery date for their AUKUS submarines.
The Gulf states find themselves with too few interceptor missiles and a war in Iran.
The Japanese and Koreans are building as many war ships as they can.
I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder. They are losing the European market just as the largest rearmament since ww2 happens.
Maybe they are and its just a lost cause with the US administration.
> I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder
It doesn’t really matter if your product is better or cheaper, if the customer thinks that service and spare parts might possibly be withdrawn in the future for political (or whatever) reasons they won’t buy your product.
If you mean they need to lobby the US government to be less schizophrenic, I agree. Though I suspect the government would just decide to start more wars.
If you mean they need to lobby the other governments, I don't think that'll work, the decreasing trust is associated with the US government's actions, not as related to the arms dealers' actions.
He’s a simple creature. Just pay the man and/or his kids off. Remember the funny video comparing Oracle and Larry Ellison to a lawn mower? He is the same.
You can lobby congress to put him in a 6x6 cell. For any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. Their trials are ultimately a yes/no vote, the facts don't matter.
They are just as complicit in failing to exercise their power.
So they need lobbying to lie to customers? Why would that help people choose Boeing when it ultimately is up the whims of one single individual that can drastically change moods every four years?
There is a reason why imperialism ultimately always fails.
No. You do understand how lobbying works right? You don't lobby your customers, you lobby that single individual. Which has never been easier as the current one takes bribes almost directly and has no true opinions.
A major issue is that the US manufacturers cannot keep up with demand even as they scale up production capacity. The current order backlog of approved foreign military sales of US weapons systems is approaching $1T and growing faster than they can fill the orders.
This is creating secondary fallout as the orders from various countries get re-prioritized. It is not strictly first-come, first-served order fulfillment; you can find your order pushed back in the queue for reasons.
This is why nations need to have their own industrial capacity. Because when shit hits the fan everyone needs guns- and they have a limited time frame until war breaks out.
Don’t think of them as companies in the normal sense. There’s no meaningful competition anymore and they have rolled everything up. They are essentially national industries now.
itll be hard for US weapons manufacturers to win when a big part of the rearmament is going to be around deterring the US just as much as deterring Russia
You have to understand that the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration and are just as horrified as everyone else with how inept and pathetic this administration is. Unfortunately we’re a minority, the senate’s design (Wyoming has the same number of senators as California even though a small city in CA may have more people than the whole state) and the US is so ridiculously gerrymandered.
Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.
There are a lot of issues in the American political system but the structure of the Senate is not one of those.
It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.
If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.
Well, dissolving the Senate would just make that problem even worse if that's your viewpoint. "Twice now" seems to be a dig at Trump as though MAGA is the only populist movement, but ANTIFA/BLM and other, similar populist groups have taken hold of power in various forms as well, primarily in certain west coast states and cities.
Politicians with similar far-left populist political leanings have won elections in various cities and states. I'm just pointing out that removing the Senate empowers more of these populist groups with destructive and authoritarian ideologies.
When they'll get a president with a subservient congress elected twice, and go on to drive the country into a burning dumpster, I will be willing to entertain the possibility that the existence of the Senate protects us from their destructive and authoritarian ideologies. (Despite it demonstrably failing to do so, twice.)
---
(I'm not even going to bother to ask how a movement for police accountability is a 'destructive and authoritarian ideology'. I guess making cops not murder people for no good reason, and then lying about is called 'authoritarian' by FOX, but how can any rational person repeat that?)
From the prospective of many millions of Americans, and me to some extent (actions that align with my interests and ideology are good regardless of political leadership) the country is going in the right direction.
If you throw the Senate out you'd just further embolden those in power today.
Yes, if anything the issue is that the House was capped in seats in 1929 and the population has tripled. Smaller states have an outsized representation in Congress currently.
Vermonters might not want that because they hold outsized influence on the direction of the country, but then they shouldn't pretend to believe in Democracy.
So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.
> Vermonters might not want that because they hold outsized influence on the direction of the country, but then they shouldn't pretend to believe in Democracy.
A Republic is a form of democracy. Having a Senate in the structure that we do is entirely consistent with democratic principles. To suggest otherwise is incorrect and counter to established definitions in the realm of political philosophy.
> So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.
Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters (I don't recall the exact losing number)?
Nevermind that the state of Vermont is a sovereign entity in our constitutional republic. To modify this existing arrangement you give opportunity for certain states to leave (pro-Russian viewpoints try break up the US - don't fall for them!) since they are deciding as sovereign entities whether or not to participate in the Republic. If you are upset about the 10th Amendment or whatever then you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and inviting a Civil War or something similar. I say nah to that. We'll keep the existing system because it's pretty damn good.
We are supposed to have a REPRESENTATIVE Democratic Republic, but it's no longer representative when you have orders of magnitude difference in representation.
> Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters
They do in the Presidential race (and only because of FPTP and because we don't have i.e. approval voting), but they shouldn't control the House as well (because trump voters don't always vote R for reps).
States aren't sovereign entities -- they can't make agreements with foreign countries that isn't granted by Congress.
> States aren't sovereign entities -- they can't make agreements with foreign countries that isn't granted by Congress.
This is incorrect. They can't make "agreements" with foreign countries but that's because of the Constitution they all agreed to, not because they aren't sovereign.
States aren't sovereign. The state legislatures don't even control their Senators anymore. The fiction of "collection of independent states" is just that: fiction. If nothing else, the American Civil War put an end to that. The Senate is just an unjust system which causes California to have to remit 33% of taxes to other states, while those are state's Senators vote to strip the rights Californians wish to have.
You're misunderstanding the purpose of the Senate, whether Wyoming is 80% white or black or any other random race. The point is that it exists as a sovereignty vote. To take it away would be to cause a civil war or at least a dissolution of the United States because smaller states will walk away.
