The only reason this isn't a free speech problem is because it's monopolized in the private sector. Well, if it's already centrally planned and controlled, then we can just put it in the public sector.
Now, we have some guarantee of rights. We can even use our voting powers to influence the payment processor. Because, right now, we essentially have this same exact scenario - except, it's opaque, we can't vote, and they're allowed to completely trample over the US constitution, because it doesn't apply to them.
What's the actual drawback here? I mean, it's not like things can get more consolidated. I understand not wanting to disturb a market, but there's no market to disturb.
We can also go the other direction and split Visa up. But that's bad in different ways.
I don't want 50 payment processors, you don't want that, and certainly Visa doesn't want that. So who wins? Nobody, it's all losers. If you think it's expensive now, just wait until you're paying for the integration and complexity costs of all those payment processors.
IMO, payment processors are public infrastructure. That's an opinion of course, but it's really hard to argue otherwise. It is to the benefit of everyone that we have good payment processors. We already pay for Visa via taxes - that's what that 2% charge on all transactions is.
Given that, we should treat it like a public asset.
This is simply an underwriting risk problem. Get the government to draw boundaries of what’s ok or not and it’s less of a problem.
They're already acting as a public good - so why can't we just make them a public good? That's not a rhetorical question.
We're already paying taxes for this public good. So why can't we pay actual taxes for this public good? Again, not rhetorical.
> Get the government to draw boundaries of what’s ok or not and it’s less of a problem.
Yes, we can do this. But we have already done this. It's our common laws and the US constitution.
If we want free speech, we don't need to go out here and write a super special law to target Visa. If they were just part of the public sector that would already apply to them - no new laws required.
You can't just say something is a fairy-tale because you're ideologically opposed to it. We already run many, many public services and do it successfully. It's not a fairy-tale, it's real life and we've been doing it for hundreds of years. Yes, even in the US.
Not to mention, we'd get a lot of extra benefits for free. Don't want your payment history leaked? Great, now the police require a search warrant to invade your privacy. Don't want to be debanked? Great, now we have more stringent discrimination protections. Want to pay less? Great, we don't have to turn a profit anymore.
