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Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
(europeanbusinessmagazine.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Is it worse than private companies leveraging their dominance and effective monopoly to impose demands on all who depend on the critical infrastructure they provide, sidestepping all legislative processes and accountability to the public?
Besides, a corrupt government can just as well abuse regulatory powers to impose its will on private companies, since it doesn't have to observe due process. A sane government, however, will have less power to force a private company to do business it doesn't want to.
Privatisation is no protection against corruption, but a hurdle for public oversight. There are sectors where that is acceptable and the flexibility it provides may be worthwhile, but infrastructure isn't one of them.
A corrupt government can also be bought off by the companies to not fuck with things so that they at least remain functional.
In an ideal world, yes I'd rather these things be regulated in a way that the companies are accountable but that is not the world we live in. Moving this to the public sector now would just put even more power into the hands of our horrible government. Better to have everything split up so all the greedy malicious assholes are looking out for themselves than to have it all in the hands of one group who will do whatever they want with nothing to impede them. Regardless of consequences. Fix the government first , then give them control. You can't legislate based off the idea that it will only be well intentioned responsible adults running things.
...for whose definition of functional? Because any additional overhead from having to bribe the government would inevitably impact customers. And while they're at it, they might as well come up with more ways to be anti-consumer and the bribed government won't stop them.
They might also just bend over to please their dictator instead of buying him off, so it's not even a given thay they will keep him from interfering
I get your point about the current government situation though. I'm just not convinced replacing a corrupt private company with another not-yet-quite-as-corrupt private company from a different country would improve things in the long run.
Functional in the sense that people are able to make transactions with their credit cards. Trump would have zero hesitation to just destroying that system as part of some tantrum if he had control of it. Private companies controlling it will at least fight to keep it working as that is in their best interest. Is it the best option for consumers? No, but it's the best option under the current administration. We have to deal with that problem before we start giving things over to government control.