[throwawaysea]

Thank you! It’s incredible that I had to wade through so many comments discussing this news without getting to the heart of it. Network effects breed centralization via a lack of competition. Companies whose products or services have network effects can abuse that power in many ways, including discriminating against customers or content, as Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Stripe regularly do. This compels everyone to have to act the way these companies dictate, which is a huge problem for any free society.

I agree with you that some regulations are harmful and are just plain old regulatory capture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) that protects the big incumbents. But we need well-targeted regulation for this situation where the size of existing networks prevents new payment processors from participating and having a shot in the economy. one option is that once you’re above a certain size, providers benefiting from network effects must be treated like a government entity, just like we regulate utilities. After all, services like payment processing are incredibly fundamental to our society’s operation. Another option is to force interoperability so that a new small business doesn’t face an insurmountable barrier to competition.

[webinvest]

It’s a Monopoly. Or in this case of Visa/MasterCard, a duopoly. There are laws to break up monopolies/duopolies. In the case of an oligarchy, there are laws to break up anticompetitive behavior and collusions.