Asklemmy

43893 readers

843 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

135

What is one relatively unknown thing that your country does much better than elsewhere, but that most people don't know about? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 2 weeks ago by NateNate60 to c/[email protected]

172 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] NateNate60 92 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

I will start. I'm in the United States.

Credit unions! Nearly half of all Americans are credit union members. They don't seem to be popular in Europe and Asia. A credit union is a not-for-profit co-operative financial institution that essentially provides all the same services as a bank, except it's run as a democratic institution with directors elected by the customers instead of as a profit maximisation machine for shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The UK has building societies which sound like what you're describing

[–] NateNate60 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yes, they're similar, but from what I've heard, most UK building societies are basically the same as or worse than banks in terms of fees, rates, and service quality. In the US, most credit unions will absolutely spank the big banks on at least two of those, if not all three.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

The majority of UK building societies turned themselves into banks; maybe twenty years ago when the legislation was passed to enable it. A select few still exist though, but I don’t believe any are that large.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

There's only really one big building society in the UK, which is Nationwide, but they're awesome

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

*had. They've been swallowed whole by the larger banks

load more comments (8 replies)