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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

It s the sheer horror we have to live with in the EU. The intrusiveness of banks is beyond this world. As soon as you re a little bit off the rails, say you lived in different countries or own real estate in another country, all he'll breaks loose. Endless KYC, banks rejecting you, making pointless snitch reports to the various IRSes you have to respond to (there are several if you live in one country but have revenues from a company or real estate in another), etc.

Endless waste of time, red tape, administratrivia...

All for exactly nothing.

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EU banks mandate similar KYC as well like a passport or national ID (something we do not have but need).

.. and some also refuse to do business with Americans because of the additional reporting requirements!

That's due to US regulation imposed on them under FATCA in not additional check due to EU rules.

See that's the thing people are upset about though - the fact that the documents you need are either an original certified copy of a thin sheet of paper from whatever random backwater you were born in's local government (birth cert), or an expensive time-consuming document that needs to be renewed on top of that (passport).

In general, the people against these kinds of things aren't against the simple extra check of something that's theoretically already true (registered to vote / ID at voting place, citizenship at banks, etc). They're against forcing people to provide arcane, asterisk-ridden (including married women! a large demographic!) documents.

If we just had a normal federal ID system like a normal country, where you just got one mailed to you when your kid was born just like their social security card manages to do, then this would all be much more fine. But noooo god forbid we be normal for once. Much better to keep using random bullshit in place of a national ID.

Having been through this in the UK, what people want is:

    - a rigorous secure biometric identity system
    - .. but not for citizens, only for immigrants.

(one of the weird consequences of this is that the final stage of naturalization was to send back / destroy your secure ID: https://www.gov.uk/biometric-residence-permits ; we now have a purely online "share code" system, which everyone is much more scared of because you have no way to contradict the computer)

Many Americans think mandatory ID is some kind of dystopian measure. It's part of an irrational cultural obsession with "government control" that believe that if something could hypothetically be used for oppressive purposes, then it will be and must be resisted. Never mind that in practice, you very often need to have a state-issued ID of some kind of do things.

Mind you, I am not saying gov'ts cannot misbehave. I am merely saying that this categorical opposition is imprudent and irrational. It's like the idea that you shouldn't leave your basement, because bad things might happen to you outside. What kind of life is that? Yeah, something could, but you aren't living life by remaining cooped up. And news flash: you're going to die eventually.

I mean one of the uses for something like this is to make it easier to de-bank people. That is, make it impossible for them to function financially. That sounds super dystopian to me and a power the government shouldn't have.

They call it 'collateral damage' so that it fall outside of the constitutional protection/requirement that all punishments need to stem from a conviction and then a judge's determination the punishment is directly proportional to the conviction so it's also un-American.

As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird. From my perspective, if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people. If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do. Afraid that your fellow citizens don't share your values, or those of the constitution.

When it comes to de-banking, the bigger threat seems to come from the banks than from the government. Your bank might choose to de-bank you, because it doesn't like you. Because you are too risky or too unpleasant, or because the computer says so. So if you're afraid of de-banking, you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you, unless one of the exceptions listed in the law applies.

Our ancestors came to the US because our neighbors in Europe decided they should die for following the wrong religion, be it catholic irish/germans or non-catholic french/jewish.

So yes, our country is founded on not letting that happen, not letting your neighbors have that kind of power over your life, via the old world/European direct killing/starvation/exile from society or a modern world reimaged debanking that basically strangles you to death with the burden of just existing in the modern world without modern finance/electronic funds/card payment.

In the US there are strict banks and then there are immigrant/human friendly banks like US Bank. I can easily change banks. I can't exist in a right to life/liberty/happiness way with no bank, and the government can't take that right away unless I have been convicted and a judge ruled that in my circumstances specifically it should be taken away.

But what happens if your neighbors no longer believe in that? Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people? Who will enforce the constitution, if the people who are supposed to do that no longer want to?

If you live in a free country, your neighbors become a problem before the government does. If they become a problem, the government will often follow, and then you may no longer be living in a free country.

> Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people?

Yes, otherwise the incumbents could pull stunts like opening the borders to flood the nation with foreigners, radically redefining who "the people" are in order to dictate what "our values" are.

The entire point of written law is to outlive the whims of human nature.

How does written law enforce itself if the police and the judges are compromised?

