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Comment by otteromkram | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised the adult entertainment industry doesn't just form it's own credit union or bank.

Maybe it wouldn't get federal approval (US or Canada), so that's why it never happened?

Given how necessary credit card processing is to any business these days, I’m surprised they don’t try to get a law passed that credit card processors must handle any business that isn’t actually illegal.

For once, this shutdown (or Omegle's for that matter) has nothing to do with credit card companies.

But yeah, the idea could be a smaller bank serving under-served industries and demographics - and for whom getting in the press for some random BS wouldn't matter.

You'd definitely need a better poster child than sex work for that in the US. There's no way conservatives would vote for something with that as poster child and some democrats wouldn't either. The US as a whole regardless of team is pretty puritan.

You don’t have to be a puritan to find pimps distasteful, even if they are cyber.

Edit: Child evidently has a reading comprehension problem and didn't understand "don't have to be a puritan." The emphasis is on cyberpimps. Whether or not you approve of pornography or prostitution you can still find pimps, who are by nature exploitative, distasteful without being a puritan.

Puritan is defined as finding porn etc distasteful, so it really is. one who practices or preaches a more rigorous or professedly purer moral code than that which prevails https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puritan

It’s the objection itself not the reason for it that’s important. In other words objecting to porn on artistic grounds is still puritan.

Reason is very obviously hardcoded into the definition with "moral" word.

Ergo,

>objecting to porn on artistic grounds is still puritan.

is not true

Valuing “good” art is a moral stance. It’s a judgment of what human behavior is good or bad.

It's moral stance if you define good as moral. In other words, your reasoning is a circular reference, and not very useful

Different definitions of the word good here. Someone who values “plucky” art is making a moral judgement in the same way someone who thinks it should be destroyed, preserved, created, or …

It’s defining something as positive or negative which makes this a moral judgement not the specific value assigned.

I use positive/negative here because someone may believe there’s an incorrect solution to a math problem without judging such errors in terms of morality.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means in the context it’s being used. In this case a moral judgment simply means with respect to ethics. One could morally judge something to be good, bad, or neutral.

One way or another the system has to have a way to handle high fraud vendors. It appears the vast majority of porn vendors experience high fraudulent card use as well as high chargebacks. Perhaps the merchant gateways could just charge really high onerous fees instead.

This isn’t about credit cards but normal banking services. They can’t maintain a company bank account to do things like pay taxes, which is why crypto doesn’t work for them.

Taxes (at least US federal) are one of the few things you can pay for in unlimited amounts with cash.

They have a nice page about how to make an appointment (recommended 30-60 days in advance): https://www.irs.gov/payments/what-to-expect-when-you-pay-cas...

"Hi, IRS? I've got a billion dollars worth of 'other, unspecified' income I need to pay taxes on in Cash. My name? Uh...."

If the person on the phone had said “Capone, Al” instead of “Uh…” he’d possibly not gone to jail.

Even ill gotten gains are taxable and the theory of one crime at a time suggests that even “other, unspecified” could be with paying taxes on to reduce the likelyhood of successful criminal persecution.

They’d have nailed him with something else - it just might not have been so easy.

That said, pay your taxes even if you’re a criminal for sure!

Fun fact: One of the most closely guarded pieces of paper in those offices are the tax receipt forms. Because if you can produce a tax receipt it's good as cash for meeting your tax obligations.

From what I understand, the US cannabis industry has this problem, because pot is still illegal at the federal level.

That means that they can’t get banking.

Probably means that dispensaries are juicy robbery targets.

Yes - the one on a major road near us had pretty frequent attacks. Our local political representative actually gave a presentation about how they were working to reduce the crime risks since a lot of neighbors were concerned (like LA banks in the 80s). It sounds like they now have a pretty elaborate setup: there were multiple police reports where someone showed up with a gun and got stuck in the mantrap, and the officers just waited until they got hungry/thirsty enough to surrender.

Which "they" would do that? The US Government finds it rather convenient that they can use the banking system to shut down things they don't like that it would be unconstitutional for them to shut down directly, they're not in any hurry to give that power up.

My guess is that a lot of the adult entertainment industry knows that they're in bad company.

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