Summary: Social media giant Facebook plans to venture into cryptocurrency, which it proposes to call Libra. Knowing as we do the dangers inherent in crypto currency such as Bitcoin, and having as we do a not incorrect appreciation of the emission of legal tender, currency, or coinage of any sort as an incident of sovereignty, now may be the time for Congress, as well as legislative and regulatory bodies throughout the world, to squash Libra — and maybe to squash Facebook and Gospodin Zuckerberg as well.
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Cathedral City, July 21, 2019 – apparently not satisfied with its plundering forays into individual privacy, or with its well-nigh unilateral arrogation of control over a great deal of speech to be found on the Internet, Facebook now wants to take over much of the world monetary system, too.
What has Mark Zuckerberg been smoking?
The obvious answer is, nothing good. Facebook’s cryptocurrency venture, entitled Libra, tells us one of three things. Either Gospodin Zuckerberg is a redeless fool with no understanding of the law of foreseeable, if unintended, consequences, or Gospodin Zuckerberg really is suffering from an undiagnosed case of Asperger’s syndrome which blinds him to the strong negative optics of the Libra venture, or Gospodin Zuckerberg is simply undone by sheer hubris, marvelously defined by late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington as a belief that “to [Gospodin Zuckerberg] the rules just do not apply.”
It is tolerably well understood in the modern world that the emmission of any kind of medium of exchange, whether currency or coinage or some derivative based thereon, is a nondelegable incident of sovereignty. Notwithstanding the multibillion-dollar– a-year credit card industry, even the ubiquitous pieces of plastique we carry in our wallets derive their legitimacy and negotiability from the sovereign backed currencies in which they are denominated. It is also tolerably well understood in the modern world, whether in the common-law world, the civil law world, or in other legal traditions that derive from neither England nor Rome, that that which is an incident of sovereignty is rightly jealously guarded by sovereigns themselves.
Thus, most sovereign entities tend to look with a distinctly jaundiced, gimlet eye upon cryptocurrency and its emitters. Certainly, the use of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency in numerous ransomware attacks and other nefarious activities has left the whole cryptocurrency gray market in distinct malodor, particularly in Western industrialized democracies. Indeed, the use of Bitcoin in such obvious East Bloc ransomware attacks as occurred a few months ago in Atlanta has left both lawmakers and regulators on every continent strongly convinced that the whole Bitcoin enterprise is nothing more than a Kremlin cut out.
Now Facebook, easily the most mistrusted, un-trusted, distrusted social media entity on the planet, wants to get a piece of the cryptocurrency action. Not surprisingly, David Marcus, Facebook’s go-to guy on Libra received a less than friendly reception before congressional committees of jurisdiction when he tried to pitch the idea on Capitol Hill. And. Quite. Right. Too.
Whoever at Facebook came up with the idea that Facebook, with all of its trust and image issues, should want to dip its toe into the cryptocurrency lake, ought to be fired, unceremoniously shown the door, and referred to federal and California investigating and prosecuting authorities. Of course, were the idiot who came up with this redeless proposal Mark Zuckerberg himself, I expect that a great many people in Congress, in the EU Parliament, in the Imperial Parliament, in Dáil Éireann, the German Bundestag, the Japanese Diet, and other legislative bodies in the West, including the California Legislature, would doubtless experience some significant Schadenfreude.
Facebook would be well advised to shit-can the whole Libra project before the wrath of the Western democracies turns upon it so completely as to make its continued existence not merely unsustainable, but an affront to the West altogether.
There are a number of reasons why it would be in Facebook’s well considered self-interest to shit-can Libra. First, Facebook should consider carefully the applicability of the law of reasonably foreseeable, but unintended consequences. If Facebook, whose chairman and CEO is an Ashkenazi Jew, gets involved in a cryptocurrency venture, it will provide fuel to the already dangerously smoldering fires of anti-Semitism throughout the West. Already, anti-Semites are ramping up again the old trope that Jewish financiers secretly control the world.
