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Comment by Tyrek | Hacker News Reader

It's difficult to claim that any system is 'certifiably broken' until you can actually point to an actual effective real-world implementation of a 'better system' (pareto or otherwise), no?

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Nah, it's definitely possible to point out failings in systems even before they're implemented, without having to prove that a better solution exists. It might not exist! You might just have to put up with an inadequate solution if it's better than nothing.

Nope. That's a really weird way to think about when you're allowed to call things broken. You can observe the effects, and with clear precision explain exactly what's broken just by looking at the thing itself.

Brazil has a better payment system than the US. Brazil!

Can you elaborate for the viewers at home in the UK?

Pix money transfer/payment system. Fully digital, easy to use, fast, cheap, available 24/7, launched by Brazil Central Bank and with massive adoption in the first year.

The US financial infrastructure is remarkable in how far behind the rest of the world it is though, which is one of the reasons I think Bitcoin took off in the first place. Fast and free transfers of money never seemed quite so magical when every bank in your country already offered that service.

Bitcoin was about getting rich; using it for money transfers was just a fig leaf.

No.

What?

Say you're trying to invent a lightbulb. The first one ever, and it explodes when you plug it in. How would you describe its state?

"I have failed to invent a light bulb" Broken implies it was working to begin with, or can be compared to something that works, as the post you're replying to states.

No. Your attempt is now just shards of glass. It's borked. Before it was broken, it didn't work, but now its broken.

sure, but the thing that's broken was just that, a "thing". It wasn't a "lightbulb", because it was never able to produce light. It's a broken "bulb", at best, and that's a correct use of the word "broken", because it can be compared to other bulbs that aren't broken, in this case the glass bulb itself.

Never having operated as desired and broken are different concepts.

My square wheel isn't broken, because it's square.

Seems like you just didnt read what I wrote.

Nobody knows what a lightbulb is as it hasn't been invented. What you did was fail to reinvent the candle.

I know what lots of things are that have yet to be invented. Space elevators and their variations, for example.

Is the one we have not better than the ones that came before it?

It's popular to look things like the gold standard through rose tinted glasses, but economic numbers don't support it.

Say you're selling a lightbulb and millions have bought it and then one day the millions of bulbs you've sold to millions of people all explode at the same time.

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