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The need for an address is incredibly outdated imo. Not just for banking but for anything. It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home lan

The need for an address is incredibly outdated imo. Not just for banking but for anything. It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number. I think there needs to be more discussion about how we move away from addresses to some other kind of basis for taxation, education, health, etc (not blockchain), a real answer that lets me declare my residency on the highest territorial level possible and transact electronically or to a physical location I pick

sandworm101 4y ago
Because just letting people pick where they want to be taxed/sued/regulated doesnt work. Laws change from one place to another. Where you live matters to which laws apply to you. Where your bank account lives matters to which laws apply to it. Would you rent a london appartment to someone if you might have to sue them in Quebec should they fail to pay rent?
- Avamander 4y ago
  I don't think OP necessarily meant what they said on an international scale. The first step would be to avoid the requirement when in the same city, state or country. To the extent possible, if there are legal reasons, maybe those should be reviewed. There are options for sure.
- literallycancer 4y ago
  Why would you have to sue them in Quebec? Legal persons work exactly like this. And they are able to rent stuff just fine, last time I checked.
Avamander 4y ago
> a real answer that lets me declare my residency on the highest territorial level possible and transact electronically or to a physical location I pick So a digital identity system needs to be implemented. Something akin to what quite a few countries have already implemented. I'm unsure why it would require more discussion at this point. It's not hypothetical science fiction without practical examples.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Well to start, the assholes using a South Dakota trust held by a Nevada LLC to run a Delaware corporation would have a harder time hiding their beneficial ownership and might have to pay taxes. Also the “mark of the beast” crowd is real, really loud and politically powerful.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    > Also the “mark of the beast” crowd is real, really loud and politically powerful. Can't that be bypassed by implementing the system but making it voluntary? That crowd is honestly quite unfathomable to me.
    - bragr 4y ago
      > It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. If it practically excludes people from transacting it kind of plays into the prophecy. That's how people go off on bank accounts and debit and credit cards as being the mark of the beast.
throwmeariver1 4y ago
Yes, you are living in le cyberspace.
Hendrikto 4y ago
> (not blockchain) Why not?
- billpg 4y ago
  Because blockchain solutions to anything are almost always awful. (And I'm unsure about needing the word "almost".)
  - FateOfNations 4y ago
    I always replace "blockchain" with "distributed ledger" and see if the idea still make any kind of sense (it rarely does).
  - White_Wolf 4y ago
    Awful? Ignoring the crypto coins, I'd love to see all spending/funds in for governments, ONG, non-profit orgs, (mass)media channels, public hospitals, all companies that have shareholders/sell shares, anything that runs on public funds and so on should be tracked via publicly available blockchains. You can probably see where I'm going with this. I have mixed feelings about banks, national banks, lenders, art trading, casinos, pawn shops and such though. I'm a bit worried about tracking private individuals at that extent because of these.
    - billpg 4y ago
      You can do that without a blockchain. Have all those orgs publish their accounts in a form that allows for anyone to make copies and to audit that the published versions don't get modified over time.
    - dbbk 4y ago
      Nothing about this requires the blockchain though. It's additional complexity for no gain.
bfz 4y ago
I'm not sure I have the faculties to address what bothers me about this comment, but there is so much tied to traditional society the comment seems to ignore. - Voting districts - obviously tied to physical land, with different styles of vote counting system per area, often according to local cultural needs. I come from a society where special voting considerations exist in order to achieve actual peace. Prior to that system being introduced, there was war. The right to vote and the manner in which the vote occurs is an essential and inalienable attribute of all democratic societies, often deeply saturated in historic customs taking centuries of diplomacy to achieve stability. - Public services - voting and taxation are directly related to policy in a local area. The tax that I pay my local council is accountable almost directly to me because I can schedule an appointment with the very people whom I elect to spend my taxes as I desire. My physical address in that locale entitles me to an opinion on the use of those taxes, and a stake in ensuring awareness of local policy, and that the policy works for myself and the people around me. - Land rights - a requirement for a physical address, or the alternative of no requirement for a physical address, (is/is not) an implicit endorsement of land ownership and encouraging long term placement of people within fixed communities. Community quality and composition varies greatly across every region of the world, and for folk spending most of their life inside cities, it is easy to forget the concept of a community exists. Establishing a physical local presence is essential for many kinds of growth, not least, starting a family and therefore the continued growth of a healthy society. So to summarize, I think what bothers me is that the only possible way to arrive at what the parent comment suggests would be to avoid participating or contributing to any of these essential traits of civil society, which is to say it is an opinion explicitly rooted in contributing to civic decay. It's not "incredibly outdated", a physical address comes with many essential implications that ought to be encouraged.
- sausagefeet 4y ago
  > So to summarize, I think what bothers me is that the only possible way to arrive at what the parent comment suggests would be to avoid participating or contributing to any of these essential traits of civil society I don't think this take is very realistic. Most people want to live in a home with a static address. They aren't doing it because they need an address to participate in society. However, there are people who are more nomadic and the physical address requirement for some things can be a challenge.
