Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

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hn_throwaway_99

Thanks, I think your comment clearly explains some ideas I've had for a while but have been struggling to elucidate.

I think it's also why you see so much "pendulum-ism" in the tech world. Something about the current paradigm is difficult ("monoliths make it hard for large teams to release software quickly and independently!"), so then a new paradigm comes along which perhaps addresses some of the shortcomings of the old one, but conveniently ignores all the problems the original paradigm solved ("microservices make it easy to break up work so teams can release frequently and kinda-independently, but now you've got worse problems like transactional boundaries, coordinating cross-cutting concerns, alert escalation, etc.")

I see the same thing with crypto enthusiasts. They see "the code is the law, transactions can never be rescinded!" as a feature, but the broader financial system has concluded over centuries that that is a bug and that you need and want a human arbiter from time to time.

I don't believe the broader financial system ever tried out making transactions impossible to reverse. They might not have ever had the power to do it.

Another thing to bear in mind is that none of the participants in the financial system have ever been interested in designing a financial system. They have been interested in making money.

> none of the participants in the financial system have ever been interested in designing a financial system

I agree to some extent with the view that we should see systems as emergent phenomena arising from countless participants none of whom understands or intends the entire thing, but you can go overboard with that. There are clearly some participants who have taken a 'God's eye view' and tried to re/design an entire system (Bretton Woods, Dodd-Frank, Visa/Mastercard, &c).

Breton Woods and Visa/Mastercard were top level designs... But they were designed to make money. (For the US and Visa/Mastercard respectively.) Nobody has ever taken the "god's eye view" with the intent to be nice.

> Nobody has ever taken the "god's eye view" with the intent to be nice.

This is a really good point.

There are some kinda exceptions[1] now and then, but there are many reasons why they tend to not work (not short term profitable being one of the main ones). Despite that, it seems we're pretty short even on good ideas lately, like our culture has lost the ability to dream big about positive things (we're excellent at doomsday dreaming, especially about our political outgroup members).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

How do you know their intent?

> Nobody has ever taken the "god's eye view" with the intent to be nice.

I second what the other guy said: this is an interesting point. But I'd also second the point about not knowing their intent (more with Bretton Woods than Visa/Mastercard; the latter is obviously fair enough). Also, I think it's telling that you left out Dodd-Frank when making that point, because it pretty clearly undercuts it.

When a store charged me twice for the same item last month I was very happy to be able to reverse the transaction.

Maybe it's just me, but we all place an awful lot of trust giving vendors essentially all credit card details possible AND where we live so that they're capable of skimming a self defined sum off by themselves. It's like an inherently insane system. We're supposed to be the one wiring the cash, not the vendor themselves with our data.

I find it insulting how we are at the mercy of subscription services charging us for cancelled memberships.

How come our bank won't give us a dashboard with all of our monthly charges and cancel them at will?

Because your contract here is with the subscription service, not the bank.

Just as you can’t cancel your brothers subscriptions, the subscription service has no reason to accept a cancellation request from your bank.

Even if the service was no longer able to charge your card, you would still owe the money. The debt you incurred monthly is separate from your choice of how to pay that debt.

"...they're capable of skimming a self defined sum off by themselves."

I wonder what happens if someone does that?

Credit card issuers and processors only grant merchant accounts to vendors who have shown themselves trustworthy. While the system isn't perfect it works pretty well. If a vendor has many charge backs then they will be subject to higher fees and then account termination.

By that notion, the fact that almost all home locks are easily pickable and glass windows breakable is also insane. There's tons of valuables behind almost all of these!

We found meaningful ways of disincentivizing theft, which turns out to be largely sufficient even in face of fallible security. The exact same applies to card data in the hands of merchants.

"We found meaningful ways of disincentivizing X".

Take that logic and apply it to crypto and hopefully that'll help you understand why crypto enthusiasts believe in it.

The fact is that we can and do find ways around flaws in a system. Crypto folks just think that a crypto foundation is better than the current foundation of our financial systems.

> Take that logic and apply it to crypto and hopefully that'll help you understand why crypto enthusiasts believe in it.

That's exactly the point of the article: You need some form of guardrail, and that has to be centralized.

> Crypto folks just think that a crypto foundation is better than the current foundation of our financial systems.

How so? I am not under the impression that current financial providers have significant issues in consistently exchanging numbers...

> I don't believe the broader financial system ever tried out making transactions impossible to reverse. They might not have ever had the power to do it.

I mean, cash transactions are irreversible right? Unless you mean that there was always a government willing to force a reversal, in which case crypto (and all technical solutions) isn't all that different. It's just another day in the never-ending arms race between the regulator and the regulatee.

That's a pretty good point actually, cash worked perfectly fine without this feature for centuries.

Cash transactions, by definition, are pretty much always in-person. Thus, the risk of fraud or "significantly not as described" goods are significantly reduced. On the contrary, the modern world depends on being able to transact remotely.

Even then, there is still recourse if you pay for something with cash and the thing you buy ends up being non-functional (e.g. small claims court). And since the transaction was in person it's less likely you have no idea who the seller is.

Cash transactions are easily reversible. I'm not sure why we think they are not.

How do you reverse a cash transaction in a way that doesn't apply to crypto?

You simply hand the money back. There is no transaction fee, there is no lengthy clearing time. It's dirt simple.

Wire transfers are next to impossible to reverse, that's why fraud is so rampant

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