21–30 of 135 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, why should someone's higher risk lifestyle be subsidized by other insurance customers?
My understanding is that the reason is because that's how insurance works.
Unfortunately, credit card companies/banks/etc have been selling purchasing histories, to pretty much all comers, for years. It'd be really nice if we could stop that instead of caring about the particular people they sell it to. IE It's not "better" when they sell it to someone who isn't Google, and I honestly could't give a crap about the complaint, which mostly deals with antitrust.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, I don't either. But the data is still there. You don't know if in ten years Google is going to start losing money and is forced (by its shareholders) to find alternative means of monetization. You can't really say Google is perfectly secure and will never ever ever be hacked and leak your data either. Maybe it will never happen, maybe it will. Therefore I believe I should have the right to say "hey, I d…
Or potentially worse, if they're compromised/hacked in some way and that data simply enters the wild ecosystem.
I suppose some people might feel weird letting strangers or anyone know what they buy, but that's an argument for the ability to opt-out, not for filing a complaint with an agency or starting a lawsuit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that the reason is because that's how insurance works.
Kinda. Insurance is about a pooling of risks, that does not mean that every risk level must be in the same pool. Houses that are built in flood-prone areas are forced to be in different insurance pools with higher rates than other houses because the risk profiles are different.
Unfortunately, credit card companies/banks/etc have been selling purchasing histories, to pretty much all comers, for years. It'd be really nice if we could stop that instead of caring about the particular people they sell it to. IE It's not "better" when they sell it to someone who isn't Google, and I honestly could't give a crap about the complaint, which mostly deals with antitrust.
Visa is working to prevent people from using cash in stores [0]. Currently, they are merely giving merchants an incentive to change, but in the future they may use their immense lobbying power to get preferential legislation enacted. Once cash is gone: 1. your purchases will be available to any company willing to pay for it, and 2. Visa will get a de facto "tax" on all transactions (through 1-2% merchant fees) [0] ht…
In the days when we had interest rates it was possible to make money on transactions by taking the money one day and paying the invoice on the next day. Overnight the money would earn interest. This would be profit to cover the transaction. So a bank could make money moving cheques around for people, taking two weeks to clear back in the days when everything was manual.
So with electronic payment there is no human inspecting signatures and doing data entry. So why the merchant fees?
In a free market a competitor that just makes money on interest should be winning here.
Try as I might, I just can't be bothered to care if someone wants to know what I've been buying so they can show me advertisements relevant to my interests. But I'm weird, I don't think advertising is inherently evil or annoying.
Do you want it to be sold to your insurance company? We see that you're a regular coffee drinker which is correlated with increased risk of heart problems -- here's a rate increase.
Also, not to nitpick, but coffee is not linked to increased risk of heart problems, that's a myth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you want it to be sold to your insurance company? We see that you're a regular coffee drinker which is correlated with increased risk of heart problems -- here's a rate increase.
Maybe we'll get universal healthcare at some point and people will stop rolling out this tired argument.
Try as I might, I just can't be bothered to care if someone wants to know what I've been buying so they can show me advertisements relevant to my interests. But I'm weird, I don't think advertising is inherently evil or annoying.
Inherently evil and annoying? No, but in practice it's annoying and online at least, potentially problematic on other levels as well such as security and performance. Telemarketing isn't inherently evil and annoying either, but it's become a playground for scammers with robocalls and constantly shifting spoofed numbers. That, maybe, should tell you something about the nature of the medium, or at least the nature of t…
Note I am not saying there are not annoying advertisements, but that's an issue of implementation, not the concept of targeted advertising. If anything, Google would know I will never click on an annoying ad if they "invaded my privacy" more than they do now.
Unfortunately, credit card companies/banks/etc have been selling purchasing histories, to pretty much all comers, for years. It'd be really nice if we could stop that instead of caring about the particular people they sell it to. IE It's not "better" when they sell it to someone who isn't Google, and I honestly could't give a crap about the complaint, which mostly deals with antitrust.
Visa is working to prevent people from using cash in stores [0]. Currently, they are merely giving merchants an incentive to change, but in the future they may use their immense lobbying power to get preferential legislation enacted. Once cash is gone: 1. your purchases will be available to any company willing to pay for it, and 2. Visa will get a de facto "tax" on all transactions (through 1-2% merchant fees) [0] ht…
so while Visa is the threat in the forefront we need to be very wary about any attempt to push towards a cash less society until privacy is guaranteed from even government agencies
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Visa is working to prevent people from using cash in stores [0]. Currently, they are merely giving merchants an incentive to change, but in the future they may use their immense lobbying power to get preferential legislation enacted. Once cash is gone: 1. your purchases will be available to any company willing to pay for it, and 2. Visa will get a de facto "tax" on all transactions (through 1-2% merchant fees) [0] ht…
So how do we fix this? In the days when we had interest rates it was possible to make money on transactions by taking the money one day and paying the invoice on the next day. Overnight the money would earn interest. This would be profit to cover the transaction. So a bank could make money moving cheques around for people, taking two weeks to clear back in the days when everything was manual. So with electronic payme…
You could have a non-profit do the interchange, like the Interac network in Canada, but that would be difficult to coordinate without consolidating all the banks. (Canada has, like, only half a dozen.)