I have to give credit where it’s due, I actually like this change. Likes used to be private, and then they became public and subject to the toxic performativity of social media

Removed by mod

Gold standard isn’t an odd choice, it was used for many thousands of years. It’s just odd today because no countries still use it.

And while a Bitcoin standard sounds crazy, if you lived in Argentina, you’d probably rather keep your savings in Bitcoin (despite all its problems) than in the peso.

Since taking office Dec. 10, Milei devalued the peso 54% and eliminated price controls on hundreds of everyday consumer products, reversing the policies imposed by former Economy Minister Sergio Massa, who ran against him for president. The libertarian leader also halted runaway money-printing that had flared up during the presidential campaign.

It seems like this guy is making the right decisions here. Seems like he’s ripping off the bandaid for a problem that previous administrations had created. We’ll see if he can right the ship.

I think his rationale is to take away monetary control from future administrations, which I think is a laudable goal. Argentina should be the richest country in South America, but its people keep getting robbed by the printing press. I wonder if going to a gold standard (or if they feel like rolling the dice, a Bitcoin standard) would be a better option.

(Cue the anti-crypto arguments because I mentioned Bitcoin)

Yup! EVs and renewables are broadly good things. Just wanted to give some added perspective :)

Just wanted to add some perspective. There’s a narrative lately that China is a champion of the green movement, which is absurd

It’s worth noting that this is not being done for environmental reasons (more half of all coal pollution comes from China), but for strategic reasons as China has limited access to oil near it’s borders.

This is less about malicious people and more about tragedy of the commons. Most people don’t want to see the environment destroyed, but are acting under their own incentives. If I cut down a tree it seems to makes a negligible different to the forest and my family gets to be warm that night. But if a million of us do it the forest is gone.

Multiply that by several generations and increasing power due to technology and we’re here now, still under the same incentives

This is the opinion of most macro economists today, but it’s not universally accepted. Macro-economics is not nearly as scientific as micro-economics, and some people will say that its models are just about who can tell the most convincing story (or the story that’s the most convenient for those in power)

There are some people who point out that things like electronics have been undergoing rapid deflation for decades and this has not caused people to stop purchasing them. The economy is a chaotic system and anyone who claims to be able to predict it’s outcomes is selling something

It’s strange to me that for a lot of people pro-natalism equals pro-capitalism. These are not opposites, in fact hyper-capitalism is likely a contributing factor to declining birth rates

It is possible to hold a left wing position and be concerned about the affects of declining population on our political stability

My first thought is to rank items by totalVotes / score. This would prioritize posts that get lots of votes in both directions.

Example:

def getControversialScore(upvotes, downvotes):
  return (upvotes + downvotes) / abs(upvotes - downvotes)

getControversialScore(50, 10) # 1.5
getControversialScore(4, 5) # 9
getControversialScore(6, 30) # 1.44
getControversialScore(30, 28) # 29

I’m concerned that if the fediverse scales up, this will not be enough. Especially with tools like LLMs allowing more sophisticated botting. There needs to be some sybil resistance mechanism

I would think the admins would make slashing decisions

It’s important that slashed funds are destroyed, not sent to anyone in particular. This ensures there is no way to profit by slashing unfairly. A malevolent admin could decide to start slashing for no reason, but they’d ruin their own server eventually as users left.

There may also be ways to curtail the admin’s slashing power (ex: require 2 or of 3 admins to slash, or limited number of slashes per day) which could also be programmed into the contracts

And even in the worst case where an admin goes rogue and slashes the entire server, you’re just out $10. It’s not the end of the world

If the same thing could be accomplished with a traditional payment system, would that change your opinion?