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Squillions: How money laundering won

lrb.co.uk

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Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#231

Post by lxgr »

handle584 wrote: post #230
lxgr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no subsidize at all, an empty seat on a flight is an empty seat unsold, any money they can make back is extra profit. This completely disregards the opportunity cost of being able to sell the same seat. Even if the airline is absolutely unable to sell the empty seats cheaper, consider what consistently giving away seats for free would do to the remaining paid seats... > Airlines do not make money by flying…

What you said is true, but it pertains to how to balance the game once it started, while I was giving a explanation why the game is started in the first place. > consider what consistently giving away seats for free would do to the remaining paid seats After all those years it is still fairly niche because few people knew about how it actually works, and it took quite a bit of learning, with dedicated forum [0] exist…

Oh, I don’t doubt that mile optimization/churning works or that it can be very lucrative.

I do however very much doubt that it’s somehow core to the economics of airlines. I think that the real power of rewards programs is that they exploit the principal-agent problem of business travel, with an added bonus of many people being very bad at redemptions and realizing how much they’re often overpaying for a few extra miles or status.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#232

Post by throwaway290 »

orbital-decay wrote: post #40
throwaway290 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where cash is stigmatized? I haven't seen such a place except PRC. Most people want government to be able to seize assets of baddies. It is possible with cash, it is possible with banks, hardly possible with crypto. The technology to scam people at scale with untraceable emoney is not everybody's cup of tea. Speaking from a country that invaded its neighbor, for our government (as well as north korea) it is lovely to…

Everyone in China has to and will accept cash in practice (no idea about big transactions though). Cash is also more frequent among locals in remote places. Also if you're talking about Russia, people are switching back to cash en masse because cashless transfer between people is essentially half-criminalized. You run the risk of getting all your bank accounts blocked instantly on mere suspicion or for things outside…

> Everyone in China has to and will accept cash in practice

False. If you say this as advice to anyone you are putting them in danger. Cash is a no go for most vendors and you may struggle to buy food if you only have cash. I was personally rejected numerous times and told to scan QR or go home.

> if you're talking about Russia, people are switching back to cash en masse

Also false. I don't know a single person to switch to cash. Friend of a friend lost bank card and was basically on QR for months, no cash no plastic.

Here is what I know:

- There are limits on dollars basically since the beginning of war. (Normal people aren't affected because they don't use dollars)

- There was apparently a brief scare that banks cannot satisfy if you want to withdraw a lot of ruble and then the gov quickly claimed it to be false (of course). The amounts were too high for any normal person.

- a bit of cash is helpful to help because censorship infrastructure caused internet hiccups so electronic payments occasionally don't go through, but it seems rare now

- in western regions people tend to carry more cash simply because mobile internet is regularly unavailable. After all if you can't access your banking app to pay for coffee while civilians in Ukraine across the border are getting bombed, it's a bit embarrasing.

Otherwise everyone is as cashless as usual, people moving money out of banks en masse is probably made up.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#234

Post by cantalopes »

The author is truly misguided. They are willing to sacrifice everyone's privacy under the excuse of fighting crime.

But what else could you expect from a .co.uk website, they are experts on creating orwellian police state dystopias where everyone's every single move is monitored by a big brother

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#235

Post by orbital-decay »

throwaway290 wrote: post #232
orbital-decay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in China has to and will accept cash in practice (no idea about big transactions though). Cash is also more frequent among locals in remote places. Also if you're talking about Russia, people are switching back to cash en masse because cashless transfer between people is essentially half-criminalized. You run the risk of getting all your bank accounts blocked instantly on mere suspicion or for things outside…

> Everyone in China has to and will accept cash in practice False. If you say this as advice to anyone you are putting them in danger. Cash is a no go for most vendors and you may struggle to buy food if you only have cash. I was personally rejected numerous times and told to scan QR or go home. > if you're talking about Russia, people are switching back to cash en masse Also false. I don't know a single person to sw…

I'm saying that as someone who traveled across China in a (legally and physically) hardest way possible, including crossing the Taklamakan Desert where I wasn't even supposed to be. I have no idea what you're talking about - I've been mostly using cash even in tier 1 cities for everything from motor oil to street food, with occasional mobile for things like DiDi. Hotels, some vendors and others east of the Hu line can turn you down just because you're a foreigner, they don't like cash but will accept it. West of the Hu line cash is the primary way, if you're in the middle of nowhere in Qinghai it can even be the only way.

>Also false. I don't know a single person to switch to cash.

I'm sorry but either you have a pretty specific circle or you're not living in Russia (Moscow isn't). I'm talking about private transfers, not x5 groceries. Electricians, plumbers, and other workers I happened to hire in the recent several months were all reluctant to deal with bank transfers. I advise reading the federal law 161 and the actual "enforcement" practice. I personally know two debanked people, both are elderly, one is a scam victim and another was trying to move her own savings. In the second case it took months of refusals, unclear procedures, and a metric ton of paperwork to get out of it, and it was only possible because I was helping.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#236

Post by mercutio2 »

titanomachy wrote: post #192
mercutio2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This used to be true. But the 2025 Interchange Fee Settlement abolished the “Honor All Cards” regime. Perhaps, I know it’s crazy, but… perhaps segmenting the market into extremely high-spending customers, normal pay-every-month-relatively-low-fees, and no-frills, was a smart move by the big issuers? My sense is that alienating big spenders (whose interchange fees tend to be in the 4% range) is just not worth it? All…

Costco in the US has, for as long as I’ve shopped there, only accepted visa or debit.

This is orthogonal to the Interchange Fee Settlement.

The settlement allows stores to decline different *classes* of Visa cards. It was always possible to accept Visa but not MasterCard, etc. What was not previously possible was to query, before the transaction “what will the fees be” and reject cardholders presenting high-fee cards from a network you have a relationship with.

That is now allowed, by consent decree. But so far no one is doing it.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#237

Post by anticorporate »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #225
anticorporate wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retailer here: Most of these costs are fairly fixed. We have to have a safe, bags, armored transport, staff training on counterfeit detection, etc. whether the percentage of our sales in cash is 8% or 80%. The few costs that are variable are still far, far less than the processing fees. It's also worth noting there are also huge fixed costs for credit card transactions. We're currently upgrading our pinpads and it's…

There are a number of brick and mortar retailers I frequent who swing the other way and don't accept cash, only credit or debit. Presumably, they prefer paying the cost of credit card fees to the costs of handling cash. What's driving that difference?

Margins, maybe? I work for a grocery retailer. A healthy profit margin in my industry is roughly equivalent to the percentage we pay in credit card fees.

Couple that with inertia. We couldn't go cash-only even if we wanted to without pissing off a lot of our customers and losing sales. We only recently decided the cost of check fraud outweighed the push back we knew we'd get if we discontinued accepting personal checks.

We're a community-owned business with a fiercely loyal customer base. When we tell folks what payment method is cheapest for us, many will actually choose to use that payment method just to help us save money.

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