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> The logic is sound - unbanked people exist, including in San Francisco, and without a bank account these stores are inaccessible. Wouldn't it be better to so
by gst 8y ago
> The logic is sound - unbanked people exist, including in San Francisco, and without a bank account these stores are inaccessible.
Wouldn't it be better to solve the root cause instead of the symptoms?
Give residents a legal right to open a bank account - as it's for example the case in some European countries (e.g., in Austria banks are required by law to provide at least a "basic" bank account to people that don't have any other bank account at another bank).
With this approach the stores would still be inaccessible to unbanked people - but everyone would have the choice to become "banked", even if they have a bad credit history, etc.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> Give residents a legal right to open a bank account Simpler: make it a requirement that the banks the city does business with have to offer free no-fee checking to city residents. ("Does business with" meaning issues bonds, holds deposits, does tax refunds, manages pensions, et cetera through.) Requiring vendors sell a commercial product to anyone is legally tricky. It also adds yet another convoluted cost to launching a new bank in the city. That adds incumbency bias to an already monstrously incumbency-biased banking system.
- awkward 8y agoThere is a root cause fix - it's legal tender. Systems exist that accept legal tender in an automated way. The preservation of the bearer value of cash money is a more important principle than the preservation of amazon's marginal efficiency.
- chillacy 8y agoThe fix is from the past. Cashless has lots of advantages, i don’t think 300 years from now money will be paper. (It wasn’t 300 years ago either). Technology changes, we should keep up with the times.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> i don’t think 300 years from now money will be paper. (It wasn’t 300 years ago either). Paper money is well over 1,000 years old, though it only became popular in Europe, IIRC, a little over 400 years ago.
- xfitm3 8y agoNot everyone wants a bank account.