[HN Gopher] How Iran Uses Bitcoin Mining to Evade Sanctions and ...
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How Iran Uses Bitcoin Mining to Evade Sanctions and "Export" Oil
Author : dyslexit
Score : 225 points
Date : 2021-05-22 06:48 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elliptic.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elliptic.co)
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| When people say "Bitcoin uses so much energy, it must be shut
| down!" I like to remind them of a simple fact: the amount of
| energy and military resources used to ensure the petrodollar's
| global dominance. It's not even a comparison.
| strangeattractr wrote:
| Bitcoin enthusiasts often say this because they know the energy
| question is one that Bitcoin can never answer but that doesn't
| mean it's a good one.
|
| The US has national interests economic and strategic that exist
| independently of the reserve status of the US dollar. The
| sprawling US military infrastructure does not exist to preserve
| the status of the dollar, it exists to protect these interests.
| The US doesn't operate bases in Germany and Japan for the
| dollar. Or do you really believe that should Bitcoin replace
| the dollar as the international reserve asset, these military
| bases around the world would be closed down?
|
| The importance of the petrodollar is vastly overstated and the
| reserve status of the dollar has far more to do with the
| liberal attitude the US takes to foreign capital flows and the
| size and depth of US economy and consequently its capital
| markets. Mercantilist economies such as Japan and China would
| be unwilling to accept foreign capital flows appreciating their
| currencies and making their exports more expensive largely
| because of the domestic political issues this would cause.
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| I agree with your criticism on the current petrodollar system,
| but I still don't understand how Bitcoin could replace it. I've
| yet to see a crypto enthusiast who seems to really think about
| the implications about world trade purely done in Bitcoin. And
| the "there was the gold standard back then, it's going to be
| similar" argument doesn't work, it has historically ended in
| total disaster and countries which abandoned the system sooner
| has recovered from the Great Depression more quickly. Right now
| a Bancor system that's designed to balance imports and exports
| between countries seems like the more convincing route to
| achieve peace while continuing global trade. Any ideas?
| logicchains wrote:
| >And the "there was the gold standard back then, it's going
| to be similar" argument doesn't work, it has historically
| ended in total disaster and countries which abandoned the
| system sooner has recovered from the Great Depression more
| quickly.
|
| Historically prior to the 1900s pretty much everywhere was on
| a gold or silver standard of some sort.
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| That military protects more than the dollar. It also protects
| all the real resources that give the USD value.
|
| From a practical perspective Bitcoin is effectively a virtual,
| self declared nation state but the only thing that exists
| within that nation is Bitcoin itself. Thus military expenses in
| the form of Bitcoin mining only cover a small subset of
| protection offered by conventional military.
|
| Because of this, most Bitcoin proponents are extremely narrow
| minded, they think the currency equates the entire nation,
| therefore the USD is equivalent to the entire US and only
| protecting the USD is equivalent to protecting the entire
| nation.
|
| Every day people run into the same problem with rent control.
| They believe there are no real resource constraints represented
| by the price, therefore they believe changing the price alone
| is enough to solve the problem. Yet they never realize that
| prices are just information used to allocate scarce real
| resources. If information is manipulated and no longer reflects
| reality then it has become a lie and therefore serves nobody
| except the one who told the lie.
|
| Okay now that we have established that currencies are
| information that reflect the allocation of real resources, then
| what real resources does Bitcoin allocate? It allocates a share
| of real resources around the world based on the people who
| bought and sold it. The irony is that these real resources are
| being protected by their respective governments, thus the
| existence of the US military (and all other militaries) is an
| essential part of Bitcoin's current valuation.
| siwatanejo wrote:
| > The irony is that these real resources are being protected
| by their respective governments, thus the existence of the US
| military (and all other militaries) is an essential part of
| Bitcoin's current valuation.
|
| Sadly this is true, but not for long. Bitcoin adoption is
| still very small but it will grow. Once it grows to cover the
| vast majority of merchants in the world, the next flip of a
| switch will be in people's minds: they will start valueing
| things in bitcoin (or bits, or satoshis), instead of USD,
| EUR, etc. (In pretty much the same way people switched from
| drachmas to euros recently...)
|
| And once that happens, people will stop thinking of the fiat
| monetary value of one bitcoin (or bit, or satoshi), and then
| your statement will not be true anymore.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I think your scenario requires that governments not
| influence the monetary policy of their countries, which is
| far removed from reality. We already see china cracking
| down on it, and the subsequent reaction in the market.
|
| No country is going to give up its control of monetary
| policy in exchange for cryptocurrency - there will simply
| be digital currencies also controlled by governments. We
| already see this happening. The result will be even more
| traceable, controllable transactions - not this anarcho
| currency you're envisioning.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > That military protects more than the dollar. It also
| protects all the real resources that give the USD value.
|
| That's really no different than bitcoin. With USD a ton of
| energy is used to protect what backs it, which is physical
| resources. With BTC a ton of energy is used to protect what
| backs it, which is the chain.
|
| Military also protects against external threats (like other
| countries). Mining also protects against external threats
| (like bad actors).
| LegitShady wrote:
| I think this is far removed from reality - if you have
| rockets incoming would you prefer crypto or iron dome?
| Pretending building real world military capability is the
| same as crypto is a word game, not reality.
| almost_usual wrote:
| All it takes is world peace, so simple to solve..
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The petro dollar is enforced by might and invasions.
|
| Nixon created it when he decided to leave the gold standard after
| France demanded physical gold as payments.
|
| Iran and other countries under US sanctions use alternatives
| including barter. Bitcoin can just be one of those tools. But
| bitcoin mining is more a function of cheap electricity and high
| bitcoin prices. Electricity is cheap in Iran. 4.5 percent of
| bitcoin mining is negligible given the context of the sanctions.
| One would expect it to be at say 20 percent as their is an
| American embargo on the country.
|
| This just seems to be more of a click bait article for self
| promotion or company promotion.
| sleavey wrote:
| > The petro dollar is enforced by might and invasions. Nixon
| created it when he decided to leave the gold standard after
| France demanded physical gold as payments.
|
| This aspect was not clear to me until I read The Bitcoin
| Standard by Saifedean Ammous, the first two thirds of which is
| more of a history of money than pro-Bitcoin propaganda. There
| he argues that moving off the gold standard was a bad idea in
| many ways apparently unrelated to money.
|
| And of course there's this famous website:
| https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/. For reference, 1971 was when
| Nixon decoupled the US dollar from gold.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _There he argues that moving off the gold standard was a
| bad idea in many ways apparently unrelated to money._
|
| See _Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing_ by Jacob
| Goldstein (of NPR 's _Planet Money_ ):
|
| * https://bookshop.org/books/money-the-true-story-of-a-made-
| up...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Goldstein
|
| From what I've read on the topic, gold (and 'hard money' in
| general) is generally not a good in most circumstances. Yes,
| if your mint/central bank takes orders from the government to
| create more money it can lead to bad things, but generally
| that disaster only needs to happen once before everyone
| realizes how bad an idea it is and probably never does it
| again.
|
| Recommend the book. _Debt: The First 5,000 Years_ is also
| worth checking out:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
| PKop wrote:
| What gold is good for is a neutral settlement asset between
| nations with imbalanced trade. But not at a fixed currency
| price by weight, rather floating in fiat price, which
| forces nations to re-balance to more consumption or more
| production depending on if they have large trade surpluses
| or large trade deficits. Thus the pitfalls of either
| extreme can be re-balanced by covering trade imbalances
| with gold reserves which also devalue currencies and force
| domestic production, or increase them and force
| consumption.
|
| Keynes's Bancor[1] was essentially this idea, but Bretton
| Woods conference rejected this proposal. Oil exporting and
| general surplus nations, like Russia and China, have been
| moving in this direction by reserving more gold in recent
| years (look up various European nation increasing gold
| purchases since 2008) likely to move towards a more
| multilateral system of settling trade imbalances with a
| neutral settlement asset, rather than stockpiling fiat
| currency or fiat currency debt "assets" created in
| unrestricted supply by one nation, who forces world to then
| use this inflating currency to purchase energy... which
| equals future inflation for these nations that can't print
| it themselves.
|
| It is also useful as a personal "store of value" to avoid
| "saving" in a depreciating fiat currency, along with other
| "hard" assets.
|
| But gold or hard money cannot be the unit of account or
| medium of exchange for national commerce. Credit/fiat is
| better for this.
|
| This is why some have argued that there's always been and
| probably always will be a need for "two monies".
| Bimetallism was an embodiment of this principle. Here is a
| very thorough discussion of this concept[0]. Ctrl+F "two
| monies" for specifics, but the whole article is insightful.
|
| This dynamic also presents itself in debates about crypto
| currencies purpose to function as a high throughput
| transaction currency or a more inert store of value.
| Because of the inefficiencies of blockchain and Bitcoin's
| finite quantity, it cannot function as a unit of account or
| high volume transactions currency; fiat and fiat derivative
| platforms (Cash App, Paypal, credit cards, etc) are much
| better at serving this function. Trying to shoe-horn hard
| money into soft money use cases (or vice versa, saving in
| fiat) doesn't work. One form of "money" can't satisfy these
| two distinct functions.
