this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 9 months ago (9 children)

sorry but banning anonymous payments is pretty good for fighting corruption...

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Corrupt politicians can simply ignore the law. If they didn't ignore it, they wouldn't be very corrupt.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but now there's an explicit law over which they can be prosecuted

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Good point. My statement was a bit reductive, I just worry when it comes to creating the kind of blanket ban on stuff that people can work around if they're powerful enough.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

This is not true in France. Politicians that have proven fraud are arrested and charged. In France we have Sarkozy, Cahuzac, Fillon that were all charged with crimes.

They were president, minister and presidential candidate respectively. I'd be surprised if it was different in the USA. I'm seeing that trump is also being charged, the system seems to be working.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Consumers payments deserves their privacy, but business ones needs absolutely to be fully traceable.

Could it be possible to use two different yet identical interchangeable currencies, one traceable for making business only, and one untraceable for consumers retail transactions?

loosely i.e.

  • wages are Business currency converted and paid in Consumer currency, accounted for the amount paid to the consumer in his name
  • end-users/home/consumer purchases are made from consumers anonymously in Consumer currency, and this is converted converted into Business currency upon transaction, keeping only the consumer name anonymous but tracing everything else
  • B2B transactions are made in Business currency, fully traceable

... I don't know there is probably still a loophole

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I am pretty sure the lesser part of corruption is cash. Probably more stuff like exchanging a lucrative contract for political support.

They are not stupid. Afterall cash needs to be explained, a good contract gives you cash and the explanation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Cash is mostly traceable at point of contact unless you keep it in a money bin and don't spend it, though..

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Not necessarily, it's only traceable if you generate receipts on both sides. I don't know about EU law, but in the US, you only need to report cash deposits if they're over $10k, and if your deposits are always over $10k (e.g. you're a big retailer or something), another $10k here and there won't raise any eyebrows.

Cash is still king when it comes to corruption since it's easy to exchange it for favors w/o generating a receipt at all.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Can't say in terms of proportion cash vs. non-cash but one might want to watch the Qatargate recent documentary on Arte which shows that somehow a 700k EUR luggage was found in the house of a MEP. Piles of cash sound outdated yet clearly still exist nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Video, audio and subtitles via yt-dlp at https://fabien.benetou.fr/pub/home/ytdl/

I'll leave that for few days.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

The 500€ bill was removed from circulation because it was used almost exclusively for corruption and illegal trade.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

But fighting corruption is not a goal I'm ready to pay any prize for.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

so ban it only for government (people and assets) related transactions

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Russia almost did it. Now it's finally free of corruption!

Haha , nope. It's way more corrupt than before. You can even purchase on the dark web a list of items your person of interest bought this year.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

True that. The system that we have is the product of many painful lessons, taught to us by global crises and crimes. People, who oppose this system, should stop reading nonsense on reddit and 4chan, and start with books and lectures from educated economists.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Putin's corruption works fine without anonymous payments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i mean does it really? russia is heavily sanctioned to the rest of the western world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Putin is not Russia