We've seen examples of financial denial of service from governments in situations where they're unable or unwilling to hire thugs or apply criminal laws. I'll o

We've seen examples of financial denial of service from governments in situations where they're unable or unwilling to hire thugs or apply criminal laws. I'll offer two: Wikileaks is the easy one here. While it may have some problems, I suspect most of the HN audience believes it should exist. The US government has successfully pressured payment providers to deny service to Wikileaks in the past, which has the potential to become an existential threat. Cannabis businesses in the US are another example. Cannabis is legal under state law in a significant fraction of states (a majority for medical purposes), but illegal under federal law. The federal government is mostly unwilling to enforce the federal criminal law against businesses that are complying with state law, but it's quite willing to prohibit banks from providing service to cannabis businesses.