A lot of the anti-American, anti-Senate, &c. stuff is Russian propaganda precisely because to continue to sow division and encourage populism is to invite destruction and disunity upon the United States.
i understand the purpose of the senate and believe that bicameralism is a good idea and populism is generally bad.
you seem to not understand my point so ill give it one more try:
senate was indeed formed as a bulwark against populism, but the founders didnt anticipate a 68 to 1 population difference between the largest and smallest states (california vs. wyoming), nor the vast differences in composition of their populations. when a tiny fraction of the population holds that much disproportionate veto power, the senate no longer checks populism, it actively empowers a specific, rural populist minority to override the majority.
No I understood your point, but you seem to be ignoring mine. The Senate wasn't just a bulwark against populism, it serves as a way to express the sovereignty of individual states in a way to balance states with very high populations from running roughshod over the rest of the states.
You have two things at play here:
1. Population size
2. State sovereignty
You're ignoring the 2nd, but they are inseparable when it comes to understanding the function and purpose of the Senate.
This might have made sense for the original 13 colonies but after westward expansion, it clearly does not. Most of the western state borders were formed for administrative reasons
Americans get the government they deserve. Changing how it works doesn't change the fundamental problem there - we'd just make changes and then those wouldn't work too.
I would be incredibly against any action to remove the Constitution and civil liberties we have today especially as populism is rising and needs to be squashed. It's very similar to calls from the far-right to destroy the FDA, DOE, or other federal institutions - we shouldn't get rid of them without clearly better alternatives.
> the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration
Trump has support from SV and Wall Street leaders, and the whole Republican Party.
> gerrymandered
Trump won the popular vote, and iirc the GOP got more total votes for the House of Representatives. What about for the Senate? Sure NY and CA are big, but so are FL and TX.
Foreign Military Sales from USA all go under a very ugly kind of contract where you could argue you're not sure of delivery until after the gear was decommissioned and turned into razor blades. You can't (officially) negotiate it, you can't demand accountability on actual deliveries, the real delivery time is "whenever we get to it", and so on.
It's just that until recently USA at least pretended to care to not use those provisions too much.
And who was it that put her in that situation? An American Journalist that didn't respect boundaries even after it was made clear to them that this would cause issues for her in China.
> Vice published a profile on Wu that included personal details regarding her sexual orientation, which she had explicitly asked them to keep off the record out of fear of state censorship and government retaliation in China.
Recently I started to get harassed to upgrade. Big button in gmail, large notifications on top of my mail in the mobile app etc. Also two other buttons to get me to turn on AI features I don't need.
I already pay a lot, I don't want to pay double just not to be harassed.
Having buttons to features that I would have to pay extra for is one thing. But having notifications and large buttons to upgrade when I am already a paying customer is harassment.
Unfortunately, even if you upgrade there are still upgrade prompts for an even higher version of Workspace and gemini.
Recently screen sharing a document I noticed a new "omg please use gemini" button they placed OVER THE DOCUMENT itself. That's in addition to the magic star thing in the right and the gemini menu item. If you're using Chrome there are the browser ai buttons, too.
They probably can many things but I think things like memory timing is something you can't just easily reverse engineer from a blob. You need to test every state that the device can be in and see how the blob responds which is quite difficult.
PIX is also better because it gives control back to the central bank (as it was with cash) and not private industry although they are providing the service. The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.
> The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.
That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) millenia, and is an incredible risk to take. Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?
Furthermore, wouldn't determining if a payment is legal require prying into details of the transaction that may violate your privacy? And if they make an incorrect determination based on stuff that really wasn't their business in the first place, they now have the force of government behind them, going far beyond merely declining the transaction.
I would think what you should want to advocate for is a system that cannot block payments (at least domestically) just like with cash, and enforcement either happens prior to enrollment, or after the fact through some other traditional law enforcement mechanism (warrants, etc.).
Not intending to defend either system but private financial institutions basically end up deputized as enforcement arms of anti money laundering and sanctions in the US and probably other countries where the payments systems are privatized. That's a why every bank has a big compliance department - the laws say a lot about who and what they can serve and they have to be on top of it.
Which yes means sometimes legit transactions that match rules meant to catch money laundering and other shady business get blocked or flagged. Sometimes out of avoidance of legal risk, rather than actual certainly anything illegal is happening.
I don't know if the centralized government implementation would be any better in that regard, but at least you could complain to the government instead of having a bank hide behind a law they didn't write but have to enforce.
> Not intending to defend either system but private financial institutions basically end up deputized as enforcement arms of anti money laundering and sanctions in the US and probably other countries where the payments systems are privatized.
I feel like people get so distracted by the problems they see with the existing system that they completely miss just how much more dangerous things could get in a centralized government system. For example:
- The current system is distributed and does not let any central entity make the unilateral decision to block any given transaction. Even if you think of banks as deputies of the government, they still differ in how they evaluate and respond to risks, and you have some ability to go to alternative institutions when one of them is wrong. This isn't speculation, it's a fact that already plays out on a daily basis. You cannot do that with your government.
- Flagging a transaction is so incredibly different from blocking it. Flagging is surveillance, blocking is enforcement. It's one thing to get suspicious why I'm getting food at a particular vendor and demand that I explain myself afterward; it's a whole 'nother thing to remotely block me from getting it in the first place.
- Scalability matters. Letting the government be the middleman for all transactions lets the person at the controls block five transactions nearly just as easily as five million of them. Surveillance can get bad enough, yes, but do you really want to give them that much pre-judicial enforcement power too? Because they literally do not have that power currently.
- We had a live demo of what happens when government maintains a record of financial transactions (see the IRS and tax records). Play out what would've happened against a bank - would it have been worse?
You can move out of country but for that you need to buy tickets but your cards don't work anymore, your bank accounts are frozen, cash isn't acceptable anymore and digital currency isn't fungible.
You're right that politicians can pressure private financial institutions into cutting off anyone they don't like. For example Operation Choke Point [1] which cut off legal-but-scandalous businesses' access to the financial system, and getting WikiLeaks debanked for publishing material that made the government look bad.
