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.
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.
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.
How come our bank won't give us a dashboard with all of our monthly charges and cancel them at will?
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.
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.
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.
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 wonder what happens if someone does that?
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).
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).
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.