Topic: $90,000 in credit card fees (Read 5395 times)

It's worth noting that the "3% fee" cited by many is highly variable.

It's commonplace, for example, for a payment processor to charge a lower fee for transactions containing magstripe data (i.e. physically swiped) than those that were hand-keyed at the store, and phone or internet transactions bring higher fees still. Also, restaurants often pay higher fees than other businesses because they commonly post-auth for a different amount than they pre-auth for (to add the gratuity).

I don't feel like scrolling for the fellow who suggested he'd write a check instead, but checks are usually processed via EFT which carry their own (albeit lower) fees. Then you pay a monthly fee for the privilege of having an account, you pay a monthly fee to rent any physical equipment you've got (fun fact: it's VERY hard to actually buy a PINpad or CC terminal) and before you're allowed to pay those fees you have to pay a setup fee.

3% is usually listed as the "average fee" but depending on store volume, transaction type distribution, time of day, phase of the moon, blood type, iris pigmentation and the fourth letter in the name of your double-paternal great grandfather's dog, it can be drastically more or less than this - Wal Mart almost certainly doesn't pay 3% for swiped card fees and the guy who owns the mom-and-pop restaurant down the street or a small internet retailer almost certainly pays more, even without factoring in the fixed monthly, batch and per-transaction fees as a percent of revenue.

I disagree. Chances of a nuclear disaster, particularly on the short/medium are slim to non existent if you look at it as an investor. It doesnt make sense to cut your profit in half year after year to reduce the chance of an accident from say, 0.01% per year to 0.001% per year. If you look at that from a society POV, that probably makes a ton of sense.


I disagree. If someone exposes cost cutting that results in hazards in a nuclear power plant, that may well cost the politician his job/electorate. The electorate is anal about nuclear safety. The same cant be said for the executive. If anything shareholders would like to reward such cost cutting measures, if it saved them enough money.

So if we assume a perfect democracy where politicians are elected by people and not money, and these politicians act upon their voters behalf, they do have a very strong incentive to ensure safety. Just listen to the green parties in Europe who get most of their votes from the anti nuclear power crowd.


Fair point, but important difference is that the soviet regime was not democratic and no one was ever held accountable. Not much free speech or open debate to highlight such problems either.

Yes, it's all about incentives. Yes, the profit motive in efficient production encourages cheapness at the expense of safety. However, this is balanced by the profit motive in having to pay for damages caused also encouraging safety at the expense of efficient production.

Removing the profit motive by having a nuclear power plant run by a government removes both these incentives. It encourages the people running it to run it sloppily but is does not encourage them to run it safely. You must find some other incentives that properly balances safety versus efficiency and somehow bind the people running it by them.

The horrible safety and efficency of government-run Soviet nuclear power plants versus privately run Western ones show this is not easy.

Neither of your examples have a public interest component (except maybe accessibility in rural area). Its quite different when you leave things like tap water or electricity production in nuclear power stations to an unregulated private market. There is an incentive to do it cheap (which is good) at the expense of things like safety or the environment. Im not saying you cant have private companies produce either, but not without regulation. And for some things trying to regulate a free market so its short term profit seeking is not harmful to society at large just isnt worth it.

The internet is provided by competing private companies. The phone networks were provided by government monopolies. The latter sucked, the former doesn't.

I'm a Chomsky fan as well.

I am actually. Kind of - I think. Socialist anarchist libertarian of the pagmatic variety . or something like that.
Put differently, I like noam chomsky's thinking a lot. I havent figured out where that fits on the traditional political spectrum, I tend to like elements from either US political extremes.


I guess Somalia or Ethiopia comes closest to it. If anyone has a better example, historical or current of a libertarian state, Im all ears.

i on the other hand come from a village with 500 people with public bus, roads, water, eletricity and dsl even were you have to dig several hundred meters just to provide for a single house. in a country were practically everybody has acceptable medical care and nobody lost his pension during the financial crisis.
to me those are essential archievements of civilization and i am quite happy to live in a country that hasnt yet disposed them completely.
doesnt mean things couldnt be better. there is a lot of corruption and spending. but the solution is to improve the government, not throw it away.
and thats actually quite possible. its not really a technical problem, but a political one. the solutions are often simple, the system just doesnt want to change. but thats exactly the same forces at work that stop you from getting rid of the government. so if one has the power to overcome those forces and get rid of all those ineffective government agencies, that same person/party/entity could change them for the better as well.

You aren't talking to me.  I'm no anarchist, but I do think the federal government of the United States has vastly overstepped it's bounds.  There is a continuum between here and 0 government.  It is not a binary decision.  Also, let's not mix the issue of public campaign financing (good idea) with big government (excessive atm, but it varies).  Finally, are there any modern-day examples of you can point to?

As long as there is money to steal, it will happen frequently. Should we abolish wealth?
A libertarian government free utopia just means the power is transferred entirely to corporations. Id rather suffer from political corruption than end up at the mercy of the (0.0)1%. We tried that system in Europe some centuries ago and it didnt work all that well.

Also, if not the various branches of government, what is going to fight corruption? Some of you should think about that for a second. I actually dont think its coincidence that list with corruption features mostly big governments (with public campaign financing) at the top and nearly lawless "libertarian" states at the bottom.

Where I live we get our water from a well and there is not public transportation.  Some roads are state maintained, but some are maintained by local people with earth moving equipment.  Recently, the major roads that are the State's domain have been repaired by the oil drilling companies since they were the ones that tore them up.  The government doesn't do much for us out here besides collect taxes.

problem with all that trimming is that companies suck at providing public infrastructure. do you really want to rely on someone providing things like water, electricity or public transportation who has no legal obligation to it in a proper way and can stop to provide a service at any time?

