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0 pointsbeaner5y ago0 comments

> why can't we discuss the bigger problem first without getting into the weeds of all the smaller problems?

People seem to be intentionally conflating some things. A carbon tax is nice precisely because it avoids getting into weeds and is a general approach that applies equally to everything. Some people are proposing this and others are saying "don't get caught up in the weeds." What? Makes no sense. It just reinforces the poster's point: that some people's real motivation doesn't seem to be environmental, there's a strange focus on crypto specifically that makes it seem like they want it to be reigned in for other reasons.

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WorldMaker5y ago· 2 in thread

General solutions are great, but when there's a noticeable log_10 distinction between two examples given, why can't we start at dealing with specific solutions to the biggest problem first and worry about the general approach later? It's a 99%/1% problem: we'd potentially get a huge savings if we dealt with the 99% of cases first and worried about the 1% later.

The raw statistics already tell a story that the difference between "BTC" and "Facebook" is greatly exponential. Wanting to focus first on the (much) bigger exponent isn't necessarily a sign that people's real motivation is "conspiratorial" against crypto.

beanerOP5y ago

Because an outright ban is misguided anyway. PoW systems incentivize renewable R&D and investment. If you just straight-up make it illegal, you kill a major driving force of change for the better. If you restrict carbon output instead, you just further challenge the industry to find a way to work inside those bounds, allowing creativity and positive externalities to continue to develop.

WorldMaker5y ago

There was an article just the other day of a coal plant that was entirely restarted for PoW coin mining. PoW systems are not proven to incentivize renewable energy R&D and investment. There's no proven link there. There's no proof that a PoW coin ban would "kill a major driving force of change for the better". Sure, a restriction on carbon output would be such a driving force, but there is no such restriction today and it is wishful thinking to believe that PoW miners are following anything like one in a market where such externalities continue to be unregulated.

It is orthogonal to the issue at hand that PoW is using far too much energy per transaction/per capita/per GDP/per most metrics you want to point to. Not using the energy in the first place is always going to be greener, no matter how much PoW systems invest in renewables and their R&D! I can't see that as "misguided". An outright ban would get immediate results versus a carbon output tax would incentivize eventual results, maybe. That's not misguided, that's just a different perspective, and a different preference on an ideal time window to address the situation versus wishful thinking and "golly gee, sure hope the market eventually figures it out someday".