[HN Gopher] Pubs replaced banks in Ireland for several months in...
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Pubs replaced banks in Ireland for several months in 1970 (2016)
Author : moat
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-10-01 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| version_five wrote:
| Lots of decisions in the last 50 years have made "the system"
| more fragile. This makes me realize that outsourcing trust is
| another one. This would never happen now because businesses have
| no connection to their customers, either a payment provider or
| credit bureau does the vouching which becomes meaningless when
| things don't operate as usual and human judgement is needed
| neilwilson wrote:
| Bank underground view
|
| https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/01/20/the-cheque-republic...
| Kalanos wrote:
| i don't get it, but it sounds like narrowly skirting by disaster
| throw0101a wrote:
| Patrick Boyle did a video on it a little while ago:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIQWWt4UaA
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_bank_strikes_(1966-1976)
| yosefjaved1 wrote:
| For 21 minutes and 53 seconds, I highly recommend this video.
| It gives so much context and describes the situation in as
| neutral of a tone as it's possible with a sprinkle of dry
| humor. Also, Patrick takes it a step further by answering the
| question if something like this could work again as well as
| discuss how this system that emerged compares to modern day
| cryptocurrency systems.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| > [...] almost the entire banking system of Ireland went on
| strike after an industrial dispute in 1970. The strike lasted
| nearly six months, yet the economy escaped unscathed.
|
| Getting people to strike isn't trivial, but this is the first
| time I learn about _bankers_ striking.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's uncommon in the US for reasons. It's a thing in Europe.
|
| 1970 Ireland isn't exactly an example of a modern or booming
| economy.
|
| But... what happened there should give pause when financial
| bros get weepy and pat themselves on the back about their
| sacred duty to provide liquidity at all costs. (And take a vig)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| A perfect example of my favourite part of any "class warfare"
| talk. Even for the "capital" class, the system isn't
| necessarily in their favour. It's only when you're at the
| absolute peak that you get the benefits. Everyone else is
| perfectly disposable, society just runs smoother when society
| believes that 6 figure salaries puts someone on the other side
| of the fence.
| becquerel wrote:
| The class divide isn't based around an arbitrary salary, or
| specific job positions. It's whether you have hire/fire
| powers and you make money off of other people's labour,
| rather than selling your own. Hollywood actors and famous
| football players are often very rich, but they sell their
| labor to get by. They don't own the means of production
| robertlagrant wrote:
| What's the means of production for a footballer? A
| football?
| nayuki wrote:
| Themself - the ability to attract a paying audience.
| tekla wrote:
| > They don't own the means of production
|
| They literally own the means of production, their bodies
| and minds. No one is forcing them to sign contracts for a
| million dollar salary, they can do the exact same
| acting/athelete-ing with a $100 smartphone.
| corethree wrote:
| Relax AI are now in the verge of evening the playing
| field for actors. Athletes not yet, unless we have AI
| starting to generate completely made up sporting events.
|
| The later is extremely possible given how much data there
| is and how similar it all is.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| A fair while back I was actually reading about a proposed
| system for literally CGI/virtual horse racing
| specifically for gambling purposes, backed by gambling
| industry money.
|
| Unsure if it ever went anywhere, I kind of mentally filed
| it as "insane gambling nonsense".
| kaashif wrote:
| > Hollywood actors and famous football players are often
| very rich, but they sell their labor to get by.
|
| But there's a key difference. They don't need to continue
| to sell their labor, they can stop at any time and live on
| e.g. income from dividends. Or maybe they have enough cash
| they could literally not even invest it and still live
| fine.
|
| Although they may not own the means of production right at
| this moment, they easily could at any moment, it's a
| choice.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You tomorrow could start out as a carpenter, buy a hammer
| and own the means of production. It's not a high bar to
| clear.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Ironically it's more often governments that interfere
| with this. Go to the library and read some books and you
| can learn how to be a plumber or an electrician, buy a
| toolbox and you're on your way. Presumably there is some
| kind of licensing exam?
