jamesmurray

True, but these aren’t conventionally poor but could basically include you and I (assuming you are in the vast majority of the population who relies on labor income and not tied to the ruling class) if we were wiped out by an economic calamity. This is because of how extreme Venezuela’s slide has been.

Secondly, hyperflation seems to incentivize this: even the median crypto currency is going to be a better bet than the nominal currency.

If I can stash a small rig somewhere, then I can produce currency. This process doesn't require scale or major investment, so you could mine at a small enough scale to be below notice (See also: black markets). This seems like a viable way to save funds at a personal/family level.

Stashing of small to moderate currency against a low-quality government or mafia (via the conversion of electricity) seems like one good use case of currencies. If this isn't the case, it would be genuinely interesting to know why.

>What, you mean the simplified world ideologies don't hold up in practice to the real world? What kind of craziness is this?

Your derogatory tone is uncalled for, nothing in my comment was pro-crypto.

Stashing of small to moderate currency against a low-quality government or mafia (via the conversion of electricity) seems like one good use case of currencies. If this isn't the case, it would be genuinely interesting to know why.

> ...you should expect to spend something like 95¢ in electricity to make $1 of bitcoin

Got a quote for this 95% figure? Yes, I understand efficient markets. Presumably, a lot of the value of crypto is amortized from the hardware.

> When you look at that kind of power draw,

Your criticism relies on two unstated assumptions.

1. Large scale. If I can stash a small rig somewhere, then I can produce currency. This process doesn't require scale or major investment, so you could mine at a small enough scale to be below notice (see also: black markets). This seems like a viable way to save funds at a personal/family level.

2. Has electricity prices risen correspondingly with inflation? I would expect in a dev country electricity is subsidized or small relative to other living costs. The same energy it takes to run a home I could generate a few bucks here. A few bucks in our country is incredibly valuable right now in V.

Presumably, the cost of electricity for mining is small, and a lot of the value of crypto is amortized from the hardware.

Like anything else it can be stolen but, they would need to know about it. If I can stash a small rig somewhere, then I can produce currency. This process doesn't require scale or major investment, so you could mine at a small enough scale to be below notice.

Hold on. How can the mafia, or government for that matter, systematically stop people from mining small amounts crypto (possibly arbitraging a huge gulf between electricity prices and USD exchange rates)?

Other than the electricity cost how can they find you? People have found many more clever ways to hide economic activity in dangerous situations (see black markets in North Korea).

I thought the whole point of cryptocurrencies was to exactly to get around this central control. If this wasn't possible, it’s an unfortunate and interesting example of how bitcoins ideologies don’t work in reality.

Edit: Huh, what's with the downvotes?

How did you set up your back end here? (what's taking the photos and running the algorithms on them)

Is there something off the shelf you've used?

Great site by the way, I'm impressed.

Saying gerrymandering is self-limiting because the party has to choose how to allocate its power is like saying sexual assault is self-limiting because the perpetrator can only use one orifice at a time.

Gerrymandering gives an absolute advantage. At the core of it, you are destroying part of the votes of your enemies, either by bundling them in one district, or completely destroying their power by cracking them.

Flawed argument, but good on you for noticing the tradeoff. Yes, there are two types of gerrymandering, with almost exactly opposite mechanics.

Unfortunately, the rest of your comment isn't even sophomoric...the US political structure is about sloppily conceived and aimless as your constant use of the phrase "X modulates Y".

I'm using python/notebooks. I'm pretty new to this.

There's little auto-complete and the online docs are terse with few or no examples.

People say python is easy, but it seems like there's many packages/ways to do the same thing, which makes learning confusing. It's especially confusing trying to optimize/pretty up code. I've hit plenty of gotchas.