Kind of cuts both ways though, doesn’t it? The reverse of this argument is saying that the payment processors must work with Valve no matter what they host. Agree it disagree with them, but don’t the payment processors get a say in what they do or do not want to process?
I mean, when your service is fundamental enough to the economy, and centralized enough to make just going to an alternative a major hassle, if an alternative without a similar policy even exists, then why should they get that say? The power to effectively ban the sale of certain types of thing, or force media platforms to censor certain types of content, is the sort of power we generally reserve for governments, not private entities that can do whatever they want. Honestly they’re important enough these days that they should basically be treated like some sort of public utility in my view.
Well as long as they are independent businesses, why shouldn’t they?
If your argument seems to be “they are too crucial to be independent businesses,” I don’t think we’d disagree too much, but the fact is that they are right now.
I don’t think that businesses, not being individuals, should actually have the same rights as individuals I guess. I don’t really agree with the idea that a corporation should be able to do whatever it likes by default, simply because I think corporations in general have too much power to be trusted with such.
It was more like hyperbole on my part, I was using that as a catch all for whatever kinds of things a business could abuse it’s position by doing. I didn’t want to just say “be able to do businesses or not do business with whoever they want”, because I wanted to say something more broad than just applying to payment processors, even if choosing not to do business with someone and thereby shutting them out of much of the economy is the way a payment processor would do this .
No, they should have zero say because they have weaseled themselves into a position that is the equivalent of a utility or whatever ISP are classified as. Their only involvement is whether they complete transactions between parties in a legal way.
Agree it disagree with them, but don’t the payment processors get a say in what they do or do not want to process?
Absolutely not. Power companies don’t get a say in what the power they supply their users with is used for, same for water companies and even ISPs. If they really, really want to enforce rules on what they will and will not process payments for, they can accept legal responsibility when they process a payment on a gun someone uses to shoot up a school or what have you. But they cant have it both ways.
In the US at least, they actually do, in many cases. If you are in a drought region, your water utilities can be shut off if you’re wasting it all on watering a lawn or filling a swimming pool, for example. ISPs cut people off all the time for torrenting, sometimes even if it’s not pirated content (though it was ruled not long ago that ISPs aren’t utilities anyways).
Power and water are public utilities (as is internet, in some parts of the world but not all). Payment processing is not. If you want to argue that it should be, we’d likely agree.
They may not be de jure be public utilities but they are de facto public utilities. It is essentially impossible to live in society without them, and outside their collusionist cabal there are no real alternatives.
Sure, but there are so few payment processors that even a single one refusing to do business with you can be a real problem for a business. Even Valve, a big and influential company, has little choice but to capitulate to PayPal. Visa and Mastercard have even more power.
There are too many problems with crypto for it to be a viable alternative, but there’s no good way for me to pay a business (when cash isn’t an option) that doesn’t require the involvement of a third party. Limited competition means those third parties have too much power. I don’t know what it is, but there has to be a solution for that.
They’re saying that is the reverse argument, not the state of things today. As in, the only solution to the above would be to force payment processors to do business with anyone and everyone.
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Kind of cuts both ways though, doesn’t it? The reverse of this argument is saying that the payment processors must work with Valve no matter what they host. Agree it disagree with them, but don’t the payment processors get a say in what they do or do not want to process?
I mean, when your service is fundamental enough to the economy, and centralized enough to make just going to an alternative a major hassle, if an alternative without a similar policy even exists, then why should they get that say? The power to effectively ban the sale of certain types of thing, or force media platforms to censor certain types of content, is the sort of power we generally reserve for governments, not private entities that can do whatever they want. Honestly they’re important enough these days that they should basically be treated like some sort of public utility in my view.
Well as long as they are independent businesses, why shouldn’t they?
If your argument seems to be “they are too crucial to be independent businesses,” I don’t think we’d disagree too much, but the fact is that they are right now.
I don’t think that businesses, not being individuals, should actually have the same rights as individuals I guess. I don’t really agree with the idea that a corporation should be able to do whatever it likes by default, simply because I think corporations in general have too much power to be trusted with such.
Come on, that’s a bit of a stawman because I’m not in any way suggesting that businesses should be able to do whatever they like.
It was more like hyperbole on my part, I was using that as a catch all for whatever kinds of things a business could abuse it’s position by doing. I didn’t want to just say “be able to do businesses or not do business with whoever they want”, because I wanted to say something more broad than just applying to payment processors, even if choosing not to do business with someone and thereby shutting them out of much of the economy is the way a payment processor would do this .
No, they should have zero say because they have weaseled themselves into a position that is the equivalent of a utility or whatever ISP are classified as. Their only involvement is whether they complete transactions between parties in a legal way.
Absolutely not. Power companies don’t get a say in what the power they supply their users with is used for, same for water companies and even ISPs. If they really, really want to enforce rules on what they will and will not process payments for, they can accept legal responsibility when they process a payment on a gun someone uses to shoot up a school or what have you. But they cant have it both ways.
In the US at least, they actually do, in many cases. If you are in a drought region, your water utilities can be shut off if you’re wasting it all on watering a lawn or filling a swimming pool, for example. ISPs cut people off all the time for torrenting, sometimes even if it’s not pirated content (though it was ruled not long ago that ISPs aren’t utilities anyways).
Power and water are public utilities (as is internet, in some parts of the world but not all). Payment processing is not. If you want to argue that it should be, we’d likely agree.
They may not be de jure be public utilities but they are de facto public utilities. It is essentially impossible to live in society without them, and outside their collusionist cabal there are no real alternatives.
Sure, but there are so few payment processors that even a single one refusing to do business with you can be a real problem for a business. Even Valve, a big and influential company, has little choice but to capitulate to PayPal. Visa and Mastercard have even more power.
There are too many problems with crypto for it to be a viable alternative, but there’s no good way for me to pay a business (when cash isn’t an option) that doesn’t require the involvement of a third party. Limited competition means those third parties have too much power. I don’t know what it is, but there has to be a solution for that.
Lol what? They’re being forced to do business with Valve?
Yeah, nah… They could just not process payments for them anymore. Problem solved.
They’re saying that is the reverse argument, not the state of things today. As in, the only solution to the above would be to force payment processors to do business with anyone and everyone.
But that’s the entire crux of this situation. They are threatening to do that, and people are upset about that.