[tchaffee]

I'm not claiming payment processors are moral. I'm asking if the freedom to refuse unethical business should be your right. I was responding to the position of a parent comment that processors should accept even illegal transactions.

Of course you contact the police in the situation I described. Do you accept the payment though or do you refuse the transaction? You keep avoiding a specific yes or no question.

[crote]

> freedom to refuse unethical business

There is a massive difference between "unethical business" and "illegal business". As banks provide critical infrastructure, they should absolutely not be allowed to refuse business they consider "unethical", just like a power company should not be allowed to cut someone off because they think they are behaving "unethically".

As to "illegal business", the simple fact is that the bank doesn't know enough to make a meaningful distinction. It is simply impossible for a bank to know for a fact what a payment is for. They only know the source account, the destination account, the payment value, and a user-provided description. That's just not enough data to make a decent judgement. Plenty of jokers out there who will label their rent transaction as "extortion payment", after all.

Sure, if they have reasonable suspicion they should forward the information to the police, but they should not be allowed to block it unless given a court order.

[tchaffee]

> There is a massive difference between "unethical business" and "illegal business"

Can you explain the massive difference? For example, easy access to guns is legal in a handful of countries and illegal in most countries. Where it's legal to easily obtain guns but also illegal to buy alcohol on a Sunday, what does that imply in terms of ethics?

> As banks provide critical infrastructure,

There is no physical limitation - like a local electricity generator - that requires this "infrastructure" to be dominated by a few huge companies.

> the simple fact is that the bank doesn't know enough to make a meaningful distinction. It is simply impossible for a bank to know for a fact what a payment is for.

That's wrong. The bank reasonably knows what I'm buying from Porn Hub or the local butcher. Even if they don't know exactly what I'm buying, they do know how the local butcher generates the bulk of its profits.

What you're suggesting is that it be illegal to start a vegan credit card - only works at businesses where they don't harm animals. What we need instead is more choice, not less choice. Break up the near monopoly and reintroduce competition and you fix the actual problem - which is that a handful of payment processors can collude against a business or industry.

[tchaffee]

Banks don't know what you're paying for at Porn Hub?

Banks do know enough to price in risk. And there is your problem. They must be allowed to price in risk and if they are allowed to do that they can effectively deny business by making the price too high.

PayPal isn't a bank but does payments. The real problem is there aren't enough alternatives like that. The solution to banks having so much power is to give them more competition.

[kelnos]

What does "give them more competition" mean? The fact that the landscape looks like it does is a strong suggestion that more competition might not actually be viable.

Another possible solution to banks having so much power is to regulate them more. I know a lot of libertarian types don't like that answer, but it is a valid answer.

[tchaffee]

> What does "give them more competition" mean?

It means you have far more choices in who to give your business to. For example, in a big city you can eat at thousands of restaurants. Or cook at home. However, I cannot choose from thousands of payment processors. With more payment processors competing for my business, I would get a better product and more choice.

> Another possible solution to banks having so much power is to regulate them more. I know a lot of libertarian types don't like that answer, but it is a valid answer.

I'm firmly not libertarian. Not even close. But I don't like to pull out the regulation stick until we see that more competition and a functioning market can't solve the problem. Since these transactions are now all digital, the potential for highly functioning markets has barely been explored.

[kelnos]

You accept the payment, absolutely. It should not be your responsibility to do the required due process to ensure that a decision to deny the transaction is actually fair and correct. And more than that, I don't want to have to trust an unaccountable private corporation with that responsibility.

[tchaffee]

> You accept the payment, absolutely.

So it should be illegal to start a vegan payment processor? Breaking up the current near-monopoly and giving you more choice would give the maximum possible freedom to everyone including you.

> unaccountable private corporation with that responsibility.

That's the beauty of a functioning market. With lots of choice the corporation must either be accountable or lose your business. The real problem is that you currently don't have much choice due to a non-existent market with almost no real competition for business.