|
| No, first you've got to find an existing tradesperson and
| apprentice under them, even if you could already pass the
| exam on your own. For a few weeks is it? Years,
| typically. To become a journeyman. Still can't work for
| yourself, now you have to work under them for a few more
| years.
|
| Figure out how to file papers for an LLC. Maybe you need
| a lawyer. Tax accounting will be fun too. Do any of the
| cities you operate in have a different sales tax rate?
| Which of your business expenses can be deducted in the
| current year and which have to be depreciated? Is that
| the same for things you resell?
|
| Guess what happens if you want to move to another state.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's not ironic - governments are the main source of
| power behind protectionism in all its forms. More
| regulations are good for incumbents.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| A hammer is a poor example of the means of production now
| that they're so easy to come by. The chokepoint is
| elsewhere.
|
| A more relevant example would be influence over the
| information that people consult when they're deciding
| which carpenter to hire. You need both a hammer _and_ a
| place to swing it that gets you paid--and nobody is
| trying to restrict access to hammers to protect their
| position.
|
| This is why many of our most valuable companies are ad
| companies--you operate at a disadvantage unless you give
| them a cut of your profits.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| In your example the means of production is an
| advertisement? How would the worker own the means of
| production? Hammer and newspaper? Or hammer and all the
| newspapers?
| powersnail wrote:
| Who's going to hire a carpenter who picked up a hammer
| yesterday? You can't just hammer away in your yard and
| expect income.
|
| It's not a trivial bar to clear, if you want to own the
| means of production that happens to be a viable
| livelihood.
| pierat wrote:
| And so much of our society is bound by who you work for:
| medical insurance, social standing, etc.
|
| And so many people just don't understand that there's
| really 4 classes: poverty, able to live, owner/landlord,
| royalty. (The USA has the politician class in place of
| royalty.)
|
| Note I didn't say "middle class". That term originally was
| the constructed 'rich merchant non-royalty" class that was
| founded out of mercantilism into capitalism. The Middle
| Class is now the landlord and managerial class for most of
| the western countries.
|
| But back to the topic, a Starbucks worker, a IT worker, a
| sex worker, and a MD all must sell their time and body to
| live. It's only when you start buying others labor/property
| cheaply and selling it expensively do you become a
| capitalist. Anything else, and youre just in the labor
| class.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The problem with this simplification is that it ignores
| risk. Being an employee means you get paid, and can
| change job it the business fails. Bring an owner/investor
| means you might lose all your money if the business
| fails. That is massive risk, and entirely ignored by the
| above characterisation.
| pierat wrote:
| Oh please. And you're up-playing risk.
|
| Let's talk local.
|
| We have lots of cheap shit 3 story stick built
| apartments. (
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-
| ameri... ) The ones opened are charging half of Boston
| for rents. And I'm not even in a megacity or state
| capitol.
|
| The same apartments are getting 10 year tax abatements,
| because they are "good for business" aka trickle-down.
|
| During the pandemic, pandemic "loans" were given to
| hundreds of businesses in the local area. And those loans
| were turned into grants (not have to pay back).
|
| And landlords are usually smaller, but again, they're
| another reason why housing is stupid priced: it's common
| to see a rental of a home priced at mortgage+30% . The
| landlord gets their principal covered, keeps the
| property, and raises costs for everyone.
|
| None of these apply to me or my family, sans the whole
| big $1200 relief check. I have no tax abatements, and pay
| taxes in full every paycheck and when I buy stuff. And
| local governments usually allow whatever by companies
| unless there's a big fuss. And, those corporate promises
| about hiring people or bringing in business? Yeah, not
| actually enforced.
|
| And I didn't even discuss "too big to fail", fed govt
| propping up industries, and the like.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The same apartments are getting 10 year tax abatements,
| because they are "good for business" aka trickle-down.
