NOVEMBER 30, 20 19 FORBES.COM
15With Libra, Zuck Is a Hero
FACT & COMMENT
By Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief“With all thy getting, get understanding”MARK ZUCKERBERG TOOK a verbal
beating over Libra (among other things),
Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency and
payments system, when he recently testified
before the U.S. House Financial Services
Committee. Well aware of the low repute in
which Facebook and other high-tech giants
are held these days, most of the committee’s
politicians couldn’t resist the temptation to
scold and harangue Zuckerberg. Actually,
issues such as privacy and money launder-
ing are addressable. Facebook is already
working with regulators on such concerns.
Nonetheless, regulatory pressures have forced a number
of companies that were partnering with Facebook on this
project to drop out.
And this gets to the real reason the idea of Libra is so
troubling to so many politicians, government bureaucrats,
banks and economists the world over: Libra could do to
central banks what Uber and Lyft did to the taxi cartels—
bust up their monopolies, or, to coin a phrase, give them a
run for their money.
Libra would be backed by a basket of currencies and gilt-
edged financial instruments, thereby overcoming the big-
gest flaw of other cryptocurrencies today—their instability.
Four thousand years of experience demonstrates that gold
would be the best tie, but Libra’s basket would still be vastly
superior to anything else out there.
When Libra is up and running, a Facebook user could ob-
tain a digital wallet called Calibra and could then send units
of Libra to another Calibra wallet-holder anywhere in the
world. The results would be instantly revolutionary. Under
our current system, it’s expensive to wire money across bor-
ders, not to mention the hours or days it takes for funds to
clear. Banks would be cut out of the process entirely!
What a combination Libra offers: convenience and cur-
rency stability.
Another enormous plus is that such a digital and mobile
system would easily open up accessible banking services to
the nearly 1 billion people worldwide and the 14 million in
the U.S. who don’t have bank accounts. Amazingly—and
unknown to most of the world—such digital banking has
blossomed in Kenya, where millions of people, in response
to the country’s lack of traditional bank branches and ser-
vices, do their banking, in effect, via their mobile devices.
China is also light-years ahead of the U.S. when it comes to
digital transactions.In the face of so much hostility, will Libra
get off the ground? Zuckerberg has made it
clear that Facebook itself won’t move forward
on Libra without U.S. regulatory approval.
Since the Libra undertaking is now in the
hands of the new Libra Association—a group
of companies (including Facebook) and non-
profits—and is formally independent of Face-
book, Libra could still launch. But in reality,
without Facebook, Libra will go nowhere.
It will take considerable diplomatic finesse
and political skill for Libra to formally clear
all the obstacles it faces, which is a shame,
because something like Libra is eventually going to happen,
and it would be nice if the creator were an American com-
pany. As Zuckerberg said in his prepared testimony, “While
we debate these issues, the rest of the world isn’t waiting.
China is moving quickly to launch similar ideas in the com-
ing months. Libra... will extend America’s financial leader-
ship as well as our democratic values and oversight around
the world. If America doesn’t innovate, our financial leader-
ship is not guaranteed.”E-Cigarettes Are a Blessing
YOU’D NEVER know it from all the lurid headlines in re-
cent months about the seeming epidemic of deaths from
“smoking” e-cigarettes, but vaping is actually a public-
health godsend for smokers. The hysteria surrounding vap-
ing says more about the peculiar fevers of our times than
about the realities of puffing e-cigarettes.
Those deaths we hear about didn’t result from normal
e-cigarettes but from tainted contents, particularly the ac-
tive ingredient found in cannabis. The cries for prohibiting
vaping make no more sense than banning milk because a
few bad characters peddled adulterated versions.
The truth is that vaping is 95% less harmful than smok-
ing. It lets users get nicotine without all the other carci-
nogenic contents and carbon monoxide that come from
smoking cigarettes. Vaping is far more effective in helping
people quit inhaling tobacco than are all the other props,
including nicotine patches. Moreover, with many vaping
devices, users can choose the level of nicotine they vape,
including none at all. Vaping has enabled countless num-
bers of smokers to give up cigarettes and countless others
not to take them up in the first place, thereby saving mil-