[DoreenMichele]

There have always been travelers in the world. They have long had friction with settled peoples who feel a fixed address is essential.

Even American military members have friction with the rest of America over this. It just gets mitigated by the fact that the federal government makes accommodations for them.

Military members historically had trouble opening local bank accounts so there are military banks on military installations and when I was a military wife I could cash a check at the PX/BX because banks don't like cashing out of town checks.

This is not just a homeless issue. This is problematic for all kinds of people with nomadic lives and this has long been true.

[ghaff]

Of course, it's all tied up with state government too. You need to be a resident of some state to get a driver's license. And no high tax state wants, say, Nevada to offer state residency that puts your name on an office door in exchange for an annual fee. Then there's voting/jury duty/etc.

[DoreenMichele]

Well heeled people already do pretty much as they please. Own a house in one state, travel as you see fit in your RV or whatever.

It's only a serious hardship for poor people.

[yazaddaruvala]

Maybe it’s better to think of local government as a Proof of Stake system. Where you Stake the value of land+house as collateral (using an address) to access trust based services like voting, banking, etc. such that everyone is clear that you can pay the annual fees or penalties (if ever applicable) for that local government / bank.

Sadly that does mean poor people who can’t stake capital or spend capital on rent in an area get left out of the system.

What would a system look like that didn’t use Proof of Stake as collateral to get people access to trust based systems?

[pyuser583]

I live in a town with tons and tons of students. They live here for a few years and move on.

I’m glad they avoid voting. They’d just vote for high taxes, which they wouldn’t have to pay for very long.

The city has a good system for dealing with political activism by students: there are a ton of unpaid committees with actual power - but exercising the power requires jumping throwing hoops to make sure it’s used well.

In practice this means students can get lots of influence, if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.

That seems like a good system to me.

It also makes me very cynical about voting in general. The fact that someone is willing to wait in line for 20 minutes and check a piece of paper says little about their ideas.

Spending 20 hours a week - evening and weekends - to research and write reports shows you care.

[yazaddaruvala]

Proof of Time frankly is really just Proof of Stake with a different monetize-able asset.

Not to say the time isn’t worth it, or doesn’t need to be put in. I just don’t feel like it’s substantially different (for the purpose of this conversation) to buying a house in the area. ie. The homeless can’t spend time on committees.

[pyuser583]

The Committee on Homelessness requires that some of its members currently be homeless, and other members be formerly homeless.

[ghaff]

Even absent owning a house or otherwise having a permanent address in a given state, well heeled people probably have a stable/trusted relative or friend who can serve as a nominal permanent address and place to receive official mail. I did this for someone for a few years.

[mperham]

A PO Box costs ~$100/yr.

[leephillips]

Doesn’t work. Usually banks, for example, won’t accept a PO box as a residential address. They need to know where you actually live.

[13of40]

There are private services that make it look like a real street address. The top hit when I just googled it was $9.99 a month, so pretty affordable.

[Spooky23]

You need a physical address for many things.

[skybrian]

Or alternatively, have a relative who will let you use their address? That seems a lot cheaper.

A hard case is combination of not having money and not having family.

[DoreenMichele]

Homeless people frequently are homeless in part because they don't have any relatives they are on good terms with. Most of the world blames the homeless person and chalks it up to their presumed bad behavior but it's not unusual for them to be fleeing an abusive situation.

[skybrian]

Yes, I should have said "not having family they're on good terms with."

[madeofpalk]

This of course is a particular peculiarity with the US, having such varying state taxes.

[skissane]

It is actually very common in federal systems to have state/province-level taxation, driver's licensing, etc. I don't think the US is particularly peculiar here at all. Canadian provinces also have individual GST and income tax rates.

In some ways, I'd say Australia is actually more peculiar than the US, in that the Australian states have significantly more limited taxation powers than American states or Canadian provinces do – here, the federal government banned state income tax and state sales taxes (GST/VAT), forcing uniform national tax rates and collection for both. However, Australian states still retain the power to levy some other taxes independently, such as land taxes and payroll taxes.

