Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

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My experience is the opposite. I can open up my wallet and take out a $1000 bill* in about three seconds; if change is due, that typically takes about another ten seconds. Paying with a credit card takes about a minute, four to ten times less convenient, except a significant percentage of the time the time "no hay sistema" and it just doesn't work, and sooner or later your credit card number gets sold to the Russian Mafia on a carding forum. I guess for super organized people checking your monthly statement to see if you've been signed up for a porn subscription you don't know about is not a big deal, but if you're super organized can't you just organize yourself to have the cash you need when you need it?

Also, do I really want Visa International to know what brand of constipation medicine I take and which anarchist magazines I subscribe to? (None, I swear!) Anything I buy on a credit card is something I can expect to have to explain to the police or the immigration authorities sooner or later, possibly after the next military coup, or maybe just because there was a protest nearby that turned violent and they'd like to know why I was in that neighborhood that day. Also, why do I need acetone? I'm not cooking meth, am I?

If you think this stuff will never affect you, well, nobody ever thinks it will affect them, until it does. Most people alive have lived through an invasion, a coup, or an episode of extreme governmental repression, and most people who haven't yet will.

Bitcoin is a nice alternative when it's applicable, but transaction costs are a bit high for buying a cigarette or a restaurant meal, and it's a headache when the confirmation time is 45 minutes instead of 10 minutes. Hopefully Lightning will fix this.

______

* Inflation is bad here, yo. $1000 is about US$6, but printing $2000 bills hasn't been approved yet.

Why would paying with a credit card take a minute? It's 3s with contactless, and since covid it doesn't require a pin code.

Beats me. When did credit cards ever require a PIN, though?

Chip-and-PIN has been prevalent outside the US since its inception, and is still the norm for large credit card purchases.

Because mainframes in South America aren't that fast. Specially in Venezuela and Argentina.

Threy only know mervhant and amount, not the exact item you are buying

Gee man, it sounds like you live in quite the hell hole. Move to a decent country, you’ll be happier.

You also support open borders and universal emigration, right?

How does this approach scale?

Argentina definitely has its disadvantages, but there are advantages too. Healthcare access is universal. University education is free and open to everyone, and although most of the universities are not that great (and none are R1), there are two world-class universities. It's illegal to arrest people for using or having recreational drugs—not generally my thing, but it wasn't Breonna Taylor's thing either, and in the US the laws give the police free rein to loot houses and kill people with the excuse of looking for recreational drugs. The homeless people here are afraid of other homeless people, not the cops like in the US, and actually there is vastly less homelessness because of less rigorous enforcement of building permits. We have the best ice cream in the world, the best empanadas in the world, and the best thieves in the world. Public transit here is better than any of the numerous places I lived in the US, almost as good as in New York. There are single blocks of Buenos Aires with more bookstores than most entire cities in the US. Raising kids is a reasonable thing to do in Argentina; in the US the shittiest people harass you if you breastfeed in public.

The biggest advantage, though, is that when the covid pandemic hit, the people in the US went totally nuts, saying that the government is controlled by a secret Satanic cabal of pedophiles who sacrifice children to drink their blood, that masks cause covid, that the vaccines are fatal, and all kinds of nonsense like that. Europe doesn't seem to be coping that much better. Here in Argentina, meh, it's just another crisis. It's shitty but not as bad as the crisis in the 70s when military dictators overthrew the democratic government, outlawed playing cards, and started rounding up their political opposition and dropping them out of airplanes. I literally don't know anyone who got raped because of covid, much less murdered.

But yeah credit card transactions can take a minute or two, the economy sucks, and ordering things from overseas is difficult and risky.

It's been pretty helpful in gaining perspective on the bullshit I grew up with in the US.

This is the best reply you could have given. Makes me want to visit.

Just don't bring anything you can't afford to have stolen.

“ and the best thieves in the world.”

That’s good, right? :)

I find this kind of recommendation to a random stranger on the internet highly ubjectionable and indecent.

Have you considered, that if they agree they don't like their country, maybe they have to look after ageing or ill parents, or have other responsibilities they can't just abandon? Not to mention money ofcourse.

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