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Why is our society so incapable of providing a small box for people to store their valuables? Banks are trying to drop the concept almost entirely. These privat

• backtoyoujim 4y ago
  You could mail them to the FBI, I suppose.
  • Romanulus 4y ago
  • a9h74j 4y ago
    foiaFS?
    • Ruthalas 4y ago
      Access times can number in the years, but durability is good!
• tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  This needs an app, or might even be a great use case for that weird DAO stuff - SneakerRAIDBnB. Fundamental is that your data should be encrypted and duplicated before you give it to your host so if someone tries to read your data, they just get random numbers, and if someone breaks your devices, you give them a bad rating and move on to the other nodes in your BnB RAID.
  • uoaei 4y ago
    This reads like a Markov chain trained on HN comments.
    • KennyBlanken 4y ago
      Or Doctorow drivel, er, I mean, novels.
    • klondike_klive 4y ago
      In that case I'd expect at least one mention of zettelkasten.
  • birdyrooster 4y ago
    Wat?
• bArray 4y ago
  "You will own nothing and be happy" [1]. I think the general idea is that the idea of private possessions is being phased out for the average person. You'll rent your car, eat the bugs and get your Big Corp tokens to rent items. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
  • scrlk 4y ago
    Don't forget CBDCs with smart contracts, plus your social credit score hanging over you like a sword. "You Will Eat The Bugs" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_8LTUmHWP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_8LTUmHWP0 edit: I should add that the video above is a joke, but what scares me is the fact that the technology to make this reality already exists, and is a large political crisis away from being imposed.
    • notinfuriated 4y ago
      The scam contract in this video reminds me of playing Eve Online.
    • ravenstine 4y ago
      I know the video is a joke, but the whole thing about meat having an unacceptable carbon footprint pisses me off to no end. The fact that eating insects is being suggested as an alternative makes it even worse. Meat is a part of the carbon cycle. The carbon in plants is largely atmospheric. The plants eat the carbon, the animals eat the plants, the animals belch CO2 and methane, and that methane becomes CO2 again after ~12 years. The kind of carbon rising in the atmosphere isn't even that of animals (by stable isotope testing). Guess what, those who believe that bugs are the answer. Bugs eat plants. Bugs don't burp, but to grow insects at scale, the plants need to be processed and brought to them. Guess what that means? Burning fossil fuels in transportation. Cows, on the other hand, can feed on grassland. As someone who is has eaten plenty of bugs, I sincerely hope that the globalists try something other than bugs. The "science" behind it is extremely flimsy. You can't just take livestock out of the carbon cycle and think that's going to do anything for climate change.
• kbenson 4y ago
  There is and always will be a fundamental tension between law enforcement and people wanting privacy and security (when from law enforcement). A simple illustration of what might trigger people to thing of the other side of this might be "Why is it so hard as a U.S. citizen to get an offshore bank account that the U.S. absolutely completed can't get access to no matter what?" The U.S. government thinks they have very valid reasons they should be able to see the details of the accounts of all U.S. citizens regardless of where those accounts may be. For the most part I agree with the concept, because as an entity responsible for collecting and running off of taxes, allowing otherwise is antithetical to their existence, and I'd rather the U.S. government continue to run. That doesn't mean I think they should have access to everything about all accounts, but they should have access to some information. At the same time, I don't think they should access to nothing about certain accounts, for similar reasoning. Both extremes are unacceptable, as is often the case.
  • cesarb 4y ago
    > The U.S. government thinks they have very valid reasons they should be able to see the details of the accounts of all U.S. citizens regardless of where those accounts may be. For the most part I agree with the concept, because as an entity responsible for collecting and running off of taxes, [...] Most of the world doesn't agree with that concept. AFAIK, the only countries which tax citizens instead of just residents are the USA and Eritrea.
