Submitted by OdiousOutlaw in AskRaddle (edited )

It's come to my attention that I have no substantial critiques on banks. I'm aware that they're bad, but I'm not exactly sure how bad they are, what it is that they do that an anarchist would find especially heinous, or the how deep the relationship between them and various power structures that I am aware of runs. Does anyone have recommendations on what I should look into? Even a short post that gives a general sense of the machinations of banks would help. Thanks in advance.

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Pop wrote

There's so much to say here that it's daunting to get started

I wish I knew something short and snippy I could link to, but really banks are so integral to the terrible of capitalism I'm not sure that such a text exists

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OdiousOutlaw OP wrote

Fair enough. I suppose that if I don't get any answers in about a week, I could try researching the issue myself once I'm not swamped with schoolwork (ha...) and I'll post the results here.

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Pop wrote (edited )

a few main small points I'd wanna start with though are

in anarchy, there would be no banks
gift economies would just skip out on money more or less completely
but banks are basically essential to capitalism

which is tied to

Banks are where liquid and other capital is stored
"stored" - enclosed, locked away from use from all, hoarded at the expense of those who need it
the bank's security is what is preventing us from liberating the money there and redistributing it
Every bank should be robbed and all its wealth redistributed, but it is power relationships that keeps the money in there for a few
a bank is like the private police force you hire to guard your loot

Banks are where capital is used to make other capital, against those without it
I'm talking first about loans here, but there are other ways
I'm pretty sure interest is a shitshow
You're basically charging people for having no money or paying people for having money

This is definitely not a necessary element of banking, but financial 'speculation' and related investment banking is a whole other level of shitshow
They're basically taking bets on how risky their bets are and using your money for it, or some shit
If anybody wants to clarify or correct me on any of this I'd appreciate it

Fractional reserve banking, a standard practice globally, finds us with absurd situations like in the US, where there's a 10% reserve requirement, meaning if there's 10 dollars in a bank they're allowed to loan 100 dollars.

So Person A puts 50 dollars into their bank account, now the bank can loan Person B 500 dollars, so B borrows 500. But B doesn't take that as cash, B puts that in their bank account. So there's now 500 dollars in B's bank account, and Person C needs a loan of 5000 which he can now take out because there was that 500 dollars B put in.

and literally this started with just 50 dollars of 'actual' money, the banks have invented 4950 dollars out of thin air

which is not a sustainable business model

('actual' money though is pretty meaningless even before all that because at least there was a time when dollar value was pegged to gold value or something, but that ended in 1971 and ushered in neoliberalism afaik)

money itself is the quantification of value, the symbol of successful commodification
where in a gift economy people have a general sense of how much other people contribute or don't contribute to the well-being of the broader community, with money things get an exact number value
the reduction of the things necessary for life and wellbeing and joy to numbers is no good for us
Banks have significant control over this, as mediators of much of it, I imagine

Ummmm I'm sure there's much more than this and probably even more obvious things than this but I'll stop here

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OdiousOutlaw OP wrote

Thank you. I wanted to research banks, but had no real starting point for them; These points will be helpful.

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Pop wrote

you're welcome

i enjoyed the opportunity to think about it

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steelypan wrote (edited )

One of the low-hanging fruit here, and a relatively more recent development, is the prominence of entirely electronic transactions. For most of these, you must have a bank, and that bank will take a cut of the money every time you use the system.

Yet, in the modern environment, electronic transactions are necessary. It's simply not feasible--and sometimes simply not possible--to pay personally in cash for every single one of our bills, taxes, online purchases, etc. Banks have complete dominion over this system and take a slice home for themselves every single time it's used, though they play no part in actually providing the products.

Similar arguments apply to online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Steam, and so on. All of them profit off of every single transaction made through their "services," for the simple fact that they have a monopoly on their market and there's no viable alternative.

Ideally, we would have publicly operated equivalents which provide similar services while remaining non-profit. For banks, you have credit unions to, to some extent, fulfill this purpose--but in practice, even these often operate in a very similar manner to banks, and, beyond that, are continually boxed in by banks lobbying for "regulations" which restrict or outright eliminate such sources of competition.

But again, this is only one of the low-hanging fruit.

(thank you for reading my blog)

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OdiousOutlaw OP wrote

Better to get low hanging fruit than nothing at all. It's still useful and worth mentioning. It's also relevant. Thank you.

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videl wrote (edited )

most fund pipelines and shit

but really what isn't the problem with banks? largest predators in the capitalist system

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OdiousOutlaw OP wrote

but really what isn't the problem with banks? largest predators in the capitalist system

Like I said, I'm aware of the fact that banks are bad; I'd like to expand my general knowledge as to how they're bad. I don't know what makes them the largest predators, nor am I completely aware the functions that make them useful to capitalism.

most fund pipelines and shit

This helps with that, thank you. I can (and will) look into that because it's a specific example.

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videl wrote

from my experience with banks, any fees that they have target mostly poor people. Fees for not having enough money in account, fees for overdraft, fees to transfer money to your account more quickly etc.

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