From PayPal to Amazon to Visa & MasterCard, we now know that it is time to end our reliance on intermediaries. This moral policing by Visa and MasterCard is horribly ignorant, wrong, and should be a basis for public boycott of both of these card services — what’s next: not letting you use payment cards to buy organic food because Monsanto says that is wrong? The hubris of Visa and MasterCard on this matter is deeply troubling.



Backpage Accepts Bitcoin as Visa, MasterCard Set Embargos

Phi Beta Iota: There are at least three counter-forces to the existing “monopoly” that Visa and MasterCard enjoy. The first is crypto, halawa, and other variations of cash-trust outside the existing Western banking system. The second is the emerging BRICSs alternative system, but that has its own “moral” biases and cannot be fully trusted. The third is SharkNet and variations on SharkNet, in which both cash and data are resident on personal devices and can be sent to any other personal device without any intermediary service. As we look at Elsevier and Visa and MasterCard and the major banks and the energy and agricultural companies, what we see is hubris imploding. These people literally do not “get” that they control 1% of 1% (e.g. papers published versus written versus what is known) while the 99% is busy thinking about complete freedom. In the case of Amazon, apart from stupidity over the Confederate flag, we now see them charging $12 for shipping and handling when they pay $2 more or less — they seem to think they have a captive audience that does not notice criminal over-charges.

See Also:

Robert Steele: Vilification of the Confederate Flag is Abusive, Despicable, Ignorant Public Misbehavior

Sepp Hasslberger: Russia – Japan Unite on Payment Cards – Sanctions Backfiring

Stephen E. Arnold: Elsevier Going Down….

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