[Spooky23]

There’s other weirdness too. CDLs are different between states. Oregon used to issue lots of shady licenses to undocumented and on the run type people.

[zabzonk]

Is this a USA thing? As a child of an RAF pilot who moved around a lot (here and overseas), I have never encountered this. My Dad had the same bank account all his life, at the bank in the town he was born in, in the UK, and never (as far as I know) had any problems cashing cheques etc. back when such were things.

[ISL]

Not cashing out of town checks (especially in large amounts) is definitely a thing in the US.

For larger transactions, it is also common to get a "cashier's check", drawn on the bank's own accounts to minimize the seller's counterparty risk.

The rationale for the in-town restriction is also to limit counterparty risk: if the check is from an unfamiliar bank, it is more likely to be bogus and the seller won't be able to verify the account with a quick call to a known bank nor expect to be able to address fraud within the local law-enforcement framework.

[zabzonk]

I take your word for it, but I rember getting cash on my UK credit card several times when I've worked in the US. Of course, these were for small amounts, and the credit card company were the ones finally at risk.

I have suddenly had a vision of Clint Eastwood, in High Plains Drifter mode, riding into town and attempting to cash a cheque :-)

[maccam94]

Credit/debit cards and checks are totally different systems. Cards can be checked for available funds instantly. Checks need to be cleared through the ACH system (in the US at least), which is an asynchronous process that might take more than a day to complete. If you cash a check from a different bank at your own, usually it will actually draw funds from your account and the check will be deposited after it clears.

[zabzonk]

It's been a long time since I had a cheque book, but way back then the cheque at the bank (not for electricity payments and such) trying to get money needed to be backed up with a bank's card, and the risk was on the card issuing bank.

[couchand]

I'm not familiar with UK banking but this sounds like something lost in translation. The checks the ancestors are speaking of are personal checks, basically just an IOU -- I'm guessing this is more like your "for electricity payments and such". The cashier's check mentioned above sounds to be more like your "cheque at the bank", where the instrument carries value itself, rather than being a draft on the writer's account.

[Spooky23]

It was. The US has/had a distributed banking system with thousands of banks. It’s archaic and stupid.

Basically, you can tell from the routing number on a check where the bank is. Back in the day, if the bank wasn’t from NYC or the same region they wouldn’t honor the check. Checks were mailed between clearing systems and would take weeks to clear. My dad maintained a bank account at the Bank of New York specifically for business travel in the 80s.

That’s mostly gone now as ACH is automated and quick.

[nine_k]

The problem is that the US is rather larger than the UK, so a distributed system was (and maybe still is) a natural fit. For the same reason, all the citizens of the US can't just come to one place and vote for a President, like ancient Athenians could.

[s0rce]

I was paid by the Canadian government through a fellowship while I attended graduate school in the USA. They paid my entire years fellowship in a single check which clearly said Government of Canada, however, the check was denominated in US dollars and drawn on a US bank, yet I still got a lot of confusion and difficult when trying to cash it and had to convince them it was, in fact, possible.

[DoreenMichele]

I'm American, so, yes, I'm describing my experience with the USA.

[Angostura]

One of the advantages of Empire :)

[pyuser583]

Yes, and “travelers” have historically had their own systems of law and governance.

The US military being an excellent example. Extraterritoriality for merchants was a big thing in the 19th century. Ecclesiastical laws was a big thing before that (not all clerics were travelers - monks needed their own legal system for the opposite reason).

But nobody said “screw physical jurisdictions” - they just created a new, non-territorial jurisdiction for a select few.

[Angostura]

Fundamentally it's an issue of how people in a settle community, with communal rules and support handle people who aren't part of that community.

[DoreenMichele]

It's frequently outright abusive of the nomadic peoples. People want soldiers to lay down their lives for national security, natural disasters, etc but then want to treat them as unwelcome outsiders, don't want to hire their spouses, will happily gouge them for rent, etc.

[passerby1]

> will happily gouge for rent

Making profit is the goal for renting out, right?