Conversation

I think people are insufficiently amazed at credit cards. You can walk into a store in a country you’ve been to, pull out a piece of plastic they’ve never seen before, and walk out with basically anything, in seconds, with almost no words exchanged.

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Patrick McKenzie

@patio11

Jul 9, 2018

And it’s one of the few forms of magic where explaining how it works makes it seem even more improbable rather than less.

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Patrick McKenzie

@patio11

Jul 9, 2018

“OK check it: a local affiliate of BigCo convinced this shopkeeper to put out a reader. He trusts that anything the reader says is good will actually be paid at end of month. His bank trusts a network which trusts an issuing bank. Most of these parties don’t know each other.”

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Patrick McKenzie

@patio11

Jul 9, 2018

“How does the bank trust you?” “Oh a computer made a judgement call on me at 3 AM.” “But but but!” “Yeah all the reasons you’re thinking this can’t work are in fact true AND they’re priced in AND it’s still cheap enough to run on a few percentage points of a $8 ticket.”