Banks have special rules because they are infrastructure. A cafe needs a bank but not vice versa.
I don't think "you can't fire a customer" is a good one though.
There's also a distinction between not being able to use a particular bank and not being able to use any bank. It's important that everyone be able to use some bank, but not that everyone can use Chase, but it's tough to regulate that. Again, this is why I see a government option as necessary.
Locking up the money is basically theft, but I'm sure the law and regulations say otherwise.
Say, I have 3 millions somehow deposited in the $bank_where_i_put_my_shady_money, I want to take/move the money, but doing so will raise some eyebrows, so I deliberately try to debank myself so that I can get all my money cash OR move it to $partner_bank
Private companies should be allowed to print private notes. (Of course, with distinctive designs etc. We don't want anyone fooled into mixing them up.)
I would expect private issuers in eg the US to denominate their notes in USD. Or if USD were to abolished tomorrow, they would probably denominate in Euro. Failing that, I would expect a return to denomination in gold before denomination in car fleets.
Backing is a different issue. Walmart could denominate their notes in gold, but back them with the strength of their overall balance sheet and operations. Just like banks today denominate the contents of your bank account in USD, but back them with their balance sheets. (And have only a small fraction of their assets in USD reserves at the Fed or vault cash.)
> Problem is people getting ripped off or rugpulled.
That wasn't much of a problem historically.
Stocks are (in practice, effectively) denominated as fractions of company.
What I am describing is closer to bonds. They are denominated in currency, but still backed by the value of the company.
Bonds (or something equivalent to bonds) are used all the time to pay people. Eg someone who gets paid at the end of the month accrues something like a bond throughout the month. The company owes her more and more of something denominated in currency, not in stocks. At the end of the month, the company redeems that IOU by transferring currency.
Paying people in stocks is much rarer.
Importantly, the base pay of most people from one month to the next is fixed in terms of currency, not in terms of a specific number of stocks.