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OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

sherwood.news

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Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#151
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is misreading how literal the comparison is meant to be; Sherwood's running a bunch of "OpenAI is X" articles today. This is ... a useful piece of information with which to update our credulity of the narrative these articles are trying to present.

https://sherwood.news/tech/what-companys-past-reveals-the-fu... provides more context as to what the articles are trying to achieve.

That's actually a nice way to write. Nobody knows for real what is going to happen. It's so frustrating to see a writer chase down one narrow narrative and cherry pick anecdotes etc. Understanding what just happened is often more complex. And the future is even more open.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#152

Doesn't explain what regulations Visa pushed for and got which helped it maintain its monopoly. Would be helpful to have some concrete examples of what it did and what OpenAI is trying to do. The point of the article sounds plausible, but doesn't really present any evidence to support it. Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has.

> Doesn't explain what regulations Visa pushed for and got which helped it maintain its monopoly. Visa, the organization, is little more than a small clearing house. Credit card issuers (banks) and credit card processors (also banks) define the network in so far as determining what organizations can be "on the visa rails" (also almost exclusively banks).

> Visa ... is little more than a small clearing house

worth $600 billion

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rationale of the banks is clear. The problem is that these are perverse incentives. The costs hit all customers, not just the ones who use credit cards. And the benefits accrue largely to the cardholders of premium cards, which are wealthy people. It’s a tax on being poor to subsidize the wealthy and the middlemen. Cards should be forced into being a true commodity with perfect competition. The incentive rewards…

> And the benefits accrue largely to the cardholders of premium cards, which are wealthy people. To have competition you do need a way to differentiate, and it's going to be funded by some combination of those fees, interest/charges, kickbacks etc. Some interchange fee is simply necessary, iirc the EU attempts to prevent the egregious regressive aspects of that by capping the interchange fees of all cards. Thereby el…

You do not need differentiation for competition. It’s called perfect competition and it’s a race to the bottom for price, which is the ideal outcome here.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#154

The Acquired podcast had great episodes on the background of both Visa[1] and Costco[2]. [1] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/visa [2] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco

I think the most interesting bit from the Visa podcast was that in the past 5(ish?) years, their revenue has massively increased... From a "things are nice the way they've always been", this felt like a indication that change was afoot there, too, and has me wary of Visa maybe causing greater harm in the near future.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the benefits accrue largely to the cardholders of premium cards, which are wealthy people. To have competition you do need a way to differentiate, and it's going to be funded by some combination of those fees, interest/charges, kickbacks etc. Some interchange fee is simply necessary, iirc the EU attempts to prevent the egregious regressive aspects of that by capping the interchange fees of all cards. Thereby el…

You do not need differentiation for competition. It’s called perfect competition and it’s a race to the bottom for price, which is the ideal outcome here.

Exactly.

Remember when mobile carriers were competing via "differentiation"? Practically, that meant waiting on firmware updates for months or years, having to deal with preloaded and non-removable crapware on mobile OSes etc.

Now they're largely "dumb pipes" competing on price and quality of service, and as a consumer I couldn't be happier. (Of course, there are now different gatekeepers on our phones, but that's a different discussion.)

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but my point is the US can do what it wants, but that's not going to stop anyone else in the world doing it. And the companies that want it will just go and get it from their China or the EU operations instead.

if it was only that easy… the US government would basically forbid you from doing business in the US if you violate what us puts into place and very few companies would willingly lose US market

China will absolutely call that bluff, as they have done for the past few decades.

The US quite simply does not have the clout to make China back down from anything.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#157
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point here a little bit. To break this down more simply: Credit cards: Merchants pay 3% and pass the cost on to the customer, IRS gets the vast majority of business taxes paid (no way to under-report taxable income), average person gets all the benefits of a fully funded government plus 1-2% of their purchase back in credit card rewards. Average person also gets a revolving credit line with…

> IRS gets the vast majority of business taxes paid (no way to under-report taxable income) I guess we should dispel this one if it's really why people think financial mass surveillance is a good thing. Cash is not even close to the only way for someone inclined to do it to under-report taxable income. Business income is revenue minus expenses. Anything that lowers revenue or increases expenses reduces taxable income…

You haven't dispelled this at all.