Everything is ultimately enforced by people. If people stop believing in something, the government will eventually follow suit. And not just the handful of top leaders elected or appointed for a few years, but most people from the top to the bottom in every branch of the government. Especially the ones with the power to make a difference.

The written law may say something, but people in power are very good at twisting its purpose and ignoring it. Especially when that's something everyone expects from you.

That is why the US government is designed the way it is, with the electoral college, 2 senators per state, etc.

It is all designed to prevent European style tyranny of the majority or mob rule, yet also create a representational state. It's a tricky balance. But our ancestors were, again, murdered or forced to flee half way around the world, so a core concern/reality we work hard to avoid at the cost of slower government/less direct democracy that like you say can change on a whim or easily be directed as a weapon against ones neighbors. We prefer a slow out of touch government that protects freedom/peoples rights than a government that represents short term opinion happy to trample.

My point was that an oppressive government cannot appear out of nowhere in a free country. The citizens must abandon constitutional values first. If an oppressive government remains in power and maintains its popularity long enough, it will infiltrate all levels of the government and compromise checks and balances.

Then, with popular and institutional support, the government can do basically whatever it wants. Regardless of what powers it had before or what the constitution says.

You should not be afraid of giving the government new powers simply because it might go bad later. (There are other valid reasons, but that's not one of them.) If the government does go bad, it can take those powers on its own just fine. You should be afraid of your fellow citizens going bad and starting to think that their personal goals and values are more important than constitutional values. Because that's a prerequisite for the government going bad.

> if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people.

There's no such definition, where did you get that from? The only definition is "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance".

> If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do.

In non-fantasy land all power corrupts.

> you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you

We don't pass laws, our representatives do, we select reps from a pool of candidates but becoming a candidate outside of the established parties is subject to the regulations established by these parties... you get the idea.

> As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird.

There's bliss and then there's reality... which happens to be weird, unfortunately.

My view is that the American attitude is odd, because it is catastrophizing. The "will of the people" (whatever that means; it is usually curated by those with power anyway) is neither here nor there, and I have absolutely no concern for it. The truth is not decided by vote.

But I agree that private companies can debank much more easily than gov'ts can. I think more people are realizing that it is not a question of gov't or corporation, but of power. The gov't is your best defense against private malice.

The US cultural thing is really the opposite of cowering in your basement, at least in my generation and older.

We were steeped in propaganda about the "papers, please" police state in other parts of the world, versus our freedom to travel. It's this idea that you are not allowed to leave your basement without an exit visa which is horrifying.

There is also the religious angle, with some believing that a national ID would be the "mark of the beast" from the bible. Ironically, these days the US religious right seems excited by the prospects of fascist control, rather than rebelling against it. I'm honestly not sure if that is just hypocrisy or if, in their minds, they are gleefully accelerating us towards the "end times" now.

> The US cultural thing is really the opposite of cowering in your basement, at least in my generation and older.

That wasn't the purpose of my basement remark. The point is that you can't argue against something simply because it can be abused or simply because it can have bad effects. There is a thread running through American culture that is absolutely paranoid about the slightest possibility of abuse. What I think more people realize today is that gov't is easier to restrain than corporations, because of their officially public status and the attending constraints, while corporations are in many ways at greater liberty to do whatever they want and attain power and influence that gov'ts don't have.

> There is also the religious angle, with some believing that a national ID would be the "mark of the beast" from the bible.

I don't know how influential this religious element is where IDs are concerned, but I would agree that dispensationalist Evangelical nuttery - a blatant Christian heresy - is a danger to the US. However, I think it is a danger, because it is nuts.

We are actively seeing the current US government shift towards malevolence and fascism. These fears of government control were very rational, evidently, as the government is currently abusing every possible system it can. I mean, a lot of this stuff is really being pushed to its limits and beyond.

And, all of those "unspoken rules" and relationships, due diligence, etc are finally coming home to roost. We have put too many trust-based systems in place.

Also, the US has a long history of abusing government power. The last time we required ID for voting we did it to prevent black people from voting. So now, people are rightfully scared of voter ID. Um... whoops.

Yeah the US should institute a normal federal ID system like a normal country. It might strictly be necessary to amend the constitution to do this, although plenty of other expansions of what the federal government does have happened without a formal amendment.

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