Investing with Free Software
Hey all!
I have been wondering, does anyone here invest, while using Free Software?
By this I mean, how do you buy/sell stocks, or invest in Bitcoin, or do Forex Trading, while running only Free Software?
I see a lot of apps (proprietary) and some websites that requires loads of JS.
Thanks for any advice.
Only bourgeoisie make investments, so I don't care much about their freedom. In fact, they have more power than freedom, compensating them for the unjustness imposed on them by non-free software.
I am a member!
On 1.6.2020 21:13, name at domain wrote:
> Only bourgeoisie make investments, so I don't care much about their
> freedom. In fact, they have more power than freedom, compensating them
> for the unjustness imposed on them by non-free software.
Excuse me? Everyone should aim to save SOME money, and invest SOME
money, and donate SOME money to charity.
Even the poor should give SOMETHING to charity.
--
Caleb Herbert
KE0VVT
(816) 892-9669
https://bluehome.net/csh
> Excuse me? Everyone should aim to save SOME money, and invest SOME
> money, and donate SOME money to charity.
Can you explain why you brought up charity? It seems off topic.
I am a member!
On 10.6.2020 2:56, name at domain wrote:
>> Excuse me? Everyone should aim to save SOME money, and invest SOME
>> money, and donate SOME money to charity.
>
> Can you explain why you brought up charity? It seems off topic.
Saving money is to contribute to the betterment of your own wellbeing.
Giving, investing and charity, contribute to the betterment of society.
--
Caleb Herbert
KE0VVT
(816) 892-9669
https://bluehome.net/csh
> Saving money is to contribute to the betterment of your own wellbeing.
This seems off topic too. No one has mentioned saving money.
> Giving, investing and charity, contribute to the betterment of society.
No one here has questioned whether giving and charity contribute to the betterment of society.
This thread is about investing, specifically to "buy/sell stocks, or invest in Bitcoin, or do Forex Trading". These are ways to leverage the power of one's existing wealth in order to enrich oneself further without having to work. Forex trading does not better society. Investing in Bitcoin does not either, and Bitcoin is bad for the environment. It *might* be possible to buy/sell stocks in a way that avoids funding activities that harm society, but people who invest with the goal of maximizing gains will not invest in such a way.
"Charity" and "giving" are words with generally positive connotations, for reasons that don't apply to the types of "investment" we are discussing. As boba points out, there is another sense of the word "invest" in which the return that the investor expects is not wealth, but something like "local community building". This is more similar to charity, but it is explicitly not what GNUser asked about or what nadebula.1984 was responding to.
I am a member!
The only issue I had with this thread was the political guy asserting
that all contributions to the economy are bad.
Sorry. I've been in a bad place lately and today realized that I've been acting it out by picking fights with people over random things I don't really want to argue about. I'm trying to stop now. Never mind.
> and Bitcoin is bad for the environment.
Why? How?
Bitcoins are created by using/wasting energy.
I see.
I am not sure that would be entirely true... By this I mean, yes Bitcoin consumes energy, but if we take in consideration all the energy required to run Banks, making coins and all the various physical money representations, etc... I don't believe Bitcoin is such a danger for the environment.
I see. That might sound a reasonable opinion. Though that seems off-topic.
Bitcoin doesn't just consume some energy like ordinary computing. It inherently wastes massive amounts of energy by design. If it did not take much energy to mine Bitcoin, anyone with a computer could easily mine their own Bitcoin, so no one would need to buy Bitcoin from anyone else, so it would be worth nothing. The amount of energy Bitcoin wastes makes it very expensive to mine, which is what gives it scarcity and therefore value. Banks and minting machines are not subject to this dynamic.
I see. Sounds reasonable.
Whilst I also agree that wasting energy is inherently bad, you might also want to consider electricity sources like natural gas which are hard to store. Natural gas needs to be used at the same rate at which it's produced, a lot is just burned because there is literally too much gas. A country with (more +/ cheaper) energy can produce more bitcoin at lower cost.
Again, not advocating for bitcoins massive use of energy, but increased energy usage in the world is not ALWAYS bad..
Electricity is crazy cheap in the U.S because of natural gas, everywhere except NY and CA. The thing is.. the companies going for shale, end up with the natural gas as a byproduct, its burned and released to open air where no energy is harvested sometimes.
I just came across this page[1] with some calculations and comparisons. One interesting comparison: The amount of electrical energy used by a single Bitcoin transaction is "equivalent to the power consumption of an average U.S. household over 17.76 days."
Investing makes a person "bourgeoisie"? And the fact that a person invest, denies his right for freedom when using software?
I don't follow... But anyway. Thank you.
The original meaning of bourgeoisie is one who lives in a town. Also every time you put your money in a bank you are contributing to investments - because the bank uses your money for investing into various things (BTW banks use non-free software, so with your money they pay proprietors too).
Based on your comment:
Even if I am a retired villager and the government pays my monthly retirement by transferring money to my bank account - I don't deserve freedom because I should not be compensated for "the unjustness" I am part of.
:)
> The original meaning of bourgeoisie is one who lives in a town
But that's not how the word has been used in this discussion, so this is irrelevant trivia.
> Also every time you put your money in a bank you are contributing to investments
This is also not what we are discussing. GNUser specified from the beginning: "By this I mean, how do you buy/sell stocks, or invest in Bitcoin, or do Forex Trading, while running only Free Software?", and nadebula.1984 responded in those terms, with a comment not about people who passively "contribute to investments" but who actively "make investments".
> Based on your comment
Your facetious conclusion was not based on nadebula.1984's comment. It was based on an imaginary comment that they did not make, one which uses "bourgeoisie" in a different sense and replaces "make investments" with "contribute to investments". I don't really want to debate whether nadebula.1984's comment was right or wrong, but using wordplay to create an strawman, and then from that strawman drawing an absurd conclusion, does not show that nadebula.1984's original comment was absurd.
Does anyone has any useful reply to the original post?
I would love to get some feedback. Thank you very much.
Hello GNUser, I do not have experience in browsing the internet for money investments or stocks or tradings, I am sorry. However, as far as I remember, web page of a bank I know will not work with LibreJS enabled so user cannot check their money savings unless they use JavaScript-enabled browser or disable LibreJS.
Yes, that's true, doing banking through the Internet seems to always require proprietary code. I think they truly believe that "security by obscurity" is the only way.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ast/
http://user42.tuxfamily.org/chart/index.html
Found these by searching "stocks" on FSF main page, hope it is of some help.
Thanks! Those look promising and while I cannot test them at the moment, I hope others will benefit from your post. Thanks.