Pseudonymous substackers on life; Allison Shrager on financial virtue-signaling; Scott Sumner on the gas tax holiday; Glenn Reynolds on gas taxes and The Great Forgetting; Timothy Taylor on crypto
When I make a credit card transaction, it takes 5-30 to become 'pending' and sometimes several days to 'post'. Despite them taking a hefty fee out of the transaction for their troubles.
When there is a mistake and a merchant reverses a charge, that routinely takes 5-7 days. When I get paid by so-called direct deposit, it shows up as 'pending' with my bank for 3 days before becoming a 'real' completed deposit. Occasionally I have had payment instruments like gift cards with large balances get declined for no apparent reason, and without recourse. Yes, I get all the legal and historically contingent aspects that make this our weird reality. Still, despite being fully automated and digitized for a long time, the system does not exactly 'handle' those billions of transactions at the maximum speed and efficiency of electronic communications. I've done hundreds of crypto transactions without the benefit of the card duopoly, the bank oligopoly, or 'the system' monopoly and its spying eyes, and they were all verifiably and truly 'completed' much faster than what I've described above, and there was plenty of slack for scaling to match the purported speed and scale of the regular transaction system. More to the point, newer approaches are even faster, more efficient, more secure, while the system stagnates in perpetuity and, in my impression, seems to actually be getting worse in several respects.
The point is that many attempts to compare crypto to the conventional bank-based transaction system bizarrely don't actually compare to the real conventional system as actually experienced with all its delays, controls, surveillance, obscured black box mechanisms, and occasional frustrations. And lately political favoritism too. Also costs: how many resources or emissions go into regulating, bailing out, and providing security for the regular system? Apples to apples, people.
Instead they compare to some kind of hypothetical or idealized simplified model of the bank-based system. Well, as critical analysis, that's just ridiculous. Both systems have warts, so it's absurd to compare a real photograph of one with a pretty cartoon of the other.
Personally I'm not conning anyone, and, as with trading in the stock market or especially investing in start-ups, I actively discourage people from jumping into crypto - even at easy-as-possible places like coinbase - unless they they are savvy types with impulse control who are already good and comfortable with computers and networking and who will do the necessary research and learning. That being said, I stand by my claim that the crypto transaction systems out there are not inferior to the conventional bank-based system when one does a fair and realistic analysis.
I am biased (he is my son), but I know he is a lot smarter than I am and does understand the devil in the details in computer science and security areas.
He also covers the same subjects in his lectures at UC Berkeley, which are on Youtube.
From Bruce Schneier, computer security researcher/developer (would be a good choice for FIT tech team member): "On the Dangers of Cryptocurrencies and the Uselessness of Blockchain". Covers some similar ground that I believe you have covered before.
If gasoline demand is pretty inelastic and each company's supply at the going price is almost perfectly elastic, why would a reduction in the gasoline tax flow mainly to suppliers?
in 2008 were Democrats attacking Bush for causing high gas prices?
The market elasticity of supply is pretty low. In the limit, think in terms of a fixed quantity of gasoline available. The price has to rise to clear the market. The suppliers get that higher price.
When I make a credit card transaction, it takes 5-30 to become 'pending' and sometimes several days to 'post'. Despite them taking a hefty fee out of the transaction for their troubles.
When there is a mistake and a merchant reverses a charge, that routinely takes 5-7 days. When I get paid by so-called direct deposit, it shows up as 'pending' with my bank for 3 days before becoming a 'real' completed deposit. Occasionally I have had payment instruments like gift cards with large balances get declined for no apparent reason, and without recourse. Yes, I get all the legal and historically contingent aspects that make this our weird reality. Still, despite being fully automated and digitized for a long time, the system does not exactly 'handle' those billions of transactions at the maximum speed and efficiency of electronic communications. I've done hundreds of crypto transactions without the benefit of the card duopoly, the bank oligopoly, or 'the system' monopoly and its spying eyes, and they were all verifiably and truly 'completed' much faster than what I've described above, and there was plenty of slack for scaling to match the purported speed and scale of the regular transaction system. More to the point, newer approaches are even faster, more efficient, more secure, while the system stagnates in perpetuity and, in my impression, seems to actually be getting worse in several respects.
The point is that many attempts to compare crypto to the conventional bank-based transaction system bizarrely don't actually compare to the real conventional system as actually experienced with all its delays, controls, surveillance, obscured black box mechanisms, and occasional frustrations. And lately political favoritism too. Also costs: how many resources or emissions go into regulating, bailing out, and providing security for the regular system? Apples to apples, people.
Instead they compare to some kind of hypothetical or idealized simplified model of the bank-based system. Well, as critical analysis, that's just ridiculous. Both systems have warts, so it's absurd to compare a real photograph of one with a pretty cartoon of the other.
Personally I'm not conning anyone, and, as with trading in the stock market or especially investing in start-ups, I actively discourage people from jumping into crypto - even at easy-as-possible places like coinbase - unless they they are savvy types with impulse control who are already good and comfortable with computers and networking and who will do the necessary research and learning. That being said, I stand by my claim that the crypto transaction systems out there are not inferior to the conventional bank-based system when one does a fair and realistic analysis.
Apropos of nothing, you might find this interesting—advice for academic refugees:
https://eigenrobot.substack.com/p/advice-for-academic-refugees
For a little bit (4 slides) of understanding about the crypto space and it failures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXDMzSZ409w
I am biased (he is my son), but I know he is a lot smarter than I am and does understand the devil in the details in computer science and security areas.
He also covers the same subjects in his lectures at UC Berkeley, which are on Youtube.
This is great. I will link to it in a future post.
I’m sorry Arnold but this presentation is not very charitable to good arguments from the other side.
From Bruce Schneier, computer security researcher/developer (would be a good choice for FIT tech team member): "On the Dangers of Cryptocurrencies and the Uselessness of Blockchain". Covers some similar ground that I believe you have covered before.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/06/on-the-dangers-of-cryptocurrencies-and-the-uselessness-of-blockchain.html
If gasoline demand is pretty inelastic and each company's supply at the going price is almost perfectly elastic, why would a reduction in the gasoline tax flow mainly to suppliers?
in 2008 were Democrats attacking Bush for causing high gas prices?
The market elasticity of supply is pretty low. In the limit, think in terms of a fixed quantity of gasoline available. The price has to rise to clear the market. The suppliers get that higher price.
That would do it.