[throwGuardian]

On the contrary, payments is critical infrastructure, like roads or social security, that needs to be publicly owned and operated, immune to the rise of cancel culture, and other whims of the techno-elites. No one should be denied their right to basic economics because someone in power at a private company disagrees with their politics

[brenden2]

The government should define what's okay and what's not (aka regulation), and let private entities duke it out for a reasonable share of the economic value.

[moralsupply]

Why not let consumers decide on what's better for them?

What does centralized (and politicized) regulation do better than then free market?

[xtian]

You can argue for improvements to the political process, but public entities do many things better than the market. For example: the fire department, parks, utilities, roads, healthcare, education.

[moralsupply]

How do you know these services do better than the market given that they are monopolistic (as in: the government doesn't allow for competition)?

[xtian]

Because the US has for-profit healthcare and it’s worse on all societal-scale metrics than nationalized healthcare in other countries. And we had for-profit fire departments and the result was poor people’s houses burned down. For-profit utilities cut maintenance of essential infrastructure to hit quarterly goals. For-profit education reinforces class hierarchy, enables grift, and results in superficial curriculum tailored for mercurial “employer demand.”

[moralsupply]

Do you mean "for-profit" with competition, or without it? Were people voluntarily paying for those services?

If it's "for-profit", monopolistic, and run by the government, it means:

1. your money is taken away from you through taxes

2. a service you may or may not want is implemented

3. a 'target' for 'profitability' is set, which makes no sense given there's no price system directly attached to the services

4. 'targets' are delivered by cutting edges so that public workers demonstrate enough competency to justify pay raises

[brenden2]

Having multiple private entities competing for customers allows consumers the opportunity to decide what they want.

[moralsupply]

> payments is critical infrastructure, like roads or social security, that needs to be publicly owned and operated

So if one day Bitcoin becomes the norm, do you believe it has be handled by the government? If you think so, how do you think the government will be able to enforce that?