Well, let's have a scroll...

This one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156617

No, the fed having negative equity doesn't stop them controlling the money supply. Unless like, they've literally sold all their assets and there's still too much money left in the system, but that's so far away from being a possibility that it's not worth considering. And even if it did happen, there would be options.

Here we've got fed negative equity apparently resulting in revolutions, wars, and famines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156855

Here we've got "don't be fooled, they just want profit and power":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156394

Here's a conspiratorially-toned objection to the whole concept of central banking, likening it to centrally-planned economies and implying it will be equally disastrous:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33160065

> Differently put, where exactly did you exit the conversation?

I'm still early on in my journey learning about economics (I'm a physicist turned software engineer), but after only learning a little bit it is pretty easy to spot the people who've learned almost nothing but confidently assert it's all a scam or whatever, and pretty much dismiss them.

But walking away from them doesn't mean entering an echo chamber. There are plenty of legitimate objections to how central banking is done. For example, whenever central banks monetise government debt, they buy it via private investors who therefore get to skim a bit off the top. It doesn't really feel fair for these middlemen to make bank off the central bank deciding to fund the government's deficits, an interaction that need not involve them. On the other hand, keeping the central bank and the government at arm's length from each other is an excellent idea. So how best to balance this?

It's starting to look like fiscal policy can be more powerful than monetary policy. How can we leverage this to stabilise the economy without handing the government too much power it might misuse?

Should the target inflation rate be higher? Should we target a different metric, like, nominal GDP? Should the target be symmetric? Should it be level targeting or rate targeting? Can interest rates be negative? Is the zero lower bound an actual problem, or is more QE a fine and sensible response and we're just a little too scared of it? Should the Fed pay interest on excess reserves? Is a corridor system better than a floor system for rate targeting? How can we best deal with moral hazard?

Even though I've got plenty yet to learn, it is extremely clear to me that some kind of control of the money supply is necessary, otherwise you get depressions. So I am not expecting to encounter much serious argument for getting rid of central banks entirely, unless someone invents a distributed way of achieving the same goal, or has a feasible plan for the government taking on the role instead of a central bank. If someone's got a serious argument, I'll hear it, but if it's from the "it's all a scam, we should never have left gold" crowd, I'm not expecting much. It's not a scam, it's a legitimate attempt to make a system that works, and it would be much worse if we were still on gold. Yet there seems to be something about the topic that draws otherwise smart people into dismissing the whole thing.