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Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

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Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#581

Post by usernew »

colinsane wrote: post #329
onionisafruit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further and remove the "lawful" from that. If you pay me $50 it shouldn't matter to the payment processor whether I gave you a painting or a blow job in return.

if the payment processor knew the transaction was for a contract killing but processed it anyway, would they not be facilitating a crime (“aiding and abetting”)? are you saying we should specifically exempt payment processors from being held responsible for crimes that the rest of us — or any other business — could be found guilty of when performing the same functions? or are you suggesting something more broad: that…

They key is, the payment processor would not know, because they should not have the ability to ask. What's needed here, is a replacement for cash. Nothing more, nothing less. The digital dollar wallet, with a number and a passcode that only you have. And you can send that to another wallet number. That is the scope, and the complete scope. Bitcoin w/o the blockchain. This should be provided by a government, not a bank or a payment processor, and should be free - systems paid for by how we pay to mint physical money.

Fun story about the electronic toll pass, which I refuse to use and as a result get to places slower by never taking a toll road, in over 20 years.

We had tolls. You throw a couple of quarters in, and you go on your way. They were replaced by the electronic toll tag. Which is linked to your name, your credit card, and keeps a timestamped transaction history, forever.

There was a custody battle, and the divorced husband got the kids. The court looked at the wife's toll records, showing she comes home from work real late, and that would impact the quality of life for kids. Boy, I bet she never thought she'd lose her kids by using a toll tag. I bet she did think after the divorce she'd have to start coming home earlier and probably set it up with her manager. We'll never know.

Thing is, it should have been an anonymous electronic RFID wallet you reload, to replace the function of the quarter coin, and it became a government tracking device attached to your car.

Now answer me this: is your ISP responsible for you downloading that torrent full of child porn? Well, that's probably a bad example. Is Cisco, the maker of the network switch that ISP uses, legally responsible for it?

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#582

Post by synecdoche »

tchaffee wrote: post #307
zhfliz wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you know about/suspect it you report it. how do you know with 100% certainty/due process that this is indeed the case and it's not just your ML algorithm going crazy? people can also pay with physical money if they desire to do so.

What I asked is specific: if you know the money is for a hit job will you still accept the business and take your fee or is there a moral line you personally won't cross? Yes, it's the job of the police to investigate but do you want the freedom to not engage in business that you consider evil?

Attacking a significant part of someone's ability to function in society instead of attacking the the perceived injustice itself on its merits, by informing law enforcement, who's job is to carry out due process, suggests lack of confidence in the merits, or lack of trust in the justice system. It doesn't seem to argue for fairness, unless the one arguing for it accepts being at the receiving end of the argument.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#583

Post by cfn »

er4hn wrote: post #278
theturtletalks wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a clever setup. Using laws like the Anti-Money Laundering rules, the government nudges credit card companies to avoid high-risk businesses. These companies can then turn away any business without explaining why, all in the name of "security through obscurity." But when you think about it, this setup skips past important legal protections like due process and the presumption of innocence. It's like the government…

patio11 covers this a bit in a series of blog posts in his newsletter: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-... . Quoting a relevant paragraph from the AML post above: Much like KYC, AML policies are recursive stochastic management of crime. The state deputizes financial institutions to, in effect, change the physics of money. In particular, it wants them to situationally repudiate the fungibil…

He is right on point. I recently went through a KYC process and, due to a misunderstanding (and their lack of proper user support), I got kicked out of the service for a while.

What strikes me is how much financial information I had to provide them. Bank accounts, salary slips, savings accounts, etc. I am more than happy to provide that information to my government in the course of, say, a tax audit, but handing it off to a private company abroad just to buy a few shares is not proportionate. And who else will have access to that information? Is it going to be sold to the highest bidder?

The goverment is outsourcing its policing duties and, sooner or later, that will come back to bite us all when a leak outs all this information.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#584

Post by spaceman_2020 »

lottin wrote: post #301
anigbrowl wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to find you first, which is quite labor-intensive compared to just tracking and/or halting a person's financial transaction ability.

Really? Did you read that somewhere?

What's more scalable - querying a database and hitting "delete" on the payment channels of 100,000 people at a political rally, or hunting them down one-by-one across an entire country?

You're applying this to individuals. Which is never the real threat to any regime. It's always large groups of people.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#585

Post by jasonkhanlar »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #13

My concerns about a cashless society are the power it hands to a few oligopolistic credit card processors. Look at what happened to Pornhub. Regardless of whether you think Pornhub was in the wrong, it is striking that a business was cut off from global financial system by a small number of credit card companies. This was done without due process and under no countries laws. That should scare us at least a little.

