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Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

I think there needs to be a law that unless you are committing a crime, the bank cannot refuse to work with you. Probably won't pass muster at the courts, but something has to be done to say wait a second, financial services should be a right, either let the post office do it as a bank of last resort, or force the corporate banks to stop discriminating.

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The government often uses regulations to shut 'undesirable' businesses off from bank accounts, when it cannot kill the businesses itself (for legal or political reasons). The prime example of this is "Operation Choke Point", but there are other, more subtle ones. Banks like money, but they are unwilling to challenge the regulators which protect them.

For those reasons (and others), I don't think your proposed legislation would work.

Here is how the insurance industry does it:

There are a bunch of people who nobody wants to insure. The government basically divides up those people, and forces insurance companies to take them on as customers, since insurance is legally required in some cases.

In order to make sure these customers don't hurt the main business, the insurance company has a separate legal entity to handle those customers.

That's a great idea! Someone should create a bank that specifically serves entertainment businesses. Install an ethics/business practices review process to weed out the bad players and reputational risk is turned into opportunity. The bank's promise of no hassle/no uncertainty would attract customers in droves.

BitSafe is such a bank, in The Netherlands

Okay but the problem to be solved here isn’t analogous. In the case you described, they’re uninsurable be used they’re legitimately high risk, and the government forces their insurance as a favor/pity/charity.

In the case of adult entertainment etc, the government’s regulation has cause the risk, and that untouchability, so it can’t then endorse the very interaction it was banning. If it could permit these businesses to use banking, then the solution wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

Establishing a bank is not easy, ask Walmart, but maybe that is what some industries need. Guns, Porn, weed, whatever, if it’s legal then create their own credit union.

It’s concerning because the (increasingly monopolistic) banks and the credit card companies are simultaneously a type of private tax on all purchases and the judges/juries of public morality.

This is one in a long string of cases where people cannot operate fully legal business because of the policies of the financial institutions.

Financial services _for individuals_ should be a right. Companies don’t need any more rights than they have already.

A gig worker or freelancer who sets up an LLC is essentially no different than an individual. They should have protections.

I don’t think most freelancers and gig workers are having trouble opening bank accounts.

I don't agree with sex work, but I will absolutely defend the rights of people to get paid for their labor.

Of course people should be paid for their labor. You don’t need a commercial bank account for this, even if your labor is sex work.

Doesn't this very story look like evidence that they do?

No. The banks are responding to a number of legitimate risks that they wish to avoid. They have a legal obligation not to facilitate money laundering and human trafficking and adult businesses are more likely to be involved in these.

You are mixing up a few things:

- "risks that they wish to avoid" seems merely to be a risk to their reputation "what are people going to say should stuff happen". It's a level of "legitimate" that applies to anything. That one is not illegal because sex work is not a protected class (more or less). Otherwise it would be.

- "They have a legal obligation not to facilitate money laundering and human trafficking". Hmmmm. No. A law against, say, human trafficking cannot make adult businesses illegal. Or if it aims to do that, it needs to name it. These businesses are not illegal. A bank has some obligations to be vigilant against some things - and might demand lots of paperwork and might still often do the wrong thing. But society does not need them to go vigilante and blacklist entire domains of legitimate activity.

And blacklisting / red lining is exactly what laws might try to prevent. Seems that sex work needs to become a protected class. (Never mind that "protected class" is american law, not canadian.)

I think you are the one mixing things up. I never said anything about adult businesses being illegal. This is about banks, which are businesses, choosing to avoid transacting with other businesses in direct response to obligations imposed by the government. Anti discrimination law in both Canada and the US protects individuals, not companies, so it’s unclear why you would mention protected classes in a discussion about an Ontario-incorporated business and their commercial banking relationship.

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