|
| This promotes new construction. Not as well as zoning
| reform, but it does. Which lowers the rent (or at least
| makes it go up less fast).
|
| > And landlords are usually smaller, but again, they're
| another reason why housing is stupid priced: it's common
| to see a rental of a home priced at mortgage+30% .
|
| Well of course they are. The landlord is taking on the
| maintenance of the property, insurance, the risk of a
| housing crash (look at housing prices FFS), the risk of a
| vacancy or destructive or non-paying tenant, legal
| expenses associated with operating a business etc. And on
| top of that, they have to pay the mortgage.
|
| They do turn a profit, because of course they do, why
| else would they do it? And with that they slowly buy the
| property from the bank, at which point the interest on
| the value of the property goes to the landlord instead of
| the bank, the same as it would if they sold the property
| and invested the money in something else.
|
| The problem with landlords is not that they turn a profit
| -- they always will or they'd sell the property instead.
|
| It's that they lobby for zoning restrictions that limit
| the housing supply to increase rents. But homeowners do
| the same thing, to the detriment of both renters and
| prospective homeowners.
| herczegzsolt wrote:
| Mortgage is not a cost accounting wise. Interest is a
| cost, but capital repayment is already "profit" which the
| landlord will keep at the end of the loan.
|
| Let's say rent is mortgage + 30%. If we assume all the
| risks and costs (maintenance, insurance, etc) are eating
| up all of that 30%, they still make a whopping 200%+
| profit in the long run.
|
| In a fair business relation with 20-30% profit, the
| landlord would actually loose cash each month until the
| mortgage is over, with the expectation to realize profit
| when the property is sold. This rarely happens.
| Retric wrote:
| Yes and no. The lines get blurry when you're looking at
| doctors/plumbers/etc that own their practice. They are
| making money from their labor but they can also sell their
| company to someone else.
|
| Major actors are really leveraging a brand not just selling
| their labor. Athletes have a similar dynamic where the very
| best compensated are making more from endorsements than
| playing football. And of course the richest examples all
| end up investing well.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| _It 's whether you have hire/fire powers and you make money
| off of other people's labour_
|
| I think creating a hierarchy of managers and workers is
| just another tool that the people with power use to control
| everyone else.
|
| Surely my direct manager has more in common with me than
| the CEO? Am I wrong to think this? Wouldn't the CEO see
| both managers and their teams as mere workers?
| digdugdirk wrote:
| 100% correct. That was the gist of my original point. In
| Corporate America, unless you're in the C-suite or
| sitting on the board, you're not in the club. The
| corporate ladder makes it seem as though the middle
| management levels are on the path to being upper class,
| but they're in the same position as everyone else. They
| just drive a nicer car while doing so.
| tormeh wrote:
| Technically CEOs are also working class, since they
| mostly live off of their salary. A lot of this is
| voluntary, since with a bit less spending I'd imagine
| most BigCo CEOs could easily cope on capital income from
| the investments their salaries have afforded them. I
| wonder how that affects their classification...
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I see the divide as being between those of us who created
| wealth by working vs. those who do not create wealth and
| instead play zero sum and negative sum games.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That's something else entirely.
|
| You could have someone who is solidly in the investment
| class and only works three hours a year, but during those
| three hours they tell their pet executives to put the
| capital into energy storage tech and new housing
| construction and do a lot of good in the world.
|
| You could have a low-level white collar worker who isn't
| making very much money at all, all of it in wages, who
| decides to screw over the company's customers with
| something economically inefficient because it gives them
| some advantage in internal corporate politics.
| lmm wrote:
| > You could have someone who is solidly in the investment
| class and only works three hours a year, but during those
| three hours they tell their pet executives to put the
| capital into energy storage tech and new housing
| construction and do a lot of good in the world.
|
| If they're making skilled capital-allocation decisions
| that most people couldn't, that's work. If they're being
| charitable in the allocation of their ill-gotten gains,
| that doesn't make them any less ill-gotten.
