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> It would be nice if people like stripe were more upfront about this. They could easily say "We have determined that your business might be high risk for us. If you pay us $1000 (which will be credited towards transaction fees), then we will work with you to mitigate these risks".

Nowadays people are tip-toe-ing around egg shells constantly to avoid being the latest outrage that goes viral, but that would be wildly refreshing to see. Honesty from companies (even internally when you work for them!) is getting so rare that a blunt and honest message like that makes me happy just to think about.

It would be awesome to start a new cultural movement toward radical honesty. Just being able to acknowledge the realities around incentives would be a great start.




Problem is our common law system incentivizes dishonesty. There is also the problem that everyone tends to start suing the financier if they can't get the results they want out of the business, and the cumulative end result is that financial institutions (through the resulting excess of caution) have become de facto arbiters of legitimate economic activity rather than dumb pipes.

For some people this is apparently okay and desirable. To me it's horrifying, and tends toward centralizing power far too much.




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