|
| [0] http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/05/return-to-honest-
| money.htm...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor
| lifty wrote:
| This is a very astute point and it's how I've always
| thought about Bitcoin and other crypto assets. I never
| understood why people have to debate whether it will take
| over currencies like the USD or EUR, which it will
| probably never do. Crypto assets can have utily for
| trading among enemies or situations where normal fiat
| currency cannot be used. Think about places with
| dysfunctional institutions, escaping inflation in places
| like Venezuela or fleeing war. And then there's the
| programability aspect which is a totally novel use case
| which I'm not going to go into.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Crypto assets can have utily for trading among enemies
| or situations where normal fiat currency cannot be used._
|
| Maybe crypto will get there _eventually_ , like tech
| crashed in 2000-2001 (AMZN down 90%) and things have
| 'stabilized' now, but it's been over ten years already
| since Satoshi published and this is where we are:
|
| > _So. Bitcoin fell 53% in five weeks, and then it
| rallied 35% in four hours. Two observations for now: 1)
| Nobody in their [right] mind would enter into a
| transaction denominated in bitcoin; 2) It 's too early to
| say the bubble's burst (or to say this is a new bull
| market)._
|
| * https://twitter.com/johnauthers/status/1395067576334655
| 489
|
| When your currency (?) is more volatile than the
| goods/services you're using to it buy, I'm not sure how
| useful of a 'currency' it is. Or a store of value, or a
| unit of account.
|
| Is Bitcoin or other crypto more or less volatile than the
| price of a barrel of oil or frozen concentrated orange
| juice futures?
| robk wrote:
| This feels like how Cuba had their own two currency
| market with the CUP and CUC.
| logicchains wrote:
| Did you read the link the person you're replying to posted?
| The empirical evidence there suggests that moving away from
| hard money has been terrible for the average American, and
| the shrinking middle class is exactly what's predicted by
| proponents of sound money.
|
| >but generally that disaster only needs to happen once
| before everyone realizes how bad an idea it is and probably
| never does it again.
|
| That clearly isn't the case or else no country would have
| experienced hyperinflation after the fall of Rome.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The empirical evidence there suggests that moving away
| from hard money has been terrible for the average
| American, and the shrinking middle class is exactly what
| 's predicted by proponents of sound money._
|
| The shrinking middle class, especially in the US, has
| mostly occurred post-1980s (see Reagan and Thatcher).
| This can be stopped and probably reversed with
| redistributive tax policy. See Piketty:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-
| First_Ce...
|
| > _That clearly isn 't the case or else no country would
| have experienced hyperinflation after the fall of Rome._
|
| How may countries have _actually_ experienced this?
|
| > _Re-arranging the Hanke-Krus list highlights something
| however: barring three outliers (France, 1795-1796, North
| Korea 2012, and Venezuela 2016-) there have actually been
| only five hyperinflation "events", each associated with
| particular large, long-term global processes (involving
| war, decolonization, regime change, foreign denominated
| debt /currency pegs). The spatial and temporal clustering
| of these events is perhaps best expressed visually (Chile
| and Zimbabwe are temporal outliers within their cluster)_
|
| * https://clintballinger.wordpress.com/2019/05/24/the-
| autocorr...
|
| Hyperinflation is generally not caused by printing money,
| rather the printing of money is _the effect of_ something
| else:
|
| > _In this paper I will argue why the common
| misconception that "inflation is always and everywhere a
| monetary phenomenon" cannot be used to explain most
| historical hyperinflations. I will argue that "money
| printing" is often the response to exogenous and unusual
| events and not the direct cause of the hyperinflation._
|
| * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=179
| 9102
|
| * https://www.pragcap.com/hyperinflation-its-more-than-
| just-a-...
|
| China ran on paper for a century or two without issues,
| and only went back to hard money because the Imperial
| Court wanted more centralized control; this is covered in
| a chapter of Goldstein's _Money_.
| chii wrote:
| > moving away from hard money has been terrible for the
| average American
|
| i think outsourcing is the cause, not moving off the gold
| standard.
| simias wrote:
| It's one of these situations where the correlation seems
| obvious, but the causation seems very hard to establish.
| How world changed so drastically over the past century
| that it always seems a bit strange to pin our current
| woes on one single factor, "empirical evidence" be
| damned.
| sleavey wrote:
| It's good to keep an open mind, but just look at the
| sheer number of different metrics on that website that
| show some kind of change at or soon after 1971. With
| enough correlation you can make a hypothesis, hopefully a
| testable one. Unfortunately there are no countries that
| use a gold-backed currency left where you could perform
| an experiment.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Gold is not good because it is naturally deflationary. Our
| current system is not good because it is inflationary.
|
| What you want is for the increase in the money supply to
| match the increase in productivity. What we care about is a
| stable M2V.
| inshadows wrote:
| What's so great about Debt: The first 5000 Years? I've
| tried to read it but had to abandon it after first two
| chapters as it seemed way too emotionally pushy for my
| tastes. It gives many examples of poor indebted countries
| and demonizes money lenders, but nowhere in these lines
| does author elaborate how would those countries fare if
| they weren't offered credit in first place. OK, I get it
| that lenders impose harsh conditions, but why is it in any
| way OK to not repay the debt, and in turn not receive any
| credit offer in future as it becomes clear that you won't
| repay? People keeps recommending the book but I found its
| arguments overly populist and ignoring obvious
| counterarguments.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _but nowhere in these lines does author elaborate how
| would those countries fare if they weren 't offered
| credit in first place._
|
| For one, in many/most economics textbooks you have the
| story (fairy tale?) of cultures going from barter to
| currency (special rocks, shells, etc). There is no
| sociological or historical record of a culture doing
| this. The point is reiterated in _Money_.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| My impression is that usury actually inhibits economic
| development because you're stuck paying the interest
| instead of investing in your future. Lower interest rates
| encourages more risk taking economic activities.
| Sometimes those risks don't pan out, but, if you believe
| that overall your economy will prosper, lower interest
| rates ensure that proceeds from risks stay more with
| those generating the activity rather than the lenders
| themselves. Liquidity is important but not as much value
| creating (if everyone loans the other person $5, there's
| a lot of "economic activity", but nothing of value has
| been created in that fake scenario). That's simplistic of
| course and liquidity itself can be value-generating if
| there's intention behind it (ie vetting that the
| liquidity generated is going to an enterprise that will
| likely yield net returns overall for some reason).
|
| That's also why there's bankruptcy protection. Sucks for
| the lenders that their gamble didn't pay off but
| generally they're able to take a loss and their other
| investments can balance them out. Plus bankruptcy
| protections apply to them to if they overextended
| themselves or didn't manage the investments.
|
| The point is that anyone can suffer an economic hardship
| but that doesn't mean society should strive to create
| punishing conditions if you are unlucky (or, in most
| payday scenarios, just start off poor). Of course some
| people will abuse the system. There are abuses happening
| by lenders too. Economic policies around this though can
| only work at the macro scale, so you find other ways to
| mitigate the problems through legal structures.
|
| I think there's this unhealthy association between
| lendees not paying and it somehow being a moral failing
| on their part. No. It's the fault of the lender for not
| vetting their investment properly. Sure they should be
| allowed some attempt at recollection but there need to be
| strong usury protections too (if you want to allow high
| interest rates in your economic region, then high usury
| rates should be pared with much easier ability to limit
| recovery after some limit is collected. If you think
| about it, in payday scenarios, the successful
| "investments" on the part of the lenders (ie the people
| actually making good on the payments) are subsidizing the
| lenders loans to those that can't pay. It's a vicious
| cycle frequently for those involved because the loans
| aren't actually generating economic value and are really
| being used just to help people get by. High interest
| loans really need to be restricted to risky economic
| investments (starting a business of some kind) or those
| with the resources that they could pay it back and just
| have a short liquidity issue. This $500 @ 30% interest to
| fix your car that's your only mode of transportation
| to/from work or $1000 to go to the doctor seems seems
| like not a useful application. It's a non-economic need
| that person has and there's not really any likely
| realistic scenario where those loans would have a net
| positive impact on the economy. Forcing the area to
| invest in useful public transportation solutions and
| safety net for medical care would return far more value
| to the economic prosperity and social stability/welfare
| of the area.
| inshadows wrote:
| Thanks for long reply. But you mostly just summarized
| what I felt about the first 2 chapters in your own words.
|
| You say
|
| > I think there's this unhealthy association between
| lendees not paying and it somehow being a moral failing
| on their part. No. It's the fault of the lender for not
| vetting their investment properly.
|
| You know what? If that's how I'm going to be treated as
| money lender then screw it, I'm not lending anybody. They
| need money to jump start their economy? Screw them. If
| I'm supposed to invest in detailed research with zero
| return, I'll be at loss in the end even if the huge risk
| turns out in my favor. I'm keeping my money safe, let
| them starve! Now obviously I'm not seriously that evil,
| but you get the point. When there's no protection for
| money lenders, when society treats them as evil (as this
| book does), they're not going to lend anybody, and poor
| economy won't have the capital to build from in first
| place. And then money owners will be vilified for
| hoarding money! You can't really win this game unless you
| give away money for free, can you?
|
| EIDT: I agree that usury is evil. Obviously investor
| protection should go only so far, but shifting all blame
| for failed projects on money lenders is just wrong.
| Contracts should be obeyed.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Then don't lend? I'm not sure why you're getting so
| triggered. Why are you treating it as a moral obligation
| that you have to lend? Sure there can be positive social
| results to certain kinds of lending. If you're investing
| for that purpose though (to improve someone's situation),
| why are you looking to be punitive and enforce that you
| get a return? Now maybe you're not seeing efficacy or
| maybe you're primarily motivated by your personal
| returns. Then invest accordingly. It seems though like
| you want to hold power over people as a result of lending
| out money & that to me seems like an unhealthy motivation
| for everyone involved.
|
| And as for contracts being obeyed, I'm not sure where you
| ever got that. Contracts can be broken for all sorts of
| reasons.
|
| As a counter to your "bitch better have my money"
| perspective. I invest money in startups and they fail. Is
| it a moral failing on their part or mine that that
| happened? Sometimes they don't fail. Is that due to our
| morals? It's a bet on an outcome and people. Sometimes
| the bet doesn't go my way. Sometimes it does. Why read
| morals into what is in a lot of ways a game of chance?
