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Comment by philipallstar | Hacker News Reader

That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine.

I trust my government (Switzerland) way more to do the thing that is right for the people and the law then some private company that has the primary goal of making money. It doesn't mean that governments don't make mistakes but the primary goal is to serve its people.

That is what government is for in a functioning democracy. A functioning government is of the people for the people.

Trust Switzerland? Protonmail is literally fleeing Switzerland. You now have to upload Government ID to use any online service with more than 5k users!! They are also now requiring backdoors (Article 50a). Literally the end of privacy!

It's honestly depressing no one talks about this, or even knows about this.

[flagged]

It's a joke but Visa and Mastercard are American corporations so Americans can feel relatively secure using them. If you live in another developed country, relying on the whims of American entities feels less secure than something subject to the laws of your own country.

American consumers have no democratic control of that duopoly either.

They're protected by the laws of their country. Foreigners aren't. That's the point.

Americans corporations have shown they'll just pull out of countries if the law comes down on them too hard.

To be fair both are publicly traded and owning shares would give you voting rights.

Point is: traded companies function like a democracy in which money is a vote, which is the opposite of democracy.

this doesn’t sound reassuring. there is not a nationality test on buying shares

Americans are pretty aware that government by large, multinational, unaccountable corporations sucks and has basically all of the downsides of big government without any of the accountability upsides.

American media may be less likely to share that narrative with you. But the actual people figured this out a while ago and they're mad.

Dang has stated these sorts of comments do not belong on HN news. Discussion of specifics are fine, but nationalist slurs are not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100358

Edit: wow, my bad. HN really loves low effort nationalistic slurs as entire comments now.

What's the slur here? American? Mind?

I'm American, and I wasn't offended. Because it's true, we actually can't comprehend this because we are the poster child of government via huge corporations. We literally don't know what it's like to have a functioning and trustworthy government handling these things, it's completely foreign to us.

If I had the Swiss government instead of the US Federal Government I'd trust it a lot more too.

I assume the concern is more about moving to mandated digital currency where every transaction is tracked by the government, no cash allowed.

I hope I get to live in such a place some day.

> I trust my government (Switzerland)

I do, too. I’m not sure I trust Brussels.

I certainly trust the EU a lot more than I trust US corporations.

I even trust EU more than the local corrupt country governments.

Oh, 100%. But the choice here is between European banks and a state-run Pix equivalent.

Do they deserve your trust?

The government? Either the national government or the EU get legitimacy by being democratic instructions. That doesn't mean they get blind faith, it is healthy to scrutinize their actions.

US corporations on the other hand get only my contempt and scorn.

Considering the head of EZB is a convicted criminal with, lets call it interesting, letters to the convicted criminal Sarkozy I am not sure what is plague and what cholera.

Lagarde is not a convicted criminal. She was convicted for negligence, but this is not a criminal conviction.

Taken into account than of two convicted criminals, Sarkozy went to prison and will probably be sent there again, whereas Trump is running a big country, I'm pretty sure which is which.

Lets see. Gerhard Schroeder, fled to RU. Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted. Silvio Berlusconi, convicted. Geert Wilders, convicted. Slobodan Milošević, convicted. Jean-Marie Le Pen, convicted. Marine Le Pen, convicted.

Donald Trump, convicted (pardoned everyone who attempted a coup on Jan 6 2021).

Victor Orban, surely he'll get convicted.

Benjamin N., Vladimir P.: wanted by ICC.

(This excludes cases like Jan Maršálek / Wirecard fraud / GRU spy. Also, have a peak at all the cleaning Zelenski's government had to do, including in his inner circle.)

Seems we in Europe at least are attempting to uphold the rule of law. I can't say the same for US corporations or US government, given the current administration. That being said... can we stop voting for these narcissistic criminals? Thank you in advance.

I met Mr Schröder on Saturday in the Opera. I can therefore vouch that he is not in Russia.

Having seen some of the footage, that is the oddest coup attempt I've ever seen. Wasn't the only violence a police officer shooting a woman climbing into a window?