You literally can't reduce revenue on paper when your business revenue is credit card payments. The payments get reported directly to the IRS by the card processor. You can so much more easily fudge numbers if you take in primarily cash.

In both cash and credit scenarios the business owner can increase on-paper expenses to lower tax burden, but there's only so much you can do with that without doing things like spending money on unnecessary costs or risking obvious audit discrepancies.

If you take cash you can just lie and know that if you ever get audited there is no paper trail apart from the one you have created for yourself.

The guy running the cash bar down the street can buy half his liquor from Costco with cash that he never reports receiving, and just pretends like half the bar's sales don't exist. That person would then only report the revenue to the portion of drink sales that go to a legitimate distributor.

In this scenario both the distributor and the bar's receipts all line up and look legit, so the IRS would literally have to come down to the bar and count customers to prove anything was amiss.

We can call this "financial mass surveillance" to make it sound bad and scary, but what's more scary to me as an average taxpayer is businesses evading taxes so that all the things I depend on like Medicare and Social Security get underfunded. As a W2 individual, I have no way to avoid taxes in a similar way.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#158
post #100
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point here a little bit. To break this down more simply: Credit cards: Merchants pay 3% and pass the cost on to the customer, IRS gets the vast majority of business taxes paid (no way to under-report taxable income), average person gets all the benefits of a fully funded government plus 1-2% of their purchase back in credit card rewards. Average person also gets a revolving credit line with…

With your last sentence, you supply your own counterexample demonstrating that "tax-evasion-enabling cash or credit cards costing the merchant 2-3%, pick one" is a false dichotomy. As I've mentioned, another counterexample is that Visa and Mastercard credit cards very much continue to exist in the EU, even after consumer credit card interchange rates have been capped to 0.3%.

I never said "tax-evasion-enabling cash or credit cards costing the merchant 2-3%, pick one."

I'm absolutely all for credit card merchant fees getting capped and treated more like a highly-regulated monopoly.

In that scenario my argument in support of credit cards gets even stronger.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#159
post #96
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they provide that much value to consumers intrinsically, then why are banks paying the same consumers to use them? I completely agree that credit (and just as much, if not more, debit) cards are an incredibly useful invention and great accelerator for online commerce. I don't know of any other way of paying a merchant I know next to nothing of that will allow me to get my money back if they do not deliver on their…

I think you're missing the point here a little bit. To break this down more simply: Credit cards: Merchants pay 3% and pass the cost on to the customer, IRS gets the vast majority of business taxes paid (no way to under-report taxable income), average person gets all the benefits of a fully funded government plus 1-2% of their purchase back in credit card rewards. Average person also gets a revolving credit line with…

They don’t just pass it on, they gain margin through more sales.

I was on a private school board and helped revamp their fundraising. The previous leadership team was cheap and focused on avoiding things like transaction fees. Well, they lost dollars chasing pennies. We boosted sales 25-30% just by adding card and contactless payment.

Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards are probably the most consumer friendly innovation ever — a product of the time they were developed. It was an era when the federal government functioned and the credit card operations were so problematic a heavy hand was required. Every supposedly better alternative adds margin for the supplier, increases the risk of fraud, and leaves the user with poor recourse due to the lack govnerment regulation. Ad…

> Credit cards are probably the most consumer friendly innovation ever Depends on the consumer. Vendors often have to raise their prices to keep their own margins, which is passed onto the consumer. If you're too poor or otherwise 'unwanted' to be given a credit card then you are paying higher prices without any benefit. * https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/27/lower-income-americans-pay-f... * https://www.vox.com/the-goods…

Here (Aotearoa) merchants add fees to credit cards they do not add to debit cards or cash

Seems to work well

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