@ontariobay in Brazil there is the PIX, it is an instant payment between almost any bank account, in the first year it was introduced you could use it to pay for almost anything, online or in person, it usually approves in less than a second and there is no fee.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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There is this herbal thing that the fda was trying to shut down in a fact free reefer madness esque type campaign, kratom, that endangered drug company profits by amongst other things allowing people to wean themselves off opioids by taking the edge of withdrawals with it. Big business.
Anyway after failing because people in the west organized to defend their rights, the FDA leaned on the credit card companies to not process their transactions. The companies found some out of the country vendor that was willing to process them before long but for a short bit people had to use electronic checks. Which banks are funny about, no one knows how untrustworthy banks are like other banks I figure.
But idk the vendor, the visa and mastercard both work on this. But I've heard of the government doing this a couple of times since, and some private church group doing it to steam to get them to remove some game or something.
That's really interesting I never heard about how kratom was used like that.
Yeah it hits the opiate receptors, not directly though. It hits the kappa, and hits delta ones sideways. In effect it's like codeine, 1/10 morphine strength, but the half life is shorter, a couple of hours, and it is unpleasant after getting a certain amount. But it doesn't by itself hurt you or any organ system or do any damage to the body. In SE Asia where it's native, this relative of the coffee tree is used by locals that chew it's leaves.
It is rather pleasant but very mild, a poor substitute for opiates, but it will cure withdrawals, and you don't need a permission slip from a doctor to get it, or to buy overpriced medication like suboxone that without insurance can be super overpriced if you can't get on a discount deal of some kind I hear, I've never been on it. But also no medical record of being a junkie either.
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This kinda requires having a heavily consolidated convenience store industry with a lot of locations. Japan has both of these the US not so much. Urban sprawl, a physically larger country, and a culture of not using convenience stores as much kinda make this hard. Also said stores would likely need to register AML and KYC controls.
Would post office work better for US?
Maybe. The lines in my local post office are always long but they do exist. I can't come up with an easy way for the Comstock act to prohibit it being used for adult material but then again I don't work for the "Heritage" Foundation.
Then again Congress likes it's puritannical laws and would need to create such a service.
At first, I was only thinking about the ubiquity of post offices and that they already reach rural areas. But the government aspect does add a bit more too. Feels like it's official to use government currency in a government building instead of a local convenience store.
Honestly this type of transaction seems like it could easily be an automated kiosk. Scan barcode / QR code. Insert cash. Get receipt. Employees nearby to help if needed. Done
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People do heavily use gas stations which are about the same thing
True. This is one thing we still need to buy in person, and can't have delivered, so gas stations exist even in the smallest towns.
The other place, of course, is grocery stores. I can pay in cash at the self-checkout in Walmart, and the machines scan barcodes. So, that's another option.
It also requires not being dominated by people who think lack of options is a feature they can exploit and would happily destroy society if it meant that whatever was left was more dependent on them (partially to profit from it, partially to hold the keys to control who can access it and how).
- Natural monopolies should be nationalised. Network effects tend to be a significant characteristic of natural monopolies (my opinion).
- Payment infrastructure is critical for national security. Just the way cash is.
This is why imo, there should be a nationalised institution competing against private institutions like these.
- the nationalised institution must be owned by the state.
- its operations however must be organized as a consumer coop, where cardholders of this payment network are member owners. This would prevent the top down bureaucracy, corruption and inefficiencies that plague state owned corps.