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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

I'm not disagreeing with you, but the military side of me can't help but see how all of those things would be beneficial for our government as well. Stopping US air travel in an emergency. Stopping electronic transactions in a financial emergency. Etc etc etc.

I think a lot of government types would see many potential benefits in the way things are set up now. Even most regular people would have to, grudgingly, admit that, if it were necessary, this system could deliver the government unprecedented amounts of control. I mean, for good or for bad.

But yeah, there's likely a double edged sword there. No question.

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The US government already has a legitimate way to stop air travel. And the government already has significant persuasive power; if the Secretary of the Treasury asked all the banks to stop electronic transactions for a legitimate reason, I'm sure they'd comply.

So what you're talking about is neither a legal government power or something where people would trust the government and follow along. You're looking for a way for the people in power to seize further power illegally when they think it appropriate. There's no "for good" there; that's just authoritarians undermining the rule of law.

> if the Secretary of the Treasury asked all the banks to stop electronic transactions for a legitimate reason, I'm sure they'd comply

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed a Bank Holiday...that shut down the banking system” in 1933 [1]. This is an old power pre-dating our current hyper-centralised banking system.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/epr/09v15n1/0907silb.htm...

Remember 9/11? Shutting down airspace in an emergency is easish: tell everyone to land.

There are very few cases where stopping a firm from functioning would be beneficial, as compared to it being destructive. Most of the time, we want flights, banking, credit cards, IT systems to function rather than go black; hackers have many more chances and time to disrupt all of these than a government will ever have occasions to consider halting a particular company's operations in the name of national security.

> Stopping electronic transactions in a financial emergency.

That means causing some people to starve. Literally.

I can't imagine how it would improve some situation. At best, if transactions are stopped for a short enough time, you will not make it much worse.

Our country adopted cards recently, I have a card and using it almost everywhere, but I'm always carrying some cash, 200-500 bucks just in the case that card won't work for some reason. It happens. If Visa would be down, I wouldn't be disrupted and nobody would be disrupted around here. Why don't you carry some cash around, it's still a legitimate payment method and it doesn't take much space in your wallet.

I like how easily you separate groups of men in "government" from groups of men in "corporations"

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