12 ms·

The article it’s well built and the author is knowledgeable about the business side of check cashing, but as soon as I saw the title graphic, I thought “oh boy,

The article it’s well built and the author is knowledgeable about the business side of check cashing, but as soon as I saw the title graphic, I thought “oh boy, here we go.” I assume the author had the best intentions and I acknowledge the somewhat tongue-in-cheek style, but the soigné tone and the assumption that the topic is alien to and deeply beneath anyone reading the article is obnoxious. Check cashing places were an important part of my scrappier younger-adult years— cultural rifts like this have always kept me from being truly socially comfortable among a big chunk of the tech crowd no matter how much noise they make about inclusivity.

mdekkers 3y ago
The DALL-E generated hero image is terrible, and the tone of the article is beyond patronising, I couldn’t get past the “money transfer between banks is magic”.
- badgersnake 3y ago
  That’s a misquote. The author says to assume that it is magic and the reason for that is that it’s not the topic of the blog post. This makes complete sense to me since the article is long enough already.
  - mdekkers 3y ago
    It’s just one example of the insufferably patronising tone of the article. Just stating that a bank transfer happens is enough. No need to assume anything. Making the assumption that an explanation is required is totally unnecessary.
eru 3y ago
From the article: > One of the reasons I covered the checks as a payment method recently was to lay the groundwork for talking about some of the fascinating alternative financial world around them. In the main, this helps people at the socioeconomic margins turn payroll and other checks into cash (or otherwise immediately spendable value) in return for a fee. This is not how you, reader, probably deal with checks, and the existence of this industry / product have been controversial for many years. So what's funny is that the topic is actually totally alien to me. But that's because I have only ever dealt with one or two checks in my life (when interacting with an American company paying interview expenses). And otherwise, I've never handled them at all. They just have been out-of-use in my parts of the world (Europe, Singapore, Australia) for at least as long as I've been economically active in them. From what I've heard, the US is going in that direction as well? So many younger people would have never handled checks there either? But the paragraph just assumes that you would be familiar with checks in general, but not with check cashing. (Later on in the article, our author explains the basics of how well-enough-off people handle checks. So that's fine.) Edit: reading further down, I'm ok with the tone of the article and don't share the concerns.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Check usage is definitely on a downwards trend here in the US too, but there are very important benefits to using them and I doubt they will ever become truly obsolete. As for the benefits I just alluded to, they are in no particular order: * Simplicity and security. You cut someone a check, it's effectively the same as handing someone a wad of cash but without the logistical, security, and social issues associated with handling wads of cash. * Convenience. Checks are easy to use and require nothing other than a pen compared to other forms of transferring money, such as wire transfers or debit cards. * Assurance. Cashier's checks are a special kind of check guaranteed by the underwriting bank. These are often used when large sums of money need to exchange hands with no hassle or problems (eg: real estate or vehicle purchases).
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    The benefits of your first two points are even greater with electronic mechanisms of transferring money. And a big downside of checks is that it reveals your bank account and routing # in an ACH system where money can be “pulled” anytime from your account. Compare to an electronic money transfer system where money is pushed from entity to entity using a unique identifier, but can’t be “pulled”.
  - patio11 3y ago
    Checks also let you do fairly complex multiparty commerce without needing to spend millions of dollars engineering it, like an apartment broker requiring you to give them a check for deposit/first month’s rent and signed lease prior to releasing the keys to you. Note that the check is to the landlord and the broker cannot access her accounts, but visual inspection of a check plus the previous underwriting lets this work without needing to loop landlord in again (in real time) to release keys.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      The broker and landlord have no idea if the money exists just because they get a paper check. Seems like a far worse guarantee than simply transferring the money electronically and the landlord having instant assurance they received it.
akira2501 3y ago
> a big chunk of the tech crowd no matter how much noise they make about inclusivity. Technology was supposed to reduce these barriers, but in a lot of ways it has magnified them, creating a new pseudo social caste system or perhaps just an extreme shift in the existing order. Noticing that the promise of the 1990s has fallen flat they turn to blind pushes for inclusion as an embarrassed justification for their position in this new order.
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  HackerNews is starting to realize that "Diversity and Inclusion" is a ham-fisted scam.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I disagree, especially for what the linked article is talking about. Suppose a business or individual accepts checks and electronic funds transfers for payment. Are they going to apply their prior probabilities (your various -isms such as racism, etc), in regards to whether or not the payment will actually be successfully received? Whereas an instant payment and confirmation via the use of internet and databases alleviates this motivation to discriminate.
gosub100 3y ago
> the assumption that the topic is alien to and deeply beneath anyone reading the article is obnoxious So the author is being anti-inclusive by defining precisely what they are talking about? I assume you've seen the XKCD about "15k people a day dont know what X is", you're committing the same elitist reasoning, that someone is an idiot for not knowing a thing.
