While I somewhat empathize with all those use cases (not the drug users), especially in the totalitarian world we inhabit, I don't think a money system based on black market transactions is going to survive. Weekend drug users, indeed!
Fact: Venezualans screwed themselves because they were too dumb to know that Marxism sucks.
Fact: The Chinese avoid doing the hard work of reforming their nation and instead allow a faux-Marxist oligarchy to rule over them with an iron fist.
See? Fix the shit and you don't need to sneak around in the back alleys. It's the same theme over and over and again with the human race. And the US isn't immune, either--we're just one financial collapse away from the same totalitarianism ourselves.
Watching the Youtube videos of Teslas getting confused while on Autopilot made me immediately realize that the tech has a ways to go--there are roads that have odd paint or other odd features that confuse the car and make it choose a path that would get you killed if you didn't manually intervene in time.
I disagree with that statement--it is abundantly clear that the desire was for self-determination and not meddling by some unelected body which is not what the Brits signed up for with the EU, or at least not how it was sold to the public.
Get your MI5&6 under control, the way the US needs to get its IC back under control, and the crypto problem solves itself.
I hope you're right because it flies in the face of what every other government institution wants to do about crypto these days. What is it with the UK and their Orweillan nonsense? They need to get over the idea of backdoors that weaken crypto and just accept the fact that bad people do bad things--they seem to accept all the ISIS attacks in their country, so why not?
As far as the US goes, we have strong crypto because the system by which citizens come to be dominated is broken, and not for any other reason.
One reason why I think management in the US is so bad is because the entire corpus of managers went to the same few groupthink institutions and that is why they are so bad--no real risk takers, no real anything. It's like that in politics, too. We aren't promoting the right ideals, but merely conformity, risk-aversion, and foregone conclusions accepted as fact.
Stop taking digs at libertarians--for the most part, market based systems succeed where every other plan conjured up by fallible man fails! Most of the other "working answers" involved force and in this case, eradicating the human scourge that have encroached on the elephants' habitat. I guess a secondary move would be to eradicate the human scourge who think they need ivory in their lives. So if mass murder is your thing, then by all means, find a non-market solution. But keep falling all over yourself thinking you care so much!
Yes, I do find it interesting what gets downvoted and why. There is a great deal groupthink and foregone conclusions and not enough critical thinking. We are all subject to our own biases, but if those biases close up our minds to new ideas, then you aren't being scientific or seeking truth.
Being scientific means that when conclusions take you to places you are not comfortable with, you keep going anyways.
To avoid doing so is dangerous, and I see so much of that avoidance today, unfortunately for all of us. Reject that "religion" and free yourself from guilt.
Whether the past was better or worse is irrelevant. I only seek to understand the findings and have them inform our current times. I do find it hard to believe that life in the Victorian Era was longer/more enjoyable than today simply because modern medicine has evolved so much and because we know so much more about what harms people.
It makes no sense unless we truly have way more carcinogens in our modern world. Something doesn't add up--either the stats are skewed because modern populations are so much larger, or record keeping was bad, or...something.
Also, you downvoted me, then posted "life expectancy after age 5" which, in my thinking, only validates that article has little to do with "infant mortality" since age 0-5 covers a wide band of people who are not infants, right?
A tontine isn't really a modern thing--they were all outlawed. The only ones I am familiar with are from pop culture and literature. I think they are old world in origin and usually exist within a family or a small group like a fraternity or club of some kind and usually involve some item that can not be split up, such as a fine art or perhaps purloined treasure. The idea is that the last survivor gets the item. That's it. It's not insurance, it's more of a blood oath.
An annuity is not a tontine. It is a guaranteed payout for a certain period of time. I'm not a fan, but I suppose they can make sense to some people? Like reverse mortgages, they may help someone keep a certain standard of living at the cost of leaving anything to their heirs.
Funny thing about that: In my dad's pension plan he got an increase because so few of his fellow pensioners live to collect much of it. They typically retire and live for about two years and that's it. So the pension fund was adjusted to reflect that reality.
There is a debate raging over "right to repair" and the consumer is losing. Honestly, I can't continue buying $1000 smart phones. It's just not worth it. And no, I'm not going to insure them, either. That whole concept is a bag of dicks.