    • notch656a 4y ago
      The USA also has an exit tax of a few grand to renounce, so they basically hold you at gunpoint that even if you leave the US for good and never use any of their services or even consular services you have an 'original sin' that forces you to keep filing or pay up the fee to leave the gang.
      • silverpepsi 4y ago
        .. that's not the exit tax though. That's the fee to process your exit. If you do have a substantial networth there is an actual exit tax on your total net worth
• notch656a 4y ago
  A PVC pipe in the ground? Secure private storage and especially anonymous private storage are a favorite target for thieves, three letter agencies, and exit scammers. Seriously I would much more trust that kind of stuff hidden buried deep somewhere way before a storage company. If you absolutely must I would look at a private vault in Switzerland or Singapore.
  • caeril 4y ago
    This is a good solution with a few caveats: 1. The "ground" in question shouldn't be your own property, or tied back to you by paper trail. A trusted ally's property with a handshake agreement, or poorly-trafficked public land. When the Feds decide to make you a target, they can and will use ground-penetrating radar on your property. 2. Regarding the radar, bury the pipes along with plenty of shrapnel to mess with the signature, in the event that your chosen location was not as anonymous as supposed. 3. Use any any all methods to avoid tracking when traveling to/from the location. Eliminate RF signatures from phones, etc, avoid license plate readers and cameras, use bicycles or older vehicles without telemetry collection, wear clothes you wouldn't normally wear and discard afterward, etc.
    • systemvoltage 4y ago
      I would watch this as TV show. There is something so satisfying about it.
      • JetAlone 4y ago
        Breaking Barrels
• jrm4 4y ago
  Honestly, and this is pure theory -- "Sketchy private storage company" sounds like a very good solution, if sketchy means "you can pay in cash and therefore not reveal your identity?" E.g. maybe just do some crappy furniture or something and throw the valuables in a cushion? Something like that.
• kube-system 4y ago
  Banks don’t want to do it because it’s more trouble than it’s worth to them. It’s inherently labor intensive, takes up valuable space, can’t be automated, and they can’t write loans against it. I don’t know much about the private ones (there aren’t any near me) but I’d imagine the market is less in demand than compared to the past. The high end of this market buys their own vaults, and the lower end of this market no longer stores wealth in physical form. My grandma had stock certificates and gold coins. People today have 401ks. After all, it was never a primary business for banks, it was just a value-add. Then there's the self-storage market that takes a good chunk of this now, they're secure enough for grandma's heirlooms and you get a significantly bigger box.
  • ransom1538 4y ago
    Exactly. I couldn't think of a worse business model. Families' valuable heirlooms, hard metals, etc. If anything bad happens there is going to be legal battles. The government will always be hounding you with court orders and divorce paper work. You are pulling in what? $15 per month per box? for this service. I would rather make someone a burrito instead.
  • nly 4y ago
    > they can't write loans against it You can apply leverage to almost any business model. E.g. seems to be some overlap with the pawn broker lending business here in my view. Here in the UK lots of moderately wealthy but illiquid individuals keep their illiquid collectables (art, wine, cars, jewelry) with upmarket pawn brokers, who store their stuff securely and provide them with a healthy loan to value. Most of them pay the loans back, and many of them do this continuously. Otherwise I agree on the labour intensive, hard cost part.
  • pas 4y ago
    > can’t be automated it seems perfect for automation. just a box retrieval system. all that the bank should add is physical security. that said, banks are providing the usual shady upsell shit (loans, mortgages, credit cards, "premium" services) and that market is already pretty competitive, but basically it's not "free" because the costs of the labor intensive internal workings of these non-slim companies (plus regulatory compliance)
• njharman 4y ago
  The "why" is the war on drugs. And "tough on crime" FUD politicians, including DAs use to get reelected. Civil asset forfeiture became such a cash cow, jurisdictions are constantly looking for new ways to apply it.
