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Comment by Terr_

4 months ago

Since it is looooong (even by my aging standards), an excerpt:

> Many regular people who get the [bank's] offboarding letter are confused and upset. Most people who get this letter are insufficiently expert in the financial system to understand what is going on. Many of them are (perhaps sensibly) enraged that the bank seems reluctant to offer answers. If they successfully pry answers out of the bank, the answers sound like nonsense or change constantly.

> Here, advocates often say that banks lack fundamental humanity, regard for their customers, or simple competence. I’d tell them that is neither here nor there, but the challenges described in Seeing like a Bank drive far more of this than malice, apathy, or incompetence as such. It is a systems issue.

[...]

> Very soon after making the decision to close your account the bank does not know specifically why it chose to close your account.

> This strikes many people as Kafkaesque. (Me, too!) It is the long-standing practice of banking in the U.S. and allied countries. It is downstream of laws passed by duly elected representatives. It was not capriciously developed as a political tool in the last few years. (We’ll get to those.)

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Terr_

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tehwebguy  4 months ago

> Normal people who experience a bank treating them like shit will assume the bank has treated them like shit. However they are wrong.

  • Terr_  4 months ago

    When it's not actually a quote, you might want to present it a little differently. Especially when nobody can tell that its fake at a glance.

    The guy isn't arguing that the outcome is sane or deserved, but rather than most victims mis-identify the motives and causes.

  • lmm  4 months ago

    Yep. His explanation of the details is somewhat interesting, but his insistence on ascribing all moral responsibility to customers, governments, or random bystanders because none of this could possibly be anyone in the banking industry's fault is infuriating.