Comment by diego_moita
19 hours ago
> What if the ONLY payment method was the one approved by your "elected" government.
Yeah, what if?
You didn't provide any argument, didn't point to any real problem. You just hinted at a "terrible bad thing". Would we have monsters under our beds or bad guys in corners to ambush us?
This sounds like VISA/Mastercad/Apple Pay playing FUD[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
You realize you're arguing for a monopoly, right? One where competition is not only non-existent but also illegal, and which has complete control over how you're allowed to spend your money.
I think arguing "but it's a democratic monopoly" is little comfort in this situation. Maybe you trust your government not to ever be incompetent or to use the powers granted by this monopoly in a way you disapprove of. Maybe in the short term you'd even be right to do so. But I think history has proven that over the long term that's a very foolish assumption to make.
Which is completely irrelevant because as the government of the country they have the power to make laws, now and in the future which compel private entities to perform actions like AML (anti money laundering) and KYC (know your customers).
The end result is private entities taking money out of the system at some stage, and it doesn't shield you in any way from government incompetence or malice.
"They could theoretically seize control of everything anyway, so we should just let them seize control of everything now without a fight" doesn't seem like a great argument to me.
Things like the constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and decentralized control of communication and commerce serve as bulwarks against tyranny. That they all could be dismantled in the future is not an argument against doing our best to preserve them now. Tyranny is not a binary state, it's a gradient with many steps along the path thereto.
(Also, "taking money out of the system" is not optional; payment systems cost money to maintain whether it's done by a private entity or by government.)
> The end result is private entities taking money out of the system at some stage,
How is it possible to take money out of the system? Those private organizations are just participants in the commercial economy, right?
Suppose you have an actually decentralized payment system, like cash, or any digital system that preserves the same properties whether or not it involves a blockchain.
An example of one that doesn't would be a global decentralized protocol for transferring money. You're standing in a coffee shop in LA and want to pay for a coffee so you tell your bank to transfer $5 to their bank. It works the same if your bank is in Brazil and their bank is in Switzerland as if both banks are in Nebraska, involves no intermediary other than each party's bank, and their bank shows them the transfer immediately so they know to give you the coffee.
Then the panzers roll into Washington and der Führer wants to reintroduce financial surveillance to make sure nobody is covertly buying a computer that doesn't censor the internet. Obviously they can force the bank in Nebraska to inform on the dissidents, but your bank is in Brazil and the seller's bank is in Switzerland.
Unless the system allowing that is dismantled ahead of time so the dystopia can be switched on overnight instead of needing years to erode entrenched decentralized infrastructure.
The indirection is a shield.
In my country they have to make laws to FORCE shops and restaurants to accept cash. Because it is a damn hassle.
You go far enough on fiscal tracking and you just wind up back where we've always been: barter. All currency is as useful as the regime backing it, and when that regime falls, barter always comes back in. Everything else is just rent seeking scaffolding to reduce barter friction (cash let's me store all the value I've created, but so could gold bars, or bitcoin, or vodka).
This is to say: All currency is about control and convenience (you trade "invisible transaction" for "easily able to resolve payment") because those in power want to know/control the money and everyone else wants convenience.
> You realize you're arguing for a monopoly, right?
Right! Like all the other monopolies that governments already have: public security (police and courts of law), external security (armed forces), public healthcare in many civilized countries, inspection of health regulations and consumer safety, monetary policy, etc.
> you trust your government not to ever be incompetent
Oh, I don't. But Apple, Visa, Mastercard and Google Pay aren't very "competent" either.
> history has proven that over the long term
History has proven that privatization of many of government monopolies are disastrous: Roman generals making private armies and destroying the Republic, abuse of forced labor from inmates in private prisons, exorbitant fees from payment providers (Visa, Mastercard), food dangerous for public consumption because the governments didn't inspect them, etc.
You're motte-and-baileying here. Arguing that there are natural/desirable monopolies for government to possess in certain high-risk cases does not automatically translate into an argument that it's desirable for governments to have monopolies in every case imaginable. As a rule of thumb, it's best to avoid monopolies wherever possible, and rely on government solving complex coordination problems only as a last resort.
Pointing out that it's reasonable for governments to suppress private armies maurauding around and having wars with each other does not in any way sustain the argument that it's reasonable to allow governments to act as a forced intermediary in everyone's commercial transactions.
> Like all the other monopolies that governments already have
Your examples are things that aren't inherently monopolies and are significantly worse if you try to make them such. It's better to give people the right to self-defense than to put them in jail for violating a "public security" monopoly for not allowing someone else to kill them when there were no police around. It's cruel to prohibit someone from paying for their own healthcare in cases when the procedure exists but the public system won't spend the money. What argument could you even make for prohibiting private inspections of products and services the likes of Consumer Reports?
The things that are better as a monopoly are so rare that they plausibly don't exist.
> But Apple, Visa, Mastercard and Google Pay aren't very "competent" either.
The article doesn't say and I know nothing about India. I could guess consumers are oaying using their smartphones. So Google/Apple duopoly are still the gatekeepers to use UPI making huge profits. Of course using one of the American backends would make their control and profits orders of magnitudes bigger.