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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I don't know. I kind of like competition in banking. I like free checking, ATM fee reimbursement, better customer service, better websites and apps, better alerting etc.

You get that through competition for my deposits.

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Interac is a great example of the opposite. The government of Canada had to strong arm the financial sector to create a non profit third party to allow zero cost transfers and a robust debit payment system. The banks have been lobbying to dramatically increase interchange and transaction fees on Interac payments for years to allow for an expansion in lucrative 'premium' credit card processing fees.

Competition did nothing to stop industry alignment against consumer interests.

all of those trivial improvements for the low price of half a trillion dollars in bailouts

That causes lower profits, so won't be affected by windfall tax.

Maybe they won't but new competitors will see the outsized profits and try to get my business by offering these things. I have all these things at my bank (TD) so the system seems to work.

This is pretty uncontroversial basic economics...

How often you see "new competitors" in banking come up now ?

Not often enough. You've seen the reverse due to high regulatory costs.

If you're a healthcare provider in the US you often have to get a "certificate of need" to offer a service where a board full of competitors in the neighborhood determine if the neighborhood really "needs" this service:

> CON programs primarily aim to control health care costs by restricting duplicative services and determining whether new capital expenditures meet a community need.

https://www.ncsl.org/health/certificate-of-need-state-laws

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