To put it another way...
When you write a check, you are telling your bank, "Hey, bank, send money to here". If you have the money, and "here" exists, they send the money.
The bank doesn't have the liberty to say "We don't think you should be sending money to there". The federal courts and the treasury can, but that's a high hurdle and basically means "there" is under investigation for crimes.
What the bank CAN do is say "you don't have that money", or "we don't think you're actually you". The latter case, they have to ask you "hey, did you authorize this?" and if you did, they send it through. But compared to credit cards, banks tend to be more fast and loose about sending transactions through as long as the balance is okay. They simply don't care too much.
If you don't offer loans, what stops "real" banks refusing your customers loans purely because they are with you?
Because clearing isn't a loan.
Think of it as a "push". The other bank can only refuse if they don't believe that the transaction was authorized by their depositor.
It is a depositor telling their bank "take my money and sent it to here".
They can only say no if they believe their depositor didn't actually authorize it, or didn't have the money to do it.
Bank runs are only possible if you write loans.
It's entirely possible to run a bank that doesn't operate on loan income. It'd just have to charge fees...
Like PayPal does.
The second you could have a positive balance at PayPal, it became a bank. Albeit a crummy one with no depositor's insurance.
I am aware of all of that, yes.
Consider the Keiretsu.
The keiretsu are vertically and horizontally integrated business groups in Japan, each built around their own... private... bank.
As in, it's theirs. They control it.
Suppose the free speech wing of the internet decided to get its ass together and form a keiretsu. With a real bank, that clears real transactions.
I don't think it's impossible. It's just a lot of work from people who are as lazy as Ian Fucking "Free the Code" Crossland.
Because I'm already rich from a software startup, on the back 9 of my life, and don't care to help people who get their kicks posting racist slurs like a 12 year old.
It's a lot of work, and I'm an engineer. I make what I'm paid to make.
During the era of checks, every federal reserve bank hosted a "clearinghouse".
This was a location where all the banks under that Reserve Bank would meet and swap checks that had been given to them. Balances would be paid out.
ACH replaced that system electronically. Instead of a paper check, an ETF record is handed around and then money changes hands.
The system is still fundamentally controlled by the government. The only ways a transaction can be refused is either because it was unauthorized/fraudulent, or because the account doesn't have the funds.
To actually kick a participant out of the ACH system would require the participating entity to be recognized as a habitual source of fraudulent or overdrafting transactions, and that determination is made by the government, and can be fought in federal court.
I think you underestimate the sheer amount of licenses and regulations you have to meet, and how expensive it is.
No, you just don't have the professional experience in the subject matter that I do.
Now pray tell, how do you stop the government
Because, the Treasury Dept is the rule making body. They administrate the system, not NACHA.
Which means they're subject to the fucking constitution. People have a right to conduct commerce freely. A participant in the ACH system doesn't have the right to refuse to conduct transactions with another participant, they have to go to the Treasury Dept and argue that the other participant is acting criminally and needs to be kicked off the network. They can only refuse transactions on the basis that they were unauthorized by the account holders.
That's a much higher hurdle.
Banks have capital requirements that none of us could meet.
You are thinking the numbers are a couple orders of magnitude larger than the numbers really are.
How do you think local credit unions keep poping up and then going under?
If you go under them for a second, you'll be shut down.
Yes, and?
ACH suffers from the same problem as MasterCard.
NACHA IS ONLY AN INDUSTRY GROUP, THE RULE MAKING BODY IS THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY.
NACHA is an industry group, they don't make the rules.
The Bureau of Fiscal Service makes the rules. That's the Treasury Department.
Means that to shut you down, they have to get the FEDS to shut you down, they can't just blacklist you out of spite.
Yes, that.
You set up a bank, a proper bank, FDIC insured, everything, and then you direct market it as a free speech harbor.
At that point it's MUCH harder for other companies to say they won't work with you. If the customer with the money says to transfer the money, they have to transfer it as a legitimate, authorized transaction.
Refusing at that point means going to federal court and convicting the BFS to say you're not a legitimate bank. That's a much, MUCH higher hurdle, one these leftists won't be able to clear.
it looks like
Yeah. It's down to "who is the most high profile voice of the opposition". Probably 90's Oprah. You flip Oprah hard redpill during the Clinton era and... well probably nothing would change because the church of feminism would flip to Ellen.
Indoctrination in kids cartoons
It's always drawn hate.
Heinlein of the late 50's definitely lived down to the stereotype of a sneering STEM nerd telling an english major to get a real job. Which didn't sit too well since at that point he hadn't touched engineering for decades, had flopped at politics, and had been writing professionally for years.
Oh.
Greed, and the threat of CFPB action, and exposure to anti-trust action as well.