syshum 4y ago
I want politics and taxation to be more local in the smallest division practical, with extreme limits being placed on the power and scope of larger political organizations. In short I fully support US Style Federalism and oppose the move to make the US Federal Government all powerful If I was in the EU I would support sovereignty of the nation states,and oppose efforts to make the EU Government all powerful the move to make governments larger and all encompassing including calls for a 1 world government, are IMO a threat to individual freedom and will not have the desired effect you seem to think
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  Fun fact, US states have more freedom from the Federal government than EU member states have from the EU. US states can basically just ignore or refuse to enforce the federal law with little to no consequences (immigration sanctuary states/cities, Texas no longer treating suppressors as NFA items, etc.), but EU member states can't. EU law is binding to all of them and there's no escape from it.
  - derriz 4y ago
    That's quite a stretch. US states cannot just ignore federal law - unless the federal law is deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court - a federal institution. There are effectively no limits to US federal powers - while the treaties governing the EU enshrine the principle of subsidiarity[1] - and the powers granted to the EU are specified in treaties. A topical and obvious example is that the current Roe vs. Wade controversy just couldn't happen in the EU - as it's unrelated to trade or competition, the EU has no competence in this area. Or the idea of the EU imposing a health care system like the Affordable Care Act or deciding drug laws or gun control laws is unthinkable. An individual cannot be arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for breaking EU law the way the feds can do in the US, regardless of state law. There are no EU prisons. By any measure the US is far more centralized than the EU - money is power as they say and 64% of government receipts in the US are at the federal level while the EU budget represents only 2% of government spending in the block. [1] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/the-principle-of-subsidiarity https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/the-pri...
asah 4y ago
Agree it shouldn't be a hard requirement, but fyi a secure physical address is pretty valuable for re-establishing relationships if electronic communication breaks down or is lost.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  This sounds like something that could be provided as a notary style service. A letter addressed to an individual, only to be handed over on positive ID, care of local business providing this service. Fun fact: The US Postal Service offers this service, for free. (Though not in an ideal way; they'll just match name to ID, don't uniquely identify an individual. All that would need would be to write a drivers license or such number on the letter too, and the USPS to confirm that.)
  - asah 4y ago
    when handling substantial matters (big$, felony accusations, etc), I question the definition of "positive ID."
beamatronic 4y ago
Voting out all elected government officials over age 30 would be a good start to a better tomorrow.
timthorn 4y ago
> It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number. Or today, when companies assume that everyone has a mobile phone - if not a smartphone?
alar44 4y ago
I don't think there needs to be any discussion. The 10k programmers living as nomads can get a PO box. Problem solved. No need to reorganize society for the 0.001%.
- caymanjim 4y ago
  Things you can't do with a PO box and no fixed residential address: get a driver's license; vote; prove to the last place you were resident that you're no longer resident and don't owe them taxes anymore; get insurance (vehicle, medical options severely limited); get a PO box in the first place.
  - d0gsg0w00f 4y ago
    Do we want people with no address voting? I could think of all kinds of problems if people could just roam around voting in places where they have no skin in the game.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  This is incorrect. I am a digital nomad w/ a PO box and it's not accepted by many financial institutions that do KYC. My credit union requires me to list a "real" address. My credit card company required me to list a permanent address as well. Any time there's a fraud alert on my of my accounts & I have to provide proof of residence, there's a good chance submitting a document w/ my PO box will not be accepted. I use my dad's address for my permanent residence. But since I'm not on the utility bills, it can be hard to provide true residence. In one case, I had to write up a lease agreement & buy renter's insurance to get one of my accounts unlocked. They wouldn't accept a bank statement, my driver's license, or voter registration card. It was a real pain in the ass, and resolving it took a good 2 weeks.
  - rigrassm 4y ago
    I do this exact same thing. Though, I have the benefit of sharing a name with my father so proof of residency had had never been an issue. It feels like cheating but it's so damn convenient lol.
Spooky23 4y ago
I don’t see it until biometrics and sovereign identity are a thing. The only people who really benefit are really rich people and really poor people. It also creates a dozens of hundreds of truly difficult problems. In the US, people pitched a fit when the tax authority started requiring facial verification for sign in to access sensitive, vulnerable to fraud records, so it ain’t happening here. The really rich people don’t really care, and nobody really cares about the really poor. Nobody cares in the least about the elderly. Everyone else has a home and has more to lose to the rampant fraud that happens when you make things like this easier.
Vladimof 4y ago
> It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number. Lots of places still require a phone number (many email services do for example).
refurb 4y ago
It's not outdated in the least. The vast majority of people have an address. Most people don't move that often. Hell, most people don't live outside the country they were born in. Seem odd to design a whole new system for an edge case?
intellix 4y ago
Massively agree, this has been annoying me for a while now. I'm only renting and the need for everyone to know my address which i'll only reside for a couple of months is so pointless. Also the need for people to see some utility bill to verify that i'm there is problematic when they're all in my landlords name.