> attempted a coup

funny everyone forgot to bring guns for the coup

> That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine.

If you ever had your account blocked by Apple or Google, you know exactly why a government is the better option. At least you have the rule of law on your side.

Big companies are the authoritarian situation, not the government.

It deems to me that the rule of law is easier to apply to third parties than to the government that is in charge of administering it

Not if your government properly implements separation of powers, as is the case in most Western countries.

Yes, I'm aware someone is trying to undermine it in the U.S. currently. That doesn't mean that companies are a safe haven suddenly.

The actual separation of powers that's a good idea is that between governments and companies.

Separation of powers is easy to erode and we are seeing that happening in a lot of western countries. Companies are, of course, never going to be trustworthy, but they at least can go out of business if they go full dystopian.

So how many user accounts should Apple or Google wrongfully close until they go out of business? 1000? 10,000? ...

This reminds me of how all the drug dealers use USPS because it actually requires a warrant to open the package.

If the government has to enforce banking KYC/AML itself they won't be able to hide behind all the third party fuck-fuck games and they'll get sued into oblivion. I'm sure they'll play the normal federal court and sovereign fuck-fuck games but it would be glorious trying to watch them try to enforce the BSA and Patriot act bullshit while not being able to hide behind the auspice it's just a private bank collecting the data.

in some countries you can vote for your government and hold it accountable.

And your vote basically counts for nothing.

Until such governements have already loopholes to circumvent rules of law, I'm as sad as the next guy but the EU technically has that.

I guess it comes down to who you would trust more - your own government which you have some control over via elections or some (potentially multinational) corporation which you have exactly zero control over?

It's the other way around. You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad. You have very, very coarse-grained control with the government every few years.

> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad.

There are exactly two companies in the global credit card market and they operate in lockstep, literally coming to agreements to shut down legal businesses together. Visa and MasterCard have absolutely no right to determine who is and isn't allowed to receive payment. Governments have that right, but that doesn't mean they should use it -- if they're abusing that right, people can vote them out. The effectiveness of people voting out harmful politicians is another matter, but that's kind of on the people being bad at voting, not the idea of government altogether, and at any rate you have no vote whatsoever in what MC/Visa do (unless you vote for government to regulate them!).

> You have choice with a company,

This is wrong for a large share of the companies that most people deal with on a daily basis. And that share has been steadily increasing every single year.

Ok, I choose to not use Visa/Mastercard in the US, and I want to subscribe to some saas. What do I do now? Or do you mean "choice" as in "you can always choose not the breathe or eat"?

To be pedantic American Express and Discover exist.

But I agree with your meaning. We are beholden to some third party no matter how we move in the current situation.

I've found it funny how many people still believe that most places in the US don't take Discover. I almost exclusively use my Discover card and the number of times I've had it declined is a tiny fraction of a percent. Most people also don't seem to realize that Discover is also a bank, so you can use it for both credit and checking/savings. So yeah, you likely don't have to be forced to use the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. The only time I've recently used one of my Visa cards was when I visited Europe where I found much more places don't accept Discover, although there were still many that did.

Hopefully the acquisition of Discover by Capital One results in lower processing fees so the network broadens globally and makes the notion that Discover isn't viable a thing of the past.

Amex is regularly rejected by businesses and cannot be your only credit card, so really you maybe have Discover.

I also wouldn’t say either of those is particularly better than Visa/Mastercard. They all engage in the same practices more or less

The only places I've found that refuse AMEX are very small mom and pop operations. And of those, many don't accept cards of any type: cash only.

Fair enough, it's probably not as common as I think and is more of a reputation.

Costco?

[Edit] -- And I've frequented several independent coffee shops that are cashless.

Costco doesn't even accept Mastercard (credit cards), so they're kind of a unique case here where they intentionally choose to only accept one particular type of credit cards.

Guessing they have their own branded card that they push you to use?

Correct, and it used to be AMEX.

Why is this downvoted? While slightly sarcastic, you make a good point.

