Re: Great SWT Program

On Oct 18, 8:51 am, Patricia Shanahan <p...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
You complain about web sites being over US-centric, but treat the rules
for banking where you are as laws of nature that must apply everywhere?

Eh? It's simple logic. Ignoring the developing word as not much of a
market (yet), and focusing on the industrialized nations, an e-
commerce vendor needs to cater to the lowest common denominator in
terms of the sort of banking and credit/debit options available to
consumers in the world. If they assume that their whole market has
access to convenient frequent armchair creation of temporary accounts,
for example, in designing their payment options, they will actually
end up with a huge chunk of their potential market ignoring them. The
chunk, of course, that does NOT have such access.

Same with other things. So many assume that anyone who is interested
in their product and can afford it has good credit, which is far from
true.

I simply will not consider e-commerce mature until a) you can
reasonably expect to be able to order from an e-vendor from anywhere
in civilization, and not just that vendor's own home-base country;
ones that won't ship to one or more civilized places being quite rare;
and b) if you have the money for it you can order one of their
products nearly as easily as you could get it from a store just down
the street from where you are with cash. In short, whether you can get
the item should depend solely on a) whether you're in a developed
country and b) whether you have enough money in your bank account. It
shouldn't matter what bank you're with; banks and merchants should all
be interoperable, the same as they are with physical cash. It
shouldn't matter whether you have credit, unless you are actually
going to be paying in installments or otherwise borrowing rather than
paying the full price up-front. And so forth. And last but not least
it should be truly secure. That means you authenticate via challenge-
response that proves you know some private key, and digitally sign
transactions, so the number that someone would need to have to
fraudulently make purchases with your money is a private key that is
never given out to anyone else; no merchant knows it, and even your
bank doesn't know it.

This is mathematically possible, physically possible, and already
practical with current technology; indeed many transaction costs will
go down meaning the cost of designing and introducing such a new
system will be offset quickly. (The fraud risk currently raises the
transaction costs for CC purchases tremendously. This eventually gets
passed to the consumer in some manner, if not in such an obvious way
as a price increase on goods bought by CC or actually losing large
sums of money to fraud themselves.)

I obtained both my current credit cards without visiting any bank, or
even an ATM. One of the issuers, Capital One, does not even have any
physical branches to go to.

This I find difficult to believe. In particular, if they don't have
any physical existence you can't possibly have a physical card.
*Maybe* a number that can be used online, but not at a physical point-
of-sale.

Regardless, this is not an option for everyone. Not everyone is
creditworthy. If I have $9.99 in my chequing account and something
costs $9.99 (including applicable S&H fees, taxes, etc.), I should
really be able to have that thing shipped to me anywhere in the
developed world and my account debited. Securely, in a strongly fraud-
resistant way. Right now I can't; additional conditions have to be
met. That is simply wrong and until it changes I cannot consider this
area of commerce to have matured.

The flexibility and decoupling interoperability of cash is ultimately
what is required. I can withdraw actual physical banknotes from any
bank (except, I suppose, pure-virtual ones). I can then spend those
banknotes at any real-world store or restaurant. It doesn't matter
what bank I got them from. I won't find that some store only accepts
banknotes from BMO and not CIBC, or whatever. This flexibility is
lacking online. Some sites accept PayPal. Many don't. Some accept
Visa; some MasterCard; some AmEx; not all accept all three. Most don't
accept anything that isn't either PayPal or a credit card. *None*
accept Canadian debit card numbers or anything comparable --
Canadians, at least, cannot buy online without having a credit card or
dealing with the evil that is PayPal, for some reason. No good reason,
mind you. I'm sure there are other places where this is equally true.
Canada is thirty million people or so, nearly 5% of the population of
the developed world; certainly not a market small enough to safely
ignore!

Why is the system this shoddy? OK, it had to start out that way, but
why is it STILL this shoddy? Where is the iWallet and eCash that can
be gotten from any bank with an online presence and spent at any store
with an online presence regardless of what bank it came from? Where is
the clear zoning and scoping of searches and domain names so that it's
easy to tell who will ship to your location and easy to scope a search
to exclude everyone else? Apparently in the future still, perhaps as
many as ten years away still. I wonder why?


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: SocGen 1Q down 23%; EUR1.18 Billion in New Write-downs
    ... The (stock market) rebound has been based entirely on a perception ... units were hurt by the impact of the credit turmoil. ... quarter," the bank said. ... of the country's largest retail bank network, reports Thursday. ...
    (misc.invest.stocks)
  • Re: More bad news
    ... I wouldn't expect these to have any overall market effect. ... mortgage lender that is suspending operations, says it has laid off 99 ... Sachsen falls victim to credit crisis ... The bank, which is based in and owned by the German state of Saxony, ...
    (misc.invest.stocks)
  • Re: More bad news
    ... Guess they are trying to find people with good credit so they can stick them with a higher rate. ... If the market crashes more, they might but I suspect they don't really want to with a weak dollar. ... The bank, which is based in and owned by the German state of Saxony, ...
    (misc.invest.stocks)
  • Re: More bad news
    ... Guess they are trying to find people with good credit so they can stick them with a higher rate. ... If the market crashes more, they might but I suspect they don't really want to with a weak dollar. ... The bank, which is based in and owned by the German state of Saxony, ...
    (misc.invest.stocks)
  • =?windows-1252?Q?If_the_left_is_unable_to_defeat_neoliberalism_now=2C_a?= =?windows-1252?Q?n
    ... An Interview With Robert Pollin - ... Building a Fair Economy ... the stock market recorded the biggest one-day ... Central Bank and the Bank of England all agreed to make ...
    (soc.culture.cuba)