|
| Rentiers inherently make their money in a zero-sum way;
| it's perhaps not the only way to be zero-sum, but it is a
| major one.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If they're making skilled capital-allocation decisions
| that most people couldn't, that's work. If they're being
| charitable in the allocation of their ill-gotten gains,
| that doesn't make them any less ill-gotten.
|
| Why do they have to be ill-gotten gains? Someone could
| invest money they've earned through productive work.
|
| And could invest it in something charitably while still
| making money, e.g. you have the option to make 10% doing
| something anti-social or 5% doing something socially
| beneficial and you consciously choose the latter knowing
| you could make more by being less charitable.
|
| > Rentiers inherently make their money in a zero-sum way;
| it's perhaps not the only way to be zero-sum, but it is a
| major one.
|
| Do they? Suppose you have some money and you put it in
| some investment fund and then live off the earnings while
| having no real involvement with how the fund is managed.
| Meanwhile the businesses you invested in are off doing
| productive net-positive things with your money that
| wouldn't have been possible had you stuffed it in your
| mattress, while yielding you a positive return which is
| nonetheless smaller than the total amount of net good
| created by the business.
|
| The best you can say is that the _returns_ are zero-sum,
| even if the act of investing is positive sum. But isn 't
| that true of anything? If you get a raise, that's zero
| sum. Someone else would have had the money in the
| alternative.
| pavlov wrote:
| The banking system in 1970 was much more labor-intensive. This
| was before ATMs and online banking, or even computers -- a
| small local bank in Ireland probably didn't have an IBM
| mainframe at that time.
|
| So there were clerks and cashiers at every level pushing paper,
| crunching numbers, handling cash. These people were clearly
| working class, not the later Wall Street image conjured by the
| word "banker".
| [deleted]
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| Flagging this article for being too stupid to warrant reading. In
| 1970, nobody was afraid their savings disappeared; when a bank
| fails, people _would_ lose their savings unless the government
| insures or rescues the bank.
|
| Given the extremely low quality of this article, and given that
| the author is a _finance editor_ rather than some freelance
| contributor to Business Insider, I very much hope that HN readers
| would stop upvoting submissions from Business Insider in the
| future.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| The article really wants to imply that because this worked, we
| shouldn't be afraid of "too big to fail", but it doesn't dare say
| that and kinda of ends up sitting between two chairs.
|
| "I'm not saying that banks crashing isn't bad, but it wasn't a
| problem for Ireland to have banks disappear"
|
| but the thing is, according to the article, trust in banks never
| disappeared, neither did the banks. People kept writing cheques
| against their bank accounts. There was a clear expectation that
| banks would open with all money intact and cheques would be
| processed.
|
| That is a very different scenario from a bank failing.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| This is a huge equivocation by TFA. When we think of banks
| failing we typically think of situations where banks can no
| longer honor deposits.
|
| What the article describes is nothing of the sort. It was a
| strike, which is a breakdown of operations, not insolvency.
| corethree wrote:
| How were bankers not skinned alive?
|
| If someone owes you or I money and then suddenly they go on
| strike there will be a vicious reckoning.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 50 years after the civil war, Ireland would not particularly
| keen to start up the random violence again.
|
| I suspect everyone assumed normality would resume "tomorrow",
| for a lot of tomorrows. Which is the other reason you can't
| just start up the lynchings, this isn't America and you'll
| have to live with these people and their families on a
| comparatively small island.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Most people, presumably, aren't as bloodthirsty as you;
| strikes, no matter how inconvenient, rarely result in mass
| murder of the strikers by the general public. Sometimes by
| the state, in totalitarian systems, but not by random people.
| corethree wrote:
| First of all bankers on strike isn't a normal strike. It's
| like parents going on strike and leaving their kids to die.
|
| Think about it... I steal all of someones money and promise
| to pay them back later and they're just going to be nice
| about it? If this happened to a person... likely he will
| hunt me down and "extract" the money out of me through any
| means available.
