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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> Allowing foreign money to be the primary medium of exchange directly challenges monetary policy.

Who said anything about a primary medium of exchange? Should dollars be disallowed as well? How about bitcoin? Starbucks gift cards?

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Let's be honest, if Libra takes hold as Facebook wants it to, given the power Facebook already has over communications, ads and social networks, it very well could affect the capability of states to exert their own monetary policy. Not a single one of the examples you made had such a real possibility of being as big as Libra could be.

It won’t. Germany already doesn’t have control of the monetary policy for the currency it uses (the Euro). Monetary policy != taxation.

It has control as Germany is part of the Eurozone, the ECB is subjected to the EU treaty, operating under its guidelines, and is accountable to the European Parliament, in which the people of Germany have a say. Maybe it is not as accountable as we wish it were, but it is far from what Facebook would be.

Is “a vote in” and “control” really the same thing?

In case of Germany it’s very close to be the same thing.

Isn't the Bank of England privately owned? Or perhaps it merely was privately owned. If Facebook does this, they had better be prepared to be nationalised.

EU has many checks and balances, is governed by Germany and other like-minded countries, and has given lots of guarantees as well as an option to leave. If Facebook decides to discuss on that level, maybe an actual agreement could come out of that.

Facebook can come and expect to discuss on the level of trust that a country gets when it has existed for less than 2 decades and has been treating its citizens/users like an authoritarian dictatorship surveillance state. There are a number of other parallels, and none of them put FB in a good light.

It's not going to be a very amicable discussion.

If the EU goes tits up, Germany will be using marks again before the month is out. The EU could never have been started if member states had to give full control of monetary policy to the EU Council.

Facebook has a non controlling stake in Libra. Libra Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization. Do you feel a similar threat of non-profits that try to give financial opportunities to people around the world?

Are you (1) employed by the Libra Foundation or Facebook, (2) in possession of a large Libra stake, or (3) duped by the marketing and in possession of a large amount of free time?

1. No. I have a facebook account but I haven't posted in years

2. No. I don't think its available yet. Its not really meant to be a speculative investment since it's backed by a basket of stable currencies. Although it may be like a closed-end mutual fund where the investment could trade below or above net asset value. But I wouldn't recommend speculating on some price increase even if it takes off

3. No, I'm just interest in cryptocurrencies read the white paper [0]. I suggest you do the same. It's pretty interesting. I do have a fair bit of free time though

[0] https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#introducing-libra

Did they not lose you as soon as you read "blockchain"?

Their blockchain neither has block nor chain as I seem to recall. If the company is already lying in their whitepaper, what exactly are you expecting from the real thing?

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a paid shill. Responding to a legitimate argument with some kind of absurd accusation will always make you look like you lost the argument.

Except you know, shills exist, and are real, so lets not make up some kind of even lamer "Godwin's law" about it.

Doesn't mean its (always) sensible to accuse people you disagree with of course.

Well, it's already one of the site guidelines...

Libra Foundation is a foundation established by Facebook with members like Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Booking, Vodafone or Uber, among others. Calling it a non-profit is a technicality. It is a currency controlled by for-profit organizations. It doesn't have anything to do with actual non-profits.

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