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If you don't understand the connection between money laundering and corruption, you certainly do not have a very strong understanding of the problem of corrupti

If you don't understand the connection between money laundering and corruption, you certainly do not have a very strong understanding of the problem of corruption. Also, good luck having "transparency measures" in a world where intermediaries are allowed immunity as long as they don't know stuff.

blagie 4y ago
Nice. Switch from discussion to insults. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is clearly an idiot who doesn't understand things. Yes, I do understand the connection between corruption and money laundering. That touches on one form of corruption. There are many others. If I were to eliminate corruption, I'd take measures like: - Extend laws like FOIA and Open Meetings, dramatically, so we have a much clearer understanding of government. In particular, I'd extend enforcement and penalties. Wilful violations should be criminal. - Extend such laws to cover non-profits as well. I should be able to ask a church, a university, or any other organization exempt from taxes for documents, or sit in on governance meetings. - Put in stronger whistleblower protections, and eliminate a lot of the power of NDA / non-disparage / etc agreements - Increase SEC-mandated transparency measures ... and so on. Those have nothing to do with money laundering, and to me, are strict wins. Very little of the corruption I've seen involves bags of money. Most corruption involves things like (not directly financial) preferential treatment. If I give you a raise you don't deserve, give your child preferential treatment at my school, or cut a sweet deal for your company, that doesn't show up in a Paypal transaction.
- candybar 4y ago
  > Very little of the corruption I've seen involves bags of money. As I said, that's precisely because the world works the way it does, rather than the way you wish it did. The bottleneck for lots of otherwise extremely profitable criminal endeavors is their reliance on traditional financial intermediaries. > That touches on one form of corruption. I'm talking about the type of corruption that keeps entire countries from developing economically. I don't know what you're on about. And no, your series of suggestions, which amount to saying make the current regulations stronger, doesn't come close to closing a huge loophole created by giving blanket immunity to financial intermediaries. Edit: honestly it sounds like you ran into some unfortunate situation somewhere and hold a personal grudge. But that's not a particularly meaningful basis for policy recommendation, especially given that it's quite clear that you don't understand the domain particularly well. > Most corruption involves things like (not directly financial) preferential treatment. If I give you a raise you don't deserve, give your child preferential treatment at my school, or cut a sweet deal for your company, that doesn't show up in a Paypal transaction. Most corruption is like this when you live in a country where corruption isn't much of a problem.
  - blagie 4y ago
    With all due respect, you have no idea who I am, what my background is, where I lived, or what I know. If you wanted to argue facts, that'd be one thing. I could pull up citations. Personal attacks, I just don't feel like engaging with. I'm done here.
    - candybar 4y ago
      It's not that hard to infer that you know very little about the topic at hand, but you think you know, because reasons. Your comments remind me of the other time I had to engage with complete nonsense from someone who was oddly confident about their position, despite clearly having no idea they are talking about (to be fair, you're not nearly as bad as the other person, who was unironically arguing for freezing the entire global credit market to avoid the coming COVID apocalypse of small business failures) - just because you can put together some words that appear to make sense if you don't think deeply enough or have no context, doesn't mean the resulting output makes any sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687
      - blagie 4y ago
        Oh no! Someone's wrong on the internet! No, you can't infer how much someone knows about a topic, at least from the discussion here. You can infer they know something different than you do. That happens when you get a modern-day Republican and Democrat in the same room, and each believes the other to be an idiot. The same happens if people are from different countries, cultures, or hold different values. Groups develop groupthink, with a common set of information, logic, and conclusions. It's natural to assume anyone who doesn't share those is an idiot. My own experience is that they're often not idiots, and if I go in with an open mind, I often learn something (and quite often, we both do), although that's been harder with recent political polarization. Nowadays, discussions usually shift to people calling me an idiot if I don't line up 100% with their worldview. It's been rarer and rarer to have intelligent discussions. Perhaps my conclusions were wrong. They often are; on average, we're right about half the time in discussions, and that's fine. Perhaps yours are too. Perhaps we're right in different contexts (we might live in different countries, for example). However, where you took this discussion, neither of us has any chance of discovering what the other's opinions were informed by. If you doubt something I'm saying, you can ask for evidence, rather than assuming and insulting. Perhaps each of us might have learned something. In either case, that's as far as I'm willing to take this discussion. I nerd on topics like these for fun. Getting insulted is tiring and draining rather than fun. You're welcome to believe I'm an idiot. I propose we terminate this discussion. People are welcome to be wrong on the internet.