| I've also been a landlord & had people try to screw me
| out of rent checks. Sure that's shitty of them to do and
| it frustrates me but everyone has their struggles.
|
| EDIT: And I didn't shift all blame on lenders. I just
| said that usury like payday loans should be way more
| regulated than it is in the US.
| inshadows wrote:
| I'm not triggered. Sorry, that's just my (bad) habit of
| employing ridicule and irony in discussions. I didn't try
| to imply that it's my obligation to lend. I'm very risk
| averse in fact. I'm also not 100% evil, but I'm not very
| charitable (yet). I donated several times and that's it.
|
| > Sure there can be positive social results to certain
| kinds of lending. If you're investing for that purpose
| though (to improve someone's situation), why are you
| looking to be punitive and enforce that you get a return?
|
| Certainly there are people and organization that invest
| with aim to help the other party. But aren't most people
| investing to make profit? And isn't this kind of
| investing (for profit) beneficial for society as well?
| You provide capital early to others, and since you can't
| use it now for your consumption you get interest in
| return.
|
| I don't think why you imply that I want to hold power
| over people. All I'm saying is that if I don't get any
| protection, then likely I won't invest at all. And who
| would if there's no protection?
|
| > Is it a moral failing on their part or mine that that
| happened? Sometimes they don't fail. Is that due to our
| morals?
|
| If a company defaults on obligations then by the law it's
| going to be liquidated, and both bond holders and stock
| owners will be paid from that. That's the risk I'm
| willing to bear. But if the company would have the choice
| to renege on its obligations and keep on existing, would
| you invest? Would anybody?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > But if the company would have the choice to renege on
| its obligations and keep on existing, would you invest?
| Would anybody?
|
| Yes. Chapter 11 bankruptcy
| inshadows wrote:
| OK. I'm not US citizen, but I'll check that out. Anyway,
| I see your point and I'll have to think about it more.
| Maybe I'll even give the book a 2nd try. :-)
| discreteevent wrote:
| In "The Economics of Belonging" Martin Sandbu makes the
| argument that it should be more like venture capitalism.
| You provide a loan and get some of the upside if it works
| out but if it doesn't then you share the loss. It would
| at least keep people more honest.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I don't think one approach or the other works. Interest-
| based loans are the equivalent of hedging your risk in a
| financial investment. That's like saying you should
| remove financial instruments that allow for that when you
| make stock investments. That is a position one could
| take, but I feel like allowing for hedging is smart (&
| besides there's all sorts of ways people can create
| contracts to hedge risks that are impossible to regulate
| anyway).
|
| For many investments, interest-based investments seem to
| make more sense to me. For example, investing in a
| restaurant is not an investment that works out in favor
| of the VC model unless you want to be inundated with low-
| cost generic options that can scale to every market even
| more than we are today. That's also why you have
| collateral in such investments so that the lender has
| ways to recoup their investment even with uncooperative
| lendees. I think the world is complex & we have different
| investment models to account for that complexity. I'm
| skeptical that any one hammer will somehow solve all
| problems. It's all trade offs in the end, no?
| lifty wrote:
| Indeed, the petro dollar has had all kinds of side effects,
| good and bad. Like any imperial rule, some get crushed by it,
| but peace and prosperity can be a direct outcome of it as
| well, and I think this was the case with the American
| "empire" after the WW2. You can google for "Pax Americana"
| for more info about the concept.
|
| ps: I say this as a non-American.
| notduncansmith wrote:
| For reference, 1971 was when Nixon first coined the term "war
| on drugs" (after passing the Controlled Substances Act and
| related legislation a year prior). People love to bring up
| that website when the gold standard is mentioned, but it's
| actually showing a broader trend of the government apparatus
| being weaponized against the middle and lower classes.
|
| Here's a quote that summarizes the effect of the time period
| nicely:
|
| "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after
| that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You
| understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it
| illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting
| the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
| with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could
| disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders,
| raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them
| night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were
| lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
|
| -- John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in
| 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared
| in 1971.
|
| That's what the fuck happened in 1971. Then, notice how many
| graphs actually show an inflection point around 1981 when
| Reagan started as president, employing Nixon's Southern
| Strategy to get elected and then serving those voters with
| policies that attacked the lower and middle classes (slashing
| spending on federal aid programs, raising income taxes while
| lowering capital gains taxes, freezing the minimum wage,
| raising military spending which is essentially a cash
| transfer to rich arms dealers, etc). Then throw the Cold War
| in there, and you have a US government that is in an
| adversarial position with everyone but the 1%.
| sig-reduction wrote:
| I've always wanted to understand the geopolitics of oil and
| gas. Despite much interested reading, I can never quite figure
| out what's going on.
|
| One of the more interesting quote's I've encountered along the
| way, "The foreign tax rates of U.S. oil multinationals fell
| significantly after the first Gulf War, during which the United
| States intervened to protect Kuwait, a major oil producer.
| Although it is not possible to know for sure what caused this
| decline, a possible interpretation of the fall in taxes
| collected by oil-producing countries is that they reflect a
| return on military protection granted by the United States to
| oil-producing States."
|
| Figure 2 on page 20 has the discontinuity.
|
| https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/WrightZucman2018.pdf
| ultrastable wrote:
| You should check out Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell if
| you haven't yet
| patrickk wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-
| untol...
|
| This article explains the link between Saudi Arabia and the
| US. It explains a lot about the relationship that exists
| despite so much chaos and turmoil. As they say, money talks
| and bullshit walks.
| DSingularity wrote:
| I think that is an important point but tangential IMO. The
| question here is geopolitics of the dollar. Notice, when the
| us had deep music-gonna-stop level problems in its economy it
| prints a shit-ton of dollars. Which other country in the
| world can do this? Nobody. And it will stay this way until
| someone has a navy as powerful as the US.
| imtringued wrote:
| >Notice, when the us had deep music-gonna-stop level
| problems in its economy it prints a shit-ton of dollars.
| Which other country in the world can do this? Nobody. And
| it will stay this way until someone has a navy as powerful
| as the US.
|
| The Eurozone can do so as well. Actually, it must do so to
| prevent the collapse of the euro. It's the same with the
| USD, foreign nations keep "stealing" USD and take them out
| of the US and therefore the US must replace the lost USD
| just to stay still.
|
| Also, the fact that no money is being printed is one of the
| biggest problems. Yes, you can increase the money supply
| without printing. For every USD you create, you also create
| an obligation to return it which is called debt. When the
| newly created USD are allocated to otherwise idle resources
| you may unlock value equivalent or higher than the debt you
| took on. The excess value you have created in the process
| is called economic growth. It turns out, fiat creation is
| highly deflationary and deflationary forces from other
| sources are extremely high as well. However, debt is
| inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. I
| personally still get 4% interest rates on private loans.
| The borrowed money never ends up in the real economy
| indicated by low inflation rates.
|
| We are basically experiencing the great depression again
| but to a milder degree, therefore we should do our best to
| prevent it from becoming a problem in the first place. The
| fact that the US hit inflation goals because of a pandemic
| is pathetic. What if they were not blessed with a natural
| disaster that spurred politicians to act (it wasn't enough
| to get trump to act)?
|
| Hitting inflation goals and moderate interest rates quickly
| is absolutely necessary to keep the economy stable. With
| every year of low interest and low inflation the imbalance
| keeps growing but the correction will happen in a flash,
| therefore we must ensure that any imbalance is as small as
| possible before we run into the crash.
|
| It's like extinguishing wild fires as soon as they happen
| while the fire is still under control. At some point you
| can no longer contain the fire but the consequences have
| become unbearable.
|
| It's better to crash small today, than crash big tomorrow.
| Unfortunately, today is many years too late.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > And it will stay this way until someone has a navy as
| powerful as the US.
|
| Armed force superiority is a requisite for maintaining
| order, which is a valuable good in and of itself, but the
| country also needs to produce goods themselves (such as
| research, medicines, technology, media) which is greatly
| enabled by a large population that has a higher than
| average level of trust between each other.
|
| I would even assume the latter is far more difficult to
| create than the armed forces, and only arises from a
| perfect storm situation. And it feels like it's in a
| downward trajectory, but hopefully that is not true or will
| reverse.
| DSingularity wrote:
| It's all intertwined. When you can print billions and use
| it to fund research while other countries can't -- well
| this will also reenforce your lead.
| refurb wrote:
| I mean Canada has expanded its money supplier to a larger
| degree than the US as a percentage of its GDP.
|
| +50% since 2016, +20% since pandemic started.
