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Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

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Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it's for human trafficking? Payment processors are made up of people, and people have to have the freedom of drawing a moral line they won't cross. The real problem as I see it is that payment processing is a near monopoly. Better competition and smaller players would almost guarantee that every transaction except the most egregious would have a willing payment processor. Diversity is so often the best answer…

It's odd to me that the way to combat this is to freeze money. Yes, money is the lifeblood, but that means you can also follow the money to the source. Wouldn't you want to do that instead of freezing it and killing the lead?

Sometimes the people who own that money are out of jurisdictional reach.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, the processing fee for PornHub and gun stores is now 237%. What are you going to do about it?

No idea where you got "237%" but no, of course, the rule I have in mind would require charging fees proportional to the risk. This is well-worn ground. And if somehow the risk is double what the charge is (?!) then that's the risk. They'll have to step up their customer validation at PornHub.

Who gets to define the risk, though? Currently the payment processor gets to decide what's risky (and how risky) and what isn't -- with no need to justify it to anyone -- so they could just say that online pornography companies' risk justifies a -- totally proportional -- 237% fee (or whatever high number they want that makes using them infeasible).

Or does someone have to sit down and write a law or regulation that says "the risk for providing payment services to an online pornography company is X, and thus the processing fee is Y%"? I guess that could work?

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It was more convenient to rob cash which is fungible. But I actually wonder if the rewards are higher today, with everyone carrying >$1000 phones.

iPhones are hardware locked now they can only be sold for parts.

Or scams on eBay

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#594
post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The poster was noting there is historic precedent for parties to charge punitive fees to the point it’s defacto banned Obviously, the answer is to disallow that. And if people break the law, and do it anyway, by trying to be "clever" then a judge and jury can punish them. This punishment works especially well, with this thing called "discovery", in which the legal system can parse through your internal communicatio…

The reason that it is the way it is now is because people want it that way. So good luck with that.

Well, what do you mean by "people"? If you mean "a majority of voters", then I doubt that's actually true, for quite a few types of businesses and transactions that are currently banned from payment networks.

If you mean "those in power who can and do make decisions that a majority of voters wouldn't actually support", then sure, I think that's the case, but that doesn't make it right, and that doesn't make it inevitable, either.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#595
post #574
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto fixes this to some extent, but would require a chain that could handle a large volume of small transactions.

I don't want to be associated with illegal activities. Crypto transactions are traceable so I could receive tainted coins from some criminals and become a suspect myself. Cash and traditional banking don't have this problem.

Lightning solves the fungibility issue. Then you have Monero but it's not widely adopted and has scaling issues.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. There are other mechanisms to target illegal actions, such as sending the police to arrest the person. Those actions are guarded by due process and the right to trial. Using the financial system to target people is not.

But we're not talking about "using the financial system to target people." We're talking about whether it's worthwhile to say something like "hey, maybe we will not allow legal markets for some things (say, murder) in our society" on top of "maybe we will ban make some activities crimes (say, murder) themselves." Do you believe markets for murder should be legal?

I think you're asking the wrong question.

Do you believe private corporations should be in charge of deciding -- with no oversight or ability to appeal -- whether money changing hands is for a legal or illegal purpose?

I guess "yes" is a defensible answer to that, but for me it's a hard "no". As flawed as the US justice system is, I prefer due process over arbitrary action.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#597
We don't even need to abolish cash, imo it would be a huge improvement to cull 1 and 2 cent coins and make digital and card payments available everwhere. I'm from Germany and there are a lot pf places where you can't even pay with a regular bank card.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. There are other mechanisms to target illegal actions, such as sending the police to arrest the person. Those actions are guarded by due process and the right to trial. Using the financial system to target people is not.

So you would willingly, knowingly, and personally process a transaction to kill someone? Not your problem, let the police discover it?

Do you truly believe that when you'd make the decision to categorize a transaction as such, that decision would hold up in court, beyond a reasonable doubt, every time?

If not, then you have no place making it. And I would argue that even if you do, you still have no place making it, as unaccountable private corporations should not be given the ability (or requirement) to enforce law.

Certainly we can legally require you to report suspicious transactions to law enforcement, but it should be up to people bound to follow due process to actually do something (or not do something) about it.

I think a reasonable compromise might be to allow payment processors to put a transaction on hold until it's reviewed by law enforcement, but even this has some significant downsides.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have evidence that a murder is about to occur, you report it to the fucking police. You don’t just remove yourself from the pipeline and hope it doesn’t happen.

Do you accept the payment and profit or can you refuse the transaction? A parent comment claimed we must process all transactions, legal or not.

But you don't -- and can't -- know that the payment is illegal. You merely suspect it, and since you are not a court of law, a judge, or a jury, you should have no business arbitrarily cutting off someone's ability to transact.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#600
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you know about/suspect it you report it. how do you know with 100% certainty/due process that this is indeed the case and it's not just your ML algorithm going crazy? people can also pay with physical money if they desire to do so.

What I asked is specific: if you know the money is for a hit job will you still accept the business and take your fee or is there a moral line you personally won't cross? Yes, it's the job of the police to investigate but do you want the freedom to not engage in business that you consider evil?

And I think what many of us in this thread object to is that your specific question is irrelevant, because it's hypothetical and unrealistic. You do not know the money is for a hit job. You just don't. You may think that's what it's for, but you don't actually know, and you -- as a random employee (or worse, algorithm) of Payments R Us, Inc. -- should have no business playing judge and jury.

As for moral lines you are curious as to what people will and won't cross, those lines will be different for different people, and that's exactly why we shouldn't be putting these sorts of decisions in the hands of random unaccountable corporate employees (or, again, worse, algorithms).

You clearly want someone to say "no, of course I wouldn't allow a transaction to go through if it was for a hitman contract". But what if someone said "I see no problem with contract killings; I'd let it through"? That person could be working at Payments R Us, and clearly we don't want someone making that decision! So take it out of their hands.

The contract killer is of course an extreme example, but we already have real-world examples discussed here that illustrate the problem with this. Pornography is legal, and yet payment processors boot online porn companies from their networks. Someone who thinks pornography is immoral might have made that determination (I don't buy the "high risk of fraud" argument; you can always control for that with higher fees). Regardless of how you personally feel about pornography, do you think it's ok for a company to deny another company access to a big chunk of the financial system for entirely legal activities, just because they don't like them? I would sincerely hope that we can agree that sort of thing is bad.

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