The last thing Facebook should be doing, given the recrudescence of anti-Semitism during the Trump administration, a recrudescence given form by, among others, Andrew Anglin’s website The Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website modeled after Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, is giving credence to the vicious canards disseminated by neo-Nazi anti-Semites in this country and abroad. Given that Facebook has acquired a piss poor reputation for trustworthiness, and has repeatedly acknowledged that it needs to “earn our trust,” while blithely taking steps calculated to demonstrate its utter untrustworthiness, one might think that Facebook would at least consult with people somewhat learned in the history of Western anti-Semitism before undertaking a project like Libra, untransparent and unknowable as it is.
Of course, Facebook’s ill considered foray into cryptocurrency may not be so much a result of a corporate failure to understand the reasonable foreseeability of unintended adverse consequences as it may be a result of some disconnect in Gospodin Zuckerberg’s personality. There has already been speculation in some circles that Gospodin Zuckerberg may fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. Perhaps what we are seeing in Facebook’s latest misadventure is a manifestation of some form of high functioning Asperger’s. Certainly, Gospodin Zuckerberg’s apparent inability to read the optics of a given situation is not inconsistent with undiagnosed high functioning Asperger’s. The last several additions of the Diagnostic and statistical Manual have defined part of the symptomatology of Asperger’s as an inability to discern affect in others, as well as an inability to ascertain emotions, social cues, or the social dynamic of a given situation.
Certainly, Gospodin Zuckerberg’s inability or unwillingness to read the social cues of senators and representatives when he was before Congress, his inability or unwillingness to recognize the strong mistrust and distrust for Facebook that have been manifested throughout the world, and his apparent belief that all will be well if he tenders some anodyne (but to others wholly unconvincing) “apology,” certainly raises probable cause to believe that somewhere some of the synapses in Gospodin Zuckerberg’s brain simply aren’t talking to one another. That’s fine if one is a computer drudge in some Silicon Valley startup who is not expected to have any contact with the world. However, it doesn’t work when you are the CEO of a company worth the better part of trillion dollars. What would be intolerable in an entry-level sales job is even less tolerable when one’s company exercises the kind of influence that Facebook does.
Of course, it may be that all of Gospodin Zuckerberg synapses are talking to each other, and that we are not so much dealing with a case of ignorance of sociopolitical optics or an undiagnosed case of Asperger’s as we are with the sheer hubris that is so often a concomitant of wealth inhering in someone who may not be mature enough to handle it. In that regard, we may justifiably wonder if Mark Zuckerberg and Jared Kushner are not suffering from the same kind of wealth-based millennial hubris that causes them to believe that they possess plenary understanding of how the world works.
Though Gospodin Zuckerberg and Gospodin Kushner may not be devoid of a certain useful cunning, they are both entire strangers to anything resembling true wisdom. Both men manifest a kind of dangerous hubris, that belief, according to Harold Washington, that “to them, the rules do not apply.” Gospodin Zuckerberg may realize that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been a disaster for the West and a tool in the hands of the West’s enemies, but he may think that since he’s “the smartest guy in the room,” he can make a success where others have failed.
Of course, that is what happened with Enron.
Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay both thought they were “the smartest guys in the room.” Yet, as it happened, a bunch of federal and state prosecutors, collectively smarter than the smartest guys in the room, brought them down, sent them to prison, and brought down Enron as well. That’s history Gospodin Zuckerberg and his management Krewe in Menlo Park would be well advised to remember. If the government could bring down a multibillion-dollar corporation like Enron, staffed as it was by friends of then-Pres. George Dubya Bush, Gospodin Zuckerberg should not underestimate the willingness of Gospodin Trump to burn an asset, or of Gospodin Putin to do the same.
At all events, if I were strategically consulting for Gospodin Zuckerberg and his management Krewe at Facebook, I would advise them to run, not walk away from the temptation to engage in cryptocurrency trafficking. They have aroused a fighting, punitive spirit in Congress, and they should not make haste to tempt fate.
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Paul S. Marchand, Esq., is an attorney and former Cathedral City City Councilman who lives in Cathedral City and practices law in the adjacent Republican retirement redoubt of Rancho Mirage. His disdain for Facebook derives from Facebook’s obvious preferential option for Donald Trump and for Bernard Sanders. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice of any kind or character.