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/money-supply-m2
| seibelj wrote:
| And their housing price increases are even more absurd
| than the US. The middle class is trying to hold on to
| anything they can to protect their savings from inflation
| and there are very few options remaining for the average
| person.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Same in Western Europe. Housing is almost unaffordable
| now after the ECB money printer sprint and free loans
| from he local banks.
| lifty wrote:
| At least Japan and the EU have higher debt to GDP ratio's,
| but the currencies of those places definitely enjoy a high
| level of trust in the world.
| woodpanel wrote:
| * it prints a shit-ton of dollars. Which other country in
| the world can do this?*
|
| Currently, there isn't a country that isn't doing this.
|
| But I agree, when the music is gonna stop globally the US
| can print the longest.
| himlion wrote:
| There is a significant difference, those countries print
| their own currency, but only the USA can print US
| dollars.
| simonh wrote:
| I think this is backwards. The USSR had a navy toe-to-toe
| competitive with the US, but never had a fraction of the
| economic weight. The economic power of the US isn't a
| product of it's navy, rather it's economic power is just
| another weapon it uses alongside military force.
|
| Let's look at how the petrodollar came about. The first
| step with the run on gold in 1971 which broke the Breton
| Woods system. The value of the dollar went through the
| floor. Having a big navy didn't make any difference. This
| hurt oil exporters because now their dollar earning weren't
| worth as much, but they didn't abandon dollars. There was
| no credible alternative, and there was no military
| dimension to that fact.
|
| Then in 1973 US support for Israel lead to the OPEC oil
| embargo. Oil prices quadrupled. You could say it was
| American military aid that caused this, well maybe but no
| actual projection of force by the US was involved. Military
| aid to Israel was no different in character from Soviet aid
| to Arab regimes. The reasons the embargo mattered and had
| an effect were economic reasons, not military ones.
|
| When the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on
| Economic Cooperation was established in 1979 the US hadn't
| invaded any Middle Eastern nation, hadn't blockaded any
| Middle Eastern ports, hadn't established any bases in the
| Middle East. The total of their interference was support
| for Israel, a small state a long way from any of the actual
| oil.
|
| All three of those milestones were entirely economic in
| character. Military power projection played no part in
| them. The US has and uses economic power anyway, regardless
| of how effective it's navy or army is. It was a military
| midget, but economic powerhouse in 1941 when Japan attacked
| Pearl Harbour. It parlayed that economic power into
| military might, not the other way around. By the end of the
| war the US was launching 2 aircraft carriers per month due
| to sheer economic muscle.
|
| US military intervention in the Middle East long post-dates
| the establishment of the petro-dollar. Those claiming the
| petro-dollar is a result of military power have it exactly
| the wrong way around.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Haven't established any bases in the Middle East? Are you
| kidding? Building bases in the Middle East was first
| order of business after world war 2.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Sultan_Air_Base
| simonh wrote:
| I was very clearly referring to the situation in 1979
| when the petrodollar system was formalised, which itself
| was long after dollars became the standard currency for
| trading oil.
|
| That base was exclusively a Saudi air force base until
| the first Gulf War, which occurred long after the dollar
| became the standard currency for trading oil.
| elcritch wrote:
| The US'es navy is arguably much more of a result of our
| economy than the other way around. Of course there are
| synchronistic effects. The petro-dollar is what let's the
| Fed print money with abandon beyond what other nations
| could. The petro-dollar is protected by American naval
| power. So it's a feedback cycle.
|
| In a fashion, the US printing dollars lowers the value of a
| dollar which effectively taxes the rest of the world by
| lowering the value of their dollar denominated assets.
| Particularly oil. Still it's an odd system as the US is
| ultimately on the hook for that debt, to US federal debt
| holders who are still majority Americans.
|
| It'll be interesting to see how post-oil world economy will
| handle it. Possibly more serious large scale wars between
| regional powers.
| fnord77 wrote:
| the US pays 0 or close to 0 interest on that debt.
| imtringued wrote:
| >In a fashion, the US printing dollars lowers the value
| of a dollar which effectively taxes the rest of the world
| by lowering the value of their dollar denominated assets.
|
| Those foreign nations take USD out of circulation and buy
| US treasuries. They are expressing a desire that the US
| invests the USD they spend on the bonds. When you buy US
| treasures you do so because you think the US government
| can spend your money better than you can spend it
| yourself. If the US decides to not borrow your money it
| is basically saying you should put your money elsewhere
| but these foreign nations refuse to do so.
|
| Because the US government doesn't spend the money inside
| the US the obvious result is unemployment. There is no
| way to increase the investment rate to account for the
| increased savings rate. Instead, the domestic savings
| rate of US citizens must go down to compensate for the
| increased foreign savings rate. How does it go down?
| Someone who is unemployed or underemployed must consume
| more than they earn. Income inequality becomes mandatory
| to just keep the economy alive. It's increasingly
| unsustainable for everyone including foreign owners of
| treasuries.
|
| Of course the US has a nice president right now that
| wants to let the damn savers save by increasing the
| investment rate through infrastructure spending. It's a
| win-win for everyone. The underemployed get jobs, the
| savers get a nice investment that will not suddenly
| collapse one day.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| news is never accidental.
|
| the subtext here is obvious: dear normal people, Uncle Sam will
| not tolerate a competitor to the USD. get out before we
| criminalize crypto.
| lvl100 wrote:
| How Drug Cartels Use Bitcoin Mining to...
| uberdru wrote:
| This must be a riff on the article I read a couple of months ago
| that described Iceland's aluminum industry as a means of
| exporting its geothermal energy. It's the only plausible argument
| I have seen for Bitcoin's intrinsic value.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Alternate headline: How Iran manages to maintain some semblance
| of an economy despite immoral sanctions.
|
| Not a crypto person at all but I do remember when the last US
| president ripped up the Iran deal which afforded the
| International Atomic Energy Agency the right to inspect their
| operations and replaced it with... nothing. I think this is proof
| enough that all of the talk about Iran being a threat (to the US?
| to the world?) is vastly over hyped.
|
| Now we've got warhawks, oil companies & the finance industry all
| working together with Iran as the bogeyman driving all their
| policies. Watch for Yellen or congress to drop some "bitcoin
| supports Iran" talking points any minute now.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I think what's actually interesting about it is that Iran
| actually forbids crypto for local currency transactions,
| because they don't want people to bypass the local currency. So
| it's one rule for the government and another for the people.
|
| But yes, I agree with most of what you said, also what Jellen
| said about global corp tax is kind of messed up. They don't
| want to go after their own big corps, but rather control the
| rest of the world. As long as the fiscal years start at
| different times, they can still shuffle money around as they
| please, but nobody actually dares touching the US corps in the
| US.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Bitcoin will never be true decentralization because the real
| world runs on centralized violence and power grabs.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| It can't be decentralized to begin with, because whoever
| has more money can run more mining and whoever mines more
| has more power in the network. It's still more about rich
| hording power. On the flipside it may just be a little bit
| more distributed and accessible than the current prevalent
| system.
| siwatanejo wrote:
| But mining doesn't grant you any power (unless you manage
| to accumulate 51% of it, which is in this day and age
| pretty much impossible for a single individual or
| organization). Mining is just a service that you provide
| (to secure the network), and you get rewarded for it.
|
| Compare that to how monetary inflation works in the fiat
| world: they just press a button, et voi-la, they got
| their funding.
| slver wrote:
| True decentralization means you don't get to complain when
| Bitcoin is used to do everything you hate.
|
| You don't get to complain when honest people lose
| cumulatively billions of their hard earned savings to
| scammers and hackers.
|
| You don't get to complain when peope hire hitmen, buy drugs
| and child porn with it.
|
| You don't get to complain when data mining centers hook
| illegally to the power grid and steal millions of dollars
| of energy.
|
| Or when countries avoid sanctions, or manipulate other
| countries through it.
|
| That's precisely what decentralization and deregulation
| looks like. It's the law of the jungle. Enjoy.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Most of the thing you listed are illegal, and paying them
| with Bitcoins don't make them magically legal.
|
| If someone makes an "Uber for hitmen", it will still be
| illegal in spite someone is using an app to hire them and
| paying them with their altcoins.
| slver wrote:
| Honestly it's very disappointing I have to explain this
| but I NEVER ARGUED THE LEGALITY STATUS of these
| activities.
|
| I argue the fact Bitcoin and other coins enables crime.
|
| I'll make it really simple for you: would you hire a
| hitman with a briefcase full of cash, or you'd do a bank
| wire with subject "for the murder, thanks"?
|
| Think why we don't use bank wires for this.
|
| Now think why anonymous cash transfers are hard
| internationally.
|
| Now think what Bitcoin is. It's anonymous cash over the
| Internet.
|
| It's a huge enabler for illegal activities because it's
| anonymous and decentralized and happens over Internet.
|
| You can spin it any way you wish, but the fact speak if
| you're a criminal, Bitcoin is automatically the most
| attractive way for making transactions to you, aside from
| person to person cash briefcases.
|
| Law is centralized by nature. Because law has to be
| enforced in a centralized nature. Decentralization and
| anonymity means you can't apply the law. "Illegal" means
| therefore NOTHING to Bitcoin.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| The irony of this whole statement is that _bitcoin isnt
| anonymous_! (which is a core reason it lost its intended
| value as a medium of exchange)
|
| The general sentiment also applies to cash, and the
| reality is the authorities want to track your every
| transaction, which is why every opportunity to diminish
| cash has and will be taken.
| slver wrote:
| It's anonymous because you see wallets, but you don't
| know who has them. That's what anonymous means.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The reasons you give against Bitcoin can be used also to
| against encryption.
|
| We agree that hiring a hitman is illegal, and we agree
| that it will be easier for the police to solve the crimes
| if encryption is banned and the police can read all the
| emails/whastapp/whatever of all the people in the city.
| slver wrote:
| I'm tired of this completely wrong argument.
|
| - Encryption doesn't stop law enforcement from having
| backdoors at key servers, and they do.
|
| - Also we're discussing a financial transaction
| instrument, which REQUIRES MASS for it to make sense (for
| it to be valuable for transactions).
|
| - While you can roll your own unique encryption and
| communication channel and authorities won't know a thing.
|
| So no, situation is completely different with encryption.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I should have written "end to end encryption".
| slver wrote:
| But if you have written it I'd have to note end-to-end
| encryption (as in truly end-to-end) is rarely applied in
| the real world.
|
| It doesn't make even pragmatic sense, for ex. how can
| Apple index and process your photos, if it just sees them
| as bunch of binary noise? It can't. So it doesn't.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Encryption is _tolerated_ because it also allows
| protecting regular people from criminals, in ways which
| allowed to build e-commerce on top, and ultimately
| enabling great economic boom on the Internet. If it was
| _only_ about securing messaging, it would likely have
| been banned already.
