BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries (2024)

We have normalized the treatment of the financial and payments systems as things that exist primarily to perform law enforcement surveillance functions. It's the same dynamic that leads to debanking of small accounts - payments firms exist on thin margins and the potential fines for inadvertently servicing a bad actor are stratospheric, so it's entirely logical to play it safe by refusing to service anyone whose profile looks even the slightest bit risky.

Debanking small accounts isn't something that I'd heard of before. But debanking "undesirables" is certainly a problem.

Over here (Belgium) we have legalized prostitution, but it's very hard for sex workers to open a bank account. There's some legislation that forces banks to offer them a basic bank account (at a steep fee) if they can prove that they've been rejected by N banks. Which is a start, I suppose.

Banks have basically become an extension of law enforcement, tax collectors, anti-terrorist operations, and morality police. Which is ironic, given how many banks brazenly break laws on the regular, how absolutely depraved parties with bankers are, etc. They're hardly paragons of virtue. Yet they get to gatekeep "virtue".

I agree; but if we're bank-bashing I'd like it to be comprehensive:

What with all the attention they have to put into cooperating with the authoritarians they also aren't particularly good at their theoretical purpose, which is pooling people's money and investing it productively. We're watching an ongoing capital crisis in the West where we've been out-invested by nominal communists; it is absurd. The banking system has sticky fingers all over that mess. Then they get political protection through financial crisises where they should be taken out by bankruptcy but the powers that be prioritise having reliable people in what is effectively law enforcement rather then putting good capital managers in charge.

So, y'know. Upside is the banks do a great job of shutting down sex workers and political activism. 10/10 mark for reporting what everyone is doing to law enforcement. Downside is that turns out to be a big distraction from all the wealth creation banking can enable.

Dictatorships (which is what communism always amounts to in the real world) are always good at big visible projects. they fail because things not on the dictators 'radar' don't get anyones attention as there is no reward for small projects that keep the world running until the dictator notices the lack. If the dictator doesn't notice the lack you have to be really good at marketing yourself if you do them otherwise you will be 'purged' for wasted effort when you do them.

It is a myth that dictatorships are good at big projects. Just consider the history of atomic bomb. If not the access to the spied US blueprints Soviet Union would be much delayed with own version. Then it took China about 10 years before they could test the atomic bomb even after receiving initially a significant help from Soviet Union.

Or consider sending a man to the Moon. Soviet Union eventually abandoned own efforts and was able to create a rocket with similar capabilities as Saturn V only in 1986.

Or consider that the best semiconductor production process comes from a Taiwanese company followed by South Corea and US. China is still not able to catch up despite all the efforts.

Or consider high speed trains. It was Japan and Europe that developed comprehensive network first, not China. And Soviet Union and later Russia never came close to implementing anything like that.

There are counter examples, too.

The space race first astronaut (cosmonaut) was Yuri Gagarin, and Laika. Stating the space race was lost by Soviet Union is myopic at best. The Soviet Union defaulted due to being unable to compete, the costly Afghan War, and the inefficient system. But nowadays, how relevant are NASA and BMW ?

The liquidators of Chernobyl [1], to name another example. Another feat is winning the Great War. Shenzhen is also one of a kind. Where is the West's Shenzhen? China's equivalent of F-35 (J-10) shot down two Dassault Rafale a couple of days ago.

Far fetched in West? We got corruption, too. We got Boeing, and Trump.

As for train system, Russia's main transportation is via train and it is robust, but slow. That happens when your country is such a vast amount of land, without solid (direct) sea connections.

But in general, it is a myth, albeit a different one. It is part of the myth (façade) of the strongmen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_liquidators