sandworm101 4y ago

Because just letting people pick where they want to be taxed/sued/regulated doesnt work. Laws change from one place to another. Where you live matters to which laws apply to you. Where your bank account lives matters to which laws apply to it. Would you rent a london appartment to someone if you might have to sue them in Quebec should they fail to pay rent?

Avamander 4y ago
I don't think OP necessarily meant what they said on an international scale. The first step would be to avoid the requirement when in the same city, state or country. To the extent possible, if there are legal reasons, maybe those should be reviewed. There are options for sure.
literallycancer 4y ago
Why would you have to sue them in Quebec? Legal persons work exactly like this. And they are able to rent stuff just fine, last time I checked.

Avamander 4y ago

> a real answer that lets me declare my residency on the highest territorial level possible and transact electronically or to a physical location I pick So a digital identity system needs to be implemented. Something akin to what quite a few countries have already implemented. I'm unsure why it would require more discussion at this point. It's not hypothetical science fiction without practical examples.

Spooky23 4y ago
Well to start, the assholes using a South Dakota trust held by a Nevada LLC to run a Delaware corporation would have a harder time hiding their beneficial ownership and might have to pay taxes. Also the “mark of the beast” crowd is real, really loud and politically powerful.
- Avamander 4y ago
  > Also the “mark of the beast” crowd is real, really loud and politically powerful. Can't that be bypassed by implementing the system but making it voluntary? That crowd is honestly quite unfathomable to me.
  - bragr 4y ago
    > It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. If it practically excludes people from transacting it kind of plays into the prophecy. That's how people go off on bank accounts and debit and credit cards as being the mark of the beast.

throwmeariver1 4y ago

Yes, you are living in le cyberspace.