| bawolff wrote:
| People forget what the 90s was like (if you had to export
| out of usa)
| kemonocode wrote:
| All those things were already illegal (worse yet,
| immoral) whether you pay for them in fiat or in Bitcoin.
| That's a false equivalence.
| slver wrote:
| That's the whole point. They're illegal/immoral, but
| decentralization means you can't mitigate them despite
| that.
|
| Tell me when is the last time a drug dealer used a wire
| transfer with reason "for the cocain"? Oh they don't do
| that. I wonder why.
| slver wrote:
| > So it's one rule for the government and another for the
| people.
|
| Of course it is, otherwise it wouldn't be a government.
| People get really silly with this. Governments can define
| laws, enforce them and so on. They have many rules that apply
| to them and not to everyone else. That's the whole point.
| drclau wrote:
| I agree with you on how governments often work. I can't
| agree that's the whole point, though. Why would it be? I'd
| be curious to understand why you think so.
| allie1 wrote:
| The whole point is to enforce rules that benefit the
| whole, at the cost of individual benefit.
|
| Say you have 100 rials or 1M. Converting it to BTC might
| be good for you individually if you believe the local
| currency is going to lose value, but it's not good for
| the collective as there will now be less demand and more
| supply of it. So the individual benefits at the cost of
| the group. Stopping that is the gov's job.
|
| This is a general comment, I am not familiar with Iran as
| a country and might be missing context.
| leetcrew wrote:
| this is a really unconvincing example, at least to me.
| despite the name, bitcoin doesn't function much like a
| currency. that is to say, someone who would otherwise
| hold $1mm cash would probably not want to convert that to
| bitcoin, at least not for legal transactions. so if a
| meaningful amount of people would rather use BTC than
| fiat, the problem is not that people are allowed to buy
| BTC. the problem is that the government has failed
| spectacularly at issuing a stable currency, which is one
| of its main jobs.
| allie1 wrote:
| It might not be a pertinent example for btc, it was just
| used as an example.
|
| The US did something similar with gold - https://en.m.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act#:~:text=The....
|
| The main point is, the govt has a mandate to take actions
| that benefit the whole, even at the cost of individuals.
|
| Yes it will make mistakes, and yes it sometimes will be
| corrupt and abuse that mandate, but in those cases the
| country can appoint a different group of people to try
| and fix things, that's its only option that addresses the
| problem and is not "benefiting the individual and harming
| the whole".
| sushid wrote:
| The US also has done the exact same in the past.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act
| marto1 wrote:
| > So it's one rule for the government and another for the
| people.
|
| You cannot imprison other people, but your government sure
| can. There are many cases where the government has special
| jurisdiction as compared to citizens and it is clearly
| recognized as a moral thing to have in democracies around the
| world.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I think this is a bit different. They're exporting
| something that's illegal to use locally. It's like if the
| government of a dry county was distilling liquor.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a strong philosophical argument in favour of
| governments following different rules from people.
|
| However, in this practical case, the government is forcing
| people to make bad choices (to use a second rate fiat
| currency). It understands it is forcing people to make a
| bad choice, because it doesn't want to make that choice
| itself.
|
| This is the thing I don't get about more tin-pot
| dictatorships. It is obvious why the States force people to
| use their first-rate fiat currency - the US benefits hugely
| from people using the dollar.
|
| It is obvious why Iran might force its citizens to use the
| US dollar - if they didn't they probably get invaded by the
| US on some flimsy pretext.
|
| But why force people to use a local fiat currency? It just
| makes their country poorer. Why are there all these idiots
| who look at their own economy and think "gee, this thing
| might work to well if we let people save in a liquid
| asset"?
|
| How do people think they are going to generate wealth if
| not incentivising people to consume less than they produce?
| It is the only reliable path. Why do all these governments
| find it so scary?
| viztor wrote:
| That's kind of always the case, because using non-government
| backed currency undermines governments control of its own
| economy.
| kyrra wrote:
| The issue isn't that Iran is doing bad things directly, it's
| their proxies forces. You can Google and find a source you may
| trust more, but here's two[0][1]. Iran was taking much of the
| money the US was paying them to not build nukes, and funneling
| it into proxy forces to further their interests in the region.
| You can dig deeper to understand what those proxies have been
| doing in the region.
|
| [0] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/irans-islamist-proxies
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-iraq-proxies-
| insight...
| dv_dt wrote:
| Doesn't the US use it's money and influence to further its
| interests? many heinous and hurtful outcomes are facilitated
| by such funding around the world. That would include
| overturning a democracy in Iran and putting it on a course
| for the governance it has today.
| elefanten wrote:
| Weak comparison in scope.
| seoaeu wrote:
| So we should just be OK with that when Iran is the one
| doing it? You can object to US foreign policy and also be
| opposed to Iran's attempts to destabilize an entire region
| causing immense suffering in the process
| user982 wrote:
| Iran's proxies have fought against:
|
| 1) US, the illegal invader actively destabilizing the
| region for two straight decades+.
|
| 2) ISIS, the brutal Islamist neo-Caliphate birthed from
| the destabilization brought by (1).
|
| 3) KSA, currently bombing Yemeni civilian infrastructure
| into the largest humanitarian crisis in the world using
| weapons and support from (1).
|
| 4) Israel, the apartheid nuclear ethnostate that has
| abused a captive population for generations with the
| support and protection of (1).
| kyrra wrote:
| US had three motives for entering the Middle East. The
| first was originally the attack on 9/11, the second being
| trying to maintain one friendly government (Israel), and
| third was access to oil.
|
| The problem with the first is that the US never came up
| with a good exit strategy, so we are just kind of
| lingering over there now. It's not even clear what our
| objective was from the start (it's all sorta all over the
| place). There has been an appetite to get the US out, but
| when Obama got us out, ISIS took charge in the region and
| Obama had to send troops back in.
|
| Supporting Israel can be done through money and arm
| sales, so you don't really need forces over there.
|
| Oil has become less of an issue since the US went
| through. Its fracking boom and generated an oil surplus.
|
| It's definitely a careful balance, while many people
| don't want to be there, if the US does not have troops
| there, it could become a breeding ground for anti-
| American organizations that then want to attack the US.
| It's a hard problem.
| Berobero wrote:
| Iran has a shit regime (corollary: all countries' regimes
| are shit, just some more than others).
|
| To your question, it's a matter of emphasis. You have a
| fundamentally greater moral imperative to criticize your
| own government (I assume you're not Iranian living in
| Iran) and its dealings/shortcomings simply because you
| can, in principle, actually have some relatively
| significant impact on its actions. So no, there is no
| need to ignore the conduct of the Iranian government, but
| if you place emphasis on it disproportional to what you
| actually have influence over, your moral priorities are
| fundamentally misplaced.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I'm not sure I would characterize Iran's efforts as
| destabilizing the region, certainly not more than the US
| injecting billions of dollars of arms into the region.
|
| Really we're in the endgame of fossil fuels, and arguably
| control of access to those resources that was the main
| reason that the US was so heavily involved in that region
| for decades. But with the green revolution needed and
| pragmatically quite close in reach, the US needs to
| fundamentally rethink its involvement.
| dv_dt wrote:
| A rethink along these lines would be good imho. Less
| stick and better carrots.
|
| https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-05-21/
| com...
| throw_this_one wrote:
| Iran: "we will wipe Israel off the face of the earth!"
|
| You: economic sanctions are immoral!
|
| Lol.
| eloff wrote:
| Why are sanctions on Iran immoral?
|
| Sanctions seem like the least harmful way to deal with bad
| actors at the nation state level like Iran, North Korea, and
| Russia. This is the equivalent of not playing with the kid who
| can't play fair or follow the rules. Replace playing with
| trading.
|
| You might say Iran is not a bad actor, but that's not a
| winnable position to take.
|
| Would you prefer military intervention over sanctions? What
| else can you do in these kinds of situations?
| Udik wrote:
| > This is the equivalent of not playing with the kid who
| can't play fair or follow the rules.
|
| More like the equivalent of the school bully threatening to
| beat up any kid who plays with the kid he doesn't like.
| nradov wrote:
| Sanctions aren't violence, or even the threat of violence.
| They're an attempt to prevent violence.
| seoaeu wrote:
| "Doesn't like" due to the real and lasting harm they've
| caused to the entire region
| Udik wrote:
| Says the country which organised a coup in Iran to
| install a dictator, financed another local dictator to
| attack it, then waged war twice against him leaving a
| country in ruins, supports and arms a religious absolute
| monarchy and its wars, supports an apartheid regime, paid
| jihadists in Syria to keep a civil war running...
| 8note wrote:
| I'd say Iran isn't a bad actor.
|
| They're not an American client state, bit they're no worse
| than America, China, or Saudi Arabia
|
| You can argue that they're a threat to american interests and
| an embarrassment to the American intelligence agencies, but
| that's not exactly the same as being a bad actor.
| eloff wrote:
| That's a logical fallacy. Two wrongs don't make a right.
|
| China and Saudi Arabia are pretty dirty, but I don't see
| the US in that camp lately.
| sfifs wrote:
| You probably should read up on the history of the Shah of
| Iran, Western oil companies, the CIA and the Islamic
| revolution.
| eloff wrote:
| That's not an argument. But I happen to be familiar enough
| with that history to also say your point isn't even a valid
| one.
|
| That's the two wrongs make a right logical fallacy. That
| the US did shit to Iran does not excuse the shit Iran is
| currently up to.
| LegitShady wrote:
| "You should read up on" is not a persuasive logical
| argument - it's a dismissive throw away line given by
| someone who doesn't have one.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Even if you grant that Iran is a bad actor (which is kind of
| rich considering how much western countries deal with Saudi
| Arabia)...
