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Comment by KhoomeiK | Hacker News Reader

> Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to some foobar in the last century, which I'm sure everyone is aware of.

Ironic that aforementioned foobar in the last century was a governmental entity that existed entirely within the limits of regulation. Not to mention the completely reckless monetary policy of the Weimar Republic with respect to the Papiermark that arguably caused the rise of Nazi Germany.

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So people or governments are not allowed to make mistakes and learn from them? If, apparently, something likewise happened in the past and caused lots of problems, the German government should just let it happen now just so that it isn't 'ironic'?

Not to mention the fact that the German government around the second world war was completely different from the current German government in terms of the actual people making it up.

Is it 'ironic' when governments try to improve equal rights for men and women just because there is oppression of either of the two in their past? What nonsense.

But this behavior is not an example of learning. In fact, as Libra could potentially limits government power and encourages sound money money, one could argue this is the opposite of the dangers you mentioned.

This false equivalence borders on Godwin's law. Combine that with the 9/11 rhetoric in the US hearings and it's really quite telling how they get SO scared. Idk how far it's going to go, and it might not be Libra at all, but there is so so clearly big role for crypto currencies to play.

Well it seems like the German government is worried about Facebook controlling money, not cryptocurrency per se. And I completely agree with that. Facebook creating money and everyone switching to libra sounds very dystopian to me.

As nobody would be compelled to use it, and those "everyone switching" network effects only occur if it has merit, I'm a bit more concerned about the banning being "dystopian".

And, of course, the Ministry of Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

Yes, I don't think we are disagreeing here. Perhaps I should have said intention of regulation instead of regulation. The past events showed that the regulation was rotten, not watertight and prone to abuse. Thus there was a restructuring from the ground up, not only in the law but also in culture, and so Facebook's behavior is triggering all the red flags.

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