Problem: Buying something with a credit card exposes the customer to unauthorized charges.

Weak political solution: Thou shalt not make unauthorized charges to other people's credit cards.

Technical solution: Replace the whole concept of credit card numbers with a secure payment authorization flow.

Credit cards: Meh. That sounds hard.

[20 years later...]

Credit cards: Check this out! We offer a secure payment authorization flow! And your credit card numbers still work like they always did!

[Someday...]

Stronger (but late) political solution: Thou shalt provide a secure payment authorization flow instead of credit card numbers.

You absolutely can. Politics follows technology, not the other way around. At minimum, technology gives politicians new options.

That's patently false. If tech was the panacea you're suggesting, free speech would be the norm and there would be zero concerns regarding privacy.

I'm not saying it is the panacea, or that it only has consequences. Just that technology drives social and political developments, not the other way around. Our current technology does promote free speech[0], and does promote lack of privacy. That's why you see politicians fighting with the Internet on curtailing free speech, and promoting privacy.

Politics and social customs are all about taking particular spots on a landscape of choices. Technology shapes that very landscape.

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- [0] - note how difficult it is to really censor anything these days, or curtail someone's audience; hell, if anything, technology is showing that ubiquitous free speech has some negative consequences too.

Have people forgotten arab spring already?

Bitcoin shook the world.