|
| It's still _very_ fucked up that the US signed a treaty with
| Iran saying "we'll lift sanctions if you do X", Iran did
| X... and the first thing the US did after the next
| administration change was to say "Fuck the treaty we signed,
| we're putting sanctions back".
|
| What's the message being sent to Iran? "It doesn't matter if
| you try to play nice, we're going to destroy your economy
| unless you submit as a vassal state to the US"?
|
| Also, I don't see how the US has any sort of moral legitimacy
| to unilaterally decide which country is a "good actor" and
| which country is a "bad actor", even against the wishes of
| its allies (including western democraties). In a fair process
| the US would only be one of several countries deciding
| together, and would only act with common backing.
|
| If your answer is "moral legitimacy doesn't matter, because
| the US has the power to enforce its decisions", sure, that's
| true. Enjoy it while it lasts.
|
| But don't act surprised when other countries start banding
| against US hegemony.
| williesleg wrote:
| I love me some smelly burka too
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > immoral
|
| So, how do you feel about throwing gay people off buildings?
|
| Edit: Yes, I know this isn't any part of why we have sanctions
| against Iran. But it should be.
| michael1999 wrote:
| I dislike our alliance with Saudi Arabia. What is your point?
| gokhan wrote:
| What kind of argument is that? LGBT rights in Saudi Arabia is
| almost equally non-existent [1] yet US happily sells them
| arms used in a horrific war in Yemen. SA's prince can even
| get away from blatant murder.
|
| Besides, it was ISIS throwing gay people off roofs and
| filming for propaganda. Iran has an authoritarian system with
| it's (many many) own sins, but it's no different than any
| other country in the Middle East. All are terrible, but some
| receive love from the west and some don't.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia
| kemonocode wrote:
| I fail to see how an economic sanction towards an
| authoritarian regime that ends up having a greater impact
| upon its people than on the regime itself will somehow fix
| said regime's mistreatment of minorities.
|
| I come from Venezuela, I have family in Cuba. I know what
| economic sanctions look like and what they do against
| dictatorships. Hint: they do nothing, because they're not
| going to abide by your rules or meet you in the middle.
| agency wrote:
| Look also at the sanctions we imposed on Iraq after the
| first gulf war. Conservative estimates put the death toll
| at a quarter to half a million CHILDREN alone. I guess
| those kids should have risen up and overthrown Saddam,
| because that's what the sanctions were conditional on - his
| removal from power.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| That's a very practical way of putting it, thanks.
|
| This was mostly a knee-jerk reaction on my part because it
| often seems to me that in the rush to (rightly) denounce
| bad policies by the U.S. or other countries against Muslim
| majority nations/groups, the fact of extremely barbaric
| practices by some of these groups is just swept aside, like
| it's okay because they're being victimized. It's still not
| okay.
|
| Regardless, I concede the point. I'll leave my prior
| comment up, though, because I can't be alone in these
| feelings and your response provides more nuance to the
| issue.
| miracle2k wrote:
| Since you are in a conciliatory mood, you might also want
| to reconsider the whole "throwing gays off buildings"
| thing, because that doesn't happen in Iran. LGBT rights
| are by no means great in Iran, but this kind of hyperbole
| does not help anyone.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| I decided to check on this, and it would appear that it
| was more of an ISIS thing that anti-Muslim Americans
| falsely projected out across the entire group. However,
| there have been at least a few hundred state-facilitated
| executions
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Iran).
|
| One thing I was not aware of before today is that Iran is
| second only to Thailand in sex reassignment surgeries,
| which I found very surprising. Apparently it may be done
| in some cases to avoid persecution of same-sex
| relationships, but the fact that it's not only tolerated
| but partly paid for by the state is pretty mind blowing.
| There's always more detail when you look closer at issues
| like this. Thanks for prompting me to look it up.
| agency wrote:
| Do you think attitudes towards homosexuality are any more
| progressive in Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc? No, but they're
| "good" US client states and help further US interests in
| the region so it's okay when they dismember a journalist
| inside an embassy and whatever else besides.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| I don't think harming all Iranians via sanctions for the
| actions of the regime is the right way to deal with this,
| especially because the sanctions do nothing to stop
| persecution of LGBT.
| seoaeu wrote:
| How else do you propose pressuring them? Launching an
| invasion doesn't really seem like an improvement for the
| common people there
| oblio wrote:
| I don't think that's his point.
|
| The US doesn't embargo Iran because of that. Otherwise they'd
| probably have to embargo a bunch of their closest allies for
| half a century or more.
|
| It's all realpolitik, morals don't influence this issue much.
| krrrh wrote:
| It wasn't replaced by "nothing". The information that
| intelligence agencies are able to gather about Iran's nuclear
| weapons programs is more detailed and accurate than what the
| IAEI could or would gather under JCPOA. The Iranian regime
| faces internal dissent, and western intelligence agencies
| working with dissenters to retard the Iranian nuclear program
| directly (see last month's cyber attack on Natal for instance)
| may handle the threat better than the state department and the
| UN.
| sschueller wrote:
| Like the WMD in Iraq and the smoking gun?
| krrrh wrote:
| No, I think this is different from that example. I don't
| even know what you're trying to compare.
| sschueller wrote:
| The UN inspectors said there are no WMDs in Iraq. The US
| intelligence agencies said the opposite and provided made
| up proof taking the US into a quagmire of a war. In the
| end there where no WMDs in Iraq.
|
| So I am saying the US intelligence agencies are useless
| and are used for political purposes to re-enforce what
| ever the current administration wants to do for foreign
| policy.
| praptak wrote:
| For me as a member of the general public it's actually
| "nothing'. Intelligence agencies are opaque, have no
| incentive to tell the truth and have a track record of lies.
|
| An international body has at least _some_ checks and balances
| to keep it close to the truth.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| I think the environment is way more important in terms of
| problems with BitCoin. Evading Sanctions are way easier than
| that. Give a couple of stacks to Hunter Biden and you are good to
| go.
| xbar wrote:
| Comments this morning seem very aggressive-defensive. How about a
| different takeway: cryptocurrency defeats current international
| sanction tools.
|
| Whatever your feelings about US/Iran or your feelings about
| Bitcoin/Climate Change, sanctions have been an effective peace-
| time tool for the UN to bring countries to the negotiating table.
| Perfectly effective? No. Security Council politically motivated?
| Yes.
|
| Better than war for the citizens of all countries? Yes.
|
| Will Bitcoin lead to more war as a result of weakening the power
| of sanctions? I wouldn't hazard a guess. But I didn't see this
| possibility coming.
| Udik wrote:
| > cryptocurrency defeats current international sanction tools
|
| Yes, exactly. They (in part) defeat an act of unilateral
| violence, one that is very cheap for the perpetrator, from one
| country against another. Which seems a very good thing.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >cryptocurrency defeats current international sanction tools.
|
| If one values international law, or the, "international order"
| (as Secretary of State Blinken put it, without irony), then a
| bright line needs be drawn between, "international sanction
| tools" that are used by the UN and the unilateral sanctions
| issued by the US.
|
| >Will Bitcoin lead to more war as a result of weakening the
| power of sanctions?
|
| Bellicose nations have always issued demands to other sovereign
| nations backed by the threat of illegal wars of aggression.
| Will the ability of targeted nations to avoid being starved to
| death via the use of bitcoin lead to more war? Possibly, but is
| the problem there really bitcoin, or rogue nations who consider
| themselves above international law?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Can these coins be detected and blacklisted? Pretty pointless to
| do something like this on BTC.
| variable11 wrote:
| The elites are out in force against Bitcoin, using all the same
| tired cliches they use for everything: "racism, Iran, Russia,
| climate change."
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Prior to the re-imposition of US sanctions, Iran was producing
| around 1400 million barrels of oil per year and exporting around
| 800 [1]. The article says that Iranian Bitcoin mining is
| currently consuming the equivalent of around 10 million barrels
| per year.
|
| At a consumption rate of ~1% of the potential exportable amount,
| this doesn't seem like a particularly significant evasion of
| sanctions.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48119109
| asddubs wrote:
| political implications aside, it still seems so crazy that here
| we're just burning 10 million barrels a year on doing nothing
| useful at all
| logicchains wrote:
| >political implications aside, it still seems so crazy that
| here we're just burning 10 million barrels a year on doing
| nothing useful at all
|
| The Iranian people impoverished by sanctions would beg to
| differ (no pun intended).
| asddubs wrote:
| hence "political implications aside". this could also be
| solved by the US lifting their unjust sanctions
| lifty wrote:
| If only we could all get along and sing Kumbaya together,
| we could solve all the world problems. In this context of
| human conflict and geopolitical power struggles, does
| bitcoin make any sense to you?
| asddubs wrote:
| only as much as other means of money laundering, which
| tend to be more energy efficient
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere a few years back that they have
| to keep pumping it in their antiquated infrastructure
| otherwise it causes problems to the infrastructure/wells. I
| tried to google it but it's hard to find.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It isn't unique to Iran, in general stopping oil wells is a
| risky thing. There's no guarantee it will start back up,
| and even when stopped it can leak combustibles.
| intotheabyss wrote:
| They're securing the network and being rewarded for it. You
| might not like it, but it's hardly 'nothing useful at all'.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Like a security guard for a mall with no stores inside.
| mabbo wrote:
| It's a cost/benefit ratio problem. Other crypto currencies
| can achieve the same goal for a tiny, tiny fraction of the
| energy costs.
|
| As well, what major difference would there be to the world
| if bitcoin vanished overnight? What real-world value is it
| providing to us?
|
| I don't see the costs of bitcoin being worth the benefits.
| graeme wrote:
| What has the network produced in the real economy?
|
| It's possible bitcoin may produce something someday. But
| look at it from an outside perspective: a bunch of people,
| motivated by an idea, have got together and commissioned
| the burning of coal and oil on a vast scale.