[wheeeeeeeeee]

In this hypothetical situation you've set up in which Visa somehow knows that one of their billion+ payments is for the contract killing of another human, then no, it's probably better to not let the payment go through.

However I find the argument you're posing apparently in favor of allowing a business like Visa to decline transactions on ethical grounds to be missing some important rigor. It's honestly kind of boring to argue about very clear-cut and extreme example like a credit card payment that is clearly for a contract killing. That's not where the meat of the issue lies.

If you'd like to make the argument that a business like Visa should decline transactions based on the ethics (as opposed to legal & financial risk, which appears to be how they do it now) of that transaction, then I think you need to come out of the gate with a bit more rigor. Here are the questions that immediately come to mind for me:

1. Can we agree that the rules applied to a multinational corporation with billions in income utilized by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis to exchange legal currency for goods and services should be different than the rules governing the bakery down the street?

2. If yes, then within the context of multinational financial corporations, what is "ethical"?

3. Who decides what that definition is for a multinational financial corporation?

4. Is that definition industry-wide or specific to a corporation?

5. Is a corporation expected to hold to a consistent definition of "ethical"? If they are, how is that enforced?

6. If a corporation is not required to hold to a consistent definition of "ethical", how is this different from "for any reason or no reason at all"?

7. If an individual's small business is deemed "unethical" by a monopoly or near-monopoly, such that it is impossible _in practical terms_ for the business to exist based on an extralegal decision by a multinational financial institution, should there be any recourse for that individual? What would that be? Over what timeline could it be reasonably accomplished?

8. Remaining firmly in the context of applying your above answers to multinational financial corporations: how do your answers create a net boon for society? Who is likely to benefit from your policies? Is there any apparent harm from your policies? Is that harm a net boon for society? How and why?

Without some thought put towards these questions, or ones like them, your (apparent, there's not a lot to go on here) proposal of universal ethical freedom for all businesses looks a lot like "unlimited freedom without regard for how that unlimited freedom affects others." Which, if you are seriously putting that argument forward, I'd like to circle back to contract killing and ask what damn right does Visa have to limit one's freedom to run a contract killing business?

[tchaffee]

> 1. Can we agree that the rules applied to a multinational corporation with billions in income utilized by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis to exchange legal currency for goods and services should be different than the rules governing the bakery down the street?

Yes. The core of the problem is the near monopoly that the small list of current payment processors have. As an aside, these companies have less global control than someone from the US or Europe might think.

2. If yes, then within the context of multinational financial corporations, what is "ethical"?

A vegan credit card is entirely reasonable. Any ethical stance you want to take is reasonable. As long as you fix the actual monopoly problem.

3. Who decides what that definition is for a multinational financial corporation?

It shouldn't matter if you fix the actual problem.

Etc.

Solving the actual problem instead of the perceived problem very often answers a bunch of doubts all at the same time.

> I'd like to circle back to contract killing and ask what damn right does Visa have to limit one's freedom to run a contract killing business?

The same right that I have to not be a contract killer. If your contract killing business can't find enough suppliers - be that the killers themselves or the payment processor - then that's a problem that no one should be compelled to solve. You don't have a basic human right to run any business you choose and force others to be suppliers to your business.

[kelnos]

I think you hit the nail on the head with the assertion that the contract killing example is boring and doesn't really expose any of the grey areas or nuance that is necessary to really think about this issue.

But even ignoring ethics, I don't think multinational corporations should be unilaterally deciding on questions of law, either. I don't think they will ever make legal determinations based on any sufficient amount of rigor, either. Sufficient in this case, to me, is "would be the same decision reached by a court of law after engaging in due process". And even if they could theoretically apply that level of rigor, why should we trust an unaccountable multinational corporation with that power?

[tchaffee]

Forcing companies to neutrally process all transactions is in itself a decision around ethics. You're not ignoring ethics. You're pushing for your own ethics around payment processing.\

> I don't think multinational corporations should be unilaterally deciding on questions of law,

They aren't really. Deciding to refuse a payment is not jail time. The business can also accept cash.