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Comment by hackernewds | Hacker News Reader

Terrible misuse of public funds. Why not just depend on a private entity with the right watchers in place?

That leads to situations like Intuit capturing the IRS and making some agreement with them to make a shitty free filing solution that nobody wants to use because it's so bad.

It's not even a revolving door anymore, it's just unchecked corruption.

To add to this: current US system siphons 10s of billions of dollars yearly, adding nothing in value.

Some things the government does doesn't have to be profitable, it does them because it is a good thing for a government to do.

The government serves the people. A high value opportunity hasn't been slow payments. Poor tax code is way more expensive than anything else.

The government serves the government. "The people" only matter towards that end.

The govt serves the people, but if there are corporations that can manipulate the people to think in their interests, they can get the govt to serve them.

There is no higher authority than that of a sovereign. The government is a sovereign entity which forces use of its currency and taxation upon its subjects in order to compel the procurement of goods and services for its courts, military, and police forces from which it derives actual power. More info in Debt: The First 5,000 Years https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

There is a higher authority than that actually, those with the government issued money that not even the government has any control over. After all even the government has to obey the rules of its own currency which is why it is perpetually in debt vs the private sector which is mostly controlled by the rich.

If that manipulation runs contrary to the interests of the government, that corporation and its leadership are in for a bad day.

Imagine a world where Zuckerberg wasn't obviously some kind of early Boston Dynamics prototype assembled before the team responsible for the ethics subroutines got their CI/CD going.

When the FBI shows up and tells him to do something, he's going to do it. He can either enjoy the billionaire lifestyle and do as he's told, or suffer the rather predictable consequences. After all, there are well over five thousand federal crimes in the USC. Zuckerberg, along with everybody reading this, is definitely guilty of something. Just takes a bit of digging to figure out what.

Doesn't matter how much money you have or how great your lawyers are. If the government wants to squash you, they are going to squash you.

"The interests of the government" are not only malleable, but become highly ductile in the presence of large sums of money. Sure, at time T, the government may have decided that gazillionaire Zuck Markerberg may need to be taken down, but at time T', the government may have changed its mind (for reasons we can guess but likely never know).

Eh, merchants have long been complaining about the squeeze from the credit card networks, which routinely raise percentage fees. And merchants have to raise prices for all consumers to keep up.

A fast, free alternative to those would certainly provide some relief.

It is kind of interesting how some cryptocurrencies like Solana or Stellar could in theory outcompete PayPal, Visa, MasterCard on fees but the volatility of the underlying cryptocurrency makes them uninteresting for businesses.

"How much for a beer?"

"$1. Or $4000. Maybe $20. Whatever. Life's a lottery. Be lucky."

On the other hand, you might get lucky and wake up one day and find that the crypto machine accidentally refunded you fourteen swimming pools of beer.

What about stablecoins? I think USDC exists on Stellar as well

Cards do not compete with ACH or FedNow. Cards are intentionally reversible and non-final. They serve a different need and use case.

People want insurance products, they want rewards, they want chargebacks and they want to borrow up front - and so do merchants. It increases average ticket sizes and it saves them from having to deal with cash. This system didn't get foisted on anyone, it was built to meet the needs of both buyers and sellers.

In Europe where interchange is regulated, credit cards are capped at 0.3% interchange but don't come with those features.

ACH is reversible and non-final.

Because this is literally about managing the relationship between individual citizens and the government. Why would you want a private entity serving as an intermediary?

It’s great to have organizations that help people navigate complex bureaucracy, but it’s way better to just simplify the bureaucracy directly.

They do that all the time. How do you think Pelosi and Biden got so wealthy?

Like most wealthy Americans, they were born in a wealthy and/or connected family?

I don't know them, that would be my guess.

That’s part of it!

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