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Comment by Scubabear68 | Hacker News Reader

This started out as a good narrative on the history of checks, but quickly devolved into a political rant about poor people being victims of banks, and no real criminals write bad checks.

The first is true, but the second is not. Check fraud was a very big deal for years for criminals. I don’t know if it is anymore given the progress in electronic payments.

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I don't think that's a fair reading. At most, the piece describes a common political rant, and then says "Phrased that way, it sounds almost fantastically unjust. And… it’s complicated."

Your comment, in contrast, strikes me as being much closer to a reflexive political rant than the essay.

Actually my focus was less on poor people and more on the incorrect assumption in the article that true check fraud was non existent.

The article does acknowledge the existence of real fraud. It distinguishes it from honest errors. It goes on to point out that sometimes institutions (financial and state) sometimes fail to adequately distinguish the two.

Maybe it could have included more on bona fide fraud. But it doesn't contain an assumption that true check fraud is non existent. And it certainly doesn't devolve into any sort of rant.

A rhetorical technique you should use is to put your most important point first.

You can go even further and not include the parts of the review you don't think are important

As a change

> The article downplays the historical impacts of cheque fraud, which were resolved by electronic payments, see source[0] for more details

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