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It seems like promoting a fairer society is a priority for you, given your focus on paying fair wages. That’s great! Please consider extending that desire to se

It seems like promoting a fairer society is a priority for you, given your focus on paying fair wages. That’s great! Please consider extending that desire to serving people who do not have credit cards or bank accounts (or crypto …) Plenty of them exist and like coffee too.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
NYC had to put a stop to the cashless trend because it is unfair to only offer services to those eligible for banking.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is unfair to lay that burden on businesses, when it should be the government’s job to operate infrastructure. It would be trivial for the federal government to offer each individual an electronic money account that legally cannot be closed and is forever accessible to them. And as an adjacent comment wrote, the in person services infrastructure can be tacked onto USPS.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    NYC can’t, for better or worse, dictate federal policy. Given the limited scope of its authority, requiring businesses to take the currently available form of universal currency seems not unreasonable.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    You want the government to run banks so that stores don't need cash registers?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I wrote “electronic money accounts”, and yes. It is clear that electronic money has lots of utility, and it makes sense for a society to ensure its existence as infrastructure. The same infrastructure can also serve as an identity verification service, which is also sorely needed. There is no reason it has to operate as a bank, which would involve becoming a lender.
  - notch656c 4y ago
    The government will never never allow any kind of bank account that cannot be closed and is forever accessible. The closest we have to that is gold buried in a hole somewhere or maybe a cold storage seed phrase in your head and the discipline not to reveal it in torture.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Trivial you say? How so? Tacked onto the USPS? Why would it be a good idea to have the USPS run a bank with no experience or staff in banking, for every single person in the country, especially when the USPS CEO is more or less openly trying to dismantle and then privatize it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy *edit to just add I read the article posted by sibling, they are proposing a “pilot program” to offer check-cashing for a fee, not depository accounts, and it adds that they’re avoiding the word “bank” to distance themselves from places where you have accounts and store money and intend to keep it that way…
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > especially when the USPS CEO is more or less openly trying to dismantle and then privatize it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy Obviously this due to one party trying to dismantle it, which ideally would not happen to our country’s infrastructure. The point is using the network and real estate and organization of an existing federal government entity that already spans the nooks and crannies of the US to get a nationwide benefit up and running.
      - dahart 4y ago
        Yeah, fair enough, the idea makes some sense. But the fact that it’s an entire party trying to dismantle USPS, a party that has a lot of power, and not just one person, is precisely the very strong reason I wouldn’t be able to trust it or buy into a plan to add accounts and depository banking to the postal service. (I already get suspicious with articles that start by framing the USPS as an unprofitable business. They might indeed be “losing” money, but it’s a branch of our tax-funded government, and we don’t expect other branches to be profitable businesses. Does it even make sense to frame the police or FBI or firefighters as “unprofitable”? The narrative of the USPS deficit seems like part of the plan to privatize it...) On top of that, I guess it’s very, very far from trivial to spin up such a service even though it’s true the USPS has a nationwide physical presence. It might be fair to say it’s easier than starting from scratch, maybe, but the USPS has entrenched practices and infrastructure that might not easily extend to physical and digital security required to handle high volume finances at all. Does having electronic accounts cover everyone? We seem to have a rapidly growing homeless population in the US, and many homeless people have real difficulties holding on to cell phones & documents long term, anything that would allow them to authenticate and/or use an electronic account. If electronic accounts were the solution, I could also imagine the primary infrastructure being a phone app (maybe not entirely dissimilar from China’s WeChat). In-person cash transactions for deposits and withdrawals could perhaps be mostly handled by ATMs?
pj_mukh 4y ago
This seems like one more problem of policing individual behavior instead of solving the infrastructure problem, by say, having the Post Office run a free bank for the under-banked [1]. [1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90683033/the-post-office-is-finally-going-to-try-out-being-a-bank https://www.fastcompany.com/90683033/the-post-office-is-fina...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

NYC had to put a stop to the cashless trend because it is unfair to only offer services to those eligible for banking.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
It is unfair to lay that burden on businesses, when it should be the government’s job to operate infrastructure. It would be trivial for the federal government to offer each individual an electronic money account that legally cannot be closed and is forever accessible to them. And as an adjacent comment wrote, the in person services infrastructure can be tacked onto USPS.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  NYC can’t, for better or worse, dictate federal policy. Given the limited scope of its authority, requiring businesses to take the currently available form of universal currency seems not unreasonable.
- freejazz 4y ago
  You want the government to run banks so that stores don't need cash registers?
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I wrote “electronic money accounts”, and yes. It is clear that electronic money has lots of utility, and it makes sense for a society to ensure its existence as infrastructure. The same infrastructure can also serve as an identity verification service, which is also sorely needed. There is no reason it has to operate as a bank, which would involve becoming a lender.
- notch656c 4y ago
  The government will never never allow any kind of bank account that cannot be closed and is forever accessible. The closest we have to that is gold buried in a hole somewhere or maybe a cold storage seed phrase in your head and the discipline not to reveal it in torture.
- dahart 4y ago
  Trivial you say? How so? Tacked onto the USPS? Why would it be a good idea to have the USPS run a bank with no experience or staff in banking, for every single person in the country, especially when the USPS CEO is more or less openly trying to dismantle and then privatize it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy *edit to just add I read the article posted by sibling, they are proposing a “pilot program” to offer check-cashing for a fee, not depository accounts, and it adds that they’re avoiding the word “bank” to distance themselves from places where you have accounts and store money and intend to keep it that way…
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > especially when the USPS CEO is more or less openly trying to dismantle and then privatize it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy Obviously this due to one party trying to dismantle it, which ideally would not happen to our country’s infrastructure. The point is using the network and real estate and organization of an existing federal government entity that already spans the nooks and crannies of the US to get a nationwide benefit up and running.
    - dahart 4y ago
      Yeah, fair enough, the idea makes some sense. But the fact that it’s an entire party trying to dismantle USPS, a party that has a lot of power, and not just one person, is precisely the very strong reason I wouldn’t be able to trust it or buy into a plan to add accounts and depository banking to the postal service. (I already get suspicious with articles that start by framing the USPS as an unprofitable business. They might indeed be “losing” money, but it’s a branch of our tax-funded government, and we don’t expect other branches to be profitable businesses. Does it even make sense to frame the police or FBI or firefighters as “unprofitable”? The narrative of the USPS deficit seems like part of the plan to privatize it...) On top of that, I guess it’s very, very far from trivial to spin up such a service even though it’s true the USPS has a nationwide physical presence. It might be fair to say it’s easier than starting from scratch, maybe, but the USPS has entrenched practices and infrastructure that might not easily extend to physical and digital security required to handle high volume finances at all. Does having electronic accounts cover everyone? We seem to have a rapidly growing homeless population in the US, and many homeless people have real difficulties holding on to cell phones & documents long term, anything that would allow them to authenticate and/or use an electronic account. If electronic accounts were the solution, I could also imagine the primary infrastructure being a phone app (maybe not entirely dissimilar from China’s WeChat). In-person cash transactions for deposits and withdrawals could perhaps be mostly handled by ATMs?

pj_mukh 4y ago

This seems like one more problem of policing individual behavior instead of solving the infrastructure problem, by say, having the Post Office run a free bank for the under-banked [1]. [1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90683033/the-post-office-is-finally-going-to-try-out-being-a-bank https://www.fastcompany.com/90683033/the-post-office-is-fina...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]