But some might see that as a sign you need more separation between the state and payment networks, rather than less.
I think the ideal would be private banks enforcing exact legal rules (no fuzzy matches) and forwarding edge cases to the authorities (but not blocking them). All with transparency.
You don't want private banks in the business of fuzzy-matching (because they'll default to over-cautious, and it empowers the government to exploit grey areas to pressure them).
And you don't want the executive arm of the government too involved in day-to-day financial inspection (because executive can move at the speed of an edict, versus needing a law).
Credit cards, iDeal, SWIFT, Paypal, Venmo, etc are all fully traceable. Anonimity at the protocol level is not a design goal for any of these.
Being worse is debatable: the main difference is the government being able to execute blocking on their own, vs having to convince all banking institutions to do it for them - doesn't sound hard as the govt will always have all the leverage.
Also important to note that BCB (the central bank in Brazil) is autonomous, and technically protected from political influence, thought that ground has been proven shaky.
Indeed the issue was leverage. The problem is CDBC. The govs plan is to end money fungibility. Once they get that leverage, MasterCard or central bank is just a detail.
> That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) millenia, and is an incredible risk to take. Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?
There are financial laws that banks must comply with and one of them require banks to share information with the Central Bank about potential fraudulent transactions. Having a payment system using the CB's infrastructure doesn't change anything. They are still required to comply to bank secrecy laws and can only investigate your transactions after obtaining a warrant.
> There are financial laws that banks must comply with and one of them require banks to share information with the Central Bank about potential fraudulent transactions. Having a payment system using the CB's infrastructure doesn't change anything.
That's just... a completely false assertion on its face? Putting the CB in the middle lets the CB (read: government) proactively block any set of transactions at will, and at scale, before anyone has any chance to litigate or otherwise dispute it. Which literally lets the government entirely cut off any citizen's ability to access the rest of human society. That makes no difference in your eyes vs. post-facto investigation/warrants/etc.?
We saw a live example of this with the IRS too, no? Do you think they would've had just as easy of a time accessing such financial records if they were held by a private entity than by the IRS itself?
In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.
Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.
Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.
(pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever. Heh that's a joke, but for real, you can use that without any permit, in theory.)
EU Brusel is trying very hard to force these idiotic laws to every country.
Eg.: they forced limited mags for rifles.
We have bypassed that with local law haha, when you get a gun permit (which is not easy, but not impossible) you just fill a paper with "a gun buy order" for the police and you are by law allowed to have unlimited magazine, silencer and special JHP ammo. Reason self-defense and defense of your property (default reason, police will only check same thing they've checked for gun permit. Your criminal record).
And also luckily we don't need to use anything, because our criminality is a liiiiitle bit lower than France, Germany and UK.
You know why.
But tide is changing, Poland will be biggest economy in EU in few years and their gun laws are also changing and we have a lot of common with them.
I believe together with other reasonable countries (Slovakia, Hungary etc.) We will overturn this idiocy comming from France, Germany and other "west" countries.
Btw I'm for EU, even for federalization of EU. But with US approach. EU should be no.1 country, yes country, in the world.
>In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.
That shouldn't be happening. French banks on Czech soil should operate under Czech, not French laws. Otherwise the Czech banking authorities should go after them. Something is fishy about that.
Also, which banks do French citizens working in the arms industry use if they're not allowed to? This is all very bizarre.
>Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Ridiculous.
I'm sure what they did was illegal, the problem with such cases is that even if you take them to court and win, you'll still lose a lot of time, money and stress in the process of fighting a bank in court, while for the bank the lawsuit is just another small business expense.
Centrain industries and businesses tend to act above the law even if they know they're in the wrong simply because the punishments if they get caught are too lax.
That's why I'm a big fan of direct personal accountability. Like the person working at the bank who made the choice to close the accounts should go to jail. Because otherwise nefarious people simply hide behind the accountability shield of a large org where nobody is responsible for anything and accountability is always deflected.
>The eu it self has a faceless committee that debanks people without a day in court or any oversight.
Yepo, that's scarier to me than big-tech closing my email account. The issue is HN users defend the EU on its trigger happy ability to debank its citizen without a court trial.
If they think you are a fraudster or terrorist (etc) they have to refuse giving you an account and must silently report you. What would happen if they skip/delay the reporting part?
Banks are required to provide fairly detailed information when refusing basic PAD accounts on those grounds. This doesn't apply to regular bank accounts, but these are specifically the accounts intended by regulators for people who'd otherwise not be able to access banking services.
>What would happen if they skip/delay the reporting part?
They wouldn't. Typically banks take the approach of filing as many reports as they can. If you're overeager in filing the reports, nobody will look at them and you will not be blamed for not filing those reports.
Google for something along the lines of "suspicious activity report flooded" and you'll find endless stories demonstrating how ineffective these systems are.
Fair enough, but what do we do when the banks abuse this system to just cut off honest people they just don't want to serve because of whatever reason, maybe profit? That's the definition of discrimiantion.
> Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Goodbye.
Wow this sucks. One thing I took from this comment (and the previous one), if you allow me to (badly) synthesize is: we might need less policy making and more policy enforcement.
What policies of local legal framework and the bank define as a "rksy customer" might vary completely.
For example many EU banks refuse service to US citizens due to them still being tax liable in their own country and the banks not waiting to deal with that shit. Or they refuse service to Iranians, Russians or other nationalities in case of conflicts. That's the definition of a risky customer and they're legally allowed to bail on.
But working legally in your nations arms industry is not the definition of a risky customer because you're a legal citizen with rights in your own country, your arms company operates legally with all the checks and approvals of the government, and the banks should as well. Therefore there's no risks coming from the customer here to the local bank because neither you or the employer are doing anything in gray legal areas to be a risk.
>What policies of local legal framework and the bank define as a "rksy customer" might vary completely.
