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1. I would not call it consensus, for example the top comment on this article disagrees with that ‘consensus’ 2. Here are two nuanced arguments about each that
by dan-robertson 4y ago
1. I would not call it consensus, for example the top comment on this article disagrees with that ‘consensus’
2. Here are two nuanced arguments about each that I’ve seen:
Communications privacy is good in the small and mirrors the world with earlier technology with some differences. In the large it can allow maintaining much larger conspiracies than were previously possible with private meetings. One may consider it acceptable from a privacy and free speech perspective to allow secret communication in small groups but less secret communication in large groups. Indeed for political speech in a modern democracy you generally want it in public anyway, and WhatsApp and signal have small group sizes so you get this anyway. For very large groups, leaks seem hard to avoid. A counter argument might be that militaries / companies are in some sense like conspiracies in the way they want to keep state/trade secrets. However in typical democracies there may be document release schedules/transparency laws and internal company information may be revealed through patents, subpoenas, or just plain old leaks.
The money argument is that whereas people typically have similar amounts of private speech, some people have many orders of magnitude more money than others. Privacy for communication is then reasonably fairly distributed across the population (though those with more to hide may gain more) whereas privacy for money is mostly an advantage for the people with lots of it. Giving the people who are already rich and powerful this kind of advantage in avoiding scrutiny/taxes may not be considered fair or desirable. A counter argument could be that it is unfair for the rich to be exposed to such increased scrutiny merely because of their money.
- igorkraw 4y ago> A counter argument could be that it is unfair for the rich to be exposed to such increased scrutiny merely because of their money I think it is very fine to discriminate against people based in things that give them enormous power, quality if life and they can easily get rid of. Unlike being discriminated and scrutinized for having no money , you can easily escape scrutiny due to wealth by giving away wealth with no meaningful reduction of quality of life (after a given point)
- terryf 4y agoReally? You think there is an ending to a sentence that starts with: "I think it is very fine to discriminate against people based in.." That's actually good?
- igorkraw 4y agoYes. "It is very fine to discriminate against people based on them behaving like assholes" is another one. If you can't point to the injustice in the discrimination and are reduced to claiming all discrimination is bad you have run out of arguments
- sgt101 4y agoIt's really not because of their money, it's because of how they got their money and what they are doing with it and the great harms that accrue to everyone else due to those processes.
- Fnoord 4y agoTrue, after a certain amount one has enough money, and the next goal becomes power. One person's power is directly opposed to the power of the rest. And more often than not, untraceable money is a tool to achieve more (unwarranted) power.
- balderdash 4y agoI’m not sure sure I agree with the premise that one’s utility for financial privacy is correlated with how much money they have. In fact I’d say people with lots of money are most able to cope with the costs associated with their privacy being violated.
- irusensei 4y agoI’d add that its a very rose colored illusion that is totally the opposite of what happens. KYC/AML guidelines are often used to banish poor people from the financial system. I’m by no means rich and I’m sometimes getting into KYC hell because my passport have the wrong color. Banks will often flag poor people for the slight things and demand impossible documents. You send the required documents and they keep saying that’s not enough and requesting more and more documents. I had this debit card company asking me for criminal records (never committed a crime, financial or not) in english and translated by a trusted entity. I’m from a portuguese speaking country and live in a slavic country. I don’t think they were actually expecting me to send those impossible documents and more like the platform wanted me out. Banks will ban you because you are not worth the risk. They call this “de-risking”. Meanwhile rich people can just hire someone to handle the requests and as we often see in billion dollars money laundering scandals the bank might even turn a blind eye for a while if there is profit in it. To add fuel to the fire many KYC/AML proponents will justify this abuse by trying to say in a polite manner that its your fault for having born in the wrong place. I’ve actually seen fervent self proclaimed anti-racist pro-immigration people agree with this kind of abuse. Racism and xenophobia are alive, well and officially sponsored by the general population through the guise of financial crime laws.
- dan-robertson 4y agoI don’t think it’s really intended for KYC/AML/ATF to keep poor people out of the system, though it is true that in practice they mean it’s hard to have access to the financial system if eg you’re homeless or your name is Mohammed and you send remittances to your family abroad. And banks have a shared ‘blacklist’ of people who cause them compliance pains so those people who have a hard time at one bank can end up having a hard time at many other banks.
- gws 4y agoIn reality it is exactly the opposite. The very rich can pay advisors to create all the privacy schemes they want, “optimize” their taxes, etc. Financial privacy would benefit the middle class way more than the very rich.