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Comment by dataflow

1 hour ago

> The central bank controls what payments are permitted by what laws exist, not some risk management system that has decided that your legal purchase is too risky or some foreign state has applied sanctions against you.

That sounds worse to be honest. You're essentially asking for the government to be not only aware of but also able to control all digital payments. That upends how money has worked over (literally) millenia, and is an incredible risk to take. Giving someone in government the ability to block someone's payments and trusting they won't abuse it might be fine as long as good people remain in power, but do you really want to bet the entire nation's ability to live life on that?

Furthermore, wouldn't determining if a payment is legal require prying into details of the transaction that may violate your privacy? And if they make an incorrect determination based on stuff that really wasn't their business in the first place, they now have the force of government behind them, going far beyond merely declining the transaction.

I would think what you should want to advocate for is a system that cannot block payments (at least domestically) just like with cash, and enforcement either happens prior to enrollment, or after the fact through some other traditional law enforcement mechanism (warrants, etc.).

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dataflow

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dgoldstein0  1 hour ago

Not intending to defend either system but private financial institutions basically end up deputized as enforcement arms of anti money laundering and sanctions in the US and probably other countries where the payments systems are privatized. That's a why every bank has a big compliance department - the laws say a lot about who and what they can serve and they have to be on top of it.

Which yes means sometimes legit transactions that match rules meant to catch money laundering and other shady business get blocked or flagged. Sometimes out of avoidance of legal risk, rather than actual certainly anything illegal is happening.

I don't know if the centralized government implementation would be any better in that regard, but at least you could complain to the government instead of having a bank hide behind a law they didn't write but have to enforce.

Fokamul  36 minutes ago

Worse? Are you serious?

In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.

Only because France, Germany, UK and similar countries are against guns and against self-defense, where your only option is to lay on the ground and let the attacker kill you.

Luckily we can still use guns for self-defense, we can conceal carry by default and we will fight EU laws till our death for this.

(pepper sprays, knives and even katana, whatever. Heh that's a joke, but for real, you can use that without any permit, in theory.)

EU Brusel is trying very hard to force these idiotic laws to every country.

Eg.: they forced limited mags for rifles.

We have bypassed that with local law haha, when you get a gun permit (which is not easy, but not impossible) you just fill a paper with "a gun buy order" for the police and you are by law allowed to have unlimited magazine, silencer and special JHP ammo. Reason self-defense and defense of your property (default reason, police will only check same thing they've checked for gun permit. Your criminal record).

And also luckily we don't need to use anything, because our criminality is a liiiiitle bit lower than France, Germany and UK. You know why.

But tide is changing, Poland will be biggest economy in EU in few years and their gun laws are also changing and we have a lot of common with them.

I believe together with other reasonable countries (Slovakia, Hungary etc.) We will overturn this idiocy comming from France, Germany and other "west" countries.

Btw I'm for EU, even for federalization of EU. But with US approach. EU should be no.1 country, yes country, in the world.

  • joe_mamba  28 minutes ago

    >In EU, Czechia. Foreign(french lol) banks are banning accounts because you work in gun manufacturing industry. In EU. When 2 countries from you, there is a FCKIN' war happening.

    That shouldn't be happening. French banks on Czech soil should operate under Czech, not French laws. Otherwise the Czech banking authorities should go after them. Something is fishy about that.

    Also, which banks do French citizens working in the arms industry use if they're not allowed to? This is all very bizarre.