- chefandy 3y ago
  > If you are reading this, you probably are relatively wealthy, are almost certainly of high socioeconomic status, and quite plausibly have never paid one red cent for check cashing in your entire life. Explicitly stating unfounded assumptions about your audience doesn't change the fact that they are unfounded assumptions. A whole hell of a lot of people in our country have relied on check cashing services regularly at some point, and believe it or not, many of us read blog posts just like them proper folks from polite society.
  - gosub100 3y ago
    I think you're just trying to make a self-aggrandizing statement that everyone else in tech is so snooty, but no, not you. You're so woke and connected that you find it insulting that an author has the gall to try to educate people about a problem in society.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      Reread my initial comment without the knee-jerk reaction to the word “inclusive,” then objectively consider how reasonable your accusation is.
Kalium 3y ago
What, in your opinion, is the sensitive and inclusive way to discuss a category of business that the author can fairly assume a significant fraction of the userbase has never interacted with? Should the author discard that assumption and presume every reader is deeply familiar with check cashing instead? We know, with reasonable statistical evidence from the FDIC, that this alternative assumption is untrue. I ask because there is, as far as I can tell, no obvious way to do it. You could just as easily write an essay talking about carrier-provided phone financing, and it would expose a similar cultural rift where most Americans don't do that and are only very vaguely familiar with how it works. Or is the glaring thing that you dislike here the clearly stated assumption that most of the readership is not like you? In which case perhaps we should simply request that authors not state such assumptions while they make them anyway in the interests of being maximally informative.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I did a google search for articles about temp laborers because I thought it would be a good analog, and this came up: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-temps-who-power-corporate-giants-are-getting-crushe https://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-t... Do you think this article is ineffective?
  - Kalium 3y ago
    Yes, I do think it's ineffective. It's needlessly ponderous, excessively emotive, and cares far more about its activist mission than questions like "How is the business structured?". It's not an accident that the central character is someone carefully chosen to be maximally sympathetic to a well-meaning, well-off, educated liberal white person. Moreover, a similarly sympathetic (and horrified progressive middle-class-assuming) portrait of a check cashing business and its customers would almost certainly read as incredibly condescending to someone who finds them a fact of life. The article quite clearly assumes its readers have never been temps, never been crammed into a van to work in a warehouse, and will be upset to learn the conditions in question. It just doesn't say so briefly, opting instead to bury the assumption. Do you want to read an article that portrays your younger self as a victim so that readers can feel bad and maybe learn about the financial structure of check cashing? At the risk of making a large assumption, that does not seem like it would help you feel included.
huytersd 3y ago
I can immediately tell this is DALLE3 generated. It’s a little funny that the person accepting the check has shadow that looks a hitler mustache.
thecrash 3y ago
I also thought the article had interesting information, and the brisk "I'm just being honest about how things are in the world" tone was initially fun but was darkened by the hints of callous bias that bled through: > Compassion gets burned out of the owner and burned out of the clerk in basically the same ways that it gets burned out of everyone else in the neighborhood. This reflects a false belief that people who live in poor neighborhoods are less compassionate. In fact research suggests that people living in poverty tend to be more compassionate towards each other than rich people are toward the impoverished. It's comforting for wealthier people to hold this belief, because it makes us feel less bad about our own lack of compassion. And the point of the below paragraph seems to be that it's difficult or unpleasant to think about systemic injustice, so let's avoid it? > And, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s really hard to expressively, passionately hate this business and not hate the young lady working in it, the decisions and life challenges of its customers, and similar. And if you hate one particular building in a poor neighborhood, and then start rigorously thinking about the liquor store, or the police station, or the supermarket, or the church, or the public school, or the home in the poor neighborhood, I think your mind will start going to some pretty dark places.
- e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
  > This reflects a false belief that people who live in poor neighborhoods are less compassionate. In fact research suggests that people living in poverty tend to be more compassionate towards each other than rich people are toward the impoverished. It's comforting for wealthier people to hold this belief, because it makes us feel less bad about our own lack of compassion. From what I recall, its less that the poor are more compassionate, instead they participate in _reciprocal altruism_ as a form of insurance against further loss. I remember this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AchISJUKfH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AchISJUKfH4 -- poor people make seemingly dumb decisions because if they don't help their social network when it comes knocking, they're in effect _cutting themselves off_ from said network. The middle class is more insulated from this effect because those with emergency savings don't often need to borrow $500 because of a broken car or need to house their recently homeless sister and children, so capital can accumulate more easily.

