> ...an AML form that needs filling in if the sales go through...If that’s not overreach, I don’t know what is.

Absent a complete dismantling of AML oversight (and I do have empathy for those free market purists who want to wholesale toss out KYC and AML, but for now in practice we have to deal with what are on the books), these are difficult use cases to address. These kinds of edicts don’t usually say, “any retirees buying even economy cars must fill this out”, it is usually broadly applied like, “all car dealerships must do this for all transactions no exceptions”. And these laws are often a lagging reaction to various sham transactions uncovered as a result of crime busts.

Once you start weaving “reasonable” exceptions to address the overreach, the scammers start to come up with sham transactions that fit the exceptions filter. It’s a pretty fascinating problem.

There are many who would still object to a system where your mother doesn’t fill out a form. Instead her banking app pings her to confirm that she is purchasing a Yaris from the dealership (looking at the other comments here, it seems anonymous large transactions scattered through many people with otherwise clean records are a common laundering pattern, so metadata on the nature of the transactions might be one way to counter that kind of structuring, but alas that’s overreach for many), and uses her financial history in the background as the AML controls rails.

I’d love to see AML professionals participate in this thread to help us learn what they’re really facing. Assuming we have to put up with it for the time being, might as well design and make its implementation as low friction for lawful people as possible.

The Yaris is more expensive than 10k.

Simple as that. Allow people to shift value in larger units without AML and the crooks will use that route.

The AML form will not be the most unpleasant part of buying a Yaris.

No, sadly the American response is to advertise the idea of mass shootings and run detailed how-tos for any potential copycats out there. We obsess over the shooter's motivation and shower more attention on him then he'd ever gotten in his whole life.

Ignoring them would actually be better than what we do.

Well, no, not really - Bin Laden's stated goal was to commit attrocity so great against the American people that they will have to look into who those people are and why they did it, at which point hopefully they will discover their own government's work in the middle east and rise up against the government in protest.

Obviously, that didn't happen - I don't think your average American had any interest in looking into any of it, they just went "Arab people bad, let's invade", and of course accepted even greater invigilation and intrusion into their daily life and travel than ever before, all in the name of "safety". So yeah, terrorists made our lives miserable - but they failed to achieve their goals.

Is it though? I mean the US supported Bin Laden when he was fighting the Russians. Essentially we had a pet snake and complained when it bit us.

I think that the same case with Hamas which I believe was a mossad creation.

Most of these problems are self inflicted.

It's not really that, though. The people who won are those in power, at home. They were handed a pretext to increase their control and surveillance of their citizens.

>This money was already taxed when the individual who pays the babysitter received it. It's questionable whether the society as a whole benefits from taxing babysitters.

Replace babysitter with any government regulated and licensed profession and the motives become clearer. The government gets power by forcing things above the table because once above the table you can be forced to transact with who they want and how they want and those parties then become dependent upon government to a degree.

There's no such thing as cash under the table land surveying, for example.

> This money was already taxed when the individual who pays the babysitter received it.

And the money the retail clerk gets paid was already taxed when the customers spent it at the store. No, wait, it was already taxed when they got paid it! No, wait, it was already taxed when the customers of their employers spent it! No, wait——

...This whole idea of "money getting taxed multiple times" being a bad thing is absurd. Of course any given dollar going through the economy is going to get taxed many times. It's not about the dollars; it's about the transactions. And, ultimately, it's about funding the government so it can actually provide services, from sanitation all the way up to the military.

(Note that this is not an attempt to say that "the more taxation, the better"; that's obviously absurd, too. There are different levels of taxation that make sense for different people, different countries, different transactions, and different economic circumstances. There is no one simple magic rule you can follow that will always make things better when it comes to taxation, any more than there is with anything else economic or political.)

Man I wanted to write about georgism (see my comment on the parent's post where I talk about land parasites)

I am such a big georgist. Seriously, I might genuinely cry seeing how georgism isn't being implemented. it is one of the most superior policy systems but the parasites own so much that we don't even discuss about it

I was talking to my friend about georgism when he asked me if I was a capitalist/communist.. Basically in the end he just said, that he doesn't know about economics... so he doesn't know and they wanted to change the topic I feel like this might be a major hurdle where people think that economics is some huge mumbo jumbo when I feel like georgism and (index funds?) are two things that almost everyone should know given how simple they are.

Tariffs also make sense, since all that stuff is going through and declared to customs anyway, although it might be an economically inferior mechanism.

Either way the income tax is one of the most dystopian ways to collect tax as it pretty much relies on mass surveillance of domestic activities to be implemented fairly or effectively.

Nah, it's always the middle class that gets screwed. Poor can't be squeezed for more, rich have resources to fight back, the middle class ends up paying for everyone.

I think you're missing the point. I honestly don't think the rich people with hidden bank accounts really bothered those in power that much. Why would they; those people are their friends, in many cases.

People in power want more power. They want more control, even over average, law-abiding people. They want to moralize and tell you what you should be buying and consuming. Power over others is the goal; it's not incidental. The random Swiss bank account holder is the pretext, not the reason.

Would love to read more about these shadow states, these undeclared secessions. I've often wondered about cartels in countries like Colombia and Mexico and how they interact with the Government. I never thought about places like Brazil. Would welcome any recommendations on the subject.

This is kind of how all gangs work. The narco gangs were just so profitable they were able to take it to the next level, but even if you look at organized crime in the usa in the 40s, its still kind of a shadow state, just on a smaller scale.

If you knew the attitude those people had towards having "illegal small arms", you'd realize that isn't much of a barrier. It's kind of like the equivalent of bit torrent for them. Often it's easier to buy an illegal gun even if they are legally allowed to than to buy it legally used or new. They only avoid it because it's a conviction escalator if caught.

Also you can own guns on a non-immigrant visa as a resident if you have a local hunting license that are pretty easy to get and maintain. Even non residents can with hunting trips.

I checked your links and the word "terrorism" isn't mentioned once. There a single mention of some Al Qaeda members having accounts but it's pretty far from "proof of financing terrorism".

Catholics were targeted by the Nazis so seems unlikely

The fundamental goal of voting isn't to pick the best candidate, but to pick a consensus candidate in such a way that everyone feels their voice was or at least could have been heard. The distinction gets obscured because a lot of people describe their decision about who to vote for in terms of candidate quality, but if you scratch the surface, you'll find that most have cultural and ideological expectations in mind, and because those expectations are often incompatible we have to find a way to balance them that everyone will agree is fair.

> I’m not allowed to vote medicine FDA approvals because I’m not a doctor.

Seriously? That's probably because the FDA does not have the power to declare war, annex territories, or sign treaties on your behalf.

> Why are some topics “restricted” to the experts?

You're still allowed to go across borders and get medication that the FDA has not approved for your own personal use. This "restriction" isn't nearly as complete as you pretend it is.

It actually only binds what professionals can do not what citizens can do.

> But voting for president is not?

It's actually /any/ representative. Does that make it clearer for you?

If all the drug cartels in the world were limited to pawning copper scrap it would make me very happy indeed. I am also sure that it would benefit a large number of people who live in countries where cartel money dominates the economy.

I wouldn’t want to live in a world where the equivalent of the life’s work of its average citizen are traded causally like chips on a poker table and the only option to opt-out is to barter or starve. It would be hard to see the difference between that and feudalism.

Paying taxes doesn't make illegal things legal. However it hides evidence. Al Capon was got on tax evasion because exidence of that was easier to prove. Everyone knew is other crimes - but there wasn't enough evidence to convict.