Through its currency, there are fears that Facebook will organize new repositories of what’s marketable, what’s accessible and what’s not, explained in his op-ed, Holder of Theory and Innovative Design Methods , Armand Hartour.
“Company” expert opinion. By announcing the creation of a virtual currency for its 2.5 billion customers, Facebook broke one of the main tenets of the modern state: monetary monopoly. The reaction was quick, with the economy minister warning that private companies cannot create sovereign currencies.
Many observers have also expressed doubts about the viability and reliability of such projects. The fact remains that Facebook’s use of this new currency heralds an era when the company has become a universal force, thanks to its historically unprecedented number of people and countries deployed, as well as Facebook’s intensified penetration of people’s private and everyday lives.
Because money is not a passive tool of exchange. Proceedings from a recently published Cerisy workshop show that money tends to colonize benchmarks of value, civic and market ethics, power and solidarity (“How to Tame Money?”, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste de Foucauld, Hermann, 2016). In response to these abuses, modern states are compelled to act to defend the “good governance” of public order. It is necessary to guarantee debt repayment, regulate professional conduct, protect the value of goods and wages, and even restrict banking.
Besides Bitcoin, local currencies have been around for several years. But they serve collective, local, territorial or community interests. Among Facebook users, none of these. It’s a huge crowd, bigger than the greatest empires past and present.
precursor
So the danger is not that the new currency will compete with nations for sovereignty. More worryingly, Facebook is building a global “Libra pax” through its currency, which organizes new repositories of what’s sellable and what’s not, deciding who deserves protection from their debt or abandoned designation. The activities that are accessible to one’s currency and those that are not. Facebook also has a memorable predecessor, the Dutch East India Company, which minted its own currency and acquired the status of an influential nation for two centuries.
By publicly insisting that it’s just a matter of whether a person can send money when they send a photo, Facebook pretends to underestimate its innovation. Remittances are connecting two individuals or two communities in the same community of interests, judgment, and solidarity.
