To reply to your middle paragraph, you'd probably want a longitudinal cohort study rather than an A/B test. A well-designed one can provide pretty conclusive indications in situations where A/B testing (or, testing with a double blind control as the epi community might call it) isn't possible.
Credit cards do more than just move money around, though. And capping fees isn't ever going to be practical without shifting the risks around.
I pay for most things with a credit card. Here are the value-adds that I receive in exchange:
* net-25 payment terms (eg free short term credit)
* anti-fraud: the money isn't actually taken from my account until I make a payment at the end of the month. This gives processors some skin in the game to solve fraud.
* warranty extensions
* risk of losing cash, either by loss or theft
* centralized accounting. No data entry.
I'm not saying the system is perfect. It can definitely be improved. But, personally, that's a pretty nice set of value that I receive in exchange for using the cards.
Is 2-3% excessive? Probably could be cut back. But if I'm getting 1% back, we're now talking 1-2% that it costs me. Seems likely that a big chunk of that is due to fraud, which isn't something that would disappear by legislating lower rates. (additionally, it opens the opportunity for me to churn cards. I haven't done the math, but I open 2-4 accounts per year and receive ~$500 in rewards. $1k in signup bonuses is at least 3-4% of my credit card spend. For those who are able to safely take advantage of the system, you actually can be net-positive PLUS receive the benefits above)
I do understand the frustration for people using cash, because they typically pay for these features regardless of whether they want to. I also sympathize with folks who want their purchases to remain more anonymous.
For me, however, the value is greater than the cost.
I don't want to legislate lower rates, I want to remove the regulatory barriers to entry for competition. And yes, credit cards do more than just move money around. This is part of the problem. Sometimes I want to just move money around, but in the U.S. it is actually impossible to do it in a way that is 1) fast, 2) cheap and 3) secure. There is no technological limitation to this. It's purely a result of regulatory capture by the banking and traditional money-transfer industry (e.g. Western Union) serving as a very effective barrier to entry for any competition.
Venmo and the like are pretty effective at all 3 for personal use. Acts as a trusted intermediary so you don't give your bank info to anyone you're paying/receiving payment from.
That strikes me as kinda neat, actually -- is that not the purpose of putting the slides in this order? It's a shortcut to just the topic slides, so you can skim through them even faster and only dig in once you want to.
I was curious and just checked -- until you click on an image in google's search results to see it fullsize in the semi-lightbox, you're actually getting the "thumbnail" sent from google as a b64 encoded string
Interesting thought, but wouldn't it kinda have to be done that way? Otherwise you'd see missing images on image SERPs, and you'd see the delay of thumbnails loading due to slower source servers.
I suffer, on occasion, from depression and anxiety. When I'm having an episode, my brain doesn't function.
I don't mean that I can't solve problems. I mean I can't hold a conversation.
I wonder if the reason so many people fail is because we've essentially put them in an artificial situation that shuts their brain down.
(I have also been dumbfounded by the inability of recent CS graduates to do FizzBizz... I feel like it's not certain our candidates are frequently flawed. Maybe it's our environment.)
I think both situations you described are unethical and I don't want my government doing either of them.
I'd also question your use of the word prevailing, as I have never heard this theory in respectable historical circles. (I'm not an expert by any means, but I have yet to hear a respected scholar or non-conspiracy theorist advance any evidence to this concept.)
I'm working on a project involving EDI data right now. You speak as though you have some experience in manufacturing and data. Would you be willing to chat with me for a few minutes about the space?
I'm not sure what I could offer -- my experience is limited to wrapping my head around EDI file formats + processes, and understanding what would be required to support a small manufacturing company's who directly drop ships their products.
Given the Expense + complexity of EDI, in all cases we've found it more cost effective to integrate with all the alternate Web-based import/export tools provided by systems like VendorNet, or whatever other crazy systems our customers use.
If our volume gets bigger, we'll probably have to revisit that position, but it's served us very well for now.
