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Comment Re:Banking License (Score 0) 57

>A regular bank can't magic up $1M out of thin air,

uhmm . . . historically, this is *exactly* where paper money comes from, and why they are called "banknotes"!

Banks issued paper notes promising to pay the bearer a sum of money (i.e., an amount of gold or silver) upon presentation. This was a matter of convenience, the paper being easier to haul about. This led to the practice al matter that a bank could issue more paper than it held money, as long as it was careful enough not to issue so much that too much would come in to redeem.

This isn't fundamentally difference than the practice of lending deposits back out to other borrowers (which is generally how this new money created by the banking system was disbursed, anyway).

In time, government stepped in to regulate how much a bank cold lend in this manner (reserve requirement).

Until WWII, the majority of the paper money in the US was *not* issued by the government, but by banks and some other companies (e.g., Railroads printed $2.40 bills, as $2.40 was a common fare).

Even today, some cites print a local currency, generally (universally) backed 1:1 by federal money. It circulates and shows the effects of buying locally as these local bills start showing up in cash registers. (In the same vein, the US Navy used to deal with local discontent and calls for removing bases of rowdy sailors by paying in $2 bills. Once merchants noticed just how much of their registers were full of that uncommon note, attitudes changed quickly!)

The federal government has the exclusive power to coin money--but this means coining metal; it doesn't stop states or other entities from printing paper money.

doc hawk, displaced economics professor

Comment Re:Old-school option (Score 1) 131

>Personally, if im bound by law to make loud
>sounds on my efficient and quiet vehicle, Iâ(TM)m
>inclined to make it the Peter Griffon awkward l
>laugh track.

Actually, I'm holding out for the Enterprise's main phasers (from Start Trek, not it's spinoffs!)

Possibly interspersed with photon torpedoes as it accelerates.

Comment Re:Good idea? IPOs and SPAC have a bad history (Score 2) 54

As an economist, I cringe at the typical IPO and related culture and expectations.

A huge runup in price on your IPO does *NOT* mean you've done well, or were a good choice.

It means that you *SCREWED UP*! You sold pieces of your company for less than people were willing to pay!

I would much prefer to see the new equity issued in a treasury style auction (price set at the highest price that sells them all, with everyone bidding that price or above receiving stock), a transparent direct sale into the market on an announced schedule, or one or more "dutch auctions", in which the price counts down from an initial high price until someone accepts (variants include anyone else being able to buy at the price before the clock resets).

And there's really no reason for investment bankers to be taking a fat seven or eight figure cut of the proceeds. The could either be done in house, or by firms that do it regularly. None are rocket science!

doc hawk

Comment Re:software abandonment (Score 1) 67

the only think that doesn't "work" as vivo claims, at least that I can remember at the moment, is that season passes got sloppy on rescheduled programs--sometines it catches the reschedule, and other times it doesn't.

The rest are dropped features--some outright, like suggestions and continuous recording, and others hidden behind an "upgrade", like the ability to record all series premiers.

They've dropped everything that distinguishes a tiro from any other dvd--well, except for needing to pay them for s subscription, I suppose. And their rf remote control is nice; hopefully I can get it to talk to the pi for mythic (although realistically, I'd usually run it through my appletv and that remote)

Comment software abandonment (Score 1) 67

They abandoned everything *in* the software that mad a Tivo desirable well before this. It had been just another DVR for some time.

Season passes that worked? Gone.

Subscribing to things like series premieres? Gone.

Suggestions? Gone.

We had a roamio with a lifetime subscription, and dumped it at yet another cox cable price increase.

By that time, we realized that pretty much everything we watched was on broadcast.

We got an orange pi (what a disaster! don't!), an hdhomerun quattro, and a terabyte disk.

we've been using the Quattro's dvd functions, and they've been "good enough" that other projects are ahead of getting the raspberry pi running.

Comment Re:Music and sound effects (Score 1) 38

Music & Sound effects shouldn't even be on the same channel as voice!

Adding channels on a digital distribution isn't as complicated as what it takes to broadcast & decode stereo audio, whether AM or FM.

And then add a "relative volume" slider so that regular volume controls both (or even let the user choose a curve so that music doesn't increase as much as speech [or more, if the user prefers])

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