This whole thing is just so infuriating. I feel powerless to affect change against an entire system that increasingly feels like it was designed to protect families like the Sacklers.
Sorry for a political rant on HN...
> feels like it was designed to protect families
That's because it is designed to protect them. When a good enough team of lawyers can free you from consequences, it equates to being able to buy off justice.
When the majority of financial instrument controls are designed to limit the financial activity of the layman, who does it benefit? Just yesterday I was fighting with my bank about how much I could spend on a single purchase. It was a startlingly low number. The amount I can actually withdraw from an ATM at any point in time is lower.
And what divides the classes most is the law. The law benefits those who can navigate it effectively. This boils down to people wealthy enough to buy, barrow, and steal professionals to navigate it for them. If the law were simple, everyone would benefit because everyone could navigate it easily.
All that to say, you aren't the only one.
Bankruptcy lawyers can shop for venues they think will be favorable to their case, and a lot of them bring their corporate clients to Drain’s court. And though Drain told the Wall Street Journal last year that any notion of legal friendliness was “an offensive fantasy,” the bitterly fought settlement in the Purdue Pharma case he announced from the bench on Wednesday would seem to provide ammunition for his critics.
A worthwhile read, in my opinion.
[1] https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/purdue-pharma-oxyconti...
Class differences are understated or poopooed in American media, and by the Republican and Democratic party leadership. In real life, people talk about class all of the time. The people who own media companies and donate to political parties don't.
I generally agree with you but I'm not sure about this. IME, the media/government complex has done a very good job of convincing people that the primary cause they should be fighting about and talking about is identity politics, not class.
I have no experience like this, other than a bank contacting me if I am trying to use a card outside of my usual locations or outside of my usual amounts and I did not already alert them. Which sounds like a pretty reasonable anti fraud measure, and it only takes a couple minutes to solve.
And you can alert them prior to traveling or spending large amounts, and even do it online, so you are not inconvenienced at the time of purchase.
I also think it is easier than ever for the layman to buy whatever they want than ever. Everything is electronic and mostly instant. People can gamble on options sitting on their couch watching a game. You can buy equities for free. You can buy and sell in foreign currencies and Bitcoin with the clicks of a few buttons. All seems far more accessible than when I was a kid.
[edit]And if your bank has no issues with that, then I'd love to know what bank it is. Mine was pretty sketchy about moving more than 3k at once per day.[/edit]
But I wire much larger amounts of cash all the time online for real estate transactions, and I generally do not even have to talk to someone at the bank. I can do it all online.
Edit: I have not needed to send $3k via Zelle yet, but according to BoA’s website, $3,500 in 24 hour time period should not be a problem:
https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-transfer-...
Just because it's uncommon, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. In fact, the justification for these types of controls is normal people don't do those type of transactions.
Think about that carefully, and you'll start to smell the rat decaying under the floor. In a way, the system is architecting itself to keep the fiscal freedom of the populace low to catch outliers that may just be criminals.
I've just never been able to convince myself that there isn't some economic reality shaping going on there that people don't feel comfortable either talking about or admitting. If I can't easily do a transaction, but that transaction would be an example of good business that everyone wins from; I'd possibly be dissuaded from even trying.
That seems counter to incentivizing good business to facilitate economic mobility.
It is a pretty simple form identifying the parties in the transaction.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8300.pdf
I do not see how anyone can say it is difficult to comply with this, regardless of the issue of whether or not it should or should not be required.
If there is any part of the system that is designed against lower socioeconomic classes, it is law enforcement (and TSA) being able to seize cash for no reason (civil asset forfeiture). But that has nothing to do with banks or the IRS.
Tools arise when the inventive require them. Those same tools become weapons of oppression when the right (wrong?) people start to use them for their own advantage.
It's this sort of sentiment that "the govt. needs to do more, we need more retribution" that explains why the US has such a high prison population. There is the perception that criminals are not being punished, but this is wrong: they are, but it is not in the news except for just a tiny number of noteworthy cases.
Painkiller addiction sucks, but so does chronic pain.
The "perception" is that criminals with power, wealth, and connections aren't being punished, and that's because they aren't. After Enron our justice department lost whatever appetite it had for meaningful criminal prosecution of corporate execs, there's even a book about it:
https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...
People who get put away for white collar crimes are punished because they stole from someone wealthier or more powerful than them. Hardly anything is systematically being done about "white collar" crimes affecting ordinary disempowered people, which is why millions of workers in the U.S. experience wage theft each year.
Scott W. Rothstein,Reed Slatkin,Bernie Madoff,Tom Petters,Allen Stanford,
If the justice system would try to actually dole out justice instead of maintaining the status quo, we might actually live in a better world. As it is, the world fucking sucks, and I refuse to defend the status quo.