[lotsofpulp]

It is unfair to lay that burden on businesses, when it should be the government’s job to operate infrastructure.

It would be trivial for the federal government to offer each individual an electronic money account that legally cannot be closed and is forever accessible to them. And as an adjacent comment wrote, the in person services infrastructure can be tacked onto USPS.

[dahart]

Trivial you say? How so?

Tacked onto the USPS? Why would it be a good idea to have the USPS run a bank with no experience or staff in banking, for every single person in the country, especially when the USPS CEO is more or less openly trying to dismantle and then privatize it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy

*edit to just add I read the article posted by sibling, they are proposing a “pilot program” to offer check-cashing for a fee, not depository accounts, and it adds that they’re avoiding the word “bank” to distance themselves from places where you have accounts and store money and intend to keep it that way…

[lotsofpulp]

> especially when the USPS CEO is more or less openly trying to dismantle and then privatize it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy

Obviously this due to one party trying to dismantle it, which ideally would not happen to our country’s infrastructure. The point is using the network and real estate and organization of an existing federal government entity that already spans the nooks and crannies of the US to get a nationwide benefit up and running.

[dahart]

Yeah, fair enough, the idea makes some sense. But the fact that it’s an entire party trying to dismantle USPS, a party that has a lot of power, and not just one person, is precisely the very strong reason I wouldn’t be able to trust it or buy into a plan to add accounts and depository banking to the postal service. (I already get suspicious with articles that start by framing the USPS as an unprofitable business. They might indeed be “losing” money, but it’s a branch of our tax-funded government, and we don’t expect other branches to be profitable businesses. Does it even make sense to frame the police or FBI or firefighters as “unprofitable”? The narrative of the USPS deficit seems like part of the plan to privatize it...)

On top of that, I guess it’s very, very far from trivial to spin up such a service even though it’s true the USPS has a nationwide physical presence. It might be fair to say it’s easier than starting from scratch, maybe, but the USPS has entrenched practices and infrastructure that might not easily extend to physical and digital security required to handle high volume finances at all.

Does having electronic accounts cover everyone? We seem to have a rapidly growing homeless population in the US, and many homeless people have real difficulties holding on to cell phones & documents long term, anything that would allow them to authenticate and/or use an electronic account.

If electronic accounts were the solution, I could also imagine the primary infrastructure being a phone app (maybe not entirely dissimilar from China’s WeChat). In-person cash transactions for deposits and withdrawals could perhaps be mostly handled by ATMs?

[lotsofpulp]

> but the USPS has entrenched practices and infrastructure that might not easily extend to physical and digital security required to handle high volume finances at all.

The USPS has handled identify verification for the federal government since many, many, many decades. If you want a US passport, you have to go to a USPS office to get your identity verified. This is the logistically difficult part, since it involves so much labor, but it’s already done!

As for electronic accounts, the hardest and most laborious part is identity verification. The electronic accounts part can be taken care of by some IT department, just like visa/Mastercard/any number of banks and financial institutions (including the federal reserve) do.

[freejazz]

You want the government to run banks so that stores don't need cash registers?

[lotsofpulp]

I wrote “electronic money accounts”, and yes. It is clear that electronic money has lots of utility, and it makes sense for a society to ensure its existence as infrastructure.

The same infrastructure can also serve as an identity verification service, which is also sorely needed.

There is no reason it has to operate as a bank, which would involve becoming a lender.

[notch656c]

The government will never never allow any kind of bank account that cannot be closed and is forever accessible.

The closest we have to that is gold buried in a hole somewhere or maybe a cold storage seed phrase in your head and the discipline not to reveal it in torture.

[woodruffw]

NYC can’t, for better or worse, dictate federal policy. Given the limited scope of its authority, requiring businesses to take the currently available form of universal currency seems not unreasonable.