No they don't? Your next sentence demonstrates as much:
> For example many EU banks refuse service to US citizens due to them still being tax liable in their own country and the banks not waiting to deal with that shit
Local jurisdiction makes fuck all difference. Ignoring foreign regulations would be suicidal for a bank which wants to take part in international commerce.
> But working legally in your nations arms industry is not the definition of a risky customer because you're a legal citizen with rights in your own country, your arms company operates legally with all the checks and approvals of the government, and the banks should as well
Any bank picks up a very significant regulatory burden by engaging in transactions with such an entity. The idea that any bank could just assume that an arms manufacturer is fully compliant because the Czech government allows them to exist is hilarious.
What is the french owned bank you're referring to? Your article mentions ČSOB (Belgian ownership)and Česká spořitelna (Austrian ownership). The source [1] also mentions issues with Fio bank, which according to Wikipedia has Czech owners. The source also attributes this to ESG rules, rather than supplying weapons to Ukraine. Last year, the European Commission launched a legislative initiative designed to make it easier for arms manufacturers to secure funding, including by clarifying the rules within the ESG framework regarding prohibited weapons.[2] I therefore find it hard to believe that the EU deliberately brought about the incidents described. Regardless of this, I do not consider it sensible to conflate the issues of ‘private gun ownership’ and ‘the financing of arms companies’.
Why is this supposed to be surprising? These kinds of customers are a huge compliance burden for the bank, why should the banks keep doing business with customers that most likely cost them money?
The "because" part is wrong. Also, FWIW, countries in the EU don't just get to make their own banking rules.
I don't have an argument, you are simply misunderstanding what's happening here.
Closing accounts that belong to high risk customers who aren't making you a bunch of money is an entirely normal and legal thing to do.
EU solved this a long time ago, you have the right to a "basic payment account". Just not necessarily from the bank of your choice. The accounts closed here were not such accounts.
> countries in the EU don't just get to make their own banking rules.
They 100% do.
>Closing accounts that belong to high risk customers who aren't making you a bunch of money is an entirely normal and legal thing to do.
It isn't a legal thing to do because they didn't give a reason why. ANd if they do give a reason it must be legal to the local legal framework. Is being in the weapons industry a legal argument by Czech laws to close someone's account?
Not even close. For the most part, they're bound by EU regulations.
>It isn't a legal thing to do because they didn't give a reason why. ANd if they do give a reason it must be legal to the local legal framework. Is being in the weapons industry a legal argument by Czech laws to close someone's account?
Banks are only obligated to give a reason for closing basic PAD accounts. No such obligation exists for normal bank accounts.
>In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.
Why do you think this is special? US banks will do this too lmao.
There's not a single serious bank in the world that wouldn't consider this an incredibly high risk industry. The compliance load for banks is incredible, especially if you're selling those weapons internationally.
>Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.
All EU countries and the UK use pretty much the same wording when it comes to self defense. ECHR limits what the states can allow, Czechia isn't allowed to e.g. pass a law allowing you to shoot anyone who enters your home.
> In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry.
I don't think that's how its supposed to work. So IF you're correct and a French entity of any kind is found breaking current Czech laws, THEN this must be reported and action must be taken against it, no matter the law, no discussions here.
> Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.
This is a big reduction to the absurd, and unnecessarily inflammatory. I'm no dang, but I would ask you to please refrain from such things, in the name of civil discourse. It could have been dishonestly framed in a number of other ways, for example, "Poland as a country is pro-violence and pro-crime, since they are arguably fond of shooting people". I know this must not be as simple, as "laying on the ground and letting the attacker kill you" does not look like a sound defense strategy. However, gun collecting and sports are not, to me, good reasons for owning firearms. To each their own.
> Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.
> (pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever)
Wow, go Brussels I guess. Hope they can eventually implement the "idiotic laws" that make people unable to kill each other with katanas.
The state has the power to cancel a person. If MasterCard denies to service you well at least you can look for a competitor or sue. Anyway digital authoritarianism is inevitable. PIX and this Euro system are steps towards CDBCs.
> Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?
Banking and finance companies honour foreign government sanctions. Ask Francesca Albanese.
Libertarian comparisons of government and non-government behaviour always devolves into angel counting.
Wero is run by the banks themselves, which are in turn controlled/restricted by the central bank. I don't think there's a meaningful difference on that front.
The European ECB isn't really in a position to directly offer services to people, and relying on every country's central banks to cooperate will take decades.
The central bank is governed by a direct mandate from the government (and, effectively, the entire population, when dealing with a democracy). Commercial and investment banks are beholden to their board and shareholders. There's a clear conflict of interest in trying to dump a service that should be available to everyone onto a business with narrower concerns.
I have been using iDeal for many years now and have yet to see any of the downsides of it being a product of a commercial bank.
Perhaps it's a difference in banking culture between different countries; I would certainly not put the same trust and faith in a Wero alternative set up by American banks, that's for sure.
Banks are beholden to policy from the central bank and financial authorities. Payment fees are capped, payment processing terms aren't a free-for all, and the power of individual banks is kept in check. The people doe have a voice in all of this, just not in the direct implementation process.
You cannot do a chargeback on iDeal, but I don't think that is related to it being a product of commercial banks.
The American companies Mastercard and Visa are subject to American rule of law. In the case of a criminal or authoritarian president, such is an issue. You can see how Russian assets got frozen and SWIFT stopped working for Russia after they did the full scale invasion of Ukraine.
Should the USA invade Greenland, they could stop bank payments done via Mastercard or Visa networks.
So for sovereignty, we are better off without USA. We should also transfer our gold and other assets out of USA, since the country is moving towards fascism.
You can't do that with an iDeal transaction. And it is a reason I (European, preferably using European products) often go for a debitcard instead, using Visa/MC... that, or PayPal. But if you have too many disputes on PayPal, they'll simply close your account.
The difference is clearly that banks have a different agenda from central banks.