|
| Why? because typically survival depends on a persons'
| ability to spend money.
|
| I am not bloodthirsty. Theft in any society typically
| results in extreme measures of punishment including
| forcefully kidnapping people and confining them in inhumane
| conditions (it's called prison). Additionally, when the
| "theft" involves survival, getting violent is a normal
| thing. This is not just a "totalitarian" measure.
|
| What's going on here seems to be a social phenomenon
| because theft and a sketchy promise of repayment is
| essentially what happened. The only reason why the system
| remained stable was because people still accepted checks.
|
| I mean would you accept an IOU as payment if you know the
| issuer essentially stole the money and won't return it when
| asked for it? Typically no.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Only in totalitarian systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
| rsynnott wrote:
| > In the summer of 1921 in Mingo County, hundreds of
| miners were arrested without habeas corpus and other
| basic legal rights.
|
| I mean, er, yes, sounds like it.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| There were a lot of strikes in Ireland in the 1970's,
| including a rent strike at one point.
| barrkel wrote:
| Back in the 90s in Ireland, my mother would occasionally cash a
| cheque at the pub - if it's not crossed payee a/c only, the
| bearer can generally cash it themselves.
|
| Going further back, pubs were the local shops for general dry
| goods, particularly in rural communities. I recall some dusty
| window displays in some pubs even in the 1980s, when I was a kid.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Recently I found that in a few of the more touristic areas in
| Ireland (which I rarely visit, being from here, was showing
| friends some places), a lot of pubs will offer a foreign
| exchange service of dubious legitimacy with debatably fair
| rates.
|
| Same thing in the border counties up north - you can often
| spend or exchange Sterling and Euro currency, but the rates
| will suck.
|
| In the 1990's where I grew up, one of the two shops in the
| village was basically a room off one of the pubs. The other,
| larger shop was also the post office, hardware store, etc.
| rsynnott wrote:
| This is common in tourist-y areas everywhere. I was in Lisbon
| recently, and saw a number of places advertising that they
| accepted Sterling... at a rate of 1:1 with the Euro. A mere
| 15% FX fee.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| What struck me as interesting is that one could do FX
| easily in a pub out in Blarney near the castle, while
| there's not a single FX place in Cork City itself. Same
| thing in Galway - can't find a FX place anywhere in the
| city, but if you head out to one of the tourist
| destinations you can do so at the pub.
|
| You can't do foreign exchange at a bank or credit union
| anymore without an account.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There are 3 or 4. You may need to search "bureau de
| change"
|
| http://www.locallife.ie/county-cork/bureaux-de-change.asp
| araes wrote:
| > You can't do foreign exchange at a bank
|
| (Somewhat rant, not really at you, just...What?) It's
| difficult to believe I'm even reading that. An
| institution that only deals with currency, and literally
| has almost no downside to accepting any customer for
| currency exchange ... won't accept currency exchange?
|
| Most banks have far more resources that an FX stall to
| verify whether you're handing over junk.
|
| There was a story last month about how banks are the only
| people left who can even determine whether "fake" Euro
| coins are fake because they're too high quality "fakes".
| Counterfeiters are cranking out magnetic, weight
| matching, material matching, currency that's nearly mint
| quality. And banks won't even do ForEx? People over in
| Eastern Europe have just given up. Don't even bother
| using banks, cause the banks will just tell you all the
| money's fake.
|
| (TLDR; Feel free to ignore, this entire situation seems
| idiotic. Like humans just keep rushing towards dumb
| results.)
| rsynnott wrote:
| > and literally has almost no downside to accepting any
| customer for currency exchange
|
| So, there are a few things going on. First of all, there
| are downsides; in particular, it's a money laundering
| risk. But also, it's logistically expensive; the bank has
| to keep a stock of foreign money, and occupy an actual
| human dealing with it, and, these days, the rates they
| can reasonably charge for it are pretty low.
