Your paper on criminal contracts

Lodewijk andré de la porte l at odewijk.nl
Wed Aug 26 02:15:47 PDT 2015


2015-08-25 23:25 GMT+02:00 <wirelesswarrior at safe-mail.net>:

> Money Laundering is the thoughtcrime of finance. Anyone mentioning it as a
> crime is probably a law enforcement apologist.
>

The problem is that it's effective. Can't launder the money, can't use the
money, don't have any use for the money. A lot of people (maybe? Wonder how
many) people get caught years down the line because their expenses don't
line up with their incomes.

The counterargument is that laundering is not that hard. Tricks like buying
tons of lottery tickets with black money, but claiming only the massive
value ticket. One could start an online software business, and create fake
downloads/purchases for his/her software (pay tax, laundry complete). If it
weren't possible, that would be a serious issue of privacy. We have at
least one example of how the expression of your political believes is
limited by observation: the anti-gay-marriage Mozilla CEO, who could not
donate anonymously enough. Therefore he could not privately express his
opinion through money/donation to lobby-group (a form of speech the US
courts agreed exists).

Money Laundering itself is of no harmful consequence. It's good for the
economy, as it makes money available for investment (good according to
inflation fans). It does always follow something labelled illegal. Making
it illegal (supposedly strongly) supports prevention of illegal things.

Should it be illegal?

I think it's good for humanity if it were legal. It's too easy to avoid law
enforcement (these laws are not enforceable). It's a nearly complete loss
of privacy if it is enforceable.

I'm not so opposed to having Money Laundering be illegal. I just think
there should be absolutely no legal powers granted to police specifically
to deal with Money Laundering. Anti Money Laundering torments our financial
system and just isn't worth it. (NB: might be motivated by the TLA's to
mass track everything and everyone for no good reason) (NB:
Cryptocurrencies make black money much more useful, as it is the first time
digital and untracked meets practical)
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