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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> seems to just be a massively fraudulent vehicle that has been a direct cause of both booms and busts ...

Ya. It's crypto. Any and every aspect of crypto is at least partially deserving of such description.

I used to believe this wasn’t the case. Even the ICO craze in 2017/2018 didn’t sway my opinion. I genuinely thought crypto was the future of finance. This most recent bull cycle from 2020 to late 2021 changed my mind. I believe crypto use cases don’t extend far beyond fraud, gambling, or purchasing illegal goods. Every new project that claims to have some inherent value is just a disguise for gambling, and or straight up fraud.

> *don’t extend far beyond fraud, gambling, or purchasing illegal goods.

There are many use cases outside of these. See Cross-border payments, censorship-resistance, trust networks, access to credit, etc.

> Cross-border payments

My impression is that cross-border payments are a pretty small use case, especially if you mean legal cross-border payments. I.e., “something the law allows you to do but you can’t find a financial institution to do it.”

> censorship-resistance

Sure, but again, fairly niche at this point in time in western countries. Most financial censorship cases I’ve heard of in the U.S. sounded pretty well deserved.

> trust networks

This is a niche of a niche outside. You could just say “cryptography enthusiasts” instead.

> access to credit

Example? As in, someone with bad credit can still borrow on crypto?

>> See Cross-border payments, censorship-resistance

Both being illegal. If something is censored by government, the tools to bypass or defeat that censorship are likely illegal, especially if used to distribute uncensored copied of that material. If governments have regulated payments across a particular border, bypassing those regulations is also very likely illegal.

Crypto is the greatest solution in search of a problem we’ve got in the tech world.

Incorrect. Before crrypto a censorship resistant asset never existed. It’s the only asset that can bypass censorship.

Don't expect people from non-corrupt-government countries to understand the importance of this though.

I understand the pain point, but I just don’t see crypto as an industry capable of solving it. Just look at how centralized some of these new networks and tokens are.

Until the government shows up and starts breaking your legs

What about gold, jewelry and precious stones, cash? They can be stored on one's person or in a secure place. They also have underlying value. They're also actually censorship resistant, compared to cryptocurrencies which have been banned in multiple countries, and any determined state can block at the ISP level.

What about the stocks that make up the S&P500/the ETFs/mutual funds that track it? I know it isn't on the scale of "crypto scam" but a lot of people think along the lines of:

can you trust the U.S. government to do the right thing/be efficient/effective? not really

therefore, lots of debt that'll never get paid back

corporations barely turning a profit. https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&f=idx_sp500&o=-pe ton of stocks with high P/E or no earnings in the S&P

wall street/robinhood "manipulating" markets, basically designing it almost like a casino to extract money from those who get addicted to "trading"

stock market is where wall street + U.S. corporations (greedy CEOs/boards) + government/politics (regulation, interest rates, etc.) all meet

and it's less fraudulent than crypto?

i'm not saying this is what i think. i read a lot of this (pretty much MAGA crazed conspiracy theorist weirdos) on stocktwits. a non zero amount of people think this.

Okay? A non zero amount of people think the Earth is flat. That doesn’t mean we need to take them seriously.

Maybe you should be more discerning about what MAGA crazed conspiracy theorist weirdos you read, and what MAGA crazed conspiracy theories you spread.

I wouldn't say I'm aiming to spread them. I'm asking a bunch of people more educated than I (HackerNews readers) if there is any truth/concern to any of it.

You can find 10 posts in the past 30 days where people here are saying "omg, greedy corporation does greedy thing".

Just the other day we had a post saying "maybe the U.S. economy won't continue to grow forever and the stock market won't continue to return 7% a year"

Asked ChatGPT

> Is Wall Street known to be trustworthy and moral?

> Over the years there have been many instances of scandals, manipulation and fraud on Wall Street, which has damaged the reputation of the street.

Asked it this as well

> Are there instances of the U.S. government hiding the truth/lying to its citizens/being inefficient with taxpayer money?

> There have been instances in history where the U.S. government has been accused of hiding the truth, lying to its citizens, or being inefficient with taxpayer money.

I'm just trying to have a conversation. These MAGA people get a ton of power when you shut them down because they can point and say "see! listen! they don't want our points to be voiced! that means we're onto something"

Of course you wouldn't say that, but what matters isn't where you claim you're aiming, it's what you're doing: parroting MAGA crazed conspiracy theories.

"Argument from ChatGPT" is much worse than Argument from Authority. If you can't come up with your own arguments, then don't quote ChatGPT's arguments to me, just admit you're out of arguments.

