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Pirate Party MEP Helps Draft New Credit Card Company Controls
Dupple writes with this excerpt: "It has become an increasingly large problem that Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal control the valve to any money flow on the planet. Today, the European Parliament established this as a clear problem, and initiated regulation of the companies, limiting and strictly regulating their right to refuse service. The Pirate Party was the initiator of this regulation, following the damaging cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks, after said organization had performed journalism that was embarrassing to certain governments."
While I like regulation in many cases, like nuclear power plants, in my experience new regulations are like cables.
When you put all the cables on the floor, they're more likely to snag your legs, or get entangled and knotted with each other.
This is why sometimes the solution is fewer regulations, and more direct solutions. If relatively few companies control our banking or money flow, the solution may be to break up some large companies.
I think the feds are about to do this to Google for their near-total-dominance of search results and search-based advertising. Too much power in one set of hands can be destructive, unless that set of hands truly does "do no evil."
...how it is that banks can control the abstract tool used for easing trade ......
So I want to trade you for something you have but I don't have what you want so we used this abstract tool to allow you to then get what you want from some one else.
But we cannot even do that because some bank which originated in the support of the basic idea of this abstract tool decides they don;t want to?
They are contradicting the purpose of the abstract tool of money. They are contradicting their own original objective.
And who, exactly, gets to determine who the "true" journalists are? Are what "true" journalism is, for that matter?
What will finance companies do when one government's laws make it illegal to do business with some entities, while another government's laws mandate it?
Journalists really are no longer in the business of letting their readers know what their government doesn't want them to know.
Donate money to one or both the governments and get the laws fixed. Next Question.
If you throw cables on the floor for any reason, or string them at random heights or intervals to please one particular person, yes - they can bring all progress to a halt.
Properly planned and distributed, however, they can take a seemingly impossible task - such as spanning a large body of water, capturing a large number of fish, jumping out of an airplane from several thousand feet up and landing safely, or climbing a very tall structure - and make it a straightforward task.
The only difference between gridlock and utility is the thought and care with which the regulations are laid.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You can just clone a corporation by cutting it into two independent pieces. Like a zombie, but eating money instead of brains. And regenerating all the missing parts instantly after cutting it in two. With the right shell structure, you can usually avoid those problems long enough to get new laws written - like waiting around for the food and ammo to run out on your human victims. With enough lawyers, corporations can just hang out until the conditions are right for consolidation of resources. And a feast of brains.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And who, exactly, gets to determine who the "true" journalists are? Are what "true" journalism is, for that matter?
Slashdot anonymous cowards and bloggers, of course.
The MEP, Christian Engström", who instigated this is being disengenous when he claims the problem he is fighting is "American fundamentalist moralism". If you RTFA you find out that it was Swedish banks denying purchases of "horror movies, movies with nudity, or sex toys" and trying to shove blame off on "vague rules from Visa and Mastercard". Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal allow purchases of these items every day the world over. He should instead be blaming Swedish fundamentalist moralism. This strikes me as nothing more than another European statist power grab against an American company. If the Europeans want in on the payment processing business then they should create a competing company, not use big government to attempt to seize power over American companies.
The irony is that it was a "true journalist" that accidentally leaked the encryption key to the WikiLeaks archive with the embassy cables. WikiLeaks up to that point seemed to know their limitations and was working with established journalists to release the cables in a controlled fashion.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
>Oh wait.. Wikileaks has already disclosed the names and addresses of American operatives around the world. Hmmm... Well, do it again.
Did your panties also get in a bundle when the Bush Administration made the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame public with the kind help of Washington Post in 2003?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Just saying, this is THE reason they were invented. You can get money to anyone in the world in approx 10 minutes without any oversight of blocking or interception or BS like Paypal and the big CCs try to pull.