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Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. With AML you are assumed guilty anytime you possess money, or participate in any financial tr

Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. With AML you are assumed guilty anytime you possess money, or participate in any financial transactions, or have any assets. If called upon to do so you will have to prove your innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, and if you fail to do so, your assets or money can be permanently seized. All of this occurs without any form of due process. The government actually wouldn’t be able to make these regulations for itself, and the only way it manages to make AML laws work is with a complete governance anti-pattern. Where they simply tell the banks that if they unknowingly allow any “money laundering”, then they will be punished, rather than actually creating some regulations for them to follow. So the institutions just create these kafkaesque nightmares themselves, because they don’t really care about who gets screwed over by them. The worse part is that money laundering is trivially easy for anybody who wants to do it, it just costs money to do the compliance properly. The only people who get thwarted by these laws are immigrants who do a lot of remittance, and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. Two groups that society generally doesn’t care at all about protecting. I personally make a lot of money off the AML compliance industry, so I’m not really complaining for my own sake. But these laws are the intended outcome of “anti-terrorism” and “anti-tax-evasion” policies.

lawlessone 3y ago
>and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. They should be fine as long as they show receipts.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  I really hope this is a joke lol. The amount of paperwork required today is far in excess of anything required pre-GFC. Basically any wealth acquired prior to then is up for confiscation, and this happens all the time. But again, nobody cares, because injustices delivered upon the rich are fine. Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t.
  - ls612 3y ago
    >Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t. Do you have an example of what you mean by this? Like they will say "well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house, go die alone in the gutter"? Because I find that hard to believe. Most people with wealth have an obvious reason for that wealth which is documented in the formal bureaucratic system.
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      > well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house Yes this is basically how it works. The only contrived thing about my example is that we’re talking about one house a person inherited, rather than millions of dollars in assets. Here’s a well documented example of this happening in real life https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-ba... > A federal judge ruled Friday that the FBI’s seizure of tens of millions of dollars in cash and valuables from 700 safe-deposit boxes in Beverly Hills did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights. > The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner endorsed law-enforcement tactics that tested the limits of how aggressive federal agents can be in seizing money and property in the absence of any evidence that the owner committed a crime. > The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions. Of course, nobody cares, because those people are rich, so they probably didn’t deserve that money anyway…
      - vkou 3y ago
        I assure you, rich people care very deeply about having their money taken away, and are, as a class, incredibly litigious, and are often politically connected. I am not very impressed by implications that of the truly downtrodden and powerless people in the United States, the 'rich' are anywhere near the front of that line.
pdonis 3y ago
> Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. But they were produced through the democratic process: we have told our elected representatives that we want them to Do Something about things like organized crime and international terrorism, and these laws are part of the Something That Was Done. The laws will not change unless and until we the people change the incentives we give our elected representatives.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate [1] [2]. It could also be argued that such laws and policies have mainly been enacted by states in order to eliminate threats to their authority, legitimacy, or continued existence, through financial control. Which may or may not be the case. Just pointing out that states, even liberal democracies, may not always be all about expressing the will of their constituents. [1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate If we the people wanted something different, we would be voting differently. The fact that we continue to vote for the same incumbents means they are doing what we want.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      Individual House Representatives usually have high approval ratings from people who voted them in while Congress as a whole has a terrible approval rating. It's not quite as simple as seeing historical election results and saying everybody is necessarily happy with their representation.

lawlessone 3y ago

>and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. They should be fine as long as they show receipts.

AmericanChopper 3y ago
I really hope this is a joke lol. The amount of paperwork required today is far in excess of anything required pre-GFC. Basically any wealth acquired prior to then is up for confiscation, and this happens all the time. But again, nobody cares, because injustices delivered upon the rich are fine. Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t.
- ls612 3y ago
  >Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t. Do you have an example of what you mean by this? Like they will say "well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house, go die alone in the gutter"? Because I find that hard to believe. Most people with wealth have an obvious reason for that wealth which is documented in the formal bureaucratic system.
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    > well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house Yes this is basically how it works. The only contrived thing about my example is that we’re talking about one house a person inherited, rather than millions of dollars in assets. Here’s a well documented example of this happening in real life https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-ba... > A federal judge ruled Friday that the FBI’s seizure of tens of millions of dollars in cash and valuables from 700 safe-deposit boxes in Beverly Hills did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights. > The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner endorsed law-enforcement tactics that tested the limits of how aggressive federal agents can be in seizing money and property in the absence of any evidence that the owner committed a crime. > The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions. Of course, nobody cares, because those people are rich, so they probably didn’t deserve that money anyway…
    - vkou 3y ago
      I assure you, rich people care very deeply about having their money taken away, and are, as a class, incredibly litigious, and are often politically connected. I am not very impressed by implications that of the truly downtrodden and powerless people in the United States, the 'rich' are anywhere near the front of that line.

pdonis 3y ago

> Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. But they were produced through the democratic process: we have told our elected representatives that we want them to Do Something about things like organized crime and international terrorism, and these laws are part of the Something That Was Done. The laws will not change unless and until we the people change the incentives we give our elected representatives.

ElFitz 3y ago
Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate [1] [2]. It could also be argued that such laws and policies have mainly been enacted by states in order to eliminate threats to their authority, legitimacy, or continued existence, through financial control. Which may or may not be the case. Just pointing out that states, even liberal democracies, may not always be all about expressing the will of their constituents. [1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate If we the people wanted something different, we would be voting differently. The fact that we continue to vote for the same incumbents means they are doing what we want.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Individual House Representatives usually have high approval ratings from people who voted them in while Congress as a whole has a terrible approval rating. It's not quite as simple as seeing historical election results and saying everybody is necessarily happy with their representation.