Hendrikto 4y ago

> (not blockchain) Why not?

billpg 4y ago
Because blockchain solutions to anything are almost always awful. (And I'm unsure about needing the word "almost".)
- FateOfNations 4y ago
  I always replace "blockchain" with "distributed ledger" and see if the idea still make any kind of sense (it rarely does).
- White_Wolf 4y ago
  Awful? Ignoring the crypto coins, I'd love to see all spending/funds in for governments, ONG, non-profit orgs, (mass)media channels, public hospitals, all companies that have shareholders/sell shares, anything that runs on public funds and so on should be tracked via publicly available blockchains. You can probably see where I'm going with this. I have mixed feelings about banks, national banks, lenders, art trading, casinos, pawn shops and such though. I'm a bit worried about tracking private individuals at that extent because of these.
  - billpg 4y ago
    You can do that without a blockchain. Have all those orgs publish their accounts in a form that allows for anyone to make copies and to audit that the published versions don't get modified over time.
  - dbbk 4y ago
    Nothing about this requires the blockchain though. It's additional complexity for no gain.

bfz 4y ago

I'm not sure I have the faculties to address what bothers me about this comment, but there is so much tied to traditional society the comment seems to ignore. - Voting districts - obviously tied to physical land, with different styles of vote counting system per area, often according to local cultural needs. I come from a society where special voting considerations exist in order to achieve actual peace. Prior to that system being introduced, there was war. The right to vote and the manner in which the vote occurs is an essential and inalienable attribute of all democratic societies, often deeply saturated in historic customs taking centuries of diplomacy to achieve stability. - Public services - voting and taxation are directly related to policy in a local area. The tax that I pay my local council is accountable almost directly to me because I can schedule an appointment with the very people whom I elect to spend my taxes as I desire. My physical address in that locale entitles me to an opinion on the use of those taxes, and a stake in ensuring awareness of local policy, and that the policy works for myself and the people around me. - Land rights - a requirement for a physical address, or the alternative of no requirement for a physical address, (is/is not) an implicit endorsement of land ownership and encouraging long term placement of people within fixed communities. Community quality and composition varies greatly across every region of the world, and for folk spending most of their life inside cities, it is easy to forget the concept of a community exists. Establishing a physical local presence is essential for many kinds of growth, not least, starting a family and therefore the continued growth of a healthy society. So to summarize, I think what bothers me is that the only possible way to arrive at what the parent comment suggests would be to avoid participating or contributing to any of these essential traits of civil society, which is to say it is an opinion explicitly rooted in contributing to civic decay. It's not "incredibly outdated", a physical address comes with many essential implications that ought to be encouraged.

sausagefeet 4y ago
> So to summarize, I think what bothers me is that the only possible way to arrive at what the parent comment suggests would be to avoid participating or contributing to any of these essential traits of civil society I don't think this take is very realistic. Most people want to live in a home with a static address. They aren't doing it because they need an address to participate in society. However, there are people who are more nomadic and the physical address requirement for some things can be a challenge.

syshum 4y ago

I want politics and taxation to be more local in the smallest division practical, with extreme limits being placed on the power and scope of larger political organizations. In short I fully support US Style Federalism and oppose the move to make the US Federal Government all powerful If I was in the EU I would support sovereignty of the nation states,and oppose efforts to make the EU Government all powerful the move to make governments larger and all encompassing including calls for a 1 world government, are IMO a threat to individual freedom and will not have the desired effect you seem to think

sgjohnson 4y ago
Fun fact, US states have more freedom from the Federal government than EU member states have from the EU. US states can basically just ignore or refuse to enforce the federal law with little to no consequences (immigration sanctuary states/cities, Texas no longer treating suppressors as NFA items, etc.), but EU member states can't. EU law is binding to all of them and there's no escape from it.
- derriz 4y ago
  That's quite a stretch. US states cannot just ignore federal law - unless the federal law is deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court - a federal institution. There are effectively no limits to US federal powers - while the treaties governing the EU enshrine the principle of subsidiarity[1] - and the powers granted to the EU are specified in treaties. A topical and obvious example is that the current Roe vs. Wade controversy just couldn't happen in the EU - as it's unrelated to trade or competition, the EU has no competence in this area. Or the idea of the EU imposing a health care system like the Affordable Care Act or deciding drug laws or gun control laws is unthinkable. An individual cannot be arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for breaking EU law the way the feds can do in the US, regardless of state law. There are no EU prisons. By any measure the US is far more centralized than the EU - money is power as they say and 64% of government receipts in the US are at the federal level while the EU budget represents only 2% of government spending in the block. [1] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/the-principle-of-subsidiarity https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/the-pri...