SWIFT is a cooperative of banks also but it seems that some central banks endeavours are better. BTW Argentina created an innovation back in the early 2000s as a product of a crisis. It was implemented in record time and transfers were immediate back then and improving. It's not run by the central banks though.
Wait until you see that ECB is shared between European states central banks that themselves shared between each country commercial banks
The ECB is directly governed by European Union law. Its capital stock, worth €11 billion, is owned by all 27 central banks of the EU member states as shareholders.[6] The initial capital allocation key was determined in 1998 on the basis of the states' population and GDP, but the capital key has been readjusted since.[6] Shares in the ECB are not transferable and cannot be used as collateral.
--
Italian Central bank
As of early 2024, the 15 largest shareholders represented slightly over half of the bank's equity, namely UniCredit (5.0 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza ed assistenza per gli ingegneri ed architetti liberi professionisti [it] (4.9 percent), Fondazione ENPAM [it] (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza forense [it] (4.9 percent), Intesa Sanpaolo (4.9 percent), Cassa nazionale di previdenza e assistenza dei dottori commercialisti [it] (3.7 percent), BPER Banca (3.3 percent), ICCREA Banca (3.1 percent), Generali Italia (3.0 percent), the National Institute for Social Security (3.0 percent), Istituto nazionale per l'assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul lavoro (3.0 percent), Cassa di Sovvenzioni e Risparmio fra il Personale della Banca d'Italia [it] (3.0 percent), Cassa di Risparmio di Asti (3.0 percent), Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (2.8 percent), and Crédit Agricole Italia (2.8 percent). The remaining 49 percent were dispersed among 157 shareholders, mainly banks and banking foundations.[49]
And that's the whole reason why Wero has been made I think. It's because the ECB wants to advance on their digital euro plans due to sovereignty concerns, and I think this push is to dismiss that argument.
I trust my government (Switzerland) way more to do the thing that is right for the people and the law then some private company that has the primary goal of making money. It doesn't mean that governments don't make mistakes but the primary goal is to serve its people.
That is what government is for in a functioning democracy. A functioning government is of the people for the people.
Trust Switzerland? Protonmail is literally fleeing Switzerland. You now have to upload Government ID to use any online service with more than 5k users!! They are also now requiring backdoors (Article 50a). Literally the end of privacy!
It's honestly depressing no one talks about this, or even knows about this.
It's a joke but Visa and Mastercard are American corporations so Americans can feel relatively secure using them. If you live in another developed country, relying on the whims of American entities feels less secure than something subject to the laws of your own country.
Americans are pretty aware that government by large, multinational, unaccountable corporations sucks and has basically all of the downsides of big government without any of the accountability upsides.
American media may be less likely to share that narrative with you. But the actual people figured this out a while ago and they're mad.
I'm American, and I wasn't offended. Because it's true, we actually can't comprehend this because we are the poster child of government via huge corporations. We literally don't know what it's like to have a functioning and trustworthy government handling these things, it's completely foreign to us.
I strongly disagree. Substitute with 'the Chinese mind can't comprehend' or 'the Palestinian mind can't comprehend' or 'the Muslim mind can't comprehend' or 'the African American mind can't comprehend' or 'the immigrant mind can't comprehend'. Obviously that would be a slur and not an acceptable way to phrase a point.
HN rightly didn't allow these type of generalization comments against Russians after it invaded Ukraine. HN rightly doesn't allow these types of generalization comments at Palestinians. It's wild to me the different standard applied lately to similar comments towards Americans. Definitely a discourse erosion/strain going on on this site when it comes to certain topics/nationalities/generalization of peoples and stereotyping/labeling.
In the link I gave dang set the rule that these sort of comments applied towards a nationality aren't acceptable here and an instance of dang actively stepping in to enforce it.
America was literally founded on this premise, and it should come as no surprise that our government has (d)evolved into what the founders felt was inevitable.
America is fairly exceptional in that it's not racist to say "Americans are ____" given it's a melting pot of so many different races and cultures. That's a beautiful thing, but something that the white supremecists in control of the US are working to erode.
Edit: damn I think this account is actually a bot. It's only pro Israel talking points, islamaphobia, and appeals to the mod to get people banned.
dangs rule is about nationality, not ethnicity. "You can't post nationalistic slurs to HN" Wanting consistent enforcement of standards is not wrong on my part. HN routinely attempts such with HN posters routinely calling out when comments are not in line with HN standards. Am I misunderstanding community enforcement on HN?
India is made up of an incredible mix of ethnic peoples. Yet saying 'the Indian mind can't comprehend' would be considered a slur.
Your thinly veiled attempt to align me with white supremacists is EXTREMELY out of line.
As is calling me a bot out of line. Ad hominems that I am a bot because I push back on topics HN SPECIFICALLY chose to make an exception for (look at my comments prior to that since you are digging through looking for character assisnations) is unreasonable on your part. Either discussion is open on the topic, or it should not be allowed. Not some weird space when only one sides perspective on the topic is tolerated and having challenging views makes one a bot. Again during discussion on Russia's invasion, it was not allowed to call people defending Russia/Russians bots. There seems to be erosion/strain of standards here since then.
Nothing I have said is islamaphobic. One can challenge ideas/religions. Bringing up their history/failings is not phobic but is needed to push for productive/healthy change.
As was recently pointed out to me, you might want to look to PGs thoughts on discussion and adjust how you respond to thoughts you disagree with.
https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
I will admit I'm old so I don't have a lot relevant to ad to a lot of current tech discussions here but I will try to add more.
You're right, it does, and my edit was my emotion getting the better of me. But when you realize you're interacting with an account that only posts about the same few talking points and never contributed to tech discussion, I think it's a reasonable conclusion to come to. I was wound up enough to check his profile, which yea...don't do that, but he got me. Bot and troll accounts are good at that, whereas generally discussion on hn is alright, even if the viewpoints are disagreeable.
Tin my observation the main advantage of swiss system is the institution of the referendum.
It means that every major decision is decided by the people. The elected government decides on the 99.9% other issues.
