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OutOfHeretoday at 4:19 PM4 repliesview on HN

Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission. It is a fundamental purpose of money. To deny this purpose puts the validity of particular money into question. Putting up fences results in a very high rate of false positives. No wonder people use crypto as they should.

If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.


Replies

palmoteatoday at 4:31 PM

> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.

They got Al Capone for tax evasion, not any of the other obviously illegal stuff he was doing. I don't know the details, but I imagine it was because he put in effort to create an organization that made it difficult-to-impossible for the law-abiding feds to go after him directly. That's why it's important to also prohibit the ancillary activities of crime.

And money laundering isn't an absurd concept, it just means it's additionally illegal to conceal the origin of illicit income.

If you want to get all dogmatic against stuff like laws against money laundering, come up with an effective alternative. Otherwise those laws aren't going anywhere and few will care about your objections, because they're unreasonable.

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BobbyJotoday at 4:28 PM

> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.

This ignores that taxes are a thing that need enforcement. Its like saying basic necessities should be free, the world should be without pollution, or cancer shouldn't exist.

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bulbartoday at 5:19 PM

Money laundering is about hiding illegal actions by faking the source of the money.

Generally speaking, it makes sense to me that a society wants to make that difficult.

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Nicooktoday at 5:58 PM

Everybody here falls for the most obvious bait.