• nodesocket 4y ago
  My big multi-national bank (Chase) is phasing out safe deposit boxes entirely. I had to go to a regional southern bank to get a safe deposit box. I also had to give them a $300 deposit and jump through a bunch of hoops because I didn’t want a checking/savings account. It seems like a good business opportunity, but it’s expensive (takes space, requires security/safes, and low revenue offering). It’s not a good business for banks.
• sneak 4y ago
  Our society isn't incapable. The United States of America is, for reasons plainly explained in TFA: the federal law enforcement in the US (where only 3.x% of humans live) is not constrained by the law, and they regularly and routinely break the law and suffer no consequences, as documented in painstaking detail in this instance. The problem isn't "our society"; the problem is the FBI being lawless and the DoJ refusing to hold them to account because they regard them as the "same team". Somehow, our news media still reports FBI statements as implicitly true, and the media-consuming public takes it all at face value. This is astounding to me.
• HWR_14 4y ago
  I mean, as smaller objects become more valuable, it becomes harder to find a place safe enough to hold them. And banks don't make money off safe deposit boxes - they're loss leaders to get banking customers. However, the number of places where you can more securely store small objects with excellent and armed security exploded in recent years. They are currently used to host servers and other internet facing computers. I'm sure they'll store a similar rack-mounted box containing your will if you offer to pay them.
  • kylehotchkiss 4y ago
    Are any of these places available to normal consumers?
    • dicknuckle 4y ago
      Of course they are.
    • piperswe 4y ago
      Almost all of them are, if you're willing to pay. Expect to pay on the order of $400-$800/month for a bare basic cabinet with minimal power/network in one of these facilities. You can put whatever you want in your cabinet, doesn't have to be computer equipment.
      • eastbound 4y ago
        Good point, you could store a 2U, and the upside is the ability to communicate on the network if the box gets opened. Virtually no chance to lose network connectivity.
  • upsidesinclude 4y ago
    Datacenter construction costs often exceed $250/sqft. That's $2500/sqm Full access control with background checks. They aren't putting anything of yours in their building
    • deleted 4y ago
• asveikau 4y ago
  It's a high cost thing for them. That's pretty much the extent of it. You might notice that businesses pushing costs down as much as they can has been a general trend for a few decades. Also, with so much digitization that's occurred, assets tracked in electronic accounts, fewer and fewer people have need for a such a service anymore. Eg. In the late 20th century you can imagine somebody putting stock certificates in a safe deposit box. Why would you do that now?
• xwolfi 4y ago
  Wait to know more: it could be a criminal entreprise comingling honest and dishonest people's assets without clear record of who's who and as a result forces law enforcement to seize all as a compromise. Society has to compromise: we cannot monitor all or monitor nothing, so we delegate maybe imperfectly to a subset of people vetted a bit more rigorously to breach expectations sometimes for a reasonable greater good. If they hid the raid to cover up a screwup, we'll have to sue. If they hid the raid to find more criminals, we'll have to accept it.
• antioppressor 4y ago
  Why outside the house? Store in a place where the average joe wouldn't think to look for.
• cortesoft 4y ago
  Because the economics apparently don't work.
• gonehome 4y ago
  Just a bad idea to keep it outside of the house, probably best to put it in a safe in your house. Lots of stories about safe deposit boxes getting drilled by accident, stolen, lost etc. Banks don’t really care about them or the business and you have limited ability to do anything if something bad happens.
• bananapub 4y ago
  that’s a silly take. it’s perhaps hard in the US, but it’s not impossible, it’s just more expensive than most people want to pay, because it’s actually an expensive service to provide. physically resistant boxes at scale, with per-box isolation and per-box access by randoms?
• upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Honestly, the best answer is with family and friends. Sadly, this is a big ask for many in the world and trust has been redefined with modernization. Make no mistake, the idea is to prevent you from retaining valuables. If you have something of value it must be invested to further growth. That is the paradigm of the system. Otherwise you can place them with a corporation, with insurance, and pay. Hoping that they don't have the ability to deny your claim