|
| If you're looking for someone to blame for this, probably
| primarily blame the free market. Traditionally, banks did
| physical FX, at rates that were generally a horrendous
| ripoff, but all consumer FX was a horrendous ripoff so
| what were you going to do. Today, it's possible for
| consumers to do FX with costs in the 0.5% range, lower
| for large amounts or if they pay upfront for Revolut's
| premium plan or something. This doesn't leave much margin
| for the banks if they want to be even vaguely
| competitive, so they're only going to do it if it's cheap
| to do. It is not cheap to do.
|
| This is actually generally a positive outcome for most
| consumers; FX is much cheaper and more convenient than it
| used to be for more people; it's only if you want to
| exchange physical money that it has become more
| difficult.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Most post offices will do it, I think. I bought dollar
| notes in one a while back without any difficulty. But
| yeah, it's not really a business banks would want to be
| in; if you're doing it honestly it's not very profitable,
| and it can be quite... money-launder-y. Best bet for non-
| eurozone tourists would be to use a neobank (Revolut
| etc)/pseudo-bank (Wise etc) that offers fair FX rates,
| and then use an ATM.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| The link is extremely light on detail so in skeptical
|
| 1. What was the extent of the strike? Did salaries still get
| deposited? Did inter company transfer go through? Did exchanges
| stay open? Did lines of credit for businesses small and large
| stay open?
|
| 2. The whole "we knew who had money and we didn't deal with
| strangers" makes me suspect there's a _whole other side_ of this
| particular story.
| rsynnott wrote:
| As an Irish person, I would not _particularly_ recommend Ireland
| in 1970 as a model to aspire to.
|
| And even given that, the banks did not actually fail, they just
| weren't operating, and the expectation was that they would start
| back up again at some point. When Ireland actually faced the
| banks failing, in 2008, we bailed them out and nationalised most
| of them, at a cost of almost 10,000 euro per capita.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Arguably the only reason it worked out fine (for some value of
| fine) in the 1970's was because everything being a shitshow was
| the generally accepted state of affairs, and for a lot of
| normal working people being paid cash was still normal.
| terminous wrote:
| > "I deal only with my regulars ... I refuse strangers."
|
| > 'They are mostly strangers to us, and we just have to play it
| by ear in deciding whether to accept a cheque', said an
| official."
|
| Sounds like a recipe for discrimination and inequality, which
| isn't mentioned in either article.
| version_five wrote:
| Right, much better for everybody to be screwed in the name of
| equity.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop taking HN threads further into
| ideological battle? We had to warn you about this just the
| other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37699522.
|
| It destroys what this site is for, so we end up having to ban
| accounts that keep doing it.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| version_five wrote:
| That seems awfully harsh, the comment I replied to had done
| the usual "let's find some reason this is discriminatory"
| thing and I was pushing back on it. I'm happy to stop
| commenting.
| dang wrote:
| It seems to me that your comment clearly broke the site
| guidelines and the GP comment clearly didn't. That's why
| I replied to the one and not the other. I also thought it
| best to note that we've already had to warn you
| repeatedly, and recently, to make sure that you have that
| information. I realize it sucks to get moderated, but
| this doesn't seem particularly harsh to me?
|
| I don't want you to stop commenting! I'm just asking you
| to stick to HN's rules when you do.
|
| Btw, there's a common bias that distorts basically
| everyone's judgment about this kind of thing (including
| mine, clearly): we underestimate our own harshness by,
| say, 10x, and overestimate the other's by another (say)
| 10x, and that compounds to a 100x distortion. I'd venture
| a guess that this is why your comment seemed to you like
| innocuous "pushing back", while it seemed to me like an
| obvious breaking of HN's rules. I don't know if that's
| helpful or not (probably not), but it's what came to
| mind.
