That sounds lovely. Do they have universal healthcare on the barge?

I’d emigrate right now based on your comment if it were actually allowed. Where do you think American citizens should go if their citizenship is revoked?

Sorry, I’ve been in a sour mood of late due to being an American and all my favorite sports teams being in last place. The only thing that can cheer me up is watching college kids do dumb shit on TikTok. Now let me take a big sip of water and open the app.

(I know I can just use a VPN. I’m too crotchety and old to be using TikTok anyway, though.)

It’s not really a fun time to be an American leftist in a very blue city in a very red state. But I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic.

BlueSky being ahead of X is a real testament to how Mastodon users are insufferable and hostile. I love and use Mastodon but Jesus Christ, make some jokes and relax. Al Gore didn’t take the lead in creating the Internet for people to be insufferable. If a game is on, people might talk about it. Don’t chime in about colonialism or whatever during the game. Relax. We’ll talk about that on a weekday.

Unitary Executive is the stupidest theory and I’ll never forgive anyone who supported it or who was fundraising when they should have been legislating.

Edit: added link.

If central banks are gone, you can probably assume the data centers are too. Crypto relies on a stable society far more than dollars.

Basically, if you go buy dope, the dope man isn’t taking foreign currency except maybe U.S. dollars. Euros are probably fine but the dope man isn’t taking shit that can’t be changed into local currency. He’s got bills to pay too.

American dollars have value for irrational reasons but they have proved the test of time.

So, essentially, every bank was issuing its own currency. But banks fail all the time. And no one knew what was real money. I’m saying this on Lemmy so I’m clearly for distributed things but cash money needs a central bank, for trust reasons. Gold is a stable element so it was that for centuries but it also led to horrible things. Like an entire hemisphere dying of smallpox.

So, long story short, after WWII. we settled on the U.S. dollar, which was then pegged to gold. Eventually, Nixon decided to unpeg it from gold. Which was fine because gold was arbitrary. We could have pegged it to any element on the periodic table. Bretton Woods is what to google to read more.

So, what is the dollar backed by now? Mostly the U.S. Navy and trust built over time. It’s not perfect. America has never defaulted on its debts and you can exchange dollars for local currency at any airport. The independence of the U.S. central bank is a big reason. But if you’re writing a contract for a global deal, you use dollars. If Argentina wants to buy something from Vietnam, the contract uses dollars.

In the 1800’s, there was no agreed upon currency. Banks made their own currencies. And it was a catastrophe.

I also would like to merge with TikTok.

I was born in 1981 so, in the United States at least, I’m considered an “elder millennial” rather than Generation X or a Baby Boomer. It’s a silly thing but we give our generations names.

When I was growing up, Google didn’t exist (much less YouTube) so watching a video was a pain in the ass. It took whole ass minutes to download, you needed RealPlayer/codecs, and then half the time, it could have been a text article that took 30 seconds to read. So, asking someone to watch a video that could have been an article was considered rude. Now, it’s probably the opposite and video is preferred.

It’s a bit similar to “this meeting could have been an email” but I meant no disrespect. It’s just that I’m old and prefer text Internet to video.

I apologize. I’m an elder millennial so asking me to watch a whole video instead of read something violates the social contract that once was. I’d delete but I’d rather leave it up as a cautionary tale for other old people.

I love long-discredited economic ideas making a comeback. As someone who studied Econ, it’s just peachy seeing people vote to be poorer because no one remembers the last 50 times this was tried and didn’t work.

Please, everyone read about the 1800s. I’m not completely hostile to crypto but so many crypto people are like, “What if we had a ‘free banking’ era? Surely, there’s no downside.” And you just slam your fist on the table and say “Please read one AP American history book. An actual textbook, not a YouTube video. I’m not a particle physicist because I watch PBS Space Time.”

Is it my dishwasher? Or does it have to shaped like a human for no reason?

I say snack. The liminal space between dinner and bed can be a digestif or coffee or tiramisu. But it’s not a proper meal.

They probably were using “start up” wrong but there’s no police force hunting down people who lied about being non-accredited investors. You just have to sign a standard form that says you’re an accredited investor and it basically just means you can’t sue anyone if you lose your money.

If a company fails, they might still have some value. In the medical company example I used, maybe they fail Phase III safety trials and don’t get approved. So, they sell all their laptops and beakers or whatever. You don’t get to sue anyone for shenanigans¹ if you lied about being an accredited investor.

¹ Shenanigans is not a legal term but don’t invest in risky start ups with founders you don’t know if you aren’t able to absorb the loss

It’ll take longer than 2 years. It’ll take a decade.

I know Luigi is beloved but we should put some respect on the name of that Japanese guy (Tetsuya Yamagami) who built his own shotgun to assassinate Shinzo Abe and then when people found out why, the whole country was like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” and there were actual reforms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsuya_Yamagami

In the United States, you have to be an “accredited investor” to invest in early stage start ups. To be an accredited investor, you either have to be wealthy — $1 million in wealth (not counting your house) or have income over $250,000 for 2 consecutive years — or pass some of the tests generally required to be a banker (like the Series 7 exam).

That’s what makes start ups different from a normal small business. If you open a bar or restaurant, you generally get a loan from a bank and are profitable when you open. If you want to raise rounds and lose money for years, only “accredited investors” can invest. Basically, the government bans people who aren’t aware of the risks or able to take the L that often comes from investing in risky start ups. You have to prove you’ll be fine if the company fails (or that you know what you’re getting into).

Start ups usually lose money while they’re getting established. You have build the product, hire the team, and then get customers. So, you lose money for several years — which is why Angel Investors, venture capital firms, etc. exist.

Take a novel medication, for example. You aren’t making a dime until you get FDA (in the U.S.) approval and so you do fundraising rounds to hire staff, do clinical trials, scale up manufacturing, etc. Then, once you get approved, you (ideally) make a fortune.

Ideally for the early stage investors (and staff that was partially compensated in shares), you “make an exit” — get bought by a bigger company or go public. And that’s when everyone gets paid. If a company stays private forever, you repay early investors with dividends or share buybacks (or everyone is just sort of fucked and waiting for an exit). Shares in a private company have value on paper but no store takes SpaceX shares as a payment method.