In my country, creating a new bank used to require presidential approval. That was the status quo until only a few years ago. Things only started to improve after that requirement went away, and they certainly haven't improved enough.
It's hard to describe just how deeply entrenched institutions like banks are. Normal people see all of this stuff and they do not even react at all. It's all just mindless bureaucracy that they have to put up with. Nothing can be done about it. Can't be helped, so they just accept it.
So it's not wise to treat banks like normal corporations which compete with each other on the open market. They are directly legally and financially incentivized to do everything we are fighting against.
For example, our banks still require us to install "security modules" on our computers in order to log into our accounts. Once upon a time I tried to reverse engineer one of those things to see why they made the computer so unusably slow. I caught it intercepting every single network connection. Told me all I needed to know.
At some point society has to simply determine that it's immoral and make it illegal. It doesn't matter how much money they lose to fraud of whatever, just write it off as a business expense or something.
I’ve lived in Africa, Europe, and the US, but I’ve never experienced a situation where I couldn’t just switch to a different bank if I wanted to. That’s the context for my comment. All I’m saying is that if you’re in a situation where a bank’s services are overly restrictive, and switching to a different bank will solve that, it makes sense to switch. I can’t speak to places where such choices aren’t available.
I take the same position on countries - it’s why I no longer live in Africa, where I grew up. And why I soon won’t be living in the US any more. Life is too short to waste it having other people’s mistakes inflicted on you.
> I take the same position on countries - it’s why I no longer live in Africa, where I grew up. And why I soon won’t be living in the US any more. Life is too short to waste it having other people’s mistakes inflicted on you.
You have my applause. But that certainly looks like you are in for a lot of moving around, going forward. I guess it is not an option for everyone.
In my country, creating a new bank used to require presidential approval. That was the status quo until only a few years ago. Things only started to improve after that requirement went away, and they certainly haven't improved enough.
It's hard to describe just how deeply entrenched institutions like banks are. Normal people see all of this stuff and they do not even react at all. It's all just mindless bureaucracy that they have to put up with. Nothing can be done about it. Can't be helped, so they just accept it.
So it's not wise to treat banks like normal corporations which compete with each other on the open market. They are directly legally and financially incentivized to do everything we are fighting against.
For example, our banks still require us to install "security modules" on our computers in order to log into our accounts. Once upon a time I tried to reverse engineer one of those things to see why they made the computer so unusably slow. I caught it intercepting every single network connection. Told me all I needed to know.
At some point society has to simply determine that it's immoral and make it illegal. It doesn't matter how much money they lose to fraud of whatever, just write it off as a business expense or something.
I’ve lived in Africa, Europe, and the US, but I’ve never experienced a situation where I couldn’t just switch to a different bank if I wanted to. That’s the context for my comment. All I’m saying is that if you’re in a situation where a bank’s services are overly restrictive, and switching to a different bank will solve that, it makes sense to switch. I can’t speak to places where such choices aren’t available.
I take the same position on countries - it’s why I no longer live in Africa, where I grew up. And why I soon won’t be living in the US any more. Life is too short to waste it having other people’s mistakes inflicted on you.
> I take the same position on countries - it’s why I no longer live in Africa, where I grew up. And why I soon won’t be living in the US any more. Life is too short to waste it having other people’s mistakes inflicted on you.
You have my applause. But that certainly looks like you are in for a lot of moving around, going forward. I guess it is not an option for everyone.
3 replies →