| garba_dlm wrote:
| and this is probably why and how it comes to pass that the
| taxpayer of the future is left holding the bills
| mlyle wrote:
| While keeping _something_ running via an informal system is
| better than nothing, and _most_ people might be okay... if
| you 're just kinda shifty looking or unpopular at the moment
| in your local pub and have a _much_ harder time than everyone
| else, that 's not exactly great.
|
| That is, it's not _only_ the common experience that matters,
| but the outliers too. The basic tools of society should be
| available even if you 're ugly, annoying, or a minority.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This problem is _far_ worse with a concentrated system than
| a decentralized one. If there are five local pubs and one
| of them won 't have you, well, still four more. If there is
| only one bank and their loan officer doesn't like the cut
| of your jib, or their algorithm has decided to have a false
| positive, you're done.
|
| Though of course the modern problem isn't that there is
| only one bank, it's that there is only one bank regulator
| which subjects all of the banks to the same incentives, and
| if those rule you out you're effectively prohibited from
| using a bank in another jurisdiction with different rules.
|
| What you need for this is something permissionless.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Fun fact for you, a lot of pubs in the UK are shifting to
| requiring photo ID to enter, and scanning that ID into a
| centralised system, often as a requirement from the
| police to retain their license to serve alcohol.
|
| I ended up chatting to one of the bouncers at a bar a
| while back and he was telling me about how they refused
| entry to someone not long before because they were
| flagged as having caused trouble in a bar 70 miles away.
|
| In some regards I'm not even against this, if you have a
| record of attacking women in bars I don't want you in the
| bar I'm at, but this does seem incredibly prone to abuse.
| I can totally see someone who has a grudge getting people
| banned from every pub in the country.
| mlyle wrote:
| > This problem is far worse with a concentrated system
| than a decentralized one.
|
| They can break in different ways. If you're in an out-
| group or unpopular, it's not clear whether you're better
| off with n local pubs making a decision to accept your
| money informally or n/2 national banks making a decision
| while subject to oversight.
|
| In any case, this is a false premise: it's not like
| you're choosing from 5 local pubs. The question is
| whether the pub you attend likes you enough to take your
| check.
|
| > What you need for this is something permissionless.
|
| Far better to have things work okay without any other
| entity being involved, sure. But there are reasons why
| banks exist.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If you're in an out-group or unpopular, it's not clear
| whether you're better off with n local pubs making a
| decision to accept your money informally or n/2 national
| banks making a decision while subject to oversight.
|
| What is clear, however, is that you're better off with
| both systems existing in parallel because then you can
| use either one, rather than having the informal one
| prohibited by law so that you're forced into the other
| one whether it works for you or not.
|
| > it's not like you're choosing from 5 local pubs. The
| question is whether the pub you attend likes you enough
| to take your check.
|
| You are choosing from 5 local pubs. Even if you don't
| attend one regularly, it's in the same town. You could
| have mates there who vouch for you. Or you go to the pub
| of the person who _wrote_ the check, they confirm that
| they actually wrote it and then it gets cashed on the
| basis of their standing rather than yours.
|
| > Far better to have things work okay without any other
| entity being involved, sure. But there are reasons why
| banks exist.
|
| You want a regulated and insured entity where you can
| safely store your money, sure. That doesn't explain why
| they should have a monopoly on various other aspects of
| finance though. Or why they would even need a _monopoly_
| on _that_ -- if you want the assurances you get from a
| regulated bank, there they are. If you want a
| permissionless money transfer system that anybody can use
| and nobody can be refused, why shouldn 't that exist too?
| mlyle wrote:
| > What is clear, however, is that you're better off with
| both systems existing in parallel because then you can
| use either one, rather than having the informal one
| prohibited by law so that you're forced into the other
| one whether it works for you or not.
|
| Yes, but we've never had that: pubs don't do banking
| under normal circumstances because they're outcompeted by
| the banks.
|
| > If you want a permissionless money transfer system that
| anybody can use and nobody can be refused, why shouldn't
| that exist too?
