Pubs replaced banks in Ireland for several months in 1970 (2016)

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.

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.

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.

> 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.)

> 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.