For the same reason we have tax preparation software and private health insurance (but somehow government flood insurance on vacation property). Valid historical reasons that no longer apply, and lots of lobbying.
Regulatory capture has made that near impossible now. At least crypto throws another challenger in the ring and can give people and businesses an, albeit inferior, alternative.
I'm not sure trading three owners for one public one is the right direction to go, particularly since there are few limits to the number of providers that could be operating in this space.
The article points this out, too, that it's incredibly expensive and difficult to start a new network from the ground up. This sounds like the thing you actually want to fix.
I think cheap and ubiquitous internet access has changed the game here significantly and it seems far easier to bring new products and technologies into the merchant space than it ever has been before.
> Visa/MC can straight up ban you from processing payments without rhyme or reason while they hide behind KYC/AML law
Yes, but if you had a dozen other providers to turn to, this may not be an issue, and may force the established players to have a more transparent policy.
> The government can't hide behind these laws.
I would consider the "No Fly List" as a terrifying example of where this naivete inevitably ends.
governments will give utilities a monopoly but with requirements such as they must service everyone regardless of profitability or they get fined all to shit.
If the government is corrupt or corruptible (and which aren't?) then "service everyone" isn't as objective as it seems.
Meanwhile you can just force all the collective carriers to post their prices and their profits publicly or threaten them with complete loss of license to operate. This has been effective in the past and allows for a more open system with many competitors rather than a state selected contractor.
I love how you throw in bidding as if we're not talking about the government giving a monopoly in exchange for guarantees (it's considered a public good). This exchange of guarantees has made energy one of the most stable long term investments in a way that other investments just aren't. Gee, why would anyone take that deal?
Go educate yourself.
And go read up on Chesterton's Fence.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#Statist...
I woke up this morning with an odd thought. User interfaces are hard, they are not many but we have people who are really good at designing those, we also know how to user test them. Election programs are non binding, you can say one thing then do the exact opposite after winning. (Referenda are also complicated.) It doesn't seem to make sense in the modern age to be able to change your vote every x years. It's a great formula for [say] the 17th century.
What if we designed a really neat configuration page for the government and allow people to change whatever settings exposed to them. You check a candidate you like and with each option their choice is the default. If you don't agree with something you simply change it.
Then, one by one we take the topics away from the politicians so that they can focus on the rest of the work.
For choosing the party you get 3 up and 3 down votes that you may spend however you like.
A separate election is held to chose the team to populate and work on the interface so that gradually more and more topics get exposed. Their job would also be to research and estimate how familiar the population is with a topic along with a budget to educate the voter.
It would be enlightening for the candidates as well.
Eventually we can shut down the legacy system and have one or more nudgeable robot overlords.
Don't worry, I'm sure the dream will fade in a few hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy#:~:text=The%2....
It basically lets each citizen choose between direct or representative democracy, per issue, and does away with arbitrary things like election dates and even candidates (you can "elect" any other citizen to vote on your behalf, as can they). The only reason we don't have it is because it's basically impossible without software. Even very complex ranked choice voting can be tallied manually.
If you are dealing with such monstrosity of an application all battles are lost at the interface level. It has to work for everyone, there is no room for excuses about dumb users, they are the target audience.
While in the US the number seems infinite, in the Netherlands we have roughly 140 000 laws that each could have a series of check boxes and sliders. Say we all do 4 per day, that would be only 1460 annually. It would take 100 years which seems to long. At 40 per day it would require to much effort.
If the interface is to work as desired a large amount of law needs to go.
We should burn the books most worthy first. Experts can compete finding the most nonsensical laws. Short videos can be made to explain why the law exists.
We assign a good number of test subjects to pick the least likeable ones until we have a good list of candidates unlikely to survive.
There must be a good feedback report of the terrible implications after a law is deleted.
I can see it already, naked people around camp fires, drinking booze in public, selling food after sundown, making music without a license, singing songs insulting the monarch.
The reason we don't have free tax preparation software (or a tax system that doesn't require that) and don't have free health care is because of competence issues. Taxes seems like a different dimension of problem, so let's leave it aside for the moment. Do we really believe that the people that work in the government here (in the US) are actually competent enough to administer a public health care system? I don't. I'd like to be convinced otherwise. Maybe you mean to say that we'd, I don't know, outlay lobbying and redirect that economic activity toward paying market salaries to people who are, in fact, competent enough to administer a public healthcare system.
Pointing to Russia on costs also points to the other side of the problem: Their healthcare system is severely under-funded. That's one way to make it cost less.
Sorry for the late reply.
Belief is unnecessary. The US government has been administering Medicare[0] since 1965 -- longer than I've been alive.
For federal taxes only... and with silly limitations that exist... because lobbying? And oh by the way, the IRS isn't actually offering anything, they'll refer you to third parties that will then make money off of you if you have anything beyond the most basic filing, and also if you want to file state taxes.
So no, they don't actually do that.
Why would the IRS provide a filing service for state income taxes? Go ask your state government to provide this if you want it. The IRS isn't the one collecting those taxes
They can't. Too much of the tax code is subjective and based upon claimed circumstance. If they did know this, they wouldn't need auditors.
> If you are the one who prepared them you absorb the liability when the IRS comes after you.
The liability is typically just the difference between what you paid and what you owe. It's hard to believe most people are so bad at taxes their efforts would be mistaken for willful criminal fraud.