Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission. It is a fundamental purpose of money. To deny this purpose puts the validity of particular money into question. Putting up fences results in a very high rate of false positives. No wonder people use crypto as they should.
If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.
> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.
They got Al Capone for tax evasion, not any of the other obviously illegal stuff he was doing. I don't know the details, but I imagine it was because he put in effort to create an organization that made it difficult-to-impossible for the law-abiding feds to go after him directly. That's why it's important to also prohibit the ancillary activities of crime.
And money laundering isn't an absurd concept, it just means it's additionally illegal to conceal the origin of illicit income.
If you want to get all dogmatic against stuff like laws against money laundering, come up with an effective alternative. Otherwise those laws aren't going anywhere and few will care about your objections, because they're unreasonable.
> If you want to get all dogmatic against stuff like laws against money laundering, come up with an effective alternative
No, it's not just a matter of alternatives: it is also a matter of principles.
For example: in europe, I am unable to make online purchases with electronic money, as all the payment devices are tracked, matched with a personal identity - they cannot be unidentified as they could be only a few years ago. There existed occasional cards for online shopping - now they ask you a local telephone number, identity tied. This under the excuse of "countering money laundering". So there you have "privacy" vs "financial monitoring" - with immensely disproportionate effects in a farcical manouvre.
Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal.
Fentanyl is not a soft drug, but opium, heroin and morphine can be so if administered correctly, and meet the same needs satisfactorily. Fentanyl is extremely deadly if misdosed.
Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal. [emphasis mine]
Just pointing out the double standards and the main funding source being due to illegality. And we all known how many people die due to ethanol each year. But because it is drug of the choice by too many totalitarian fascists it won't get banned like other drugs do.
> Just pointing out the double standards and the main funding source being due to illegality. And we all known how many people die due to ethanol each year. But because it is drug of the choice by too many totalitarian fascists it won't get banned like other drugs do.
Alcohol is a drug with a huge amount of cultural significance going back millennia. Don't be a robot: it's in a different category and not a double standard.
Buy yeah, one easy solution to crime problems is just to make everything legal. Sure, it totally misses the point, but it seems very clever to the software engineer mind.
So it clearly is double-standard. Excusing it with "cultural significance" is clear example of something being double standard. And it is one of the worst reasons to have. Genital mutilation of children of both genders is also of "cultural significance" so I take those supporting allowing it are also reasonable? Or is that a different category because it is not your culture?
If keeping it illegal is not working clearly best move forward might be to look at making it legal thus solving the issue. And that does not miss a point. Lot of stuff previously illegal has been made legal. So why not drugs like fentanyl?
> So it clearly is double-standard. Excusing it with "cultural significance" is clear example of something being double standard. And it is one of the worst reasons to have. Genital mutilation of children of both genders is also of "cultural significance" so I take those supporting allowing it are also reasonable? Or is that a different category because it is not your culture?
No. Frankly, it just means you're being zealous and small-minded: hyper-focusing on little bits (and feeling very self-righteous as a result) without looking at the whole picture. Demanding the world conform to whatever limited understanding you have of it. I see it all the time.
Alcohol is its own category, whether you chose to recognize it or not. That's the truth, so quit whining about it.
> If keeping it illegal is not working clearly best move forward might be to look at making it legal thus solving the issue. And that does not miss a point. Lot of stuff previously illegal has been made legal. So why not drugs like fentanyl?
Because it opiates being legal and freely available was not working? Ignoring your myopia for a minute, what you're really advocating for is a dumb oscillation between the problems of legalized opiates and illegal opiates, because you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I don't think you are ready for constructive non-zealous open-minded discussion which objectively looks at whole thing without any previous biases or and wider understanding. So it is pointless to continue this discussion as you are not ready to take it honestly.
> I don't think you are ready for constructive non-zealous open-minded discussion which objectively looks at whole thing without any previous biases or and wider understanding. So it is pointless to continue this discussion as you are not ready to take it honestly.
Heh. I mean, you're the one who's been refusing to look outside your narrow focus to "look at the whole thing" and rejecting "wider understandings" (e.g. the actual cultural significance of alcohol, the well-understood negative effects of freely available opioids), but whatever. You be you, and twist things however you need to save face.
I already did, and noted it in my parent comment if you actually read it. The alternative is crypto. It works. To use your own words back at you, no one who needs to transmit money freely will care about your silly objections, because they're unreasonable.
If money laundering is not absurd, then electricity laundering for the purpose of a crime must similarly not be absurd. Everyone must be required to provide documentation of their electricity usage and spikes. After all it could be used to conduct a crime, and we can lower crime by having laws against electricity laundering. /s
In truth, many little brains that I am interacting with here seem to be having trouble with letting abstractions be abstractions. A society can be at rest only when it doesn't have to think twice about its abstractions, otherwise it will never know peace. The same people also can't rewind to see how foolish the war on drugs is in the first place.
> I already did, and noted it in my parent comment if you actually read it. The alternative is crypto.
No you didn't, you totally misunderstood what I meant. I was not talking about an alternative payment system that "bypasses" anti-money laundering regulations, but alternative regulations.
