[patmcc]

Ok; can we do the same to your industry? Would you enjoy being required to serve incredibly unprofitable customers until you can (very expensively!) take them to court?

If being banked is so critical (and it is, in modern society) then it shouldn't be handled solely by private enterprise. Government needs to step in and offer basic services.

[quickthrower2]

Banks are a special case. If you are going to apply the “they are just a regular business like my local bar” to them by logical extension any business should be able to create new money and transmit it. Nothing special eh!

Banks have special rules because they are infrastructure. A cafe needs a bank but not vice versa.

[patmcc]

I agree, banks should have rules and regulations specific to their industry, just like cafes should industry-specific rules (food handling, tip distribution, etc.).

I don't think "you can't fire a customer" is a good one though.

There's also a distinction between not being able to use a particular bank and not being able to use any bank. It's important that everyone be able to use some bank, but not that everyone can use Chase, but it's tough to regulate that. Again, this is why I see a government option as necessary.

[planede]

The main issue isn't firing a customer (although it's bad), but locking up their money. It's not like they say "hey, we want to stop doing business with you, please transfer all your money to some other bank within a week or take out your money at the nearest branch", or do they?

Locking up the money is basically theft, but I'm sure the law and regulations say otherwise.

[marcodave]

If that would be the case, won't there then be the risk of creating a short-circuit which would benefit the actual money launderers/criminals?

Say, I have 3 millions somehow deposited in the $bank_where_i_put_my_shady_money, I want to take/move the money, but doing so will raise some eyebrows, so I deliberately try to debank myself so that I can get all my money cash OR move it to $partner_bank

[planede]

Possibly. All I'm saying that what banks do isn't simply "firing customers".

[eru]

Yes, it would be good if we deregulated, so that banking wasn't special.

Private companies should be allowed to print private notes. (Of course, with distinctive designs etc. We don't want anyone fooled into mixing them up.)

[quickthrower2]

This would be a more “old fashioned” monetary system. Problem is people getting ripped off or rugpulled. Especially as there is no gold standard so you would presumably back these by some asset for example this note is worth 1% of our fleet cars or something.

[eru]

> Especially as there is no gold standard so you would presumably back these by some asset for example this note is worth 1% of our fleet cars or something.

I would expect private issuers in eg the US to denominate their notes in USD. Or if USD were to abolished tomorrow, they would probably denominate in Euro. Failing that, I would expect a return to denomination in gold before denomination in car fleets.

Backing is a different issue. Walmart could denominate their notes in gold, but back them with the strength of their overall balance sheet and operations. Just like banks today denominate the contents of your bank account in USD, but back them with their balance sheets. (And have only a small fraction of their assets in USD reserves at the Fed or vault cash.)

> Problem is people getting ripped off or rugpulled.

That wasn't much of a problem historically.

[BobaFloutist]

I mean that sounds like stocks, which do exist, and people do use to pay other people.

[eru]

No.

Stocks are (in practice, effectively) denominated as fractions of company.

What I am describing is closer to bonds. They are denominated in currency, but still backed by the value of the company.

Bonds (or something equivalent to bonds) are used all the time to pay people. Eg someone who gets paid at the end of the month accrues something like a bond throughout the month. The company owes her more and more of something denominated in currency, not in stocks. At the end of the month, the company redeems that IOU by transferring currency.

Paying people in stocks is much rarer.

Importantly, the base pay of most people from one month to the next is fixed in terms of currency, not in terms of a specific number of stocks.

[015a]

Banking is, in the United States, by only the dictionary definition a private industry, and their importance and potential negative impact to the daily life of the average citizen puts them in the same category as utility providers and healthcare.

Strawman all you want, but there's a big difference between social media and finance.