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Comment by worksonmine | Hacker News Reader

Instead of all these complicated hoops, wouldn't a true libertarian expect his money in the deposits to be no-go for gambling. And a separate account for stocks. If the bank want's to gamble they would need the customers approval for that, IE lock your money with us for 10 years and get this interest. Insurance is socialist, even if it packaged as capitalism.

The bank has to cover it, but not today. And it's an agreement and not a surprise when it happens.

No, lets create a complicated mess, fractional reserves, excess liquidity and having money costs money, growth and more growth and ... and .. and. You're all falling for it because you're greedy and don't want to be left behind.

When is anyone going to realize the actual problem? How many times does it have to happen? I'll see you guys again in 10-15 years as we have the exact same discussion.

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Our deposits are liabilities for the bank (the bank needs the infra to secure the money, make it available everywhere at every ATM, bank tellers and so on). Banks invest the money (and give loans) to both pay for these costs and also make a small return on top.

It is possible to have a bank that just stores the money without touching it, but this bank would charge us for the costs of doing so, and it won’t be free, and it won’t be popular vs free options (which once every 10-20 years blow up).

Such banks would be highly popular if paired with the other half of the proposal which is to not bail out depositors at collapsed banks.

Yes and I'm happy to pay, I'm actually paying 50$ a year as it is for my personal account only. They call it online-banking fee.And still they gamble with my money. I also have 2 company accounts where they charge even higher fees, just for deposits. It's not that I'm not willing to pay, but I was never asked to put my savings as collateral.

Meanwhile they're closing offices to save money, and making billions every year. They can make it work, we just have to demand it.

You think there is complaining now, what do you think would happen if you lost 1-3% of your principal each year forever. And what do you think would happen to society of all that capital was sitting around doing literally nothing instead of being available for others to borrow and use on productive activities?

I think interest rates would increase and I would be incentivized to put it up for lending and create a healthy economy with our savings being safe while still being able to gamble. Money would get value again. If the banks themselves won't act as the middle-man the gig economy will fill that space in no time.

Would the execs get million dollar bonuses and fly jets? No, and I'm fine with that, I don't have to count on a financial crash once every decade or two.

What do you think would happen?

> Insurance is socialist, even if it packaged as capitalism.

What? Insurance companies (in general) are some of the most capitalistic. They teams of actuaries calculating risk to leverage a large capital pool to generate more capital.

Yes, I'm being hyperbole. But my point still stands, the view that risk should be risk-free and someone should bail you out when shit hits the fan instead of sucking it up and writing it off as a bad bet is closer to socialism than capitalism.

In the US you have low taxes but have to insure against everything. In the EU we have high taxes but insurance is not a thing unless mandatory (car/home). I don't even have the latter, stupid yes, but I would suck it up and not blame it on the FED.

Should probably clarify as "Government (mandated) Insurance"

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