|
| Bitcoin more or less operates as "proof of carbon". Imagine
| if a crypto network operated by "proof of art burned" or
| "proof of buildings destroyed". And people got together and
| directed capital towards buying up art and burning it, or
| buying real estate and knocking this down.
|
| And this secured their currency network. You'd have to have
| some _very_ good output from the network to justify such
| waste.
|
| Because proof of work is proof of waste. That's how it's
| set up and secures the network. Unlike existing systems it
| is antiefficient. And currently it is setup to waste carbon
| and GPUs.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > What has the network produced in the real economy?
|
| It has lessened the impact of economic sanctions imposed
| on a nation. I think that's direct proof of how valuable
| cryptocurrency is. People should be free to trade without
| some country imposing bullshit sanctions on them.
|
| Someone should tell them about Monero.
| thih9 wrote:
| I don't know much about cryptocurrencies; how is monero
| different from bitcoin in this context?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Monero transactions use ring signatures and are very
| difficult to trace. Each transaction is signed by at
| least 11 keys and there's no way to tell which key is the
| source of the coins. The source and destination addresses
| as well as the transaction amounts don't show up on the
| block chain. Even if they did people can just make new
| subaddresses to make correlation extremely difficult if
| not impossible.
|
| The US treasury tried to sanction a Monero address once.
| They ended up sanctioning a transaction identifier.
|
| https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt
|
| > Digital Currency Address - XMR 5be5543ff73456ab9f2d2078
| 87e2af87322c651ea1a873c5b25b7ffae456c320;
|
| Note the lack of a 0x prefix. Here's the transaction on a
| block explorer:
|
| https://localmonero.co/blocks/search/5be5543ff73456ab9f2d
| 207...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Bitcoin is a public ledger of all transactions: if I know
| your wallet address I can see how much money is inside
| it, and I can see how much money you've sent to other
| wallets, what wallets you've received from etc etc
|
| Monero anonymizes all this, no one can see how much money
| is being sent where.
| yao420 wrote:
| > What has the network produced in the real economy?
|
| Well according to this article it has allowed a nation
| state to avoid international controls and restrictions.
| Satoshi himself would be proud, it pretty much what he
| was imagining.
| herewulf wrote:
| According to the article that accounts for 4.5% of it, so
| the other 95.5% of it is waste.
| traloid wrote:
| useful is subjective
| base698 wrote:
| Think about the barrels burned by the tanks and planes in the
| middle east. The proof of work for the petro dollar is the
| military.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Something something Bitcoin solves all world problems, brings
| world peace etc.
| kwdc wrote:
| No mention about what happens when China lets Iran purchase oil
| using their Chia crypto. Interesting omission.
| josu wrote:
| Before reading the article, keep in mind that Elliptic makes
| money by scaring governments: either selling their software to
| them directly, or through regulation that is passed forcing
| companies to hire them.
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| sva_ wrote:
| > For example, blockchain analytics solutions such as those
| provided by Elliptic can be used by regulated financial
| institutions to detect and block cryptoasset deposits from Iran-
| based entities including miners. Techniques can also be employed
| to ensure that transaction fees are not paid to miners in high
| risk jurisdictions.
|
| Interesting. It seems like they're basically saying that mined
| blocks should be accepted based on the location of the one
| submitting it. This whole article seems to be a sales pitch. Lets
| see how decentralized and unregulated Bitcoin really is.
|
| >This level of Bitcoin mining would currently bring in annualised
| revenues of close to $1 billion.
|
| I wondered how they came up with that number. Miners currently
| seem to earn around $30 million per day[0]. 30*365*0.045 = ~500
| mil. Seems like they conveniently used the highest recent rewards
| of $60mil per day. The statement just seems sensationalist at
| best, all things considered.
|
| [0] https://bitcoinvisuals.com/chain-block-reward-day
| hanniabu wrote:
| > can be used by regulated financial institutions to detect and
| block cryptoasset deposits
|
| They're not talking about censoring/forking/manipulating the
| chain. They're talking about centralized financial services
| built on top of bitcoin blocking coin that is linked to Iran.
| sva_ wrote:
| Fair enough. So that's just the old concept of 'tainted
| coins'.
| viraptor wrote:
| > It seems like they're basically saying that mined blocks
| should be accepted based on the location of the one submitting
| it.
|
| That's silly. Mining doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, so setting
| up a tunnel to mask the origin of the block would be trivial.
| The moment Iran's blocked, why wouldn't miners do that?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > Interesting. It seems like they're basically saying that
| mined blocks should be accepted based on the location of the
| one submitting it. This whole article seems to be a sales
| pitch. Lets see how decentralized and unregulated Bitcoin
| really is.
|
| This implies forking the blockchain. So some clients will use
| "curated" blockchain. I don't think that this fork will be
| popular.
| quanto wrote:
| > The electricity being used by miners in Iran would require the
| equivalent of approximately 10 million barrels of crude oil each
| year to generate - around 4% of total Iranian oil exports in
| 2020.
|
| 4% of the post-sanction exports. It seems that the sanctions
| "evasion" does not have an impact on the efficacy of the
| sanction.
|
| Instead of seeing Iranian mining boom as some tech-enabled
| sanction workaround, I see it as just that -- a boom just because
| electricity is cheap.
| dragonelite wrote:
| Chinese government is clamping down on their domestic miners.
| Given how Iran and China are quiet close maybe those miners can
| get some good energy deals. Also means the Russia, Iran and
| China(coalition, partnership?) crypto hashing power is also
| more decentralized.
| tudorw wrote:
| It's an advert no? "blockchain analytics solutions such as those
| provided by Elliptic"
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| I bet this is why Bitcoin is taking a big hit at the moment. Yes,
| there are many good reasons for that to happen and maybe it's for
| the better. But I would put my mouth where the money is that this
| is the actual reason. It's probably an attack organized by
| US/Israel against an income source of Iran.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| 10second read+summary: Iran burns oil to mine Bitcoin
| timbit42 wrote:
| How does that help them export their oil?
| Udik wrote:
| It doesn't but it allows them to export its _value_ , which
| is the only thing everyone cares about.
| slumdev wrote:
| > Thousands of unlicensed mining farms have subsequently been
| identified and shut down - including in mosques, which receive
| free electricity.
|
| So...if I open a mosque and mine Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, can
| I still get some of that free electricity?
| ajb wrote:
| Reading this, it occurs to me that laundering operations seem to
| represent a fundamental threat to bitcoin, as follows:
|
| - legitimate miners should be willing to spend $1 mining to gain
| $1+delta
|
| - launderers should be willing to spend $1 (dirty) mining to get
| $1-delta (laundered)
|
| So launderers should outcompete legitimate miners.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The entire point of cryptocurrencies is to evade government.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| This is a really good point
| robot_no_419 wrote:
| You call it a "threat", but that's literally the whole point of
| Bitcoin. It cannot be censored that easily. It's a feature, not
| a bug.
| ajb wrote:
| Even if laundering is the whole point of bitcoin - a view I'm
| sympathetic to - it needs to be at least semi-legitimate for
| laundering to work. If market forces mean that the fraction
| of miners who are launderers increases over time, then
| eventually governments will consider it all tainted and it
| will no longer be useful for laundering.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| let me tell you a story about your local restaurant...
|
| or laundry mat...
|
| or car wash...
|
| or...
| b-x wrote:
| What is your definition of "Legitimate"? Is it just what the US
| lawmakers define as lawful? In such case, we've witnessed many
| instances where the US imposes sanctions on various entities
| with no relevant excuses but to oppress those who disagree with
| it. One recent example that I can think of is when the US
| imposed sanctions on members of the ICC [1].
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54003527
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| "Legitimate" in this case refers to any miner who is mining
| honestly and is simply motivated by profits from the block
| reward and fees. If we ignore potential price increases and
| inefficiencies, an ideal mining market should see block
| production costs increase until the profit margin for such
| miners is close to zero. But miners with "ulterior motives"
| can extract more benefit from mining, and so can mine
| profitably even when production costs are very close to
| rewards. This means in theory such parties are likely to
| dominate the mining network.
|
| "Ulterior motives" includes a lot of things. It definitely
| includes money laundering (see Iran and China) but it also
| includes people who mine so they can conduct 51% and MEV
| attacks on the network. On the positive side it may include
| pseudo-altruistic types such as major currency holders, who
| are willing to mine at a loss in order to support the
| currency's value. The thing all of these parties have in
| common is that none of them are incentivized to mine honestly
| solely because of the intrinsic profits involved in mining:
| your hope is that their ulterior motive is compatible with
| honest behavior. When that isn't born out, your network runs
| into trouble.
|
| * Obviously in the real world there are tons of capital
| expenses and prices fluctuate wildly, so this model is loaded
| with inefficiency that can allow some folks to make money on
| mining as a business in and of itself. But PoS systems will
| have fewer such inefficiencies.
| [deleted]
| ajb wrote:
| I'm not trying to make a moral point here. For the purposes
| of trying to predict the outcome of the interaction of
| governments and bitcoin, what governments consider legitimate
| is an appropriate thing to consider. That doesn't mean I
| agree or disagree with individual US laws.
|
| [Edit: Actually matthewdgreen is right in a sibling comment,
| that the argument can be made without considering laws as
| such]
| [deleted]
| maxqin1 wrote:
| The picture is becoming clearer. Incentive theory will cause
| governments to put an end to at least POW blockchains per
| launderers.
|
| POS will be trickier for launderers but it won't be impossible.
| nathias wrote:
| Gosh golly, it's as if it was made to be a tool against the
| petrodollar ...
| almost_usual wrote:
| That sheds 30% of its value when Elon Musk tweets.
| [deleted]
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| What's wrong with Iran exporting oil? Why can't Iran export oil?