The consequence of this system is that absolute majority of public discourse focuses on the issues and problems and not party affiliation.
So e.g. the most consequential election isn't the one where you have to choose the guy who will make everything great again, but e.g. the referendum if the country should spend billions over the next decades on the new tunnel under alps instead of other infrastructure projects.
You're completely ignoring that the Swiss system itself was a cultural output of that voting block, one they've kept remarkably insular, and with the remnants of this system going back to something like at least the middle ages. And then lucked out in many ways in WWII where most of Europe did not. The system didn't make the 90-95% euro voting block, the 90-95% white euro voting block made and support the Swiss direct democracy system itself in the context of finding it functional for their relatively insular society.
You can't just ramrod a cultural output into other cultures and expect it to work or even expect different voting demographics who might have individually accepted direct democracy to continue to do so once put in a more diverse country. They tried democracy in Somalia and it worked worse by most measured metrics (including economic) than the xeer system of tribal hearings and decentralized governance for which their culture had adapted.
But it's not the consequence of the skin color or the neutrality. All European countries have been practically 100% white until not long ago with vastly different outcomes.
Liechtenstein is probably the closest second in direct democracy nature in Europe and I'd argue the outcome was close, maybe even better. They do also have some quasi-monarchist elements too though -- they have a monarch but also right of secession (unique in europe I think) to check the monarch so they have basically a direct democracy clamp on any monarchist tyranny on direct democracy outputs.
I think the results have been pretty consistent that out of places 90+% euro-white voters in direct democracy and relatively neutral in WWII performed well (Lichtenstein was neutral in WWII too). I think it's harder to find examples of the creation and effectiveness of direct democracy in places where there is a lot more variance in culture -- Uruguay might be one good example but they are also probably the most guarded of citizenship in all of South America (you can very easily get residency but the judges will produce endless BS requirements if you try to become a citizen; they basically will not let it happen).
>But it's not the consequence of the skin color or the neutrality
Lets not pretend we're referring to the actual melanin in skin jumping out and doing something. No one thinks an albino kid of black parents is suddenly going to think like a Swiss voter.
>All European countries have been practically 100% white until not long ago with vastly different outcomes.
The outcomes of WWII ~neutral nearly all euro white fairly direct democracies (that's basically, switzerland and Lichtenstein) have actually been highly correlated with some of the best outcomes in the world, so I'm not sure how on earth you came to this conclusion or straw man argument that merely having white skin is magically gonna get you anywhere.
Lichtenstein is so deeply integrated with Switzerland and for many purposes is a little more independent swiss canton that it doesn't hold as separate example.
Swiss culture of democracy in unique in the world and is unique among 100% white countries. It's bread among others from its unique geography and history.
Swiss are genetically indistinguishable from French, German, Italian or Austrian neighbors.
When did culture developed, other 100% white countries (which many didn't exist in their modern shape) like Slavic states, Nordic states, Germanic states, French, Spanish, Portugal, Italian, Greek, Balkan etc. All of them have not developed anything like Switzerland.
Credit goes to very specific swiss culture, and the claim that it is what you get of you put white people together... just doesn't hold.
And the swiss neutrality was just a pragmatic decision at a time and today the concept of neutrality is often being questioned in Switzerland while the democratic system is not.
No I'm claiming swiss culture is people of 90-95% white euro voting block. Not that 90-95% white skin and magically out of that will dump swiss culture. Whatever white supremacism straw man you think you're arguing against, it's laughably hilarious how hard you are trying to reframe my argument to match it.
Of course I can't prove it, but it was absolutely magical how my comment was flagged the immediate moment after your initial comment posted. So I suspect, this was never a genuine response anyway, you just couldn't help yourself making your little note while flagging mine because if you had reversed the order your fake little straw man argument couldn't have been injected in. And don't bother with "it wasn't me" because it's really only you and I reading at this point and I'm not going be duped.
What we have is a story of direct democracy working in a remarkably insular voting block of 90-95+% white euro voters with a fairly organically evolved direct process going back to in at least various elements the middle ages. And relative neutrality in WWII. When your bullshit argument turned out to be false about varied results (Lichtenstein was consistent when they did the ~same thing) you tried to wash it away as Swiss-adjacent while also claiming swiss are just an indistinguishable mixture of French, German, Italian etc -- defeating your own argument.
The only consistent rebuttal you have is your absurd white supremacism straw man whenever the weaknesses of your argument is pointed out. Which really, just shows how laughably weak of a ground your thoughts stand on. It's pretty clear that the actual facts I presented of the most successful direct democracies (Switzerland, Lichtenstein) have a 90-95% white euro voting block, difficult to naturalize, and neutrality in WWII stand on their own whether they are causal or not and that's why you're so desperate to suppress these facts by flagging them falsely under the bucket of white supremacism because we can't have people objectively witnessing that.
Personally I think it's entirely unreasonable to expect culturally novel political systems to withstand cultural diversity shocks. Africa's stability was totally rocked by the influx of Europeans, as was in the Americas, from the Mongols in Persia, it goes on and on. America's political system developed in the face of absorbing former slaves, absorbing parts of Mexico and former French colonies (Louisiana, and Louisiana purchase), and all sorts of insanely diverse interests that far outpace what Switzerland has tried to absorb. Swiss has been 90-95% euro white citizens.... since a very very long time and has had that stability in which a long history of direct democracy culture to flourish. It would be rather silly to think you can apply the lessons of Switzerland and just drop them in somewhere else. It would also be silly to think the local culture is going to well tolerate direct democracy if they see it as a fast-lane to a rapid immigration channel co-opting their interests (representative democracy slows this down; you basically have to be entrenched to get into high office, and getting entrenched takes time, further favoring the old boy network of established residents).
