My mum visited not long ago. I paid for her flight and a few other expenses and she refunded me for that in US dollars in cash. I needed to convert these into Euros before I could use them. Today I went to the currency exchange, “GWK Travelex”, to exchange these dollars into Euros.

The lady at the desk was friendly and polite. She asked me for the amount, gave me a quote (which, honestly, was pretty bad, but it’s not like there’s any better choice in the Netherlands). She then inquired about the funds, requested my ID, address and a few other bits of personal information. She then started a phone call, asked me to wait for a bit. I waited for twenty-something minutes while she herself was on hold. Eventually she told me that she could not proceed with the operation. She explained that the phone call is part of the regular procedure, where she calls their offices in the UK, sends all my personal information, and the folks from the UK then approve or reject the operation. In this case, they’d told her that she was not authorised to offer me any exchange or any transaction. They refused me service.

The next people in line were there for the exact same transaction as I was, and completed their operation swiftly. I approached the desk again and asked the same lady more details about my situation. She was not given a reason, even after asking further, and was simply the messenger here: this faceless corporation had decided I was on a “do not serve” list and I was not welcome as a client there. As I inquired further, she indicated that I should not come back, since they would refuse to provide me any sort of service, for any amount, in future.

Considering that this is the only currency exchange office in the city (and in this province), I’m appalled and unsettled that they would simply refuse to serve me, without explanation of recourse. Why? The employee explain that she had no way of knowing, and she did not believe that I could determine why either.

We can only guess what might be the reason. Are some of my friends of the wrong ethnicity? Maybe those close to me are voting for the wrong parties? Your guess is as good as mine. There’s no accountability here, and financial institutions can simply decide that any of us are not welcome and that’s the end of it.

This isn’t my first encounter with such arbitrary systems…

Dangerous ethnicities

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Back in 2019 I met this girl at a friend’s birthday party. She worked at a bank in the software development sector, and told me about the project on which she’d been working. Their system collected data from various sources on people applying for financial services (e.g.: loans) and would indicate if someone was eligible, or raise a red flag. In the latter case they would have to deal with substantial additional bureaucracy, and often times would not be able to access these services anyway.

She seemed quite proud of her work, and told me her team had demoed it the previous week in front of the whole office. They’d shown the report that the system generated for each person in the team. In her case, the system flagged her as “dangerous”, and she was not eligible for a loan. Her grandmother was from Iran, and because there’s frequently cases of money laundering or other irregularities in Iran, she’s immediately flagged too. Despite her being a Dutch citizen, born and raised in the Netherlands, and working in this Dutch financial institution, her bloodline was “too risky” for her employer to lend her money.¹

I was confused, and honestly, heartbroken. This person was telling me how proud they were of their work, building a system that discriminates them based on their bloodline. I questioned what she thought about it, and she explained “well, the rules are there…” —she paused a few times— “the rules are there…”. I remained silent and she eventually finished her sentence after repeating it a few times “the rules are there to protect us”. Even though this was six years ago, every time I remember this situation it brings me great sadness. Here was a person who’d worked hard to build a system which would discriminate against them, and yet stood proudly defending their work.

I don’t think this situation is a complete outlier either. In this corporatocracy that is the modern world, a large proportion of the population works hard to sustain and enforce the same system that oppresses them. Generally, because there’s no other choice. Either work doing that, or starve. Frequently, it’s not even obvious that this is the case, given the layers of indirection.

It’s hard not to think of The Matrix (1999). Anyone in this society is unknowingly an agent which enforces its rules, despite it being the system that keeps them trapped. When an outlier tries to change the system, the men in suits will come after them — men who don’t have to follow the rules themselves