Is it possible to get a UnionPay (China) or JCB (Japan) credit card issued by a European bank? That would be very interesting. I assume in the last 10 years, there is way more acceptance of UnionPay in Europe. UnionPay is widely accepted all over East and South East Asia these days because there are so many Chinese tourists.

I've moved countries five times in my life. I still haven't been able to fully get rid of my dependency on Big Tech or the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

You only have a potential choice until a company buys out all its competitors and surpresses the rest.

Theres a natural tension here, because in order for this to be true you need a diverse market with many competitors. But that is bad usually, because it's extremely inefficient, so it gets optimized out. The monopolies we see are indeed an optimization - the natural climax of a developing market.

Consider payments: you do not want to carry around 100 different cards and trinkets just to pay for things in your daily life, right? And for merchants, they do not want to make deals with 100 different companies to accept payments, right? So what's the end result?

We see the monopolies in the US economy because our economy is very efficient. It could be even more efficient - consider, for example, how much time and money could be saved if only one phone OS existed.

But then of course that's bad for you, the consumer, because then these huge corporations rule your life and can essentially do whatever they want.

In the context of mastercard and visa being a duopoly and the recent debacle such as certain games being removed from steam because they threatened to not allow stream to use the card payment system, it's a pretty bad take.

Not that central bank won't be able to do the same, but it would have to follow laws set by the government rather than law+whatever the card companies decide to.

Agree to disagree. Lock-in is a thing that companies design for.

And a government is pre-locked in.

Like others said that choice is not really given in this case.

Also with the government option it wouldn’t mean that you can’t still use other methods - for example in brasil credit card or cash work just fine, PIX is just one (very convenient) option.

Do corner stores (small informal convenience stores) in Brasil usually accept PIX? I assume they all cash-only.

Also: What is PIX uptake/penetration like in the countryside? China is shocking how fast that countryside wet/farmer's markets started accepting AliPay. Literally, you can buy a kilo of pumpkin (namguo) using nothing but your mobile phone with AliPay, and the old lady running the stand (in a wet market) probably has a 6th grade education. (No hate on that!)

(Brazilian here).

> Do corner stores (small informal convenience stores) in Brasil usually accept PIX? I assume they all cash-only.

Pretty much every single one I've always been to. From the smallest one-person street corner popup shop to the biggest shopping mall boutique and outlets, virtually everyone accepts PIX payments. Its just better - its one of those "you gotta use it to understand" things.

Anecdotally: I've even gave some cash to homeless people on occasion using PIX. This may seem weird, but in Brazil, you must have a bank account to be able to subscribe to any sort of government benefits, and since its free, pretty much everyone has an account and therefore can receive PIX payments. Its also safer, since you're not carrying cash with you, and even if you're somehow forced to transfer, there are ways to monitor and reverse transactions (so called MED).

https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/pix-seguranca

Of course, there's been a few incidents over the years where some concerned citizens would not accept PIX payments because "the government will know what you're spending on" (in contrast to, say, credit card operators, where apparently the "right people" would know what you're spending on...).

There are some criticisms of the current system, which is fair, but most that I have heard are ideological in nature or some sort of foreign defaultism.

In Africa they've had this since ~2005 with the Mpesa system. It basically transfers cellphone credits as payment. In certain regions everyone with a dumb phone was hooked up and you could do anything from buy a coconut from a guy on the side of the road to pay your taxi driver to pay at the supermarket.

Wow, this is a great reply! "In Africa" -> Can you share a few countries? Google tells me that East Africa is the biggest users: Kenya, Tanzania, etc. (No hate on the use of "In Africa here"... as Google tells me it is used in at least 10 different African countries.)

Anywhere that MTN (telecom provider) operates. East and southern Africa mostly.

Replying here to throwaway2037 because I can't reply directly to him, but yes, even most informal businesses accept PIX, including some random guy selling candy or bottled water at a stop signal.

The only exception I have found to consistently refuse PIX are some parking lots, and they refuse credit cards as well, accepting only cash, probably to hide their earnings.

> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly

Oh yeah?

Please enlihhten me, how exactly can I switch providers from the Visa/Mastercard duopoly?

