The powers that be will likely push for cashless society because it gives them more surveillance & control

If credit/debit cards were the norm and cash was invented today, it would likely be outlawed down because criminals/terrorists/child kidnappers will use if for nefarious purposes

This isn't a good situation, but I also don't like the idea that people should be banned from using energy how they want to. One could also make the case that video games or vibrators are not "valuable" uses of energy, but if the user paid for it, they should be allowed to use it.

Instead of moralizing we should enact a tax on carbon (like we have in Canada) equal to the amount of money it would take to remove that carbon. AI and crypto (& xboxes, vibrators, etc) would still exist, but only at levels where they are profitable in this environment.

This is a bit of a fallacy. In a normal market, the rent for a home is less than the costs of home ownership (mortgage + maintenance + taxes) and that saved money can be used to purchase other assets.

Until the real estate mania of the last few years, if you followed this strategy, you would not be any worse off than the person who bought their home.

I personally would much rather have equity in more fungible assets than a home. Owning a home ties you to a specific location, and can't easily be sold in an emergency. Plus it's not a very diverse portfolio if most of you wealth is in a single property

I agree! There's a campaign pushing to avoid giving kids phones until 8th grade, but I think even that seems a bit too young

I said "smartphones" not all phones. If I had a kid, I'd get them a flip phone so they could call or text me, but one without internet capabilities

Awesome work! Thanks for sharing!

There are lots of knee-jerk reactions because people saw the word "blockchain" in the title. It's as intellectually lazy as the shills who refuse to criticize the crypto industry for its shady parts

This just sounds like a decentralized Slack, with a blockchain to ensure all nodes have the same data. The details are sparse, but this sounds like a proof of authority system to achieve consensus between authorized nodes in the network. No cryptocurrency involved. It's just using blockchain as a consensus algorithm between decentralized nodes(which is what it was designed for).

It doesn't say, but since their target demo seems to be enterprises, my guess is that the idea would be companies run their own node in the network, which would allow a high degree of security and be interoperable with other enterprises.

"But you could use a federated system..."

I'm all for the growth of the fediverse, but it still has many problems. If you're running a large enterprise that needs a guarantee that all your messages are synced, in the right order, and nothing has been removed later, a proof-of-authority blockchain is a better system than something federated

The writing on the filter is an interesting idea, but I think "Poison in every puff" will be considered cool to a certain kind of rebellious teen. They should write things that would be embarrassing for teens, like "Loser", "Tiny Dick", "Fart Smeller", "Gonorrhea" on them

I love the pedestrian streets in Montreal! My friend and I just walked along Ave Mont Royal last week on a warm evening. We saw and ice cream place and stopped by for a cone. It's a nice environment to be in and way better than what that street is like when the cars are there

A shame that Toronto seems to be scaling things back because of driver complaints. Streets should be for the people who live near them, not for suburbanites who just pass through them on their way to the Jays game

The housing market is not exactly a free market at the moment anyway

What it does do is stabilize city budgets. Low density suburban units carry a huuuuuge infrastructure burden on cities to maintain. In most places, the suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in tax revenue, hence why so many North American cities are in such poor finances

Certainly some of inflation is caused by a decade of rock bottom rates. Our real estate bubble is probably partially caused by this

Ultimately, the BOC has a mandate to fight inflation, and very few levers to use. They cannot fix the supply chain issues, but they can quash demand, so that is what they will do