I agree that would help.  However, as long as there is power to be seized via bribes it will happen frequently.  But public financing would allow "bribe free" candidates to run.

IMO its far better take away most of the need for it; public financing. Its even more transparent and you pay per vote instead of paying for votes (empirically it also turns out you pay FAR less). Public campaign financing doesnt mean bribes can not happen, but it does mean politicians are not entirely dependent on corporate bribes, giving you far better odds of electing politicians who work for the people rather than for the lobbyists.

Having it legal makes it easier to trace.  If it's going to happen anyway, might as well keep it open.  The only way to reduce it is to limit the government's authority.  I'm not sure we should throw out everything, but we could stand a good trim.

Yeah I get, I just dont agree - at all. I think we all agree that special interests paying for tailored legislation is a bad thing for society. So why would you not oppose it? Now I agree outlawing wont make it go away completely, but thats hardly a reason to support institutionalized bribery.

As for eliminating all those agencies; well, I have some sympathy for die hard libertarians, but I think you are very naive believing the world would be a better place with little to no laws.  Free markets are a great thing, but human nature has a focus on short term individual profits and not long term sustainable societies. Shrink the legal framework to next to nothing and you get more casino capitalism, not less. You get more uninsured drunk drivers, not less. You get more toxic plants polluting your drinking water, more airlines trying to saving a buck by saving on essential maintenance, not less. Free markets are ruling most of Africa, just go look how that works out. Ever flown on an african airline? You might get some appreciation for the FAA if you did.

The point is to reduce the scope of government so that there is less influence for corrupt interests to bid for. Sure we need some government to protect property rights, but everything else can be eliminated.

For every government department that goes, so does 10000 lobbyists. Get rid of the FDA: no more pharmaceutical companies influencing policy to protect their patented, toxic drugs. Get rid of FINRA: no more brokerage firms writing laws that shut out small competitors. Get rid of the EPA: no more special interests shutting down "undesirable" business ventures with the excuse of some bogus environmental disaster scenario. In fact, get rid of any government influence in any form of economic activity whatsoever and establishment type corporations nothing to bribe politicians to do, because it's not in the scope of the government. Get it?

Yes, they will still have military, taxes etc. But isn't smaller still much better? That's why the constitution is there, so that they can't create any arbitrary legislation. The American public just has to re-learn their founding principals.

You can never stop bribery. There are thousands of ways to pay some one without "paying" them.

Let's Assume that an entity can donate 5000 dollars max to an individual.

Exxon owns 1000's subsidiaries .  but let's make this simple and say 4.
Politicans have 1000's of channels,  but to make it simple we'll say 5

Exxon Inc
Exxon Exploration , LLC
Exxon Purchasing, LLC
Exxon XXX, LLC

Exxon Inc donates $5,000 each to the following

Person A
Person A's National Party
Person A's State level Party
Person A's Local level Party
Person A's PAC group


Exxon Exploration , LLC donates $5,000 each to the following

Person A
Person A's National Party
Person A's State level Party
Person A's Local level Party
Person A's PAC group

Exxon Purchasing, LLC donates $5000 each to the following

Person A
Person A's National Party
Person A's State level Party
Person A's Local level Party
Person A's PAC group

Exxon XXX, LLC Exxon Purchasing, LLC


Person A
Person A's National Party
Person A's State level Party
Person A's Local level Party
Person A's PAC group


This list goes on forever...  That $5,000 dollar donation turned to $100,000 dollar donation in this tiny example...  but in real life it theoretically and in actuality does turn into millions...

Actually that was not the memo. The memo is that bitcoin is a solid capitalist tool that has no aspects of wealth redistribution built in.

I agree that the Soviet Union was not truly socialist, but I think socialism/communism is the unstable force as it requires a power structure to manage it, a power structure that eventually starts to just work for its own good.

Toss a hundred people on an island (gently) give them each some silver coins (doesn't have to be equal amounts) and even without any power structure, very quickly a fairly efficient economic system will develop and people will do things for each other.

Capitalism is not just stable, it is almost innate, and requires no central power (though it helps to have someone create a decent thing to act as money - otherwise cowry shells will do).

The nice thing about bitcoin, is it can separate the money system from the political system. The political system determines who is in power, what policies should be enacted (do we go to war, do we create homeless shelters, how much do we tax people...), and whatever. The money system is for individuals to do transactions. A monetary system and a political system can be two separate (but interacting) systems. Tying them together has been out of necessity all this time as you need central authority controlling the minting of money. With bitcoin, you can have a global monetary system that is not controlled by any authority other than the transaction rules laid out in the initial paper.

It will be nice when one day we neither have fait currencies or problematic precious metals.

As a socialist I can give you a little bit of insight. I assume by "memo", you mean the fall of the Soviet Union. It is entirely possible that Capitalism is just as unstable, but the USSR just collapsed first.

Actual communists go even further. They see the central planning employed by the Soviet Union as "state capitalism," mirroring the central planning often seen in large corporations. In that light, the fall of the Soviet Union can be seen as a failure of the corporate structure endemic to capitalism. An actual communist society would rely on local democratic decison making. When central decisions are needed, representatives would be selected. Much like Holliday was advocating actually

On the topic, for small transactions, bitcoin is still expensive (due to the banking system you must use).  It is kind of a "chicken&egg" problem.