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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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I’m not engaging with the overall argument, just noting that you are not properly characterizing how debanking works with regard to a very public and very controversial person who has had involvement with the law.

Being banned from social media platforms for violating stated policies is not very exciting either.

I think there is a very real tension in a free society in cases like this. Somebody can be deprived at scale by private actors (who have strongly correlated interests and risks) of a key service—banking—for only appearing to be possibly engaged in illegal activity, with no explicit coordination or direct government involvement (regulation does play a role, of course).

We force medical insurers to serve those they would otherwise avoid and we ought to force sports gambling companies to stop limiting the good players, and there’s a whole host of laws on protected characteristics, but in general companies should have some level of choice to refuse service. “Legal discrimination” remains a minefield.

Ironically, the idea I’ve heard expressed by left-leaning technocrats that every American should have a government-provided checking account by e.g. the Fed to make things like tax rebates and such easier and eliminate unbanking could solve this particular issue.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/fed-accounts