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It’s absolutely wild to see people making comments like the one you replied to. Are people so eager to have Daddy Government monitoring their every move, deciding how they’re allowed to spend their money? Europeans seem to have Stockholm Syndrome, a fetish for authoritarianism of their preferred flavor.

It feels like the entire continent is one big HOA, deciding what color you can paint your house, or what flowers you can plant outside, to “preserve congruency in the neighborhood”.

It’s honestly a bit concerning seeing how pacified and apathetic people become about government overreach when it doesn’t affect them directly (yet).

And Americans have the opposite problem, where they’d rather have an incredible list of social issues than a government.

I guess it comes down to perspective: is it fair to force everyone to pay their taxes?

It isn't a matter of forcing people to pay taxes, and the fact that so many people in this thread keep going back to the same point is a frightening prospect to me. The US has plenty of our own issues with addressing social issues, but I'd rather the entire country implode due to social issues rather than the government forcibly controlling everyone's purchases and tracking their every movement for the greater good of society.

Americans hate laws like this in the US because we've already sacrificed liberties for security with things like The Patriot Act, and all it got us was our own government spying on it's citizens communication. Expanding the scope of how the government is allowed to forcibly direct or interfere in your life is generally a bad idea, even if the people you support politically make it look sexy and cool.

We keep going back to taxes, because that’s what it’s really about.

People get on the soap box for a passionate gospel about personal freedoms, facism and unalienable liberties - but actually they’re mostly mad that they gotta pay taxes for their nails & gardening now

For me personally, I think the discussion about taxes in this context is a distraction at best. How long before cash is banned altogether, in the name of "making sure everyone pays their taxes"? That doesn't seem like a solution, that seems like oppressing a populace while making them think it was their own idea.

Governments worldwide have been trending towards being more authoritarian, and I see outlawing cash purchases of any amount as an incredibly easy way to begin clamping down on the use of untraceable fiat currency.

> Europeans seem to have Stockholm Syndrome, a fetish for authoritarianism of their preferred flavor.

Not all of us! Please trim your paintbrush. Europe comprises dozens of countries, with hundreds of millions of people.

My personal divorce from "banking with will-you-think-of-the-children-and-oh-all-the-nasty-criminals" here in CZ happened when I went to withdraw ~14k USD in cash. My Fio bank, that I've been with for 10+ years, asked me, "what do you need the money for?"

After collecting my jaw from the floor my answer was of course "none of your business". But the clerk claimed to be "just following the law" (maybe true, I wouldn't know on the spot), that they cannot give me my money without a valid reason.

So I said "I want to withdraw it in order to keep it in cash" (doh!). They made a face and said that's not a valid reason.

So I asked what is a valid reason then? Is there a list that I can see and choose from?

They made a face again and said no, but suggested – trying to be helpful – that most people say "I want to buy a car". Yet I wasn't buying a car and having to lie about this – being advised to lie so a bureaucrat can tick some children-saved-criminals-thwarted checkbox – felt quite surreal. A Kafka-esque exchange. Especially when everybody knows the real money laundering is done by government officials & government-adjacent crooks – in CZ and in every other country under the sun.

In the end I got angry and said I'm about to buy a lot of dog food and refused to budge. They backed down, and I learned a very important lesson about "my" money that day.

Nothing wrong with this point of view, except that it's not shared by Europeans as far as I know (and feel).

The "none of your business" doesn't work in the long run.

> The "none of your business" doesn't work in the long run.

Well, it should.

I am European and the feeling "that's none of your business" is shared by many people.

An anecdote: The 500 euro bank note was originally created because Germans had the habit of paying in cash, even for large purchases like cars, and they had a DM1,000 bank note (which is about EUR500).

> Will bad people abuse it and do things you don't like? Yeah. That's the risk that comes with it and we have a legal system to identify and deal with those bad actors.

The problem is that things like cryptocurrency are largely designed to circumvent the financial and legal system entirely, which becomes a threat to regulated markets once fraudulent actors become large enough to inevitably become a burden to the legal system (see FTX). The government is spending a lot of money cleaning up the FTX mess and they have an interest in ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.

> The answer to this is very simple: none of your business.

It kinda is. Paying something $10,000 cash strongly suggests you’re buying something illegal, or you got this money illegally (not necessarily unethically, but still illegally).

That the only argument you can find is « it’s none of your business » doesn’t exactly play against this ruling.

> Paying something $10,000 cash strongly suggests you’re buying something illegal, or you got this money illegally (not necessarily unethically, but still illegally).

Since when?

Maybe I just want to buy a handsome dog that won a show?

What does it have to do with cash? Ever heard of bank transfers? Spending $10,000 cash sounds ridiculously unsafe for both parties.

> Since when?

Drug deals, money laundering schemes, theft, ransoms, etc. I fail to see non illegal way to obtain $10,000 cash. And if you can get it legally, just do bank transfers instead

It's a very small universe to assume that only illegal activity is conducted with 10k in currency.

I keep asking for legitimate uses of 10k in cash but the only answer I get is that it’s none of my business. It raises questions.

Because it _is_ none of your business. But feel free to review the thread, there are plenty of examples why having large cash reserves and transaction may be helpful for a given situation.

The argument for reporting is equivalent to "you have nothing to hide" and privacy. This is another aspect of privacy.

What if I have a fetish and want to buy some crazy sex swing. I don’t want you to know, I don’t want the bank to know, or the government to know. This is 100% legal and 100% none of your business and I prefer to keep it that way.

But banks or the government don’t get the details of what you buy

Unfortunately that’s what makes it scary, what you’re saying isn’t true. Look up “L3 Processing Data” which is becoming more and more common (which informs the payment provider/bank about exactly what you purchased). AmEx for example is notorious for implementing that.

Furthermore, they don’t need the details. What if I just don’t want the government or bank to even know that I spent $10K at “Smucks Sex Store Co.”?

Anyway, I hope you’re starting to see the importance of privacy and cash. Even if they’re ridiculous and silly to someone else.

It is not my business but the government creates the money and it is their business. It always has been.

Not money, fiat currency. Something without intrinsic value adding nothing of value and resulting ultimately in the ability to control and monitor its usage for inevitably nefarious purposes. It always has been.

It's a medium of exchange, it doesn't need intrinsic value to add value.

Yeah, and your income is also none of our business, we just have to blindly trust what you fill in on the tax form?

There's way too much fraud around, government unfortunately cannot blindly trust everybody.