My friend who works in cybersecurity and knows a lot about crypto says that it doesn't provide any protection against government seizure. It's more difficult for the government, so they don't bother when say low level drug dealers use it, but if they really want to take your crypto from you they can.
Re: Zvi Mowshowitz on Trudeau's policy of enlisting banks to freeze assets of convoy truckers/protesters.
Arnold Kling's focus in this blogpost is crypto. If I may make a tangential comment:
Zvi Mowshowitz and Tyler Cowen emphatically opposed the convoy/protests and lamented the lack of state capacity in Canada's government. Tyler also lamented the movement's lack of "strong analytical abilities." Now they recoil when state capacity shows its face in the Emergencies Act and in the policy of enlisting banks to suppress the movement and punish protesters.
I wasn't surprised at Trudeau's strategy. Why were state-capacity libertarians, who have strong analytical abilities, caught off guard?
There's a 4 part documentary on LuLaRue, a women's clothing MLM scheme that's on Prime (I think). Many MLMs have the same structure. I found it interesting that the most "successful" MLMs give the rank and file something besides the product to believe in. That was (is) certainly true of LuLaRue.
Unrelatedly, who knew there were so many experts on Canadian law commenting on the internet? I guess all those experts on epidemiology retooled to meet the new demand.
My dad always said "keep enough gold on hand to cross the border if you need to." I think its good advice. Oddly enough, I feel safer having some of my money in real estate in Canada. To each his own, I guess. Though I did get hit with that foreign tax last year when I sold my interest in a commercial building. That kinda sucked. I had somehow thought it was aimed at the Chinese! I imagine there are unknown unknowns investing in Switzerland as well.
Can't things have pyramid scheme qualities and non-pyramid scheme qualities? Especially with things that have social/networking aspects, where more people using something actually does truly increase its value. I always think of nation-level things as having a pyramid like trait: your retirement value (and its expected increase in value in the future!) is heavily based on the GDP growth of the country, which is based on things like tech growth, but also immigration/birth rate. If Country X stops getting new MLM sellers, I mean, citizens, wouldn't a similar thing happen?
The obvious flaw of MLM's from my perspective is I don't know how the heck you'd ever generate any repeat business. Let's say I bought some vitamins or whatever from a guy down the block and they turned out to be really gangbusters and I want to buy more, it's still a pain trying to arrange a mutually acceptable time to meet with my neighbor. In my neighborhood, we have these places called supermarkets and pharmacies that are open all the time and stock thousands of different products I like and which I already visit regularly. My neighbor's strategy of living in a house down the street and selling about six products out of his basement is going to have a tough time competing, given the disadvantages he faces.
In a typical business, people at the lowest level of the sales force are paid by the company. In the academy, people at the lowest level of the sales force pay the distributor above them for the privilege of teaching.
I joke, kind of. Obviously universities aren't MLM schemes, they always have seemed somewhat analogous. Each successive generation of recruits pays more and their expected ROI falls.
In other industries, this would automatically balance through the market as people would flee the low return segments, but education is heavily subsidized, emotionalized high-pressure recruiting is applied in manners that no used car salesman or MLM marketer would dare try, and governments at all levels impose severe employment restrictions on those who refuse to be recruited.
My friend who works in cybersecurity and knows a lot about crypto says that it doesn't provide any protection against government seizure. It's more difficult for the government, so they don't bother when say low level drug dealers use it, but if they really want to take your crypto from you they can.
Canada is giving us a live example.
Re: Zvi Mowshowitz on Trudeau's policy of enlisting banks to freeze assets of convoy truckers/protesters.
Arnold Kling's focus in this blogpost is crypto. If I may make a tangential comment:
Zvi Mowshowitz and Tyler Cowen emphatically opposed the convoy/protests and lamented the lack of state capacity in Canada's government. Tyler also lamented the movement's lack of "strong analytical abilities." Now they recoil when state capacity shows its face in the Emergencies Act and in the policy of enlisting banks to suppress the movement and punish protesters.
I wasn't surprised at Trudeau's strategy. Why were state-capacity libertarians, who have strong analytical abilities, caught off guard?
Tyler Cowen:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/02/you-want-to-have-educational-polarization-on-your-side.html
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/02/you-want-to-have-educational-polarization-on-your-side.html
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/02/a-blow-to-canadian-rule-of-law.html
Zvi Mowshowitz:
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/convoy-continued?utm_source=url
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/convoy-crackdown?utm_source=url
Arnold, If my post is too off-topic, please don't hesitate to remove it.
Thanks for another reson nt to invest in crypto...
There's a 4 part documentary on LuLaRue, a women's clothing MLM scheme that's on Prime (I think). Many MLMs have the same structure. I found it interesting that the most "successful" MLMs give the rank and file something besides the product to believe in. That was (is) certainly true of LuLaRue.
Unrelatedly, who knew there were so many experts on Canadian law commenting on the internet? I guess all those experts on epidemiology retooled to meet the new demand.
My dad always said "keep enough gold on hand to cross the border if you need to." I think its good advice. Oddly enough, I feel safer having some of my money in real estate in Canada. To each his own, I guess. Though I did get hit with that foreign tax last year when I sold my interest in a commercial building. That kinda sucked. I had somehow thought it was aimed at the Chinese! I imagine there are unknown unknowns investing in Switzerland as well.
Can't things have pyramid scheme qualities and non-pyramid scheme qualities? Especially with things that have social/networking aspects, where more people using something actually does truly increase its value. I always think of nation-level things as having a pyramid like trait: your retirement value (and its expected increase in value in the future!) is heavily based on the GDP growth of the country, which is based on things like tech growth, but also immigration/birth rate. If Country X stops getting new MLM sellers, I mean, citizens, wouldn't a similar thing happen?
The obvious flaw of MLM's from my perspective is I don't know how the heck you'd ever generate any repeat business. Let's say I bought some vitamins or whatever from a guy down the block and they turned out to be really gangbusters and I want to buy more, it's still a pain trying to arrange a mutually acceptable time to meet with my neighbor. In my neighborhood, we have these places called supermarkets and pharmacies that are open all the time and stock thousands of different products I like and which I already visit regularly. My neighbor's strategy of living in a house down the street and selling about six products out of his basement is going to have a tough time competing, given the disadvantages he faces.
In a typical business, people at the lowest level of the sales force are paid by the company. In the academy, people at the lowest level of the sales force pay the distributor above them for the privilege of teaching.
I joke, kind of. Obviously universities aren't MLM schemes, they always have seemed somewhat analogous. Each successive generation of recruits pays more and their expected ROI falls.
In other industries, this would automatically balance through the market as people would flee the low return segments, but education is heavily subsidized, emotionalized high-pressure recruiting is applied in manners that no used car salesman or MLM marketer would dare try, and governments at all levels impose severe employment restrictions on those who refuse to be recruited.