Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

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I think that payment processors want to be able to control everything. I don't think they care about adult content per se, they care about being able to allow/deny anything for any reason. They also don't really care about "hate speech", which is what gets censored when dems are in power. Republicans are in power now, so they're going after adult content. But to me, it seems like they only do it this way because it's easier than doing everything at once. Their real goal, the goal that they will mask with moral concerns about things like hate speech and adult content, is to have full control over who and what can use their payment systems without any restrictions. It seems be be working really well because instead of everyone fighting censorship by payment processors as a whole, half of us choose not to care when it happens to the other half. I really struggle reading these threads because the "it's a private company that can do what they want and if you don't like it build your own" argument is seared into my memory from when this started happening years ago.

> I really struggle reading these threads because the "it's a private company that can do what they want and if you don't like it build your own" argument is seared into my memory from when this started happening years ago.

My answer to that has always been - if a "private company" is so important and critical to a nation or economy, like a payment processor, then that company has lost the right to be private and needs to be nationalized and become a public service. Had this argument all the time back in '08; if a company needs bailed out by the government or the nation/economy will collapse, its clearly too important to be a private for profit enterprise and should be nationalized and become a public service

Not everything needs, nor should be, a private enterprise for profit. Payment processors, utilities, etc. should just be public services, available to all equally and for all legal purposes.

It need not be that extreme… what with the theft and confiscation of property, etc.

A much milder, and more sensible, expression of your underlying sentiment is:

If an activity becomes this essential, the government should provide a competitive entrant in the same field.

Now the incumbent provider has competition, and there is a market participant tied to other incentives, etc.

No theft necessary.

> If an activity becomes this essential, the government should provide a competitive entrant in the same field.

I'll admit I didn't even think of that, and yeah I'd agree that's a good solution worth pursuing in cases like this. I can think of many industries where we need to inject competition into the market.

I don't understand how this would work. If the government created some entity to handle processing payments (or whatever), I assume it would be a publicly funded non-profit, since there is precedent for that. How much funding does it get? Where does that money come from? How does it compete with the existing massively powerful corporations? What incentives does the government entity have to compete? What happens if it goes bankrupt or is purchased? What happens to whatever capital was used to fund it?

It just seems like the government entity would need to actively engage with seeking profits or just existing to artificially lower costs. I don't think the majority of people would want the government to have a for-profit arm that exists to compete with businesses, and I don't think corporations would just play nice.

I'd say that USPS is the closest example of this, and it's a pretty good example of how things can go wrong as well. The active attack against the postal service to try to privatize it is terrible. It will do nothing but continue to isolate power to the ultra wealthy and make people's lives worse. For-profit corporations and the government just have (or ought to have) fundamentally different incentives to exist.

I'd be curious to know of any examples of this working well. I don't mean to be so antagonistic, I just am really struggling to understand how this could work in any way.

These are all fantastic and interesting questions and are exactly the same questions you would face if you expropriated the property of the businesses my parent proposed privatizing.

The issue is not how complicated and difficult such an endeavor is (and you rightly identify it as such).

The issue is, if we're going to do this heavy lifting anyway, might we do it in a way that doesn't involve theft ?

> The issue is, if we're going to do this heavy lifting anyway, might we do it in a way that doesn't involve theft ?

Expropriation usually involves paying the owners so it isn't theft, its just the government buying out the stocks just like a private corporation would. Are you saying Elon musk stole twitter? That is the same thing.

Anyway, here since this is shared between countries its better to just regulate what these processors can do, like the EU does when they regulate how large payment processing fees can be etc. Since its used for international trade no single country can own it.

"Are you saying Elon musk stole twitter? That is the same thing."

It's not at all the same thing.

Twitter could have said no.

The problem: what if the government fails to provide a competitive entrant?

We must NOT expect the government to excel at anything. We must assume it is, and will always be, a mediocre follower of established playbooks. To ensure the government accomplishes X, we must stress in the playbook that X is mandated and cannot be compromised in any way.

You cannot mandate competitiveness.

Agreed. When people say that we need to privatize something because the government is not doing its job effectively, I always think that the government is not doing its job effectively because of the lack of competition. If you just replace the governmental entity with a private entity, then you would end up with more problems than before. The better way to approach this would be to create a governmental entity that competes with the private sector. Each can keep the other in check with competition. For example, in the case of tax prep in the US, the government can set up a competing entity that makes the tax prep software and keep turbo tax in check.

> If an activity becomes this essential, the government should provide a competitive entrant in the same field.

I'd agree, although considering our nation's decline into an authoritarian state I wouldn't trust a government competitor to be any better about protecting artistic works from censorship. Project 2025 makes the administration's feelings on this topic pretty clear.

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