[rvense]

> which throughout history has always selected a decentralised banking system with thousands of small local banks

The free market in my country has produced two banks that provide banking to 80% of the population (6M people). It has also more or less killed off cash in favour of credit cards and more recently a single, 100% privatized smartphone app. Accepting cash is still a legal requirement, ie. it is being kept alive by our government and central bank, but it is mostly old people and a few privacy/conspiracy kooks who use it.

Almost all of the private banks also have negative interest rates, at least for deposits over a certain amount. And they are all pushing investment (stocks) as an alternative for savings.

I really do hope our central bank wakes up and starts providing a way to store my savings without gambling them on the stock market soon, as well as a way to transfer money to other people without going through a privatized middle man. There is obviously a need for financial services like loans and mortgages, and even investment for people who want that, but storage and transfer of money should not rely on private businesses who then get to charge money for the use of money - the original definition of the word usury! - but be a publicly owned, publicly accessible infrastructure just like central bank cash was.

[Qasaur]

>The free market in my country has produced two banks that provide banking to 80% of the population (6M people).

I don't want to assume where you are from, but almost every developed country has incredibly complex, expensive, and insurmountable bank licensing procedures which make it impossible for startups to compete. That is not a free market, it is a crony capitalist market which shields incumbents.

[rvense]

That's probably true but we also have like two major supermarket chains, so I think it's hard to make the case that government regulation is the only cause of monopolies.

[nickff]

The USA actually has a history of disallowing large, centralized private banks. So-called unit-banking, driven by a powerful small-bank lobby created a great deal of instability in the 19th and 20th centuries. Canada and Scotland have a history of much freer banking than the USA. This is a very interesting subject, and I highly recommend reading a bit about it.