Readit Newsyaa_minu commented on Happy New Year HN! · Posted by u/thunderbong
Happy New Year! Just as many people here have said already, HN is really one of the few places online where one can find thoughtful discourse devoid of flame baits. Many a times, I read the comments before even following the links if at all. I've learned so much through HN. I would say that not only technical knowledge but also my English has improved massively all thanks to this forum.
yaa_minu commented on Britain’s statisticians fix a blunder and find a bigger economy economist.com/britain/202... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."
"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
This sounds good and funny at first but how is this different from this scenario: A software engineer pays a dentist for servicing his teeth and he turns around to pay the software engineer to build an appointment system for him? Clearly lots of value was created so unless this is to illustrate that GDP calculations can't filter out bogus transactions (bogus according to whom), I can't really make sense of it...
Because if that trade partner unilaterally shuts off trade with you due to a dispute or war, then you are hosed. They can probably find other buyers for their steel, but you will have to pay a lot more, if you can find enough at all.
This problem seems completely unrealistic because then you simply buy through the countries they haven't banned? What you're suggesting will only work if said country is a global superpower that can bully every country to tow the line. At the end of the day, no country can produce all the "critical" things it needs so this national security defence of restrictions on trade seems like a very unwise insurance to buy in almost all cases except maybe your millitary supply chain.
In the stripe scenario, consumers have had their CC info stolen. Bad actors are now working through that list, abusing this business.
In a crypto world, a consumer would have their key pair stolen and immediately be completely broke because everything can be instantly and irrevocably stolen.
Understood but in the case of crypto, you don't hand over your private keys to third-parties unlike cc where you have to hand over every information about your card in order to make payments. Thi is the main vector of stolen credit cards so I fail to see this as a serious problem.
Crypto not supporting chargebacks/disputes is not a feature. CC companies / processors are required by law to support these workflows as consumer protection.
This situation can still happen exactly in a crypto world, but it’s the consumer getting screwed instead of the business.
In what ways would a consumer be screwed if crypto payments become dominant? I'm genuinely curious
I know hn is not crypto friendly but crypto payments don't have this problem at all. Many of the heurestics used to defend against these problems too end up hurting we those in emerging markets including even cards issued by local banks. I hope merchants adopt crypto based payments more and more as an alternative.