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Comment by syshum | Hacker News Reader

Why is that an issue?

I am sure I will get downvoted to hell here because HN is full of Authoritarians, but money "laundering" should not even need to be done, I should not have to have a Special stamp to trade gold, or report money transfers to the government, etc

It is a prime example of government creating a problem (a black market) for things that should not be illegal in the first place (drugs and other items), then having new laws that infringe further on peoples freedom to "solve" the problem which itself creates even more problems

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Please don't downvote-bait or call names in arguments or take HN into ideological flamewar (edit: or on generic tangents). All three (edit: four) of those things are in the site guidelines, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and following them from now on, we'd appreciate it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819642.

Outside of maybe "naming calling" by referring to the majority of the commenters as "Authoritarian" which seems to be a factually accurate statement not really name-calling, how is my comment a violation of the rules.

I enjoy commenting here, and I have no intention on taking HN into an ideological flamewar, it is my honest take on that status of Money Laundering laws, and I would love to have an honest and frank conversation on why Money Laundering laws are bad for society,

Why is that type of conversation prohibited on this site? And if it is why was the thread allowed at all where Pro-Money Laundering laws (an objective authoritarian position) is allowed to be freely discussed without censor, but my counter position is not.

Yes, "HN is full of Authoritarians" is name-calling, and the site guidelines ask you not to do that.

Generic ideological tangents are moderated on this site because they're off topic. They're off topic because they don't gratify intellectual curiosity (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Why don't they do that? Because they're tedious and predictable, and usually end up being nasty.

Not downvoting you, but free untraceable and non-blockable money transactions enable some dangerous criminal business models in a large scale. Uber-like assassinations, heavy drug dealing, organ harvesting, cp, human trafficking, etc.

Pablo Escobar was making billions, but had to bury them in ground to rot, because he couldn't move them into assets efficiently.

> free untraceable and non-blockable money transactions enable some dangerous criminal business models

> Pablo Escobar was making billions, but had to bury them in ground to rot, because he couldn't move them into assets efficiently.

Doesn't that highlight the ultimate pointlessness of anti-laundering laws? Despite Esboar's inability to store his assets in a bank, his activities weren't actually stopped.

What benefit do the laws actively provide?

> What benefit do the laws actively provide?

Just like a government can distort a market through intervention, so can cartels distort a government through corruption. Unlike gang members, most operatives in a government or political campaign need tons of clean money for ad spending, transportation, and paying for venues, campaigners, etc. Most of the individuals and businesses involved will not take dirty money for liability reasons (at least in the US).

The purpose is to prevent some of the most violent organizations from getting a foothold in politics that makes their underlying activities even harder to stop.

No, not at all. Escobar is a really good case on why money laundering laws are good. Escobar had BILLIONS of dollars that he could not easily move around and this limited his ability to influence elections and politicians and straight outright control whole countries. Not having the ability to easily drop thousands of dollars into the pockets of thousands of politicians saved whole countries from be swallowed up by people like Escobar. Yes, he could it on a limited scale but if he had not been hindered by anti-money laundering, Escobar would have been much worse.

Yeah, only the CIA and other secretive government orgs are allowed to launder money! For the good of the nation.

Would you agree that money laundering is an issue when politicians have to conceal bribery?

Political Bribery is a symptom of too much consolidation of power, and/or too much power in government in general

Systems of distributed power, with robust checks and balances are the solution to political corruption, not authoritarian money laundering laws

Im not sure that’s a hard rule. China strong power consolidation, India is more distributed and the central gov is relative to China weaker, but while both suffer forms of corruption, India is above and beyond what you’d experience in China, from talking to folks familiar with both places.

I am not really familiar with India's government but I suspect they suffer from the same problem that hard core "States Rights" people in the US Suffer from

When I say Distributed power, with Checks and balances, that does not simply mean small regional Fifedom's with unlimited power. I suspect India's weak central government has limited power over the local regional governments making them very corruptible.

