and this in itself bases itself on a whole pile of pre-assumptions about what's right and the proper scope of the state's and individuals' rights should me.
We argue heavily about the dangers of tax evasion but the fact that government consumption of GDP and spending worldwide is at near record levels doesn't deserve reconsideration?
We discuss how "dirty money" is laundered through real estate but how much discussion centers around the sorts of laws that make that dirty money become such in the first place. Many activities that require money laundering are extremely debatable in their illegality, but this gets put by the wayside because money laundering = automatically evil, intrusive laws of all types necessary to stamp it out.
Then there's the whole issue of simple privacy. Yes, maybe people should have a right to at least some financial privacy, even from governments and corporations, let alone their neighbors. Transparency has its benefits but when you've created a taxation and financial monitoring system so pervasively, parasitically intrusive that any private attempt at keeping ones financial assets is considered suspicious, then this might just be a problem with the system, not so much all of those who want a measure of privacy.
It's odd that many in the hacker news crowd, who supposedly value digtal privacy from intrusive ad tracking and the growing tendencies of surveillance capitalism seem to throw the entire underlying philosophy behind these notions right out the window when it comes to elements of financial privacy, for property or money.
and this in itself bases itself on a whole pile of pre-assumptions about what's right and the proper scope of the state's and individuals' rights should me.
We argue heavily about the dangers of tax evasion but the fact that government consumption of GDP and spending worldwide is at near record levels doesn't deserve reconsideration?
We discuss how "dirty money" is laundered through real estate but how much discussion centers around the sorts of laws that make that dirty money become such in the first place. Many activities that require money laundering are extremely debatable in their illegality, but this gets put by the wayside because money laundering = automatically evil, intrusive laws of all types necessary to stamp it out.
Then there's the whole issue of simple privacy. Yes, maybe people should have a right to at least some financial privacy, even from governments and corporations, let alone their neighbors. Transparency has its benefits but when you've created a taxation and financial monitoring system so pervasively, parasitically intrusive that any private attempt at keeping ones financial assets is considered suspicious, then this might just be a problem with the system, not so much all of those who want a measure of privacy.
It's odd that many in the hacker news crowd, who supposedly value digtal privacy from intrusive ad tracking and the growing tendencies of surveillance capitalism seem to throw the entire underlying philosophy behind these notions right out the window when it comes to elements of financial privacy, for property or money.