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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I have paid for everything via credit card for 20+ years now, entering my credit card info online thousands of times, and have yet to have a fraudulent charge.

And if I do, I just call the number on the back of the card and they give the money back to me.

The system works 99% of the time, for billions and billions of transactions. Which is why it has stayed.

Edit: obviously, ideally, there would be a federal government constitutionally protected electronic payment system where people can push payments to one another.

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> have yet to have a fraudulent charge

How carefully do you check? I check my statements line by line, and have found fraudulent charges twice in the past 30 or so years.

I check every month and it hasn't happened to me in years. But then, I leverage PayPal or other such things when possible.

I've had to deal with credit card fraud on two occasions. Each involving several thousand dollars and many hours of time investment.

People should be in control of their own money. The current system categorically absurd.

>The current system categorically absurd.

It seems like a decent solution that emerged without a federal government solution (could be better, but things progress incrementally).

What is absurd is the lack of action on part of the federal government (which eventually filters down to voters) on developing electronic payments as resilient infrastructure, in conjunction with digital identity verification.

What are you advocating for? A government credit card or something like that?

Electronic money accounts and ability to transfer money. People shouldn’t need to deposit their money at a bank or non governmental entity.

For example, USPS could provide a constitutionally protected, inalienable right (not even if you go to prison) to an electronic money account, and you can send and receive via an email address or phone number. USPS because there are already physical USPS offices all over the country.

No need for government to lend people money via credit card equivalents. Just obviate checking accounts at banks. Banks don’t have a purpose when money is just entries in a database anyway.

Keeping money “safe” is no longer a physical thing to do. If a lender wants incentivize people to deposit money with them, then they have to compete by offering attractive interest rates. But then it will come with the risk of the lender losing your money, like any other investment.

There's precident for this. The USPS ran one of the biggest savings banks in the country back when it was part of the US Government. That all ended in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...

I would be leery of the high degree of centralization with such a scheme.

We already have the centralization. Except with no oversight of when and who you get banned by and why.

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