This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So, the theme of my OP is that practical limits are important. Actual, physical cash presents a similar practical limit. If you're transacting in flat cash for 99.9% of the regular, legal transactions that most people do, there is zero practical difficulty. But, if you're trying to move $100M of ill-gotten gains internationally, it's hard to do it with physical cash.
As an example, folks like Nick Weaver argue that the only reason ransomware was ever a thing was because of crypto; if it didn't provide a relatively easy way to send huge quantities of money overseas to criminal gangs, there basically wouldn't have ever been any point. I mean, play this scenario out. Some digital thugs in Russia attack your business' network, demand $50M for the decryption key. You start negotiating how to pay it. Literally all of the methods that involve regular digital cash are non-viable ("Yeah, we'd love to do that, but that's 100% going to get rejected by the banks who are trying to comply with anti-ML and other criminal laws. Sorry. Any other options?"). If you're going down the route of, "Whelp, just gather up $50M in physical cash and physically transport it over to a mutually-agreed-upon non-extradition-treaty country..." that's going to be a practical no-go for most companies. If the the Russian digital thugs literally could not figure out how to practically receive such payments from Regular American Corp., there'd be no real money in ransomware, and it would dry up to be just the background nuisance that computer viruses used to be.
What's the difference between this and a "Mixer Account" at HSBC or in the Bahamas or whatever? Regular bank accounts are already "digital money". This is probably the biggest thing that causes misunderstanding; yes, we've had "digital money" for decades - it's called a "bank account" most of the time. It's money that is kept in the form of ones and zeros in a spreadsheet with a trusted intermediary, rather than crypto, which is money that is kept in the form of ones and zeros in a ..."not spreadsheet" (which is basically a spreadsheet; unless it was with FTX, in which case, it wasn't even in a spreadsheet) with a different form of trusted intermediaries (some would point to how there are actually only a few really big players in crypto mining, others would generalize trust like Vitalik). What's wrong with making the digital money that we already have "more cashy"?
Well, the obvious thing that's wrong with it is the massive money laundering problem! That's why we've spent significant quantities of hard and soft geopolitical power on setting up wide international collaborations to counter regular digital money laundering efforts.
People still have regular digital money, and they still use it for the 99.9% of regular, ordinary, legitimate transactions. And they still use cash, too. I'm not arguing for or against a "cashless society". I think cash is pretty fine; I use it. I think cash will live and die on its own merits, particularly whether it has benefits in terms of things like ease of use, low transactions costs, and such that continue to outstrip the alternatives. I think that letting cash continue to thrive but continuing to enforce money laundering laws for digital cash (whether regular digital cash or wiz-bang digital cash) provides a nice practical balance of interests.
I almost didn't respond to this, because I didn't see how it was relevant. I think you're implying that I've somehow claimed that the people who made tornado cash did so because they wanted to launder money for themselves? Is that right? Because if so, I haven't actually claimed that. Whether they're nerds who are just trying to fill a (black) market need or businessmen at HSBC, what's the difference? Because one group thinks that it's "neat"? They think it's "wiz-bang"? Like, who cares? Either way, I'm just looking at the outcome. Are they creating a system that is basically designed so that it's primary use is going to be massive money laundering? Yeah, that's gonna be a problem.
Hey, look, if you could devise a scheme that was like Tornado Cash... but wasn't primarily useful for massive money laundering, I think most people wouldn't care all that much. Like, for example, if your technological product made it pretty easy for people transact like, a few thousand bucks anonymously or whatever, but somehow presented real, practical difficulties to just smashing it like an "easy button" to launder hundreds of millions or billions, people probably wouldn't care. This might be technologically easy/difficult to do; I don't think I care (I mean, I do kinda care, because I'm also a nerd, and it would be "neat" and "wiz-bang" to think about how to do this); I mostly just care about what the actual, practical effects of your product are in the real world.
Am I supposed to agree that privacy should be degraded in traditional banking contexts? If HSBC could feasibly create mixer accounts, then I'd support that too. They just can't. So that's why I support crypto instead. It being "wiz-bang [sic]" has nothing to do with it. What's philosophically correct or not is the issue.
If globohomo's blood money raising initiatives aren't compatible with modern technology, that's on them. Given the relative value of each, I would much rather they be castrated than privacy or technology. And whatever bad actors are doing has zero to do with invalidating my right to financial privacy or not wanting every random customer service Indian at where I cash my crypto out sometimes to know how much I have overall. (As, after all, that's me quite potentially protecting myself against those same bad actors. I'll take using my own right to my privacy to protect myself over the "benevolence" of established authorities any day.)
Most ransomware targets individuals in bulk and plenty of it has requested non-crypto forms of payment like gift cards, prepaid cards, Ukash, MoneyPak, YooMoney, etc. So "folks like Nick Weaver" are factually wrong.
I think we've hit the crux; you just don't care about the money laundering problem that 95% of the rest of the population cares about a lot. I don't think there's anything more to say here other than, "Just try to convince enough voters to repeal anti-ML laws and see if you're smarter than all of history."
If it's an empirical question, please provide some empirical data. Or at least a made-up estimate. What percentage of ransomware payment flows do you think is crypto vs. non-crypto?
Proof? I'm going to bet that a frighteningly large portion of the population doesn't even know what the literal phrase "money laundering" means at all. In any case as a someone who is not a (small d) democrat this means very little to me.
I have no idea but the answer is mostly irrelevant. If I pointed out that 95% of people currently use highway A over highway B, that still wouldn't be a justification to say that 95% of highway travel would disappear without highway A; the hypothetical carrying capacity of highway B (including any expansions that might inevitably be made to it in a world without highway A) in that case is the real determinant, not what it carries now versus highway A.
I think without crypto you probably wouldn't see big money heists targeting governments and corporations as you mentioned, but then again these are all entities that deserve the most to be targeted and I would much rather see WokeCorp lose 500 billion over a week due to a targeted ransomware attack than any granny lose her family's baby photos. So I guess crypto existing proves itself to be a good thing again.
The obscene quantities of hard and soft geopolitical power spent to build international coalitions to rein in the problem. Whether or not you're a small d democrat, this effort has been led by small d democratic nations, because the vast majority of those populations oppose corruption, criminal activities, and money laundering. So I guess you have two options: 1) Convince enough folks to just knock it off with the whole anti-ML thing, or 2) Build the power of your authoritarian country enough that you can flaunt the international anti-ML order. No wiz-bang required.
We've pretty much known the carrying capacity of gift cards, prepaid cards, etc., because these things have been used in money laundering efforts for decades. That large international coalition I mentioned went to a lot of work to massively restrict the carrying capacity of these methods. Let's put a number estimate on it again. Suppose all of crypto died tomorrow. By what factor do you think these other methods would increase in scope? 2X? 10X?
More options
Context Copy link
The boo in this section makes a bit of my soul die, despite how much as tales of corporate malfeasance disgust me, and despite how much megacorps believe they should oppose me in the Culture War.
Feeding criminal enterprises gives them resources to commit more crimes. Crime does pay like drugs do make you feel good.
Then target the actual crime instead of targeting privacy, freedom, etc. (all of which are superior to and more valuable than all existing crime fighting efforts in the world) because you think they may help facilitate some ancillary incidental crime to what you're actually worried about.
These are no purely digital criminal entities hiding in Tornado Cash or any other privacy-enhancing technology like fugitives. They are merely tools. If you disagree with what the tools are being used for, then find the people using the tools for those purposes and attack them directly. Lazy police work is not an excuse for the constant erosion of personal freedom via the incessant targeting of conduct more and more remote from what was actually criminalized by reasonable median concern in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link