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bdunham7:

--- Quote from: Simon on March 19, 2021, 04:55:53 pm --- You could trade with buttons if everyone agreed to recognise a symbolic value of a button.

--- End quote ---

One distinguishing feature of viable currencies is the inability to reproduce (counterfeit) the medium.  Gold is scarce and counterfeits can be spotted reasonably easily in most cases. 

Simon:
Yes my example was not meant to include the counterfeiting issue, it's silliness demonstrates how artificial a construct money or any other token system is. Precious metals are only on a higher level as they are natural resources that cannot be faked. A token system is only comparable if it is as hard to fake.

bd139:

--- Quote from: Nusa on March 19, 2021, 04:15:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: bd139 on March 19, 2021, 01:09:33 pm ---Here in the UK the customer is told to piss off or the backup POS unit or mobile network connection is used instead...

--- End quote ---

While some of the 35 countries in America* may be third world, your punch line is apparently not true, given the UK example posted early this this thread:


--- Quote from: themadhippy on March 08, 2021, 09:07:26 pm ---
--- Quote ---What is exactly the nature of the failure that makes all supermarkets not accept cards, but ATMs work
--- End quote ---
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55805777

--- End quote ---

*I get to interpret your joke, since you used a lazy word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas   "The Americas (also collectively called America)"

--- End quote ---

No I mean the United States of America. You have terrible communications infrastructure outside of cities compared to Europe and the Far East and horrible monopolies running it.

Simon:
We have horrible monopolies running our infrastructure. I detest virgin media but I use their service as out of the choice of 2 infrastructure monopolies that we have each running different systems they are the ones that currently have 2 continuous tracts of copper running from my house to their "stuff". My other choice of monopoly is the open reach phone system which is broken and they won't fix it. Despite our semblance of a competitive market in the phone system this is an illusion, I have had about 4 "phone companies" over the last 10 years and non were interested in fixing the damaged line because they just sell one of the two monopolies services, they have no hand or interest in the actual infrastructure.

From the point of view of the actual infrastructure there are only 2. I'm not sure how the mobile system works but ultimately there are not many independent operators of that anymore and no two will build base stations in the same area to cut costs as they then have roaming agreements with each other so there is no redundancy there, if my local mast goes down my phone will loose it's signal, in fact when 2 of the operators merged a "redundant" mast was removed and the quality of phone signal reduced. As it is I have internet off the back of the fact that there is redundancy in there being 2 infrastructure systems. Now if i was a supermarket I would really be playing it safe by connecting to both those systems and using more than one card processor, but why would i have 2 internet contracts and pay fees to 2 card processors just in case one of the card processors and/or internet lines goes down? This is why you have outages. The only way you have a rock solid system is to double up the system infrastructure and costs and have redundancy for a once in a few years event in a system that is not safety critical.

Nusa:

--- Quote from: bd139 on March 19, 2021, 05:26:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nusa on March 19, 2021, 04:15:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: bd139 on March 19, 2021, 01:09:33 pm ---Here in the UK the customer is told to piss off or the backup POS unit or mobile network connection is used instead...

--- End quote ---

While some of the 35 countries in America* may be third world, your punch line is apparently not true, given the UK example posted early this this thread:


--- Quote from: themadhippy on March 08, 2021, 09:07:26 pm ---
--- Quote ---What is exactly the nature of the failure that makes all supermarkets not accept cards, but ATMs work
--- End quote ---
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55805777

--- End quote ---

*I get to interpret your joke, since you used a lazy word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas   "The Americas (also collectively called America)"

--- End quote ---

No I mean the United States of America. You have terrible communications infrastructure outside of cities compared to Europe and the Far East and horrible monopolies running it.

--- End quote ---
I knew what you meant. But since you were joking, what does it matter? I thought it was rather obvious I was misinterpreting you on purpose. Only fair, right?

However, if you were serious, are you serious? Specifically which horrible monopolies are you referring to? Wait, if it's plural, how can it be a monopoly?
But yes, I will agree that infrastructure is lacking in our extremely rural areas(assuming you use distance as a measure of extreme, the US has lots more of that than Europe does...as for the Far East, I suspect you are ignoring the genuine rural areas in your assessment). But that's not a monopoly issue, that's an incentive to build vs revenue issue.

That said, it'll get better over time. At my sisters house in the boondocks of Missouri (150 miles to nearest metro area), she barely gets cell service. At their other property 15 miles away, they got fiber on the road and to their log cabin last year. Plus Elons starlink service may change everything....sister is on the waiting list for that now.

And don't think I didn't notice you ignored the evidence that the UK reality doesn't match what you said.

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