681–690 of 811 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
It's a joke but Visa and Mastercard are American corporations so Americans can feel relatively secure using them. If you live in another developed country, relying on the whims of American entities feels less secure than something subject to the laws of your own country.
Equivalent PIX is very popular in Brazil for instant payments.
Do we need a pan-EU standard? I'm actually not so sure, but yes it would be nice when traveling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Liechtenstein is probably the closest second in direct democracy nature in Europe and I'd argue the outcome was close, maybe even better. They do also have some quasi-monarchist elements too though -- they have a monarch but also right of secession (unique in europe I think) to check the monarch so they have basically a direct democracy clamp on any monarchist tyranny on direct democracy outputs. I think the results…
Lichtenstein is so deeply integrated with Switzerland and for many purposes is a little more independent swiss canton that it doesn't hold as separate example. Swiss culture of democracy in unique in the world and is unique among 100% white countries. It's bread among others from its unique geography and history. Swiss are genetically indistinguishable from French, German, Italian or Austrian neighbors. When did cult…
Of course I can't prove it, but it was absolutely magical how my comment was flagged the immediate moment after your initial comment posted. So I suspect, this was never a genuine response anyway, you just couldn't help yourself making your little note while flagging mine because if you had reversed the order your fake little straw man argument couldn't have been injected in. And don't bother with "it wasn't me" because it's really only you and I reading at this point and I'm not going be duped.
What we have is a story of direct democracy working in a remarkably insular voting block of 90-95+% white euro voters with a fairly organically evolved direct process going back to in at least various elements the middle ages. And relative neutrality in WWII. When your bullshit argument turned out to be false about varied results (Lichtenstein was consistent when they did the ~same thing) you tried to wash it away as Swiss-adjacent while also claiming swiss are just an indistinguishable mixture of French, German, Italian etc -- defeating your own argument.
The only consistent rebuttal you have is your absurd white supremacism straw man whenever the weaknesses of your argument is pointed out. Which really, just shows how laughably weak of a ground your thoughts stand on. It's pretty clear that the actual facts I presented of the most successful direct democracies (Switzerland, Lichtenstein) have a 90-95% white euro voting block, difficult to naturalize, and neutrality in WWII stand on their own whether they are causal or not and that's why you're so desperate to suppress these facts by flagging them falsely under the bucket of white supremacism because we can't have people objectively witnessing that.
Personally I think it's entirely unreasonable to expect culturally novel political systems to withstand cultural diversity shocks. Africa's stability was totally rocked by the influx of Europeans, as was in the Americas, from the Mongols in Persia, it goes on and on. America's political system developed in the face of absorbing former slaves, absorbing parts of Mexico and former French colonies (Louisiana, and Louisiana purchase), and all sorts of insanely diverse interests that far outpace what Switzerland has tried to absorb. Swiss has been 90-95% euro white citizens.... since a very very long time and has had that stability in which a long history of direct democracy culture to flourish. It would be rather silly to think you can apply the lessons of Switzerland and just drop them in somewhere else. It would also be silly to think the local culture is going to well tolerate direct democracy if they see it as a fast-lane to a rapid immigration channel co-opting their interests (representative democracy slows this down; you basically have to be entrenched to get into high office, and getting entrenched takes time, further favoring the old boy network of established residents).
What we have seen is in culturally stable parts of Europe, with low variance of absorption of non-whites, yes direct democracy has been able to develop and been amazingly effective, but this was in an environment of 90-95% being (in your own words, not mine) "genetically" indistinguishable white Europeans and largely culturally as well -- this is not at all the way people view themselves in place like USA. I'm not asserting it is the actual color of the skin itself that fosters that, although it can be used as way to measure rate of change of absorption of absorption of some other cultures that could complicate the process of unifying votes.
Wero uses AWS for their infrastructure... So much about their sovereignty focus. Source(German): https://netzpolitik.org/2026/uneingeloestes-versprechen-auf-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about sanders, mamdani, aoc? Or are they just fringe candidates and don’t count? For every AOC there are a dozen Schumers I guess. But I disagree with your thesis because there are factions of ethical capitalists in the democratic party that have never existed in the modern Republican Party.
As a former Sanders supporter, it became clear that even though Bernie was likely acting in good faith, the establishment used all of their levers politically and in capital-controlled media to limit him to the role of controlled opposition. Emphasis on "controlled." > ethical capitalists That is not a coherent concept, especially in late stage capitalism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been using iDeal for many years now and have yet to see any of the downsides of it being a product of a commercial bank. Perhaps it's a difference in banking culture between different countries; I would certainly not put the same trust and faith in a Wero alternative set up by American banks, that's for sure. Banks are beholden to policy from the central bank and financial authorities. Payment fees are capped,…
You cannot do a chargeback on iDeal, but I don't think that is related to it being a product of commercial banks. The American companies Mastercard and Visa are subject to American rule of law. In the case of a criminal or authoritarian president, such is an issue. You can see how Russian assets got frozen and SWIFT stopped working for Russia after they did the full scale invasion of Ukraine. Should the USA invade Gr…
Odd. How is a transaction reversed after a dispute?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Online and in-store payments will follow in 2027, as per the article
Understood. But even then it couldn't be easier than the contactless direct debit we already have.
Why would you think that contactless payment would require Visa or Mastercard?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with 3D Secure is that the merchant can unilaterally decide not to use it, which defeats the whole purpose of 3D Secure.
> the merchant can unilaterally decide not to use it If they do so, they are telling the card issuer that they are happy to be on the hook for chargebacks/fraud. It's not an decision without consequences
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wero is basically an EU-wide version of the Dutch iDeal system, which in my opinion is the gold standard of how internet payment should work. For some reason, most Dutch people are convinced that the way things work in the Netherlands is the gold standard of how things should work in general, and are very hostile to solutions from other countries even if those solutions are better by any sensible metric. This is es…
/rant? :-) 1. sounds nice though! But how do they verify that it's actually you? Just matching the photo manually? People are terrible at that. Or do they scan a fingerprint?
Yes.
> People are terrible at that.
"Imperfect" doesn't mean "terrible".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PIX is also better because it gives control back to the central bank (as it was with cash) and not private industry although they are providing the service. The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.
> The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you. That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) mi…
There are financial laws that banks must comply with and one of them require banks to share information with the Central Bank about potential fraudulent transactions. Having a payment system using the CB's infrastructure doesn't change anything. They are still required to comply to bank secrecy laws and can only investigate your transactions after obtaining a warrant.