3 ms·

>it should be an obligation on the card issuer, enforced. By financial regulation, worldwide. Which worldwide financial body will make this happen? Mastercard

>it should be an obligation on the card issuer, enforced. By financial regulation, worldwide. Which worldwide financial body will make this happen? Mastercard did this without any prodding from a government, as far as I know. >I'm not a fan of industry self-regulation. This simply seems like a case of a company offering something that customers want. Is Mastercard working with these companies to the extent that we can really call it "self-regulation"?

adrianratnapala 8y ago
> This simply seems like a case of a company offering something that customers want Part of the service that government regulation provides is dimensionality reduction. That is, when you buy X, you might weigh the price up against two to five observable qualities, but there are a hundred more that you can't observe until they bite you later. So capitalism needs some way collapsing those unobservables down. The mechanisms I can think of is: 1. Reputation of the vendor. 2. Other consumers observing what you can't. 3. Government regulation to pin them down to an enforced standard. 4. Other private business partners enforcing government-like rules (for whatever reason). ggm prefers mechanism 3 to 1,2 and 4. Personally I don't have much faith in any of these four mechanisms, though I am glad when any one of them actually does work. This seems to be a case are (2) has worked in that MC has decided to make an obscure quality improvement that only some users will notice though many will benefit from, and might become a case of (4) working if they really do cause vendors to improve their behaviour.
- ggm 8y ago
  Sure. And I hope it works, and I hope Visa responds and matches. But, rather than "leave it to the market" I wonder why we let people do 'subscribed unless you decline' models in the first place? They are inherently dangerous and risk people incurring debt they had no intention of owning.

adrianratnapala 8y ago

> This simply seems like a case of a company offering something that customers want Part of the service that government regulation provides is dimensionality reduction. That is, when you buy X, you might weigh the price up against two to five observable qualities, but there are a hundred more that you can't observe until they bite you later. So capitalism needs some way collapsing those unobservables down. The mechanisms I can think of is: 1. Reputation of the vendor. 2. Other consumers observing what you can't. 3. Government regulation to pin them down to an enforced standard. 4. Other private business partners enforcing government-like rules (for whatever reason). ggm prefers mechanism 3 to 1,2 and 4. Personally I don't have much faith in any of these four mechanisms, though I am glad when any one of them actually does work. This seems to be a case are (2) has worked in that MC has decided to make an obscure quality improvement that only some users will notice though many will benefit from, and might become a case of (4) working if they really do cause vendors to improve their behaviour.

ggm 8y ago
Sure. And I hope it works, and I hope Visa responds and matches. But, rather than "leave it to the market" I wonder why we let people do 'subscribed unless you decline' models in the first place? They are inherently dangerous and risk people incurring debt they had no intention of owning.