How does your link support your assertion of corruption?

The link doesn't. The experience you will have if you actually go try to start a bank will. I only provided the link to point you to the entrance of the rabbit hole.

I don't see how the fact that the process of becoming a bank is strictly regulated means that it's corrupt?

It doesn't. What makes it corrupt is that banks are not in fact strictly regulated, it only appears that way. But there is no way I can prove that to you in an HN comment. I would have to write a book. I can point you to a lot of circumstantial evidence but there is nothing probative in the public record (see below). The only definitive evidence I have of the corruption in the system is my personal experience, some accounts of which I have published on my blog. But if you don't put credence in my conclusion, then you will likely not put credence in my evidence either, because I can't prove any of it. The only way I can prove it is to invite you to undertake the same journey I did. If you do that, I predict you will learn first-hand the same thing I did: the system is corrupt, and whether or not you succeed in penetrating it will ultimately depend entirely on whether you have the right connections and whether they decide that you can be trusted to toe the line on the unwritten rules, the first of which is that you never talk about the unwritten rules to anyone who is not a member of the club.

Note that I never joined the club, so my theory of the unwritten rules is pure speculation. No one ever sat me down and said, "Look, son, this is how it is..." But I did spend ten years of my life on this, and during that time I accumulated a lot of evidence that I have a very hard time explaining in any other way. It eventually led me to a serious existential crisis.

BTW, it's not just the financial system. Academia is corrupt in much the same way, and in that case I did join the club so I can speak to that with some authority. That experience is one of the things that allowed me to recognize what I was seeing in the financial industry. But both academia and finance are centuries-old industries. They have become very skilled at hiding their corruption from prying eyes, and a big part of the strategy is making it appear that anyone who accuses them of corruption is a crackpot. (Which is, of course, exactly what a crackpot would say, and that, too, is part of the strategy. It's a horrible catch-22.)

So you have to decide whether to believe me or not, whether you think I'm a crackpot or not. Before you jump to a conclusion I invite you to look up my record. My life is pretty well documented on the web.

Having joined academia at one point and seen "how the sausage is made," and subsequently left for ethical reasons that I have no way of using to hold anyone to account, I totally understand this comment.

It is so hard to put into words how these systems are corrupt, because these systems create an enculturation / religion around themselves. By the time you see how the entire system works, you are powerless to simplify the mechnications that make that system corrupt (if you even choose to recognize the corruption). You can't "just start an alternative," because the system exists at a local maxima and will crush your alternative or assimilate it into the existing system.

When people are taken advantage of by these secular religions, it is so normal and engrained in the societal fabric that we almost don't have the language to expose the fundamental dishonesty and fraud of these systems. Victims will say that there may be some bad actors at the edges, but on the whole, "this is the way it's supposed to be."

Yes. Exactly.

I think this might come down to how you define corruption.

I define it the way the dictionary does: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power in order to advance their own interests over those of others.

How would you define it?

the magnitude of it matters.

Order a Big Mac - does it look like the ad? Probably not. Drink a Cola, does it feel like your life has turned around, probably not. is advertising dishonest - of course, but we all know that and we learned to deal with it. Is advertising corrupt, I would not say that.

Thus for something to be truly corrupt it needs to go beyond a certain level of illegality.

There are plenty of small banks and credit unions out there thus the point that you cannot open a bank is not quite valid. Are some of the rules onerous, probably. Are some of the rules unfair and ridiculous, probably ... does it mean it is corrupt I don't think so.

> the magnitude of it matters.

The cost to consumers of financial corruption runs into the many billions of dollars.

> There are plenty of small banks and credit unions out there thus the point that you cannot open a bank is not quite valid.

I did not say that you couldn't open a bank. I said that if you tried you would see firsthand evidence of the corruption of the system.

The problem is not that the rules are onerous. The problem is that the rules are not applied evenly and transparently.

> I feel that people tossing around the word corruption don't really understand what it means

I see. So your position is: I "don't really understand what [corruption] means" -- but you do. And because you possess the true understanding and I don't, nothing in my personal experience can possibly be evidence of corruption because you alone possess the true understanding.

Have I got that right?

> > The problem is that the rules are not applied evenly and transparently.

> Of course not. Never are

This is normalization of deviance. It might be true that the rules are never applied evenly and transparently anywhere and never have been, but it is one thing to posit this as a fact, and quite another to dismiss it as being inevitable (and hence acceptable) by saying, "Of course it's that way." No, it's not "of course." It's corruption, not just because the rules are not applied evenly and transparently, but because this is done by a group of powerful people for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else. Its inevitability is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By accepting it, you have made yourself part of the problem.

You can claim that people tossing around corruption don't understand it... but you in the first place don't understand the scenario OP is even describing (as they're unable to provide details, you couldn't possibly be making an accurate judgment). So it is far fetched for you to confidently claim OP is misusing corruption etc. here.

I am simply responding to what others also called out, that none of the evidences the poster claimed to exist were indicative of corruption,

hence the logical and reasonable assumption that the poster is misusing the term, obviously I can only comment on what is stated here,