> Banks are not state-maintained. You can argue that 'too big to fail' means government support for them, but support is not control. That wasn't my claim. I s

> Banks are not state-maintained. You can argue that 'too big to fail' means government support for them, but support is not control. That wasn't my claim. I said banks are a state-maintained cartel everywhere, and that implies preventing competition. One way to prevent competition is to make sure the cartel banks can't fail. It's difficult to compete with a business that gets handed unlimited amounts of other people's money when it's about to go bankrupt. > Banks charge roughly the same fees for the same reason grocery stores charge roughly the same prices - competition. Do you sincerely think banks couldn't charge less for their services? :) Because that's what it would take for competition to have resulted in the current price level, as anyone on HN should be able to understand. I'll stop here now because I suspect you're not being honest.