> Everybody knows the new savings scheme he introduced is essentially increasing interest rates.
This is not true. Raising interest rates would mean raising the cost of funding for the banking system. Under the new saving scheme, since the Treasury pays depositors the extra yield, the cost for banks remains unchanged. As does the marginal cost of borrowing from the central bank.
The new saving scheme is a free dollar call sold by the country's Treasury to depositors. And it will pay it out by printing money.
Something it cannot do without increasing its own borrowing costs, and reducing the import purchasing power of its currency. This has been tried and doesn't work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday
The ruling regime/Edrogan are not interested in the general wellbeing of the country, only of looting it.
I've come to realize that there are a significant number of politicians who will happily oversee 100 units of 'destruction' if it means they are able to generate 1 unit of personal profit in the process. When applied to an entire nation state, the results are significant.
Look at the corrupt wealth generated by the current US Speaker of the House, for example.
Borrowing costs increased independently of the new savings product. They were rising well before it was announced and increased further because the market priced in a higher level of inflation following the sharp depreciation.
The higher rate on deposits that the new saving scheme offers doesn't increase funding costs for banks in anyway. The Treasury literally pays the depositors the extra yield, not the banks.
And, yes I know interest on loans increased substantially but that has nothing to do with the new saving product and everything to do with the meltdown in the lira that preceded.
Edit: And in any case why would banks raise loan rates if they don't have to bear the cost of the new product?
You are asking the correct question, it does not matter if the cost is financed by banks or public. The cost of borrowing increased substantially, even though exchange rate decreased in the last one week.
Access to TL got harder by the actions of the government. This is why interest rates increased.
Of course it matters. If banks bare the cost, they have to pass it on to their customers by raising rates. If the public pays for it, the government and central bank will end up printing money --one way or another -- to pay depositors.
And all this mind you only IF people move a substantial amount of their lira deposits to the new product AND the lira depreciates more than the rate on the underlying lira deposit account (only then are savers eligible for the kicker rate).
So far, savers have moved around 10b liras into this product, out of a total 4.3 trillion lira of deposits.
You're telling me banks raised rates because of that marginal shift? And even though, I repeat, they don't have to pay for it?
I am saying that the government raised interest rates substantially, one way or the other. It used couple of tools to do it, one of them is promising expected dollar appreciation as interest. (Tl is expected to depreciate at least at the rate of inflation, which substantially higher then central banks overnight rate, hence they have increased interest)
I want to thank everyone for their comments. I'm a long-time and avid Hacker News reader and this was my first real post I guess. The community here is really solid and is largely what got me hooked on programming.
All your responses -- from don't give up on web dev totally because it can open doors, to try embedded software (I hadn't even heard of the term until today) -- have given me so much to think about.
Thanks again, and I know what I'm getting myself for Christmas. An Arduino.
When in-person events open up, look to see if there is a makerspace near you. Sometimes hardware problems are better solved with someone nearby as a sounding board.
> what if the neighbors collude and vote that you failed to improve the park despite having done what was specified. The contract could further specify that some neutral third party acts as an arbiter in that case.
If there's anything that shows that Web3.0, smart contracts and so on are a bad solution in search of a non-existent problem, it's this.
The ``problem'' is apparently that we don't trust each other and our institutions. The ``solution'' is to create a protocol for trust-less commitments. The bug is that the protocol ultimately relies on the fact that we trust each other and our institutions.
Can Web. 3.0 remove some friction from the system? Maybe. Enough to revolutionize it? Highly doubt it.
I think the bigger problem (which the example conveniently sidesteps) is that smart contracts don’t involve people. They involve _wallets_. I can have as many wallets as I want. Unless there is some external (centralized, trusted) unique identity mechanism, there’s no way to ensure the vote isn’t rigged. It also means that I could make a smart contract where I’m on all sides of the contract (e.g. say I’m trying to pump the market value of park-improvement projects…).
Outside of “a few neighbors who all know/trust each other and the public key for each other’s wallets” example, this all falls apart.
I've been to some HOA meetings. I think it's more likely that there's no consensus than that people agree that the park was improved. Even if the organizer did their best and spent a thousand bucks on supplies. There's no way to "make everyone whole again". Or maybe a majority of neighbors just aren't good people and realize they can get a nice park and their money back just by voting "no" as a bloc. All the fancy number theory hasn't really achieved anything.
The solution of course is to use a collection of oracles that report the state of the park to the blockchain. You would need to use enough oracles to be sure they aren't just your neighbors running them or being manipulated by your neighbors.
I'm only half joking. This example is a bad use case and web3 isn't going to replace literally every aspect of society.
It also assumes that neutral third party (should we call them judges, or jurors?) would act in good faith. What's stopping them from rolling with the majority? And how exactly is the problem of trust solved by trusting a third party? It would be laughable if it wasn't a straight faced affirmation. The "radically new" proposal is basically to recreate the old structures, just with new web3 labels. Is there a reason this would work better, only because it's proposed by software folk instead of politician folk? Or is it better only because it's proposed by "my gang"?
I think you're right that Web3 won't come close to displacing existing last-resort dispute handlers (courts, laws, etc). But it's dangerous to overlook the revolution lurking in "remove some friction from the system."
Uber removes some friction from hailing a taxi.
AirBnB removes some friction from finding a room to rent.
The internet removes some friction from sending messages.
Web3 (blockchain or not... the important feature is decentralisation) enables choice of governance - you can pick the "neutral third party". This destroys the governance monopoly and creates a marketplace.
But government laws and regulations still have precedence over smart contracts or blockchain transactions. “But it’s written in the smart contract” is not a valid excuse for breaking the law of the country you reside in, and will be thrown out in any court. So instead of replacing one governance system with another, you’ve create a second, subservient system that is overruled by the first, have you not?
That’s the part I’ve never understood. Sure, you could use a blockchain that is anonymous to try and avoid scrutiny and legal trouble, but at that point you’re basically just a criminal.
Yep yep. Your points are all valid and true, as far as I can see.
I think it would be interesting of governments started using this tech (Blockchain, smart contracts, etc) to improve existing systems. To me, I can see this tech being used to improve infrastructure in a lot of public services (library cards, driver license registry, etc)
Estonia has been doing that. I bet there is something that other countries can learn about what works and what doesn't
In addition to what most other people said here about how to improve communication in a team, I'd say that if you do want to learn some programming and how to think like a computer scientist, you can't go wrong with the MIT's Computational Thinking using Python series on edX.
This is not true. Raising interest rates would mean raising the cost of funding for the banking system. Under the new saving scheme, since the Treasury pays depositors the extra yield, the cost for banks remains unchanged. As does the marginal cost of borrowing from the central bank.
The new saving scheme is a free dollar call sold by the country's Treasury to depositors. And it will pay it out by printing money.