It boggles my mind that the government has privatized currency to these people.
Crazy-person-but-actually-really practical-idea:
Nationalize one if these networks. Maybe Discover.
The US government should provide us digital currency. The simplest way is to force the current systems to do that. All that rent they collect in terms of transactions fees shouldn't be profit for a private business but fees of the government.
Each of those networks carry a lot, a lot of ancient stuff. Gov is better off building a brand new network from scratch and promote it as a standard for banks to join.
There are plenty of great examples from this century all over the world.
> Even Iran has a better payment infra than the US.
That is a big claim. What would prevent someone from setting up something equally as good in the US, aside from the network effect and users unwilling to try something new for uncertain gain?
End-users don't have much agency here, network needs banks.
In Iran, they simply don't have much choice, so banks use the only network available to them. It just happens to have been built in this century, so it's not as archaic as Visa.
Here in the US, I guess only regulators could realistically create a new network and have enough power to convince banks to adopt it.
Nothing, of course, stops anyone from creating a new network. But the network effect is THE driving force here, it's not a minor factor.
My experiences with the DMV have actually been pretty decent. I think a lot of their negative reputation is from how it used to be, but that they have improved substantially since then?
DMV is a state level agency and varies a lot depending on where you are. It's partially privatized here in Oklahoma and mostly painless (you only need the actual DMV for driver's tests, CDL background checks, etc.) but when I lived on the Illinois side of St. Louis I routinely heard of people spending hours in line.
Normally I'm not a huge fan of privatization but the way it's done here works great. The fees are set by the state and the agency gets a percentage, so if an area is underserved someone just opens another one.
There was a trend for a while for waterless/flushless urinals to save water. Though I would guess those have higher cleaning costs so not sure how that worked out in the end.
not so long ago it was very fashionable to include DEI/ESG/etc lip service in those things, regardless of whether it made sense. for example, I've read a study comparing leather tanning compounds and it had a completely out of place paragraph babbling about climate change. the author wasn't even American, it's a global cargo cult.
Not trying to go ad hominem, but that's a very ignorant statement.
1. Which ones? I used to be able to stereotype with the best of them, but I cant quickly come up with any protected class that is assigned as teetotalers.
2. Saying you're not hiring someone because they don't drink is a perfectly valid reason for not hiring someone, even if it's a cover for not hiring them because of protected class membership. The laws protecting protected classes are super weak. It is virtually impossible to prove that is the sole reason they weren't hired. All you need is an actual other reason to not hire them--and of course don't put into writing that the real reason is their protected class membership.
Saying they won't get the job if they don't come out for drinks excludes (on characteristic) recovering alcoholics, pregnant women, and about a quarter of the world's population on religious grounds.
And just more broadly, some people have lives, family where they can't just be expected out on the piss in the afternoon.
Admitting it on forum is the in. Just like admitting you've been working while up on ket.
Religion is a protected class, and many religions don’t drink. If the reason they don’t drink is their religion, it isn’t a valid reason to state for not hiring them. Yes, most hr people in this case would use some other alternate reason that isn’t linked to the protected class.
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