What we have seen is in culturally stable parts of Europe, with low variance of absorption of non-whites, yes direct democracy has been able to develop and been amazingly effective, but this was in an environment of 90-95% being (in your own words, not mine) "genetically" indistinguishable white Europeans and largely culturally as well -- this is not at all the way people view themselves in place like USA. I'm not asserting it is the actual color of the skin itself that fosters that, although it can be used as way to measure rate of change of absorption of absorption of some other cultures that could complicate the process of unifying votes.
The government? Either the national government or the EU get legitimacy by being democratic instructions. That doesn't mean they get blind faith, it is healthy to scrutinize their actions.
US corporations on the other hand get only my contempt and scorn.
Considering the head of EZB is a convicted criminal with, lets call it interesting, letters to the convicted criminal Sarkozy I am not sure what is plague and what cholera.
Why use a LLM when you got Wikipedia [1]. Which references an article in The Guardian [2]:
> A French court convicted the head of the International Monetary Fund and former government minister, who had faced a €15,000 (£12,600) fine and up to a year in prison. But it decided she should not be punished and that the conviction would not constitute a criminal record. On Monday evening the IMF gave her its full support.
> The verdict came as a surprise as even the public prosecutor had admitted the evidence against Lagarde was “weak” during a five-day trial last week. Jean-Claude Marin told the court Lagarde’s actions fell into the category of politics and not criminality and called for her to be acquitted.
If the public prosecutor admits the evidence is weak, then I take that at face value. I'm open to evidence of the contrary, but without such, I just have to assume the case was weak.
It does strike me as odd that she was convicted. I suppose the evidence wasn't negligible.
Hat tip. I did not think to check Wiki for this issue. Thanks.
I agree: The comment from the public prosecutor is excellent. To me that is a very strong sign of a well-balanced, highly functioning democracy (and its legal system).
Taken into account than of two convicted criminals, Sarkozy went to prison and will probably be sent there again, whereas Trump is running a big country, I'm pretty sure which is which.
Lets see. Gerhard Schroeder, fled to RU. Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted. Silvio Berlusconi, convicted. Geert Wilders, convicted. Slobodan Milošević, convicted. Jean-Marie Le Pen, convicted. Marine Le Pen, convicted.
Donald Trump, convicted (pardoned everyone who attempted a coup on Jan 6 2021).
Victor Orban, surely he'll get convicted.
Benjamin N., Vladimir P.: wanted by ICC.
(This excludes cases like Jan Maršálek / Wirecard fraud / GRU spy. Also, have a peak at all the cleaning Zelenski's government had to do, including in his inner circle.)
Seems we in Europe at least are attempting to uphold the rule of law. I can't say the same for US corporations or US government, given the current administration. That being said... can we stop voting for these narcissistic criminals? Thank you in advance.
Having seen some of the footage, that is the oddest coup attempt I've ever seen. Wasn't the only violence a police officer shooting a woman climbing into a window?
> That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine.
If you ever had your account blocked by Apple or Google, you know exactly why a government is the better option. At least you have the rule of law on your side.
Big companies are the authoritarian situation, not the government.
Separation of powers is easy to erode and we are seeing that happening in a lot of western countries. Companies are, of course, never going to be trustworthy, but they at least can go out of business if they go full dystopian.
This reminds me of how all the drug dealers use USPS because it actually requires a warrant to open the package.
If the government has to enforce banking KYC/AML itself they won't be able to hide behind all the third party fuck-fuck games and they'll get sued into oblivion. I'm sure they'll play the normal federal court and sovereign fuck-fuck games but it would be glorious trying to watch them try to enforce the BSA and Patriot act bullshit while not being able to hide behind the auspice it's just a private bank collecting the data.
I guess it comes down to who you would trust more - your own government which you have some control over via elections or some (potentially multinational) corporation which you have exactly zero control over?
It's the other way around. You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad. You have very, very coarse-grained control with the government every few years.
> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad.
There are exactly two companies in the global credit card market and they operate in lockstep, literally coming to agreements to shut down legal businesses together. Visa and MasterCard have absolutely no right to determine who is and isn't allowed to receive payment. Governments have that right, but that doesn't mean they should use it -- if they're abusing that right, people can vote them out. The effectiveness of people voting out harmful politicians is another matter, but that's kind of on the people being bad at voting, not the idea of government altogether, and at any rate you have no vote whatsoever in what MC/Visa do (unless you vote for government to regulate them!).
This is wrong for a large share of the companies that most people deal with on a daily basis. And that share has been steadily increasing every single year.
Ok, I choose to not use Visa/Mastercard in the US, and I want to subscribe to some saas. What do I do now? Or do you mean "choice" as in "you can always choose not the breathe or eat"?
I've found it funny how many people still believe that most places in the US don't take Discover. I almost exclusively use my Discover card and the number of times I've had it declined is a tiny fraction of a percent. Most people also don't seem to realize that Discover is also a bank, so you can use it for both credit and checking/savings. So yeah, you likely don't have to be forced to use the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. The only time I've recently used one of my Visa cards was when I visited Europe where I found much more places don't accept Discover, although there were still many that did.
Hopefully the acquisition of Discover by Capital One results in lower processing fees so the network broadens globally and makes the notion that Discover isn't viable a thing of the past.
Costco doesn't even accept Mastercard (credit cards), so they're kind of a unique case here where they intentionally choose to only accept one particular type of credit cards.
Why is this downvoted? While slightly sarcastic, you make a good point.
Is it possible to get a UnionPay (China) or JCB (Japan) credit card issued by a European bank? That would be very interesting. I assume in the last 10 years, there is way more acceptance of UnionPay in Europe. UnionPay is widely accepted all over East and South East Asia these days because there are so many Chinese tourists.
Theres a natural tension here, because in order for this to be true you need a diverse market with many competitors. But that is bad usually, because it's extremely inefficient, so it gets optimized out. The monopolies we see are indeed an optimization - the natural climax of a developing market.
Consider payments: you do not want to carry around 100 different cards and trinkets just to pay for things in your daily life, right? And for merchants, they do not want to make deals with 100 different companies to accept payments, right? So what's the end result?
