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I would argue you really just need one step: 1. All economic transactions between parties are given to government and linked to a government-issued identifier.

by zo1 6y ago

I would argue you really just need one step: 1. All economic transactions between parties are given to government and linked to a government-issued identifier. With this data, you can throw a bunch of smart people and algorithms to detect fraud, laundering and tax evasion. But of course, "privacy". Such a convenient excuse to prevent us from stopping alot of crime and fraud.

Nextgrid 6y ago
> But of course, "privacy". Such a convenient excuse to prevent us from stopping alot of crime and fraud. Are you saying that law-abiding people should renounce their right to privacy because of a few malicious actors, especially when there's plenty of other ways to prevent such crime (money laundering is merely a symptom of another crime and that one needs to be prevented).
KMag 6y ago
"I'm sorry, your 6 month old daughter was selling carfentanil to her grandparents, with a probability of 99.63%" Privacy also saves us from lots of machine learning fishing expeditions gone wrong.
MadSudaca 6y ago
What if I don't trust the government or their appointed "identifiers"?
- zo1 6y ago
  Then I'd ask why you trust them with everything else? They can pretty much make you a non-person, or make you disappear, or treat you as sub-human. And they regularly prioritize companies, rich people and other special-interest groups over you. So yeah, you shouldn't trust them. But right now they are an inevitability with no alternative, so we need to figure out how to solve the problems plaguing us whilst reigning government in and keeping it from overstepping. Some element of "given" trust is necessary for that. As a side note, seeing as this is a technical space. One reason you should trust their identifiers is the same reason you shouldn't use non-unique natural keys as primary-keys in your database. The identifier is essentially your surrogate key and government is in a very unique position of power/influence that aides it in being a custodian of citizen data.

by zo1 6y ago

Nextgrid 6y ago

> But of course, "privacy". Such a convenient excuse to prevent us from stopping alot of crime and fraud. Are you saying that law-abiding people should renounce their right to privacy because of a few malicious actors, especially when there's plenty of other ways to prevent such crime (money laundering is merely a symptom of another crime and that one needs to be prevented).

KMag 6y ago

"I'm sorry, your 6 month old daughter was selling carfentanil to her grandparents, with a probability of 99.63%" Privacy also saves us from lots of machine learning fishing expeditions gone wrong.

MadSudaca 6y ago

What if I don't trust the government or their appointed "identifiers"?

zo1 6y ago
Then I'd ask why you trust them with everything else? They can pretty much make you a non-person, or make you disappear, or treat you as sub-human. And they regularly prioritize companies, rich people and other special-interest groups over you. So yeah, you shouldn't trust them. But right now they are an inevitability with no alternative, so we need to figure out how to solve the problems plaguing us whilst reigning government in and keeping it from overstepping. Some element of "given" trust is necessary for that. As a side note, seeing as this is a technical space. One reason you should trust their identifiers is the same reason you shouldn't use non-unique natural keys as primary-keys in your database. The identifier is essentially your surrogate key and government is in a very unique position of power/influence that aides it in being a custodian of citizen data.