mdekkers 3y ago

The DALL-E generated hero image is terrible, and the tone of the article is beyond patronising, I couldn’t get past the “money transfer between banks is magic”.

badgersnake 3y ago
That’s a misquote. The author says to assume that it is magic and the reason for that is that it’s not the topic of the blog post. This makes complete sense to me since the article is long enough already.
- mdekkers 3y ago
  It’s just one example of the insufferably patronising tone of the article. Just stating that a bank transfer happens is enough. No need to assume anything. Making the assumption that an explanation is required is totally unnecessary.

eru 3y ago

From the article: > One of the reasons I covered the checks as a payment method recently was to lay the groundwork for talking about some of the fascinating alternative financial world around them. In the main, this helps people at the socioeconomic margins turn payroll and other checks into cash (or otherwise immediately spendable value) in return for a fee. This is not how you, reader, probably deal with checks, and the existence of this industry / product have been controversial for many years. So what's funny is that the topic is actually totally alien to me. But that's because I have only ever dealt with one or two checks in my life (when interacting with an American company paying interview expenses). And otherwise, I've never handled them at all. They just have been out-of-use in my parts of the world (Europe, Singapore, Australia) for at least as long as I've been economically active in them. From what I've heard, the US is going in that direction as well? So many younger people would have never handled checks there either? But the paragraph just assumes that you would be familiar with checks in general, but not with check cashing. (Later on in the article, our author explains the basics of how well-enough-off people handle checks. So that's fine.) Edit: reading further down, I'm ok with the tone of the article and don't share the concerns.

Dalewyn 3y ago
Check usage is definitely on a downwards trend here in the US too, but there are very important benefits to using them and I doubt they will ever become truly obsolete. As for the benefits I just alluded to, they are in no particular order: * Simplicity and security. You cut someone a check, it's effectively the same as handing someone a wad of cash but without the logistical, security, and social issues associated with handling wads of cash. * Convenience. Checks are easy to use and require nothing other than a pen compared to other forms of transferring money, such as wire transfers or debit cards. * Assurance. Cashier's checks are a special kind of check guaranteed by the underwriting bank. These are often used when large sums of money need to exchange hands with no hassle or problems (eg: real estate or vehicle purchases).
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  The benefits of your first two points are even greater with electronic mechanisms of transferring money. And a big downside of checks is that it reveals your bank account and routing # in an ACH system where money can be “pulled” anytime from your account. Compare to an electronic money transfer system where money is pushed from entity to entity using a unique identifier, but can’t be “pulled”.
- patio11 3y ago
  Checks also let you do fairly complex multiparty commerce without needing to spend millions of dollars engineering it, like an apartment broker requiring you to give them a check for deposit/first month’s rent and signed lease prior to releasing the keys to you. Note that the check is to the landlord and the broker cannot access her accounts, but visual inspection of a check plus the previous underwriting lets this work without needing to loop landlord in again (in real time) to release keys.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    The broker and landlord have no idea if the money exists just because they get a paper check. Seems like a far worse guarantee than simply transferring the money electronically and the landlord having instant assurance they received it.

akira2501 3y ago

> a big chunk of the tech crowd no matter how much noise they make about inclusivity. Technology was supposed to reduce these barriers, but in a lot of ways it has magnified them, creating a new pseudo social caste system or perhaps just an extreme shift in the existing order. Noticing that the promise of the 1990s has fallen flat they turn to blind pushes for inclusion as an embarrassed justification for their position in this new order.

TurkishPoptart 3y ago
HackerNews is starting to realize that "Diversity and Inclusion" is a ham-fisted scam.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
I disagree, especially for what the linked article is talking about. Suppose a business or individual accepts checks and electronic funds transfers for payment. Are they going to apply their prior probabilities (your various -isms such as racism, etc), in regards to whether or not the payment will actually be successfully received? Whereas an instant payment and confirmation via the use of internet and databases alleviates this motivation to discriminate.

gosub100 3y ago

> the assumption that the topic is alien to and deeply beneath anyone reading the article is obnoxious So the author is being anti-inclusive by defining precisely what they are talking about? I assume you've seen the XKCD about "15k people a day dont know what X is", you're committing the same elitist reasoning, that someone is an idiot for not knowing a thing.