"Distributed power" is not synonymous with "small regional power"

One of the things the US gets right is neither that state nor the federal government is "more powerful" than the other, each have their place, and both can in different circumstances overrule each other, this has the benifiet of ensuring States do not go crazy with power and corruption, and that the feds do not go crazy with power and corruption

Over the last 200 years however we have consolidated ALOT of power into the Federal government, this is making things very very bad if you enjoy and prefer an individualist society with personal liberty

Obviously if nothing is illegal than we don't need "authoritarian money laundering laws". But I'm sure we can agree on at least some things that should be illegal. Should hitmen be able to launder money?

And I need to point out that it would be extremely difficult to decentralize authority so much that bribery is completely impractical without it being illegal. In such a society where there is no legal friction associated with bribery, what's to stop rich people from bribing police officers?

> what’s to stop rich people from bribing police officers?

In white collar crime such bribery is extremely common.

Not sure why this got downvoted. The college admissions scandal is about something that has been going on for years with no consequences, and most insider traders get away with it at will, not to mention all sorts of tax evasion, payroll fraud, etc.

Notably, an employer committing payroll fraud was recently brought to justice in Michigan by the new AG. It made headlines because such crimes are virtually never subject to law enforcement attention.

The context of the discussion was whether or not bribery should be illegal, I think it was already generally accepted that bribery is a problem that exists. I didn't personally see the relevance of your initial comment.

> It made headlines because such crimes are virtually never subject to law enforcement attention.

This is the sort of claim that needs citation. I'm not trying to argue with you, but the only support for this statement is your authority on the subject, and since you speak anonymously your authority is very limited. This also applies to your initial comment.

I didn't downvote you, and I actually agree with you that corruption often goes unpunished, but since you asked I thought I might point it out. In my experience, my comments on the internet that lack support don't get a good reception.

Agreed. Those who write and enforce the laws will always know how to circumvent them. Given the endless list of examples, I'm not sure why the rest of continue to have so much (blind) faith in what boils down to (the failure of) self-policing.

Endangered species. Blood diamonds. Child labor. Sex slaves. Chemical weapons. Just some of the "other items" off the top of my mind that people profit from and which are helped by money laundering.

Because:

Money from illegal activities (drug trade, human trafficking, etc.) is used to buy gold mined illegally which entails a few questionable practices and effects (difficult and hazardous conditions, enviro concerns, cartel involvement, etc.). The gold is then refined and made to look like legit mined gold and thus “launders” the dirty money.

In terms of total dollars, the biggest money launderer is the US government. Imagine if we could trace all those funds transfers to warlords, arms dealers, terrorist groups, etc.

> HN is full of Authoritarians

That's...definitely not how I'd stereotype HN posters in general.

He didn't stereotype HN posters.

He just said there's a lot of authoritarians on HN, which I believe to be factually correct: most libertarian-oriented comments on HN get downvoted into the ground.

It doesn't take even a majority to do that, just a large enough rabid mob.

> most libertarian-oriented comments on HN get downvoted into the ground

Speaking of rabid mobs, most anti-capitalism-oriented comments get voted into the ground too. It's almost as if HN has a large group of people who are trying to discourage political fights.

See, I would have said that the "rabid mob" on HN is biased towards free-market libertarianism. The Silicon Valley crowd loves it.

From experience, there are fare less libertarians in the "Silicon valley crowd" than many believe. Silicon Valley average tech. employees crowd is largely made of left-wingers, most of which are as far away from classical liberalism as one can be without being a card-carrying communist.

As a life long libertarian and many many years reading HN, HN is in no way a libertarian community,

If you believe HN is libertarian you would be in for an extreme shock if you encountered a real libertarian community

Nor is Silicon Valley anywhere CLOSE to libertarianism, Silicon Valley is extreme left Authoritarian

While HN does love markets (though nor really free markets) most of HN is Socially Authoritarian left

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