Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
Categorically disagree. Perhaps what you're trying to say is that the law does not address the root causes of people being unbanked/underbanked, or give them access to banking services, ie. solving the problem of people being unbanked/underbanked; that's absolutely true.
Yes, that is what I'm saying. Further, the law does not address the root causes of businesses being cashless, which is proof that their environment is not normal or healthy.

The law does, however, solve or at least mitigate a problem - the problem of unbanked/underbanked people not being able to participate fully in society by purchasing goods that they need/want and can pay for. The law can plausibly mitigate the problems that arise as a consequence of people being unbanked/underbanked. It does indeed also create new problems for those merchants who prefer, no doubt for legitimate reasons, to go cashless. The law attempts to mitigate those problems as well, eg. by making some allowances for stores that provide easy access to machines that can top up prepaid cards. That may still not be enough, but, as a group, merchants are better able to incentivize innovation that can solve their problems, than individual poor people who can't even access basic banking services that are increasingly necessary for participation in normal society.
No credit is awarded for saying "Not my problem". This law doesn't solve or mitigate anything. It's not a solution, it's an abandonment.

Giving a starving person free food doesn't address the root causes of poor food security, but it does mitigate the consequences of lacking food security for that person.
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This is not equivalent. In fact, the equivalent would be one of the solutions worth investigating - providing citizens better access to prepaid debit cards so they don't need the cash. Or even providing cash handling services to local businesses so they can stop being cashless would be on the table, though I doubt this would wind up being a good solution. This law doesn't provide anyone with anything except additional burdens.

Who cares who gets credit for solutions, so long as those solutions are discovered and implemented? But let's be real - innovators who develop good solutions for any problems that may arise from this law are the ones who'll get credit for those solutions, as well the $$$.
No they won't. That's extremely naive about how politics works. This law is abdicating responsibility and setting up a scapegoat so problems that persist are the fault of the shops, and problems that get solved are because of the politicians so you should vote them back in office again. Local businesses should not be expected to solve a problem for everybody that they couldn't even solve for themselves. This law is worse than doing nothing for everybody except the politicians.

The market will deliver innovative solutions that will prevent mass death of retailers in NYC. You must have faith. These problems can be easily solved, if the will to solve them is there.
The market abhors a vacuum. If the market alone could fill these holes, then it already would have. The best the market has figured out is to have businesses go cashless. I agree that this isn't good enough, but it's the best that could be done under the circumstances. So we need to change the circumstances.

Partly because I disagree with your assessment that this law doesn't "solve anything", I have to disagree with this characterization - and with your conclusion. The law does solve something, and it is perfectly reasonable to believe that the politician who managed to get it passed cares about solving a problem for a vulnerable group that he represents. Any righteous genius who feels they are less lazy, more responsible, and more competent... are welcome to present solutions that may meet your standards. It's telling that they haven't been able - or inclined - to do so yet.
My failure to do the politician's job doesn't excuse their failure to do their job. I'm sure most of the people who voted for this weren't thinking in these terms, most probably didn't care enough to give it much thought at all, they just went along with where their team was heading because they all figured that it was somebody else's job to look at this critically. And of course, nobody is going to hold their own team to as high as standard as they try to hold the other team.

This law is an excellent embodiment of everything I hate about politics:

1) It only addresses the symptom (transactional incompatibilities) and not the problem (inadequate access to financial services)
2) It fucks over the minority to pander to the majority
3) It solves nothing and creates more problems, making the situation worse and harder to solve correctly. Here it's not only putting extra burdens on store owners when we have a parallel problem in the same areas about there not being enough stores, but it also funnels out money that would have otherwise circulated in the local community, when these communities are hurting for economic activity already.
4) The only winners here are the politicians.
5) People are acting like this shit is OK.

This situation is a great opportunity to find a solution where everybody wins, because the problems faced by both sides of this are essentially the same. Politicians should not be held to such a low standard that simply fucking over the "right" people is considered good enough.