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MasterCard Rails Against Bitcoin's (Semi-)Anonymity
angry tapir writes: MasterCard has used a submission (PDF) to an Australian Senate inquiry to argue for financial regulators to move against the pseudonymity of digital currencies such as Bitcoin. "Any regulation adopted in Australia should address the anonymity that digital currency provides to each party in a transaction," the company's told the inquiry into digital currencies. MasterCard believes that "all participants in the payments system that provide similar services to consumers should be regulated in the same way to achieve a level playing field for all."
If people in Africa don't want to catch HIV maybe they should just wear condoms? Oh wait! Many of the people catching HIV in 3rd world countries have never benefited from a 1st world education! My bad!
There are various degrees of financial education, and for the most part: the people who understand money are perfectly content that the rest of the population doesn't. If they did: we might have to get a real job instead of sucking blood from the dumb unwashed masses.
Blaming him for not learning these lessons is making the assumption that he had parents to teach him these things(that weren't renting furniture and using payday loan services themselves).
I had an upper-class childhood(and elected for poverty in my young 20's) so I'm not pretending there isn't some "marshmallow experiment" at play here as well. But it's a total "just-world fallacy" to assume that everyone with credit card debt was given equal opportunities at higher education, could afford traveling to job fairs, had an internet connection growing up, didn't have shitty teeth from lack of dental care and a food stamp diet, etc.
When you can't afford to live in nice neighborhoods, you find your "cheaper" apartments come with predatory tow trucks, deadbeat roommates who lie about paying rent and hide eviction notices while you're out of town, roommates who steal, skanky GF's who get your car seized after a DUI, family members who want you to bail them out of jail/pay for their abortion. The list goes on and fucking on. They frequently can't live close to their jobs or afford car insurance so they're riding public transport and have to burn 30 minutes of every day on early arrival/late departure. Traveling takes longer, they get paid less, cops hassle them more. Best part: if their unreliable used car breaks down too often because they can't afford anything better: they get fired from their job. By the time they're 25(if they are disciplined) they have just caught up to the opportunities an 18 year old kid from a good family has right out of high school. That's 7 years of lost resume experience(shit jobs are bad for your resume), lost accrued interest, and lost youth. By the time that kid is 25, he owns the company that they work for, and every $1 they make: that kid makes $2. They will NEVER catch up at that rate and the advantage of that early start continues to compound. Mean-while they are working 50+ hours a week trying to "work their way up the ladder". Those extra 10 hours aren't free, they age you.
At the end of it all you end up with a human version of "rat park" where these wretched people have very few reasons not to kill themselves(other than unintended pregnancies in many case-multigenerational education problem as much as anything). They frequently start abusing substances because getting drunk or high at home is a cheaper way to blow-off that stress(that they are accumulating at a more aggressive rate) than it would cost for them to get the same entertainment value from movie tickets or dinner at a nice restaurant.
Frequently, it's the people who managed to escape poverty who are most eager to jump on the shit of someone who didn't. I'm not sure if it's because they have a story they want an excuse to tell if someone dares challenge them, or if they need to elevate themselves and draw distinction between themselves and the unwashed masses because they are insecure they didn't come from good breeding and are afraid that we can smell it on them. We'll notice the herpes outbreak, or the bad teeth, or the medium price clothes(not very many of these items) and realize that they aren't one of us. A cheap distraction ploy because they know the stigma/stink that goes with poverty. That complete inability to relate, the awkward silence, but worst of all: the fear/knowledge that if we stand too close to them that some of their problems might rub off of them on to us. Their problems(and if they're poor they have problems) will become OUR problems, and we know from experience: if we know them long enough, it WILL happen