chefandy 3y ago
> If you are reading this, you probably are relatively wealthy, are almost certainly of high socioeconomic status, and quite plausibly have never paid one red cent for check cashing in your entire life. Explicitly stating unfounded assumptions about your audience doesn't change the fact that they are unfounded assumptions. A whole hell of a lot of people in our country have relied on check cashing services regularly at some point, and believe it or not, many of us read blog posts just like them proper folks from polite society.
- gosub100 3y ago
  I think you're just trying to make a self-aggrandizing statement that everyone else in tech is so snooty, but no, not you. You're so woke and connected that you find it insulting that an author has the gall to try to educate people about a problem in society.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Reread my initial comment without the knee-jerk reaction to the word “inclusive,” then objectively consider how reasonable your accusation is.

Kalium 3y ago

What, in your opinion, is the sensitive and inclusive way to discuss a category of business that the author can fairly assume a significant fraction of the userbase has never interacted with? Should the author discard that assumption and presume every reader is deeply familiar with check cashing instead? We know, with reasonable statistical evidence from the FDIC, that this alternative assumption is untrue. I ask because there is, as far as I can tell, no obvious way to do it. You could just as easily write an essay talking about carrier-provided phone financing, and it would expose a similar cultural rift where most Americans don't do that and are only very vaguely familiar with how it works. Or is the glaring thing that you dislike here the clearly stated assumption that most of the readership is not like you? In which case perhaps we should simply request that authors not state such assumptions while they make them anyway in the interests of being maximally informative.

chefandy 3y ago
I did a google search for articles about temp laborers because I thought it would be a good analog, and this came up: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-temps-who-power-corporate-giants-are-getting-crushe https://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-t... Do you think this article is ineffective?
- Kalium 3y ago
  Yes, I do think it's ineffective. It's needlessly ponderous, excessively emotive, and cares far more about its activist mission than questions like "How is the business structured?". It's not an accident that the central character is someone carefully chosen to be maximally sympathetic to a well-meaning, well-off, educated liberal white person. Moreover, a similarly sympathetic (and horrified progressive middle-class-assuming) portrait of a check cashing business and its customers would almost certainly read as incredibly condescending to someone who finds them a fact of life. The article quite clearly assumes its readers have never been temps, never been crammed into a van to work in a warehouse, and will be upset to learn the conditions in question. It just doesn't say so briefly, opting instead to bury the assumption. Do you want to read an article that portrays your younger self as a victim so that readers can feel bad and maybe learn about the financial structure of check cashing? At the risk of making a large assumption, that does not seem like it would help you feel included.

huytersd 3y ago

I can immediately tell this is DALLE3 generated. It’s a little funny that the person accepting the check has shadow that looks a hitler mustache.

thecrash 3y ago

I also thought the article had interesting information, and the brisk "I'm just being honest about how things are in the world" tone was initially fun but was darkened by the hints of callous bias that bled through: > Compassion gets burned out of the owner and burned out of the clerk in basically the same ways that it gets burned out of everyone else in the neighborhood. This reflects a false belief that people who live in poor neighborhoods are less compassionate. In fact research suggests that people living in poverty tend to be more compassionate towards each other than rich people are toward the impoverished. It's comforting for wealthier people to hold this belief, because it makes us feel less bad about our own lack of compassion. And the point of the below paragraph seems to be that it's difficult or unpleasant to think about systemic injustice, so let's avoid it? > And, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s really hard to expressively, passionately hate this business and not hate the young lady working in it, the decisions and life challenges of its customers, and similar. And if you hate one particular building in a poor neighborhood, and then start rigorously thinking about the liquor store, or the police station, or the supermarket, or the church, or the public school, or the home in the poor neighborhood, I think your mind will start going to some pretty dark places.

e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
> This reflects a false belief that people who live in poor neighborhoods are less compassionate. In fact research suggests that people living in poverty tend to be more compassionate towards each other than rich people are toward the impoverished. It's comforting for wealthier people to hold this belief, because it makes us feel less bad about our own lack of compassion. From what I recall, its less that the poor are more compassionate, instead they participate in _reciprocal altruism_ as a form of insurance against further loss. I remember this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AchISJUKfH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AchISJUKfH4 -- poor people make seemingly dumb decisions because if they don't help their social network when it comes knocking, they're in effect _cutting themselves off_ from said network. The middle class is more insulated from this effect because those with emergency savings don't often need to borrow $500 because of a broken car or need to house their recently homeless sister and children, so capital can accumulate more easily.