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Comment by halfnormalform | Hacker News Reader

Whats wrong with everyone just HAVING a bank account?

You can have a bank account and use cash.

As mentionned in the article, some people use cash because they struggle with budgetting. They may get a specified amount of money from the ATM each week in their wallet and get an immediate visual clue of where they at in any moment. Using cash actually make you see the money going out. It is much more tangible than just numbers to a lot of us.

We could probably think of other options, like having rechargeable money card with some kind of visual bar indicator showing the amount of money left but that is not there yet.

Also as much as I like using my cards and phones for payments, they are really bad for privacy. All you payments get stored in a database waiting to be dumped, stolen and leaked. And it is not a matter of if but rather of when.

Its like forcing everyone to have a Facebook account to talk to their local authorities.

It's more like forcing everyone to have an email address.

You have a huge variety of choice of bank, including nonprofit, cooperative credit unions that don't do anything evil to their customers.

No need for analogies. It's literally forcing the public to use - and give money to - private entities.

Banks borrow money cheap. Can a regular person do that? No. Of course not.

It's clearly about control/money. Same thing

> Banks borrow money cheap. Can a regular person do that? No. Of course not.

There are a plenty of cheap loans available to regular persons, but of course you have to be an adult to access those.

Depositing money isn't giving money to a bank. It's exchanging money for highly liquid debt and receiving interest in return. Giving money to a bank is a relationship where the bank pays you.

Also, the government already forces you to have auto insurance. This doesn't really seem any better or worse.

> Banks borrow money cheap.

Banks don't need to borrow money, they just create it:

* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625

* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...

If you still think about banks re-loaning bank deposits you're living in another century. Fractional reserve banking hasn't been a thing since (at least) the 1960s.

I can set up my own mail server that is completely under my control. So no, it's not even remotely like forcing everyone to have an email address.

No, you don't have a lot of choice. UK banks have many restrictions about who can open an account. Just by queuing in a branch I've seen immigrants being rejected because they don't have a job yet.

Merely having a bank account can in some instance trigger FATCA report, depending on where you open it. This opens up further intrusions to your privacy. I do not know if any foreign nations have an analogue of this.

It can also be difficult to open without an address or with certain history, even if you are a citizen or legal resident.

Bank accounts aren't given out based on you needing one; they're given based on the bank wanting you.

Homeless people don't meet some of the expectations for what banks want in a person - an address

Bank accounts for homeless people can be done, in Britain probably after 'encouragement' from the government (do this your way or we'll force you to do it our way...).

https://www.hsbc.co.uk/help/money-worries/no-fixed-address/

Every transaction is visible to a lot of entities: banks, card operators, credit rating agencies, state etc.

Tell that to the homeless

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