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"Money Laundering" is the narrative that always drives monetary controls, and by inference, when they're successful, everything that's not under digital surveil

"Money Laundering" is the narrative that always drives monetary controls, and by inference, when they're successful, everything that's not under digital surveillance is under suspicion of money-laundering. In practice, AML laws don't protect from large sums being washed by nefarious billionaires at all - as we well know, the existing banking systems with their tax and reporting havens are well able to handle large amounts of official money officially, and still out of sight. In practice, AML is a narrative that serves to legitimize controls on quite lower levels - in the 1000s. 2% of cash unaccounted for is nothing, and - I mean, preaching to the choir here - to try to hinder surveillance regimes (in the sociological sense, not the dictatorship sense) is absolutely legitimate for every normal person. Also, western privilege: western banks rarely close their doors and leave you without access to your digital money, and rarely hyperinflate it away without any recourse (though they also have, historically). While cash doesn't protect against the second danger, it well protects against the first -within- western countries. Now, in other places hoarding Euros and Dollars, it protects against both. Anit-Money-Laundering (AML) laws, in practice, do not protect us from greedy billionaires. They protect surveillance and hyperinflation states from citizens trying to protect themselves against them.

roenxi 5y ago
All that is to say nothing of the numerous times it turns out the banking system is itself the criminal actor. Just looking at the most recent scandal listed on Wikipedia [0] I see Madoff near-single-handedly exceeded the 50 billion in missing cash with his ponzi scheme. It isn't like removing privacy stops crime, it just makes corrupting the government more profitable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_an...
mistrial9 5y ago
I don't accept the parent description here because it makes everyone instantly into "law obeying" or "outlaw" in the first pass. Things are not that simple and our own ontologies can't force them to be so. I invite the reader to broaden the thinking here.. There is not one bright line of LEGAL|ILLEGAL, not even close. Those whose job it is to refer to this line, may say so. The effort of those whose job depends on these definitions, does not make it so. Let's go way back to the wild days of "utterly different tribes interacting." You know, really basic things are really very different, between people. What is legal are base definitions, but differences grow from there and increase. A system of physical currency bridges that divide. Now let's think of "the Empire that takes taxes from all tribes." Of course there is an effort to standardize practices, so that Empire can collect vastly larger sums than any one or ten tribes, and use that money to build roads, forts, harbors and hire police/troops. With this aggrandized example pair, think of the role of cash, banking and transfer of money. It is not "illegal" to handle money outside of accounting practices of Empire, but by keeping and holding your own money in your own ways so you are defining economic territory outside of the control of a centralized/tax system. Legions of accountants will oppose this, since the accountants are paid more by Empire.

roenxi 5y ago

All that is to say nothing of the numerous times it turns out the banking system is itself the criminal actor. Just looking at the most recent scandal listed on Wikipedia [0] I see Madoff near-single-handedly exceeded the 50 billion in missing cash with his ponzi scheme. It isn't like removing privacy stops crime, it just makes corrupting the government more profitable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_an...

mistrial9 5y ago

I don't accept the parent description here because it makes everyone instantly into "law obeying" or "outlaw" in the first pass. Things are not that simple and our own ontologies can't force them to be so. I invite the reader to broaden the thinking here.. There is not one bright line of LEGAL|ILLEGAL, not even close. Those whose job it is to refer to this line, may say so. The effort of those whose job depends on these definitions, does not make it so. Let's go way back to the wild days of "utterly different tribes interacting." You know, really basic things are really very different, between people. What is legal are base definitions, but differences grow from there and increase. A system of physical currency bridges that divide. Now let's think of "the Empire that takes taxes from all tribes." Of course there is an effort to standardize practices, so that Empire can collect vastly larger sums than any one or ten tribes, and use that money to build roads, forts, harbors and hire police/troops. With this aggrandized example pair, think of the role of cash, banking and transfer of money. It is not "illegal" to handle money outside of accounting practices of Empire, but by keeping and holding your own money in your own ways so you are defining economic territory outside of the control of a centralized/tax system. Legions of accountants will oppose this, since the accountants are paid more by Empire.