Oh no, by shutting down and not listening to MAGA conspiracy theory parrots like you, I'm giving them power, because then they'll point fingers and lie, you threaten??!

Well they'll certainly point fingers and lie even if I listen to them too, so be it.

Hmm, now where have I heard that "I don't believe what I'm saying, I'm just askin' questions" line before, again and again?

Tucker “Just Asking Questions” Carlson Wants to Know What Putin Ever Did to You

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/02/tucker-just-asking-q...

Fox News is 'Just Asking Questions' About the Safety of Vaccines

https://gizmodo.com/fox-news-is-just-asking-questions-about-...

Seth Meyers Nails Tucker Carlson’s ‘Just Asking Questions’ Nonsense

https://www.thedailybeast.com/seth-meyers-nails-tucker-carls...

> Of course you wouldn't say that, but what matters is what you're doing, not were you claim you're aiming.

How is me trying to discuss what somewhere between 0 and 50% of registered American voters believes in regards to "crypto fraud versus Wall Street fraud versus the stock market has been running on 0% interest rate money is basically fake fraud" whatever it is you're accusing me of doing?

I'm surprised somebody who has been on this site since 2014 with 20,000 karma is this rude/accusatory.

I and your other down voters are shutting down conversations about MAGA conspiracy theories, because this is not the place for them.

It's also not an appropriate place to post ChatGPT output instead of writing your own arguments.

Is it ChatGPT who told you to point fingers and play the victim of oppression if somebody tries to shut you down for spreading MAGA conspiracy theories, or did you come up with that yourself?

The point is that when you are spreading their conspiracy theories and telling people to let them speak and not silence them or else, that makes YOU one of those MAGA people you're warning us about. Witting or unwitting, you're useful to them.

I’m sorry but if he didn’t include that last paragraph this would have led to an interesting discussion because what he wrote is true. I disagree with the summary he’s made from that, or perhaps I disagree with the weight he’s giving to US default risk being close to that of crypto, but he’s hardly spouting some MAGA conspiracy like QAnon.

He literally admitted he hears what he's parroting from MAGA crazed conspiracy theorist weirdos, and while he claims not to believe them, he still spreads their conspiracy theories anyway, and on top of that tells people not to shut them down or else they will point fingers and play the victim. So what? Let them. They won't suddenly act reasonable and tell truth if we don't shut them down.

"i read a lot of this (pretty much MAGA crazed conspiracy theorist weirdos)"

Take it the other way, “I’ve read X by conspiracy group Y. I think I believe it but I want to ask others first as I think they’re crazy weirdos.”

We’re not bulls, we don’t have to charge when we see red (hats).

When Tucker Carlson says "I'm just asking", he's not just asking questions, he's spreading misinformation on purpose.

And again I repeat, since you seem to be ignoring it: he tried to quote ChatGPT to support his lack of a valid argument. Nobody comes to this site to have arguments with ChatGPT, and ChatGPT and language models were certainly not the topic of this conversation. He might as well have been quoting his cat walking across the keyboard.

He was unsuccessfully trying to use ChatGPT output to prove his point. If he had a valid argument that he thought of himself to support his point, then he would have posted it instead of first parroting crazy MAGA conspiracy theory weirdos (which makes him their tool, witting or not), then parroting ChatGPT (which makes him a fool).

Even if he frames himself as merely a self-appointed ambassador to HN for crazy liars, he's still spreading their crazy lies. And if he trusts everything ChatGPT says so much, then he can PRIVATELY ask it "I’ve read X by conspiracy group Y. I think I believe it but I want to ask others first as I think they’re crazy weirdos." instead of trying to spread those crazy lies and conspiracy theories here.

Hacker News is not an appropriate forum for parroting crazy MAGA conspiracy theories or ChatGPT drivel as fact, or whining about how you're the victim of oppression and censorship for being downvoted and shut down when you're clearly breaking the rules.

And his threat not to shut him down or else he'll point fingers and claim to be the victim of censorship doesn't matter if crazy liars will spread crazy lies in retaliation for being shut down, because they spread crazy lies no matter what you do, so his threat that we should not shut him down for spreading crazy lies because it will make crazy liars spread crazy lies is tautological and meaningless.

> Tucker “Just Asking Questions” Carlson Wants to Know What Putin Ever Did to You

In the interest of geopolitical curiosity and fairness, what exactly did Putin do to you?

ChatGPT's answers on questions like this aren't going to be usefully correct: they're merely going to repeat at best a synthesis/summary of what people have said on the topic in extant writings. But this is a question about trust and morals, which cannot be decided merely by consensus; any meaningful answer to it must be rooted in an actual value system and an understanding of trust.