BlackRock -> https://weforum.org/partners/#B JPMorgan Chase & Co. -> https://weforum.org/partners/#J Mastercard -> https://weforum.org/partners/#M PayPal -> https://weforum.org/partners/#P State Street -> https://weforum.org/partners/#S Visa -> https://weforum.org/partners/#V

etcetera

Inevitably, the financial system is rigged to collapse, and it's just a matter of time before critical mass of people realize what otherwise currently at least hundreds of thousands of people across 160 countries realize and continue to. Apes Together Strong released recently on Amazon and Vimeo offers a reasonable perspective that does not intentionally lie by omission, despite that so many details are omitted probably due to time constraints and keeping information introduction simple for everyone not yet aware.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#586

Post by kelnos »

theturtletalks wrote: post #500
er4hn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

patio11 covers this a bit in a series of blog posts in his newsletter: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-... . Quoting a relevant paragraph from the AML post above: Much like KYC, AML policies are recursive stochastic management of crime. The state deputizes financial institutions to, in effect, change the physics of money. In particular, it wants them to situationally repudiate the fungibil…

Deputizing payment processors to curb money laundering sounds good on paper. The issue is that the payment processors ban and deny processing for random, computer generated reasons. Their decision is unappealable even if you’re in the right and are selling perfectly legal items. Normally, if the government suspects you of money laundering, they build a case and bring it to court. The burden of proof is on them to pro…

> Visa and MC are well within their rights to deny any person for any reason

True, but as payment networks take on a more utility-like place in society (I'd argue they're already there), we shouldn't allow them to discriminate for arbitrary reasons.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#587

Post by hnthrowaway8860 »

mulmen wrote: post #523
hnthrowaway8860 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. People in the tech bubble don't understand their privilege. If everybody you interact with daily makes less than you then you are rich. Or how does you total compensation compare to that of the Walmart worker, the guy behind the McD counter, you hair dresser, the lady cleaning your office toilets or the waiter at your lunch restaurant or staffer at the bouldering gym? You think they get stocks?

I make nearly 300k a year and I can’t afford a house. I’m upper middle class at best. That’s an order of magnitude away from wealthy.

I seriously doubt that. I might bot be able to afford the exact house you most desire in the exact location that you desire. But if you restrict the definition of "rich" to only include people that can, then it's a very odd set that's left. I'm sure Elon desires a house on Mars, and he can't afford that either.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#588

Post by kelnos »

tchaffee wrote: post #261
onionisafruit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further and remove the "lawful" from that. If you pay me $50 it shouldn't matter to the payment processor whether I gave you a painting or a blow job in return.

And if it's for human trafficking? Payment processors are made up of people, and people have to have the freedom of drawing a moral line they won't cross. The real problem as I see it is that payment processing is a near monopoly. Better competition and smaller players would almost guarantee that every transaction except the most egregious would have a willing payment processor. Diversity is so often the best answer…

How do you know it's for human trafficking? Are you deputized by the government to act as judge and jury?

If you think something might be for human trafficking, you report it to law enforcement and let them deal with it. They'll gather evidence, build a case, make arrests, and hand things off to a DA/prosecutor who will file charges. Or, at some point, someone will decide it's not human trafficking, or at least that there isn't enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and drop the case.

All that is just due process, and a payment processor should not be given that responsibility. Both because I don't think they'd want it (it costs money and carries liability), and because we shouldn't trust them with it (private corporations shouldn't be allowed to apply the force of law).

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#589

Post by kelnos »

lazide wrote: post #364
codehalo wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know if the money was used for trafficking. Are you reading what you are writing?

Are you reading what you are writing? People can (and do) know things without having enough evidence to stand up in court. It’s how 99% of everything works, frankly. Banks right now are denying transactions because they ‘know’ it’s fraud, based on ML models and probability and no other evidence. If you require someone to not ‘know’ something until they have enough evidence they could prove it in court, they won’t be…

The entire point of this subthread is that this way of doing things is garbage. Banks shouldn't be allowed to deny transactions because they "know" it's fraud, but we've allowed our governments to force them into the position of doing law enforcement, something we should not want them to do. But people who think the government should outsource its responsibilities seem to think this kind of thing is a good idea.

Similarly, a payment processor shouldn't be allowed to deny a transaction because they "know" it's human trafficking. Evidence of such a thing should be given to law enforcement, and due process should determine what, if anything, is done.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#590

Post by kelnos »

lazide wrote: post #440
pdonis wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People can (and do) know things without having enough evidence to stand up in court. But "people" cannot use that knowledge to deny access to money to other people if they don't have evidence that can stand up in court. Yet banks can. That is wrong. That is giving banks too much power without accountability. Yes, some of the entities they cut off will "deserve it", at least in your eyes; but many others won't. We a…

Since banks are the ones who control access to money, and banks are doing it, who are these other people that you are talking about that aren’t allowed to do it? Banks are doing this at the behest of the gov’t. Oh, and those sanctions and the like - what do you think they actually look like paperwork wise? You seem to be arguing that what is, isn’t? If you want to say that what is, is bad, then hey I’m not arguing ag…

Sanctions are a different animal. I have no problem with a government producing a court order or other legal instrument ordering that some entity be cut off from the financial system. (Certainly sometimes this is done for political reasons, rather than cases where actual harm is being done, which is unfortunate, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be fully able to prevent things like that.)

KYC and AML laws require private corporations to deny people access to essential services for arbitrary reasons, without due process. These laws are garbage.

I don't think anyone is arguing that what is, isn't. They're arguing that it shouldn't be.

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