asah 4y ago

Agree it shouldn't be a hard requirement, but fyi a secure physical address is pretty valuable for re-establishing relationships if electronic communication breaks down or is lost.

yencabulator 4y ago
This sounds like something that could be provided as a notary style service. A letter addressed to an individual, only to be handed over on positive ID, care of local business providing this service. Fun fact: The US Postal Service offers this service, for free. (Though not in an ideal way; they'll just match name to ID, don't uniquely identify an individual. All that would need would be to write a drivers license or such number on the letter too, and the USPS to confirm that.)
- asah 4y ago
  when handling substantial matters (big$, felony accusations, etc), I question the definition of "positive ID."

beamatronic 4y ago

Voting out all elected government officials over age 30 would be a good start to a better tomorrow.

timthorn 4y ago

> It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number. Or today, when companies assume that everyone has a mobile phone - if not a smartphone?

alar44 4y ago

I don't think there needs to be any discussion. The 10k programmers living as nomads can get a PO box. Problem solved. No need to reorganize society for the 0.001%.

caymanjim 4y ago
Things you can't do with a PO box and no fixed residential address: get a driver's license; vote; prove to the last place you were resident that you're no longer resident and don't owe them taxes anymore; get insurance (vehicle, medical options severely limited); get a PO box in the first place.
- d0gsg0w00f 4y ago
  Do we want people with no address voting? I could think of all kinds of problems if people could just roam around voting in places where they have no skin in the game.
devoutsalsa 4y ago
This is incorrect. I am a digital nomad w/ a PO box and it's not accepted by many financial institutions that do KYC. My credit union requires me to list a "real" address. My credit card company required me to list a permanent address as well. Any time there's a fraud alert on my of my accounts & I have to provide proof of residence, there's a good chance submitting a document w/ my PO box will not be accepted. I use my dad's address for my permanent residence. But since I'm not on the utility bills, it can be hard to provide true residence. In one case, I had to write up a lease agreement & buy renter's insurance to get one of my accounts unlocked. They wouldn't accept a bank statement, my driver's license, or voter registration card. It was a real pain in the ass, and resolving it took a good 2 weeks.
- rigrassm 4y ago
  I do this exact same thing. Though, I have the benefit of sharing a name with my father so proof of residency had had never been an issue. It feels like cheating but it's so damn convenient lol.

Spooky23 4y ago

I don’t see it until biometrics and sovereign identity are a thing. The only people who really benefit are really rich people and really poor people. It also creates a dozens of hundreds of truly difficult problems. In the US, people pitched a fit when the tax authority started requiring facial verification for sign in to access sensitive, vulnerable to fraud records, so it ain’t happening here. The really rich people don’t really care, and nobody really cares about the really poor. Nobody cares in the least about the elderly. Everyone else has a home and has more to lose to the rampant fraud that happens when you make things like this easier.

Vladimof 4y ago

> It's the equivalent of when places used to want to to give a home landline number. Lots of places still require a phone number (many email services do for example).

refurb 4y ago

It's not outdated in the least. The vast majority of people have an address. Most people don't move that often. Hell, most people don't live outside the country they were born in. Seem odd to design a whole new system for an edge case?

intellix 4y ago

Massively agree, this has been annoying me for a while now. I'm only renting and the need for everyone to know my address which i'll only reside for a couple of months is so pointless. Also the need for people to see some utility bill to verify that i'm there is problematic when they're all in my landlords name.