|
| I don't have a big objection to a parallel informal
| payment system. OTOH, these kinds of systems tend to have
| the problems that all the reddit alternatives have: they
| capture the least attractive and most problematic
| business because they only end up employed by an unusual
| subset of people.
|
| I guess the closest analog we have of what you describe
| at scale is hawala.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Yes, but we've never had that: pubs don't do banking
| under normal circumstances because they're outcompeted by
| the banks.
|
| Really what happens is that the banks don't wish to be
| outcompeted so if something starts taking their business
| under normal circumstances then it gives them the
| incentive to fix the problem. But that's exactly why the
| alternate systems should be permitted -- it gives them
| the kick in the ass needed to make the banking system fix
| its shortcomings.
|
| > OTOH, these kinds of systems tend to have the problems
| that all the reddit alternatives have: they capture the
| least attractive and most problematic business because
| they only end up employed by an unusual subset of people.
|
| That's what they're for. They serve the needs of the
| people who the traditional banking system doesn't serve.
|
| And it's not obvious that this is even the case, if they
| would be allowed to operate openly instead of being
| something you only use because you cannot use anything
| else.
|
| For example, there are different kinds of businesses. In
| some cases the business itself is questionable, e.g.
| because it's very small and has no reputation history,
| and then you want a payment system (like credit cards)
| that offers buyer protection and chargebacks so the
| customer can feel confident that if the seller doesn't
| send the goods they can get their money back.
|
| In other cases the business is perfectly trustworthy but
| it's the kind of business where the customers like to
| commit fraud, e.g. because the goods can easily be resold
| after being purchased with a stolen credit card. For this
| you want an irreversible payment system so the honest
| merchant can't get ripped off by these scammers.
|
| Sometimes you want a payment system where the buyer can
| be anonymous, e.g. so that nobody is tracking what kind
| of literature you purchase.
|
| You don't want a one-size-fits-all system, you want the
| diversity. Which you can't have if the law mandates one
| specific kind of system.
| tekla wrote:
| This seems like a very very good argument against decentralized
| currency.
| ehnto wrote:
| 1970s Ireland was very homogenous, which is to say white. It
| wasn't until the 90s that immigration began flowing in the
| other direction to a meaningful degree. So while I agree with
| you, it was unlikely a problem at the time.
|
| Although that doesn't cover gender or class discrimination so I
| suppose that was still an issue.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Oh, we absolutely still had discrimination, particularly
| against Travellers, but also there was very strong though
| largely unacknowledged classism. And then of course there
| were _women_; after a good start (Ireland was one of the
| first countries to grant equal universal suffrage), we spent
| the next few decades barely acknowledging that women were
| people.
|
| However, in 1970, people here just weren't all that 'banked';
| when I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s, it was still
| fairly common for people to not have bank accounts, and
| certainly in 1970 postal savings accounts would have been
| more common than bank accounts. Today they're ~universal
| (very few employers would consider paying by any means other
| than bank transfer) but it was a different story 50 years
| ago.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Or more importantly in Ireland, religions based
| discrimination
| rsynnott wrote:
| This is about the Republic of Ireland, where that wasn't a
| huge factor (there was definitely some; comments in the
| newspapers from 1961 when Dublin got a Jewish mayor are
| eyebrow-raising, but it wouldn't have been a huge issue for
| something like this). You're thinking of Northern Ireland.
|
| That said, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Ireland in 1970
| certainly did have other forms of discrimination which
| would've been much more relevant here.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Interesting enough, one of Israel's presidents was an
| Irish Jew - Chaim Herzog [0]. If you listen to his
| speeches, you'd think you were listening to an announcer
| on RTE [1].
|
| This has absolutely no bearing on the article and it's
| content.
|
| [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Herzog
|
| [1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWL66PUf7c
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| More so an issue in NI than RoI, even back then according
| to older relatives the division was a lot less in RoI.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > They had an informed view of whether the liquid resources of
| would-be payers were stout or ailing!
|
| Some world-class puns there.
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