> It works. To use your own words back at you, no one who needs to transmit money freely will care about your silly objections, because they're unreasonable.
It doesn't "work." Not wanting to facilitate the transfer of money derived from crime is not a "silly objection."
Also you seem to be confused about the difference between the crime of money laundering and anti-money laundering regulations.
You're seeing it exclusively from the perspective of an oppressive government, not the people. You do not serve the people, only the oligarchs. It is why your argument has no merit to the people who seek freedom. This is not a forum for government propaganda.
> You're seeing it exclusively from the perspective of an oppressive government, not the people.
No, I'm seeing it from the perspective of the people, who have a legitimate interest in the suppression of organized crime. And I also realize that most social problems don't have neat and tidy solutions that will satisfy this or that myopic dogmatist, and following the dogma is likely to leave everyone less happy (except the dogmatist).
Making money laundering a crime and going after the people who do it are important tools in fighting organized crime. Now there's legitimate quibbles in the implementation of anti-money laundering regulations, but just from that to the extreme of "money laundering is an absurd concept" is itself absurd and unreasonable.
> You do not serve the people, only the oligarchs. It is why your argument has no merit to the people who seek freedom. This is not a forum for government propaganda.
To put it politely: please pull your head out of your butt. You're talking like you're a hero is some black and white drama, the good guy fighting the evil mooks. You're not, that's just distorted thinking.
If I may resort to using your insulting terminology, you don't have a head, only a butt. Do you have any idea how unreasonably difficult it is for a US person to reliably send dollars outside the US to someone? It is slow, unpredictable, and can have adverse second-order consequences in the context of the laundering regulations.
Weaponization of the dollar means that the dollar will simply not be used. Russia showed it, and much of the world is starting to show it. It is in contrast trivial to send crypto; it is neat and it is tidy. When you put up unreasonable fences, the people will just route around them. It is no surprise the yuan is gaining favor.
What crime is laundering fighting anyway? It's in large part the war on drugs, which is a silly war to begin with. Why does everyone have to suffer because of this war? True crimes don't require putting up silly fences to fight, for they can be fought directly. Al Capone was doing nothing wrong by fighting the prohibition on alcohol.
Due to your profound brainwashing, it is clear that we will never see eye to eye. The dollar risks losing its status, and the freedom gained will be better for the world.
If the underlying action is illegal, then go after the underlying action, LOL. How many millions of innocents have to suffer for one crook to be caught?
To use your own words back at you, generally speaking, it makes sense that a society wants to make the lives of its citizens easier, not more convoluted.
The truth about money laundering is a label used by the government to repress innocent individuals by burdening them under regulations.
> If the underlying action is illegal, then go after the underlying action,
Sure, but the best way to know there is illegal action is to flag money that comes out of nowhere.
> How many millions of innocents have to suffer for one crook to be caught?
You seem to be under the wrong expression that the article is about money laundering, but it is not, that's just the legal framework used to achieve the goal. If it weren't for money laundering, they works have chosen something else to achieve their goals.
> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.
This ignores that taxes are a thing that need enforcement. Its like saying basic necessities should be free, the world should be without pollution, or cancer shouldn't exist.
Well of course they should be. You have been brainwashed so much that you can't even conceive of a different world.
For taxes, I favor land value tax. Basic necessities can absolutely be free under it, as the super rich hold plenty of land. We can have a world without much pollution if we switch away from fossil fuels, and if we take the lifecycle of chemicals into account. Note that excesss carbon dioxide is pollution too. Regarding cancer, medical science is working toward it.
> Well of course they should be. You have been brainwashed so much that you can't even conceive of a different world.
Assuming you are talking about free basic necessities: I can conceive it fine, I just also understand that conceiving doesn't mean it will work, and history has shown it won't. Me making the statement was itself conception no?
I can conceive of a million different economic systems, but I also understand most of them are infeasible, and the risk of running the experiment is extremely high, with little to gain in a my country, where obesity is a much larger problem than starving.
Everything I noted is entirely feasible. It is not pie in the sky. In fact, history has shown that it works. The risk is more pronounced with inaction than with action. If you have a decent imagination and a fuller appreciation for history, you would see it.
Define "pie in the sky", because you have described the utopia that every eco-socialist has been chasing for 100 years...
The problem that makes it infeasible isn't the math, or the technology, it's people. Communism would work beautifully... if everyone in the world was different.
Huh. I did not ask for communism, nor do I believe in it. I do believe that people need to be rewarded for their effort. Democratic socialism and social democracy are sufficiently different from communism. When people's basic survival needs are met, which is the goal, they can be more free to pursue entrepreneurial and creative endeavors, otherwise they stay stuck in a minimum-wage job as under the current system. In the decades to come, minimum wage jobs need to be replaced by AI anyway, even physical robotic AI. It doesn't make sense to do by hand what can be automated.
A system where the population's wealth disparity keeps getting worse is nothing to be proud of. There have been systems of government in history where the system's total wealth made everyone more equal while preserving the reward for effort.
If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.