We see the monopolies in the US economy because our economy is very efficient. It could be even more efficient - consider, for example, how much time and money could be saved if only one phone OS existed.
But then of course that's bad for you, the consumer, because then these huge corporations rule your life and can essentially do whatever they want.
In the context of mastercard and visa being a duopoly and the recent debacle such as certain games being removed from steam because they threatened to not allow stream to use the card payment system, it's a pretty bad take.
Not that central bank won't be able to do the same, but it would have to follow laws set by the government rather than law+whatever the card companies decide to.
Like others said that choice is not really given in this case.
Also with the government option it wouldn’t mean that you can’t still use other methods - for example in brasil credit card or cash work just fine, PIX is just one (very convenient) option.
Do corner stores (small informal convenience stores) in Brasil usually accept PIX? I assume they all cash-only.
Also: What is PIX uptake/penetration like in the countryside? China is shocking how fast that countryside wet/farmer's markets started accepting AliPay. Literally, you can buy a kilo of pumpkin (namguo) using nothing but your mobile phone with AliPay, and the old lady running the stand (in a wet market) probably has a 6th grade education. (No hate on that!)
> Do corner stores (small informal convenience stores) in Brasil usually accept PIX? I assume they all cash-only.
Pretty much every single one I've always been to. From the smallest one-person street corner popup shop to the biggest shopping mall boutique and outlets, virtually everyone accepts PIX payments. Its just better - its one of those "you gotta use it to understand" things.
Anecdotally: I've even gave some cash to homeless people on occasion using PIX. This may seem weird, but in Brazil, you must have a bank account to be able to subscribe to any sort of government benefits, and since its free, pretty much everyone has an account and therefore can receive PIX payments. Its also safer, since you're not carrying cash with you, and even if you're somehow forced to transfer, there are ways to monitor and reverse transactions (so called MED).
Of course, there's been a few incidents over the years where some concerned citizens would not accept PIX payments because "the government will know what you're spending on" (in contrast to, say, credit card operators, where apparently the "right people" would know what you're spending on...).
There are some criticisms of the current system, which is fair, but most that I have heard are ideological in nature or some sort of foreign defaultism.
In Africa they've had this since ~2005 with the Mpesa system. It basically transfers cellphone credits as payment. In certain regions everyone with a dumb phone was hooked up and you could do anything from buy a coconut from a guy on the side of the road to pay your taxi driver to pay at the supermarket.
Wow, this is a great reply! "In Africa" -> Can you share a few countries? Google tells me that East Africa is the biggest users: Kenya, Tanzania, etc. (No hate on the use of "In Africa here"... as Google tells me it is used in at least 10 different African countries.)
Replying here to throwaway2037 because I can't reply directly to him, but yes, even most informal businesses accept PIX, including some random guy selling candy or bottled water at a stop signal.
The only exception I have found to consistently refuse PIX are some parking lots, and they refuse credit cards as well, accepting only cash, probably to hide their earnings.
Yeah the concept of "Western" is a relic of the Cold war, just like Western Europe / Eastern Europe ( past some countries being genuinely there )
It's still taught like that to younger people, but definitely shouldn't.
on the West of what? Culturally and historically it's a Western country, yes, but politically and economically it's an Eastern country – founding member of BRICS and a developing economy. I think the author of the parent comment used "Western" term referring to ideological and economic grouping
I think the idea of what’s authoritarian sounding is more of a cultural/historical/ideological distinction, not something that would naturally map to an economic label like BRICS.
Also Western and Eastern are just labels in this context, not opposite directions, even if Brazil was “not Western” in some way, it wouldn’t make sense to call it Eastern.
On the West of every single country in Europe, to start with.
Don't take this the wrong way, but have you looked at a world map? I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...
Aside from its very evident geographic location, Brazil was the site of the first lasting European colony in the Americas established by Portugal.
People in Brazil speak Portuguese[1], a Romance language derived from Latin and closely related to Spanish, French and Italian.
The genetic lineages most commonly found within the Brazilian population include Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and to a much lesser degree but still significant, Lebanese and Turkish [2].
The top countries whose citizens visit Brazil as tourists are overwhelmingly from the Americas and Europe: Argentina, the USA, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy and the UK.
Likewise, when Brazilians travel abroad, their main destinations are Argentina, the USA, Chile, Portugal, France, Italy, Uruguay, the Caribbean, Spain and the UK.
Share of exports to Asia: ~41%
Share of exports to the Americas and Europe combined: ~47%
Share of imports from Asia: ~43%
Share of imports from the Americas and Europe combined: ~50%
How could one reach the conclussion that Brazil is an "Eastern" country? Oh yeah, they joined a trade organization with China and Russia ... sure, they must be Eastern now.
I agree that Brazil is Western, because it obviously is; it's a former European colony that speaks a European language and has European religious and cultural values. But geography has nothing to do with the concept of "Westernness", beyond historical etymology. Australia and New Zealand are as much part of "the West" as Canada is.
> I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...
I love these comments. Don't worry: A "significant chunk of people" from Europe also cannot find Mexico on a map. Really, these comments say nothing. They are like "man on the street with a microphone" gotchas. Anybody under 30 years old has a mobile phone with Internet: They open their maps app, and search for Mexico. Done: Borders the southwestern United States.
The West is UK, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, US, Scandinavia. I agree that Japan is a really interesting one that shares a lot with the West, but doesn't have the same cultural roots. I wouldn't be opposed if they wanted to be counted as part of the West, but I don't know if they would.
Ehh, I live in Europe. Moving forward I don't think it makes sense to bundle it with the US, who is like the biggest threat to the EU, considering the past few years.
That was said exactly when that guy first came years ago. I'll bet my money ( via Wero or not ) the whole movement will be shattered by an " European-friendly " governement.
Perhaps private companies will still retain a bad sentiment, who knows, everything else will be business as usual.
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