> ChatGPT's answers on questions like this aren't going to be usefully correct: they're merely going to repeat at best a synthesis/summary of what people have said

It might repeat what some people have said. ChatGPT isn't designed to determine a consensus or to use a representative sample.

Fair. My point was largely that it doesn't "know" or "understand" anything itself, in order to draw conclusions; it merely has a whole lot of text in it and a model that allows it to associate that text very convincingly to look like it knows stuff. Thus, any answer it gives on a question like this will not be based on a comprehensive analysis of data, but rather on what the model predicts people would most likely say about the subject.

I think it's a good point, and I hate to nitpick, but a precise understanding of ChatGPT and related tech is critical.

> the model predicts people would most likely say about the subject

Is that truly the design and the output? What "people"? Is "most likely" the goal or output? Is it structured by subject?

Maybe you know, but many people are leaping to conclusions.

> Asked ChatGPT

Are you using ChatGPT as a source of truth? If so, what do you think about the obvious accuracy issues?

>> therefore, lots of debt that'll never get paid back

The last time the national government of an English speaking nation defaulted on its debt was on January 2 of 1672, with the Stop Of The Exchequer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_of_the_Exchequer

We've now seen 351 years of debts being paid on time, so why would you think the government is suddenly not going to pay its debt? You'd need a strong thesis to explain why the 351 year old trend is coming to an end.

Never said I don't think we'll pay our debt.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

How will that not limit us going forward / is the current rate of "just add it to debt/never pay it back" sustainable?

If people are willing to lend to the gov't (by purchasing bonds), then why is it not sustainable? Those who are doing the lending is effectively proclaiming that they don't foresee a stoppage of future lending.

just because we can doesn't mean we should?

Type "At what level does debt-to-GDP ratio hinder a nation?" into ChatGPT

I'm not talking about collapse, I'm talking about hinderance going forward

Raising debt, gotta service it, gotta raise taxes to pay for it or cut costs, no?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/24/facts-about...

The level at which GDP growth is higher than interest payments.

The more important aspect is not that there's debt, but how it is spent and what is being spent on. If the spending is poor (aka, the spending is malinvestment), it doesn't matter that the current or projected future servicing is OK.

Using a metric like debt to GDP does not tell the whole story.

> Type "At what level does debt-to-GDP ratio hinder a nation?" into ChatGPT

Wow, is this what we’ve come to? This is a valid thought process now?

I have no strong views on your point. But I really don’t think it’s safe to trust the very-convincing and very-possibly-incorrect responses generated by ChatGPT to inform your views (on anything).

ChatGPT would only have a cogent answer to that if there were a well-accepted cogent answer in the extant literature.

To the best of my understanding, any answers to that question in extant literature are either going to be highly theoretical, or about situations that are not sufficiently similar to that of the modern US to be helpful.

Please stop using ChatGPT to write your comments. Nobody here is here to have a conversation with ChatGPT, and anyone who wants to talk with ChatGPT instead of actual human beings can do that privately without polluting the conversations of real human beings.

Not sure how far we can go but Japan's debt is currently 266% of GDP, so the USA debt of 120% is less than half of the Japanese debt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_Japan

Furthermore, this number only increases when the increase in the debt is greater than the increase in the nominal GDP (a number much higher than the real growth of the economy, since the nominal GDP includes inflation, which, in this situation, can be thought of as a good thing). If the debt grows at 5% a year and the nominal GDP grows at 5% a year, then the ratio of debt-to-GDP remains largely unchanged, especially during eras when interest rates are low.

In 2021 the euro area (17 countries) had a quarter when their nominal GDP growth rate was an astounding 45%:

https://data.oecd.org/gdp/nominal-gdp-forecast.htm

The point is, we can increase the debt every year, from now till the end of time, and that is sustainable, so long as the growth of the debt is less than the growth of the nominal GDP.

Sorry, I guess this is a tangent, but wouldn't that depend on how you define debt?

IIRC the US government failed to pay pensions for Civil War or WW1 soldiers, and the British government did something similar regarding bonds or pensions for WW1 or WW2 soldiers.

I should have been more specific, this is about paying the capital and interest on national bonds.

I know they're probably not what you were thinking of when you wrote "English speaking nation", but Belize defaulted on their debt twice in 2021:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-24/belize-de...

Right, I don't think there is a good phrase for it, but I believe when economists make this statement they mean Britain, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. I could say "Anglosphere" but some people think that phrase is racist.

> corporations barely turning a profit...ton of stocks with high P/E or no earnings in the S&P

In the first 20 companies you compare to scams is Amazon, a company with $500 Billion dollars in sales last year [1].

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu...

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