> I absolutely refuse to regress to the era where the mafia and cartel leaders ruled the streets and stood toe to toe with law enforcement Assuming you're talk

> I absolutely refuse to regress to the era where the mafia and cartel leaders ruled the streets and stood toe to toe with law enforcement Assuming you're talking about the US, this really only happened because of the dramatic increase in organized crime prosecutions in the 70s (mostly due to the departure of Hoover), the RICO act which significantly increased sentences for typical mafia activities like drugs/loansharking/extortion/etc, and the witness protection program which changed informing from a likely death sentence to a potential to turn a new leaf. Money laundering only became a crime in 1986, the original BSA mainly just introduced cash reporting requirements (which had a threshold that at the time was two times GDP per capita). Also things like carjacking, cigarette trafficking across states were made federal crimes which again made prosecution easier. "Follow the money" is touted as this law enforcement panacea but historically is not really that effective. Which is why for instance most major narcotics trafficking cases today almost always rely heavily on wiretaps and informants/government witnesses. And the now standard practice of adding money laundering charges to non drug cases really only started happening after 9/11. So in my opinion there is a lot of evidence that these laws have had rather limited benefits in terms of stopping crime but because of the erosion of the threshold due to inflation are having an increasingly large negative effect on privacy of regular people.