blagie 4y ago

Nice. Switch from discussion to insults. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is clearly an idiot who doesn't understand things. Yes, I do understand the connection between corruption and money laundering. That touches on one form of corruption. There are many others. If I were to eliminate corruption, I'd take measures like: - Extend laws like FOIA and Open Meetings, dramatically, so we have a much clearer understanding of government. In particular, I'd extend enforcement and penalties. Wilful violations should be criminal. - Extend such laws to cover non-profits as well. I should be able to ask a church, a university, or any other organization exempt from taxes for documents, or sit in on governance meetings. - Put in stronger whistleblower protections, and eliminate a lot of the power of NDA / non-disparage / etc agreements - Increase SEC-mandated transparency measures ... and so on. Those have nothing to do with money laundering, and to me, are strict wins. Very little of the corruption I've seen involves bags of money. Most corruption involves things like (not directly financial) preferential treatment. If I give you a raise you don't deserve, give your child preferential treatment at my school, or cut a sweet deal for your company, that doesn't show up in a Paypal transaction.

candybar 4y ago
> Very little of the corruption I've seen involves bags of money. As I said, that's precisely because the world works the way it does, rather than the way you wish it did. The bottleneck for lots of otherwise extremely profitable criminal endeavors is their reliance on traditional financial intermediaries. > That touches on one form of corruption. I'm talking about the type of corruption that keeps entire countries from developing economically. I don't know what you're on about. And no, your series of suggestions, which amount to saying make the current regulations stronger, doesn't come close to closing a huge loophole created by giving blanket immunity to financial intermediaries. Edit: honestly it sounds like you ran into some unfortunate situation somewhere and hold a personal grudge. But that's not a particularly meaningful basis for policy recommendation, especially given that it's quite clear that you don't understand the domain particularly well. > Most corruption involves things like (not directly financial) preferential treatment. If I give you a raise you don't deserve, give your child preferential treatment at my school, or cut a sweet deal for your company, that doesn't show up in a Paypal transaction. Most corruption is like this when you live in a country where corruption isn't much of a problem.
- blagie 4y ago
  With all due respect, you have no idea who I am, what my background is, where I lived, or what I know. If you wanted to argue facts, that'd be one thing. I could pull up citations. Personal attacks, I just don't feel like engaging with. I'm done here.
  - candybar 4y ago
    It's not that hard to infer that you know very little about the topic at hand, but you think you know, because reasons. Your comments remind me of the other time I had to engage with complete nonsense from someone who was oddly confident about their position, despite clearly having no idea they are talking about (to be fair, you're not nearly as bad as the other person, who was unironically arguing for freezing the entire global credit market to avoid the coming COVID apocalypse of small business failures) - just because you can put together some words that appear to make sense if you don't think deeply enough or have no context, doesn't mean the resulting output makes any sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687
    - blagie 4y ago
      Oh no! Someone's wrong on the internet! No, you can't infer how much someone knows about a topic, at least from the discussion here. You can infer they know something different than you do. That happens when you get a modern-day Republican and Democrat in the same room, and each believes the other to be an idiot. The same happens if people are from different countries, cultures, or hold different values. Groups develop groupthink, with a common set of information, logic, and conclusions. It's natural to assume anyone who doesn't share those is an idiot. My own experience is that they're often not idiots, and if I go in with an open mind, I often learn something (and quite often, we both do), although that's been harder with recent political polarization. Nowadays, discussions usually shift to people calling me an idiot if I don't line up 100% with their worldview. It's been rarer and rarer to have intelligent discussions. Perhaps my conclusions were wrong. They often are; on average, we're right about half the time in discussions, and that's fine. Perhaps yours are too. Perhaps we're right in different contexts (we might live in different countries, for example). However, where you took this discussion, neither of us has any chance of discovering what the other's opinions were informed by. If you doubt something I'm saying, you can ask for evidence, rather than assuming and insulting. Perhaps each of us might have learned something. In either case, that's as far as I'm willing to take this discussion. I nerd on topics like these for fun. Getting insulted is tiring and draining rather than fun. You're welcome to believe I'm an idiot. I propose we terminate this discussion. People are welcome to be wrong on the internet.