Duopoly is bad. We should work to fix that. A monopoly is worse.

Brazil is on the West, fyi.

The new alignment isnt East vs West... But North vs Global South, which Brazil sees itself a part of the South.

???

Wrong thread?

The comment I see reads like this:

"That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine."

Yeah the concept of "Western" is a relic of the Cold war, just like Western Europe / Eastern Europe ( past some countries being genuinely there ) It's still taught like that to younger people, but definitely shouldn't.

> The new alignment isnt East vs West... But North vs Global South, which Brazil sees itself a part of the South.

Where's Russia and Australia then?

And Cuba was in the West during the Cold war. We knew what East vs West meant, it's more a figurative phrase than anything.

Today's alignment is shaping up to be North and South. Not quite 'versus' like the Cold war was.

on the West of what? Culturally and historically it's a Western country, yes, but politically and economically it's an Eastern country – founding member of BRICS and a developing economy. I think the author of the parent comment used "Western" term referring to ideological and economic grouping

I think the idea of what’s authoritarian sounding is more of a cultural/historical/ideological distinction, not something that would naturally map to an economic label like BRICS.

Also Western and Eastern are just labels in this context, not opposite directions, even if Brazil was “not Western” in some way, it wouldn’t make sense to call it Eastern.

>on the West of what?

On the West of every single country in Europe, to start with.

Don't take this the wrong way, but have you looked at a world map? I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...

Aside from its very evident geographic location, Brazil was the site of the first lasting European colony in the Americas established by Portugal.

People in Brazil speak Portuguese[1], a Romance language derived from Latin and closely related to Spanish, French and Italian.

The genetic lineages most commonly found within the Brazilian population include Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and to a much lesser degree but still significant, Lebanese and Turkish [2].

The top countries whose citizens visit Brazil as tourists are overwhelmingly from the Americas and Europe: Argentina, the USA, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy and the UK.

Likewise, when Brazilians travel abroad, their main destinations are Argentina, the USA, Chile, Portugal, France, Italy, Uruguay, the Caribbean, Spain and the UK.

Share of exports to Asia: ~41%

Share of exports to the Americas and Europe combined: ~47%

Share of imports from Asia: ~43%

Share of imports from the Americas and Europe combined: ~50%

How could one reach the conclussion that Brazil is an "Eastern" country? Oh yeah, they joined a trade organization with China and Russia ... sure, they must be Eastern now.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil

> very evident geographic location

I agree that Brazil is Western, because it obviously is; it's a former European colony that speaks a European language and has European religious and cultural values. But geography has nothing to do with the concept of "Westernness", beyond historical etymology. Australia and New Zealand are as much part of "the West" as Canada is.

i recently got interviewed by company in the UK. The Operations Chief thought Mexico was in Spain... jeez.

    > I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...

I love these comments. Don't worry: A "significant chunk of people" from Europe also cannot find Mexico on a map. Really, these comments say nothing. They are like "man on the street with a microphone" gotchas. Anybody under 30 years old has a mobile phone with Internet: They open their maps app, and search for Mexico. Done: Borders the southwestern United States.

West is just the US nowadays.

I would say West is Europe, Japan and a few others. But I think I need a new word for that one.

The West is UK, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, US, Scandinavia. I agree that Japan is a really interesting one that shares a lot with the West, but doesn't have the same cultural roots. I wouldn't be opposed if they wanted to be counted as part of the West, but I don't know if they would.

Ehh, I live in Europe. Moving forward I don't think it makes sense to bundle it with the US, who is like the biggest threat to the EU, considering the past few years.

That was said exactly when that guy first came years ago. I'll bet my money ( via Wero or not ) the whole movement will be shattered by an " European-friendly " governement. Perhaps private companies will still retain a bad sentiment, who knows, everything else will be business as usual.

I don't know. Things feel meaningfully different this time around.

The choice is between the ECB and visa/mastercard (who are de-facto controlled by the US government).

It's a shit situation we're in, but the ECB seems like the lesser evil.

Especially now in the (former) USA.

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