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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

(www.economist.com)
666 points jcartw | 2 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.402s | source
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kubb ◴[08 Apr 25 11:57 UTC] No.43620648[source]▶
Sometimes there's no point in having market solutions. You need one thing that works for everyone and is free. It's cheaper and easier this way.
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dguest ◴[08 Apr 25 12:16 UTC] No.43620814[source]▶
The worst is a market facade for a government service. Examples in the US:

- Weather apps: various governments do the (very expensive) computing and provide the data for free. Private companies insert adds, or charge you. I use Yr, which is run by Norway and has no adds or fees. They are just sourcing public data [1].

- Taxes: the government does all the bookkeeping and enforcement, tax prep industry copies and pastes numbers into forms it lobbies to obfuscate.

[1]: https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/articles/360004008874-Weather-f...

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1. pjc50 ◴[08 Apr 25 12:31 UTC] No.43620961[source]▶
Another variant is the "playing at shops" privatization, such as seen in the UK railway system. Lots of different, fragmented entities, none of which naturally corresponds to a train service as a whole, obfuscating where the money goes (it's the train landlords or ROSCOs).
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2. internet_points ◴[08 Apr 25 13:34 UTC] No.43621609[source]▶
They did the same to Norwegian rail. In fact, one of the main companies that got involved in the enshittification of Norwegain rail was British Go-Ahead Group.