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Lumifer comments on Open Thread, Jul. 6 - Jul. 12, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I don't recommend entirely free hosting providers because they tend to come with too many strings, inconveniences, and ads for sexual-financial enhancement, but finding a cheap provider should not present any difficulties.
Price is not really the issue. Rather the issue is that they tend to expect everybody has Visa/Mastercard or PayPal or bitcoin. The same is true for Steam store, Google play store, Playstation store, it is sort of annoying, I just tend to buy gift cards in the electronics shops to fill up my account balance on them. Actually I sense there is a fairly big global gap in the payment provider market. If only a gift card type bitcoin purchase was possible with physical cash in the shops...
Yes, and there are reasons why it exists.
But given that you are gainfully employed in Austria, I don't see why do you have payment issues.
Because I use a Maestro card or cash. Visa / Mastercard simply does not fit into my mindset: they are credit cards, and as long as I am gainfully employed, why would I need credit? Credit is for the times when you cannot afford something.
Not having credit cards is a classic commitment device. Getting into a mindset of buying everything on credit then paying it off at the monthly payday is a bit of a slippery slope (no fallacy: there is an actual mechanism of slipping here: basic human desires), only one step away from buying everything on credit and then NOT paying it off due to overspending or other reasons. Only spending money one actually has is a generally good safe habit.
I would change my mind if there would be rewards like frequent flyer miles tied to credit cards but they are not common here.
About the reasons - Maestro is not entirely unknown in the Anglosphere given that most UK bank accounts are also linked to a Maestro card, and UK-based websites are fairly good at accepting it. Ignoring a market of a few hundred million of relatively well-to-do people is something that only perhaps be justified by time i.e. it is on the to-do list of the major US based online vendors, just not done yet.
You're misunderstanding the point of credit cards. They are not about borrowing from the bank (well, they could be but they should not be). They are all about convenience.
I use credit cards. I never ever had a balance on any of them -- I pay them off each month. It is convenient (and pretty much necessary for certain things like renting cars) and I do not borrow anything. I don't have slippery-slope problems with respect to buying "on credit". Oh, and at least in the US finding a credit card with decent rewards (typically, 1-2% of your purchases refunded to you) is not hard.
But bear in mind that some other people might. If DeVliegenderHollander suspects he may be one, then avoiding credit cards could be a very sensible move for him.
A fair point, but it still seems to me that thinking of credit cards primarily as means of borrowing money is misguided.
There are Visa debit cards. I have one. I have not had problems paying anyone with it.
[EDITED to add two other things:]
I don't know how readily available Visa debit cards are in Austria; perhaps your bank offers only some different variety of debit card.
In the UK, at least, there are regulations around credit cards that don't apply to debit cards and that give buyers considerable reason to prefer paying by credit card even if they have no need to borrow. Specifically, if you buy something with a credit card then a piece of legislation called the Consumer Credit Act makes your credit card company liable (as well as the seller) if the seller fails to meet the terms of their contract with you. So, e.g., if you buy something with a credit card and then they just don't deliver, or they go out of business, you can get your money back from the card company. So there's a big advantage to using a credit card for substantial purchases. Again, this may be different in Austria.