| The level of economic strangulation the US can achieve over
| countries is unprecedented. And they're often just arbitrarily
| punishing countries.
| nix23 wrote:
| They are part of the "Axis of Evil" TM by George W. Bush
| andy_ppp wrote:
| To be fair they have kidnapped quite a few British/Iranian
| citizens including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, they are
| effectively a religious dictatorship and a majority of their
| own people hate their government who I think have banned
| dancing in public and have arrested people for making TikTok
| videos, amongst more serious crimes. I'm not exactly sure the
| Iranian government are particularly nice people.
| k1m wrote:
| This article by Nazanin's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, is
| worth a read. The UK's role is rarely discussed:
|
| "As Iran sentences Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a further
| two years in Iran, her husband outlines why the UK's
| secretive, unaccountable arms trade is a danger to British
| citizens and why his family remains haunted by an unkept
| promise made by the UK government."
|
| https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-01-nazanins
| -...
| nix23 wrote:
| >dictatorship and a majority
|
| Brought (unwillingly) into power by the US once more:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9t
| a...
|
| >I'm not exactly sure the Iranian government are
| particularly nice people.
|
| One could say that about the CIA and the US-Government too.
| GordonS wrote:
| Keep in mind that there is a huge Western media and
| government bias against Iran, in the US in particular.
|
| I'm not saying the Iranian government doesn't do bad things
| - it absolutely does, though you could (easily) argue that
| the US has done far worse. Hell, you can also (again,
| easily) argue that the US and UK are largely responsible
| for many of the past wrongs of Iranian governments.
|
| As a singular anecdote from 21 years back, I spent a couple
| of weeks in Iran way back in 2000 (my father was working
| there as a geologist for an oil company and I joined him
| during the summer holidays) - things seemed _very_
| different than I 'd been led to believe. I felt completely
| safe wandering Tehran alone, and everyone I came across
| seemed extremely friendly and curious. They seemed to know
| how their country was portrayed outside of Iran, and wanted
| to show me otherwise. People talked freely about politics
| too, expressing likes and dislikes just like any western
| nation. And the food, my word the food...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| They are kidnapping and executing journalists- has this
| happened in the US or UK recently? https://www.google.co.
| uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/op...
| nix23 wrote:
| Thinking about Guantanamo...
| visarga wrote:
| No, US keeps their "special friends" in Guantanamo,
| keeping US soil clean. That's democracy in action and
| respect for the constitution, unlike lesser countries.
|
| When the US kidnaps people they call it "extraordinary
| rendition" so you don't think it's just a simple
| kidnapping + torture. It's extraordinary somehow.
|
| And Guantanamo is not the only one. https://www.google.co
| m/search?q=abu+ghraib+photos&tbm=isch
| GordonS wrote:
| It wasn't my intent to start a nationalistic or
| whataboutism flame war. History speaks for itself.
|
| My point is simply that things are absolutely not as
| black and white as we are led to believe, and the whole
| "axis of evil" rhetoric was ludicrous.
| [deleted]
| robbiep wrote:
| Don't make the mistake of confusing the position of the
| people of a country with the position and views of a
| government/regime.
|
| Iran is a remarkable place with a highly educated
| population. Of course they're nice and friendly and
| curious, most people in most countries are. The Iranian
| people aren't the enemy (re: prevailing paradigm of
| thought from the US), it is the regime. And let's face it
| both governments severely dislike each other, the
| destruction of the US is literally a rallying cry of the
| Iranian regime
| Udik wrote:
| > the destruction of the US is literally a rallying cry
| of the Iranian regime
|
| Not quite. What they chant is roughly equivalent to "down
| with". On the other hand, the US has damaged Iran so much
| that you can't blame them for being very angry at it.
| croes wrote:
| But why are they a religious dictatorship in the first
| place? Khomeini was the reaction to the support of the Shah
| by western governments. They replaced one evil with
| another.
| ljm wrote:
| They're also a direct product of US and British
| intervention.
|
| This government didn't install itself.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It is in place because they fund terrorism.
| nix23 wrote:
| The Saudi Arabia?
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is a whataboutism. Iran's government directly funds
| terrorism - that isn't my opinion.
| tjpnz wrote:
| This is what the US does with countries when they won't play
| ball. Perhaps Iran should've been more grateful when they were
| freed from the tyranny of Democracy. The US had a lovely
| dictator picked out just for them.
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| Iran is not a democracy, candidates at the presidential
| election in the coming weeks must be approved by a counsel.
| The latter doesn't allow liberal candidates, and iranians
| have lost interest in the coming election because it will
| keep the Theocracy currently ruling in power.
|
| Also, the supreme leader is at the top of Iran's power
| structure and is not elected by the iranian population.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Yes and the US caused this system. What we see today is the
| US being angry at a system they are to blame for.
| throefvhj wrote:
| Yes, that happened after they overthrew the US supported
| dictator. Learn some history.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| And how are those your (America's) problems? Why do you
| care?
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| I am not american, and I wish iranians to have the
| freedom to chose their government. Most of them hate the
| islamic regime, this is a country with so much potential,
| ruined by a Theocracy.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Maybe if the US hadn't toppled Irans government and
| installed a puppet in 1956, things would look
| differently.
| croes wrote:
| The US had no problem with the Shah and have no problem
| with Saudi Arabia, despite the war in Yemen and the murder
| of Khashoggi. The only have a problem if they can't get the
| oil, ask Mohammad Mosaddegh.
| alert0 wrote:
| The petrodollar depends on it. When we went off the gold
| standard we "backed" our currency by enforcing that all oil
| sales be done in USD. This created global demand for dollars
| and allowed us to maintain our position as the primary reserve
| currency.
|
| I don't know the history super well but I would speculate that
| either Iran wanted to sell oil in another currency, or the
| other oil exporting countries we got in bed with (OPEC) didn't
| like Iran, or another one of our allies (Israel) didn't like
| Iran.
| yyyk wrote:
| I think that aiding in the death of a couple hundred thousand
| Syrians, having militias in at least 4 ME states, and chanting
| eternal hostility to US and Israel plays a role. Also putting
| women in jail for 20 years for refusing to wear hijab is
| unpopular.
| visarga wrote:
| Other countries did much worse to US and are still friends. I
| think it's arbitrary.
| Veen wrote:
| It is always bizarre to me that people think of
| international relations as a sphere in which normal
| morality operates or should operate. The US does what it
| thinks is in its strategic interests within the constraints
| of its power. Iran does the same.
|
| Whether one side or the other has in the past acted
| immorally is irrelevant. You don't win the argument by
| saying "America has done bad things too", as if that should
| persuade it to change its behavior. It's a category error;
| nothing but ineffectual emotive fluff. You'd have more
| traction arguing that sanctions are, in fact, not in
| America's long term best interests.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >You'd have more traction arguing that sanctions are, in
| fact, not in America's long term best interests
|
| The problem with that angle is that without caring about
| morals, military invasion is probably better for
| America's interests than sanction relief.
| Veen wrote:
| One would hope they'd learned from Iraq and Afghanistan
| why military invasions aren't the strategically optimal
| way to deal with these problems. Although that may be a
| forlorn hope.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| As much of a clusterfuck both of those wars were, I don't
| think they can be shown to have been clearly bad for the
| US long term interests. It's a hard thing to calculate,
| and the war hawks would be more than willing to only show
| the data saying more war is a good strategic idea.
| havetocharge wrote:
| You need the moral fluff to convince humans to risk their
| lives in participating in the invasion.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| There's more than enough willing mercenaries, at most the
| moral fluff just drives the price down.
| refurb wrote:
| Indeed. A lot of people tend to have a quite naive view
| of international relations - and I don't blame them as
| media reporting tends to simplify things to a extreme,
| often trying to identify who is right and who is wrong.
|
| In reality, beneath the surface, is a complex web of
| relationships and competing/aligned interests.
|
| A good example is the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It may
| seem like an Israel-Arab conflict, but many Arab
| countries are aligning with Israel to counter the Shiite
| threat from Iran. But those same Arab countries can't
| abandon the Palestinian cause either. So they walk a
| tightrope of tacitly supporting Palestine, often hollow
| public statements about the "on-going fight for a
| Palestinian state" all the while strategizing with Israel
| on how to contain Iranian influence. They can't support
| Palestine 100% because that would mean severely weakening
| themselves with regards to Iran.
|
| One can argue that's two faced and they should be ashamed
| of partnering with the enemy of a group they support, but
| in reality every country does it. It's about practically
| protecting your interests. And sure you might seem like
| you flip flop in your statements, but alliances and
| enemies are created and disappear all the time.
| havetocharge wrote:
| What's that de Gaulle quote? "No nation has friends only
| interests."
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I thought you were talking about the US until I got to
| "hostility towards US [...]". Funny.
|
| The US cares about the Syrian deaths about as much as they do
| about those in Yemen. Morals play absolutely no role here.
| And when a politician howls something about humanitarian
| reasons you can be sure it's a farce.
|
| What matters is giving head to the right person. Do that, and
| anything is fair game.
| Udik wrote:
| > The US cares about the Syrian deaths about as much as
| they do about those in Yemen
|
| Especially since they fueled the war themselves. Regime
| change is less risky if you can just pay people on the
| ground to do it for you.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| The sanctions from the US are not arbitrary, it's for a very
| specific purpose: to force oil-exporting countries to sell
| their oil in US dollars only. Think about when Iraq decided to
| sell their oil in euros back in 2000, they got invaded by the
| US and then quickly switched back to dollars.
|
| The petrodollar system is why the USD was able to retain status
| as the international reserve currency even after Bretton Woods:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > to force oil-exporting countries to sell their oil in US
| dollars only
|
| Why should the US be able to do that?
| [deleted]
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