Comment by b112
19 hours ago
The boogyman is just what you described, and every democracy in the world absolutely does not trace electronic transactions.
Some have a more hands off approach, including size of transactions and flagged behaviour as indicators of when payment processors must report to the government.
The Goverment should absolutely have no idea who spends what, where. Warrants and court orders, check values should be required before anyone can know. The potential to suppress political opponents, to squelch legitimate protest, to interfere with elections, is too dangerous.
Simply because some countries, like the US after 9/11, decided to give up this aspect of a free people, does not make it right.
If I have the choice of being tracked by my government or a private profit driven company I’ll choose the former any day.
The company will sell all data to my government anyway if prompted.
Of course no tracking at all is the best option and I’m a huge proponent of cash - but it’s not always practical.
AFAIK, in India, payments more than Rs. 50k is tracked.
In anycase, the governments have the capability, what remains is just the intend. And we see how intends could change at the whim of a leader.
Governments have a monopoly on violence and thus technically the ability to do whatever they want. But it matters how theoretical that ability is and how publicly apparent misuse of the ability will be. Having all transactions flow through the government makes abuse both trivial and invisible to the public.
They do trace and log them, though.
They do not. They have to get a warrant to get such logs from a bank.