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if you know about/suspect it you report it. how do you know with 100% certainty/due process that this is indeed the case and it's not just your ML algorithm go

• tchaffee 3y ago
  What I asked is specific: if you know the money is for a hit job will you still accept the business and take your fee or is there a moral line you personally won't cross? Yes, it's the job of the police to investigate but do you want the freedom to not engage in business that you consider evil?
  • zhfliz 3y ago
    at best you suspect it, you don't know it unless you're on the sending or receiving side of the transaction. it shouldn't be my decision whether i want to allow the transaction, even if i wouldn't want to allow it. i'm not in a position to perform due legal process to determine whether you're indeed being paid for a hit job. the provider should be in a neutral position.
    • tchaffee 3y ago
      I asked a specific question and you refuse to answer it because your entire premise is based on not being able to know if someone is engaging in unethical behavior. That's premise is seriously flawed. The problem you're trying solve is caused by lack of competition and near monopoly players. The fix isn't to force those businesses to ignore ethics. The fix is hugely increasing the competition.
      • zhfliz 3y ago
        even though not explicitly, i have already answered your question. you should pass the transaction, as you should be in a neutral position. edit: to clarify, payment providers/processors nowadays are a core utility function in our society. imo this is not something you can consider a regular private business.
        • tchaffee 3y ago
          My basic human freedoms should include the right to not do business with a hate group for example. You want folks to give up that freedom because you got the problem wrong and you're applying the wrong fix.
          • zhfliz 3y ago
            you're free to decide who to do business with if you're not providing a core utility service. would you like to no longer receive water or electricity at your home because your utility companies don't like you, despite (being willing to) paying the bills like any other citizen?
            • tchaffee 3y ago
              Due to limited infrastructure resourcess, water and utility companies are a near monopoly which is why they need these types of regulations. There is no physical limitations to the number of possible payment processors so the actual fix is more competition and more companies. No need for neutrality regulations when you have thousands of companies competing.
              • stale2002 3y ago
                Ok got it, so this means that your previously statement, where you said "My basic human freedoms should include the right to not do business with a hate group for example", is not true, or not your full opinion. You actually think that there are certain situations where it is OK to force basic utilities to transact with everyone. You just disagree where exactly the line is. But at the end of the day, yes you also agree that some companies should be forced to engage in certain transactions.
                • tchaffee 3y ago
                  Interested in the topic but not interested in your aggressive style and putting words in my mouth and telling me what I believe. You can have the last word if you'd like.
      • kelnos 3y ago
        > your entire premise is based on not being able to know if someone is engaging in unethical behavior. That's premise is seriously flawed. No, it's not. It's literally the facts on the ground. Additionally, it's telling that you used the term "unethical" rather than "unlawful". Whether or not a credit card works should have nothing to do with someone's arbitrary ethics.
        • tchaffee 3y ago
          > It's literally the facts on the ground. It's literally not. Your claim is that I suspect the local butcher sells meat rather than knowing that they sell meat. If my vegan friend doesn't want to do their accounting, that should be within his basic human freedoms. He's not the only accountant in town and the butcher will surely find an accountant who enjoys eating meat. > Whether or not a credit card works should have nothing to do with someone's arbitrary ethics. It shouldn't be illegal for someone to start a vegan credit card that only allows purchases at businesses that don't kill animals. More choice is better and you want to make all payment processors follow a one-size-fits-all rule. That's the opposite of the direction we should be pursuing. The real problem is the near monopoly control of the handful of payment processing giants that currently exist. Fix that problem and increase the competition and offer more choice and you no longer needs to force payment processors to be neutral. Forced neutrality in the end means the government decides. Which makes sense in a handful of cases, but not when markets can do a better job.
  • kortilla 3y ago
    That’s a bit of bullshit because these payment providers accept transactions for the government which consistently kills people at the local, state, and federal level every day. If you “know” the money is for a hit job, you contact the FBI or local police and they can mobilize protective services and arrest forces.
    • tchaffee 3y ago
      I'm not claiming payment processors are moral. I'm asking if the freedom to refuse unethical business should be your right. I was responding to the position of a parent comment that processors should accept even illegal transactions. Of course you contact the police in the situation I described. Do you accept the payment though or do you refuse the transaction? You keep avoiding a specific yes or no question.
      • crote 3y ago
        > freedom to refuse unethical business There is a massive difference between "unethical business" and "illegal business". As banks provide critical infrastructure, they should absolutely not be allowed to refuse business they consider "unethical", just like a power company should not be allowed to cut someone off because they think they are behaving "unethically". As to "illegal business", the simple fact is that the bank doesn't know enough to make a meaningful distinction. It is simply impossible for a bank to know for a fact what a payment is for. They only know the source account, the destination account, the payment value, and a user-provided description. That's just not enough data to make a decent judgement. Plenty of jokers out there who will label their rent transaction as "extortion payment", after all. Sure, if they have reasonable suspicion they should forward the information to the police, but they should not be allowed to block it unless given a court order.
        • tchaffee 3y ago
          Banks don't know what you're paying for at Porn Hub? Banks do know enough to price in risk. And there is your problem. They must be allowed to price in risk and if they are allowed to do that they can effectively deny business by making the price too high. PayPal isn't a bank but does payments. The real problem is there aren't enough alternatives like that. The solution to banks having so much power is to give them more competition.
  • elzbardico 3y ago
    Last time I checked both Visa and Mastercard have no problems being used to buy cigarettes or alcohol. I'd bet that orders of magnitude more people die because of cancer caused by cigarettes and in episodes of domestic violence or traffic accidents caused by alcohol abuse than the number of people assassinated by hit killers hired online and paid with credit cards.
    • tchaffee 3y ago
      I never claimed the near monopoly of current processors is moral. My claim is easy: we have the right to conduct a business according to our ethics.
      • kelnos 3y ago
        In many jurisdictions, the electric utility is a private corporation. Is it ok for the power company to turn off power for a business they think is immoral, like, say, a strip club? Obviously it's not; laws prevent that sort of thing. So at this point we agree (as a society at least) that some businesses should not be allowed to conduct business according to their ethics, but instead must do business with anyone who shows up at their door. At this point it's just a matter of deciding which businesses that rule should apply to. I would argue that payment processors are approaching utility-like levels of essential use in our society, if they aren't there already.
        • tchaffee 3y ago
          > In many jurisdictions, the electric utility is a private corporation. Is it ok for the power company to turn off power for a business they think is immoral, like, say, a strip club? Obviously it's not; laws prevent that sort of thing This is due to a physical limitation. Payment processors have no such physical limitation. > I would argue that payment processors are approaching utility-like levels of essential use in our society, Correct. And the problem is not that they are utility-like essential. But that they are a near monopoly. There is zero reason for payment processors to be a near monopoly and that's the actual problem that needs fixing.
  • synecdoche 3y ago
    Attacking a significant part of someone's ability to function in society instead of attacking the the perceived injustice itself on its merits, by informing law enforcement, who's job is to carry out due process, suggests lack of confidence in the merits, or lack of trust in the justice system. It doesn't seem to argue for fairness, unless the one arguing for it accepts being at the receiving end of the argument.
    • tchaffee 3y ago
      > Attacking a significant part of someone's ability to function in society I never said to attack the ability of someone to function in society. That's a side effect of a near monopoly. The actual problem is that a handful of companies control payment processing so it's easy for them to act together. The fix is more freedom not less freedom: far more companies that process payments and more choice. This allows companies to choose who they do business with and customers to find a payment processor who allows the types of purchases they like to make. I don't think it's unreasonable for a payment processor to refuse to allow gun purchases. Or that it should be illegal to start a vegan credit card. Likewise it's not unreasonable for a payment processor to accept even very high risk businesses and make that their claim to fame. The fix in this case is to break up the monopoly and reintroduce competition.
  • kelnos 3y ago
    And I think what many of us in this thread object to is that your specific question is irrelevant, because it's hypothetical and unrealistic. You do not know the money is for a hit job. You just don't. You may think that's what it's for, but you don't actually know, and you -- as a random employee (or worse, algorithm) of Payments R Us, Inc. -- should have no business playing judge and jury. As for moral lines you are curious as to what people will and won't cross, those lines will be different for different people, and that's exactly why we shouldn't be putting these sorts of decisions in the hands of random unaccountable corporate employees (or, again, worse, algorithms). You clearly want someone to say "no, of course I wouldn't allow a transaction to go through if it was for a hitman contract". But what if someone said "I see no problem with contract killings; I'd let it through"? That person could be working at Payments R Us, and clearly we don't want someone making that decision! So take it out of their hands. The contract killer is of course an extreme example, but we already have real-world examples discussed here that illustrate the problem with this. Pornography is legal, and yet payment processors boot online porn companies from their networks. Someone who thinks pornography is immoral might have made that determination (I don't buy the "high risk of fraud" argument; you can always control for that with higher fees). Regardless of how you personally feel about pornography, do you think it's ok for a company to deny another company access to a big chunk of the financial system for entirely legal activities, just because they don't like them? I would sincerely hope that we can agree that sort of thing is bad.
    • tchaffee 3y ago
      > do you think it's ok for a company to deny another company access to a big chunk of the financial system for entirely legal activities A vegan credit card that only works at vegan companies should not be illegal. > to a big chunk of the financial system Here's the actual problem! We have a handful of giant payment processors that make up a near monopoly. That's the problem you want to fix. More competition and more choices (e.g. vegan credit card) means you'll for sure find a way to pay for your vegan porn. > That person could be working at Payments R Us I'm not talking about employees making a decision. I'm talking about the owners of a payment processing company being able to decide on a policy that is applied to all customers.