You can't practically use foreign institutions for your day-to-day banking.

Someone writes you a check. Can you easily cash that with your bank in another country? Best scenario: they have a check cashing app for your phone, so you don't have to mail anything off or present in person; but will that take an American check?

TD Bank was slapped for the exact same process. Transactions would be reordered to ensure you incurred hundreds in overdraft fees even though you had just deposited a check.

It's a bit of reverse check kiting: The bank changing when your check clears so that you actually don't have the money you think you do.

Now, there were fine print that stated only X dollars worth of your deposit would be "Available immediately", but even that was a lie.

This is 100% true and also a tactic used by PNC when I was a near zero person. The hack around it was to try to withdraw cash, then use that. They wouldn't let you overdraft cash withdrawal. That's one anecdotal likely stale trick to avoid the traps they set.

This is my first exposure to this saying. I immediately thought of Jim Crow laws and thought it a useful way to look at systems. What is a better term for these wolf in sheep's clothing systems? I think the framing of achieved results being the purpose of the system is missing "something." The goals being different than stated feels paramount, and those goals succeeding is the system doing what it was designed to do with a wink

I'm sure POSIWID gets used as a reductive way to avoid thinking through things, but his examples seem just as devoid of thought. His 67% cancer center could probably cure more cancers if society invested more in cancer treatments and research, or if doctors persisted in continuing treatment instead of palliative care more often. Russia could nuke Kiev, or Ukraine's Western allies could send their own troops to push Russia back. The New York bus system could convert to all electric vehicles but that would cost a lot and have its own environmental considerations.

In the current conversation, the policy could have been based on research about where and how cartels were doing their laundering, and designed in a way that minimized the impact on non-cartel immigrant communities.

In all of those cases, the system is the result of choices that lead to the current outcomes, and I think that's the part that's worth thinking about.

"The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure as many patients as possible" seems also like an extreme? They are businesses, after all, and there will be cases that would be unreasonable to pursue?

Damn, what a waste of words. Does nothing but give brain dead examples while ignoring that the phrase is critical of systemic societal issues.

Law and order is the stated intention. The cops not solving crimes for the poor and them beating the poor is the system's purpose.

Instead of noticing that violence isn't applied equally, or that unequal resources are spent enforcing justice for the rich versus the poor, he compares it to carbon emissions from busses. Wow, how insightful.

Yes! That one, thanks.

I would love to better understand your thinking behind this statement, if you care to elucidate.

How about this:

"Our great leaders are playing 4d civilization in multiple dimensions beyond 4. Most of what they do is carefully planned and executed but there are many unknowns and there are also "unknown unknowns". There are players not sitting at the table who are pulling levers elsewhere. There are unknown players. Most moves' results are beyond our comprehension due to purely complexity and the "fog of war", not necessarily b/c of any (of many different) superficially clever 'supreme master plans'."

Plus we have seen from italian-american gangs and certain casinos that if you force them to legitimate businesses, they eventually become legal organizations. Why continue with illegal and volatile illegal business when you have a profitable legal one?

> You can't fund the people who torture and rape random Mexican farmers so Grandma can buy a car.

If you have paid taxes, or participated in the United States of Americas economy, you have directly funded the rape of indigenous Americans, the bombing of Venezuelan fisherman and Iranian schoolgirls.

How do you think the rest of the world should react to this? Total economic embargo towards the US? Leveling the continent? How should Americans who oppose rape and murder of children (like you seem to be) react to the fact that they fund rapes and murders?

You pay taxes in the US? You are directly enabling a country to harm others.

You ever buy a phone? You are directly enabling a chain of groups to harm people (in the name of creating that phone).

You ever give a dollar to a homeless man? You might be directly contributing to them harming themselves (or possibly just letting them buy food/drink).

Heck even your example about your sister, I think some people would argue that it's still the moral choice.

Clearly there's a spectrum here. Black and white thinking and statements aren't helping and shouldn't be the basis for policy decisions.

> Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use.

What? In the case of opiates (which is the most significant drug problem we have at the moment), users are often physically addicted to a specific substance and that addiction was often initiated by legitimate medical usage of that substance. They'll certainly care if you say "hey, you can't use heroin any more, have some weed instead".

> Fron what I can tell, immigration levels right now are about the same as they were in the late 19th century, when a lot of our great grandparents first came to the US.

... and which, in turn, led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which gave the US 40 years of relief from the influx to integrate the existing population. We need another such.

Feel free to come up with another country that has sent 10% of its population over 50 years to one other country, and is large enough that that means an eight-figure population transfer.

> Also Trump's history as a "businessman" is anything but wildly successful or something to envy.

Maybe we should stop treating these contradictions with Polyanna level of naivety. What is more likely: a.) these people did not seen the obvious contradictions or b.) these people are giving out publicly palatable sympathetic responses. It is all economic vote, except that conservatives were never good for small businesses.

What if these people are not as dumb as they pretend to be. What if they are actually attracted to the same thing that makes other men attracted to Trump - the male supremacy ideology and the racism against "not them exactly". The fun ugly part of it. The cruelty against homosexuals and trans. Saying that openly will still makes you look bad, so we get the "we had no idea, this was just economic vote" kind of nonsense.

Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal. [emphasis mine]

sarcasm or typo?

Fentanyl is not a soft drug, but opium, heroin and morphine can be so if administered correctly, and meet the same needs satisfactorily. Fentanyl is extremely deadly if misdosed.

>> come up with an effective alternative

> I already did, and noted it in my parent comment if you actually read it. The alternative is crypto.

No you didn't, you totally misunderstood what I meant. I was not talking about an alternative payment system that "bypasses" anti-money laundering regulations, but alternative regulations.

> It works. To use your own words back at you, no one who needs to transmit money freely will care about your silly objections, because they're unreasonable.

It doesn't "work." Not wanting to facilitate the transfer of money derived from crime is not a "silly objection."

Also you seem to be confused about the difference between the crime of money laundering and anti-money laundering regulations.

> If the underlying action is illegal, then go after the underlying action,

Sure, but the best way to know there is illegal action is to flag money that comes out of nowhere.

> How many millions of innocents have to suffer for one crook to be caught?

You seem to be under the wrong expression that the article is about money laundering, but it is not, that's just the legal framework used to achieve the goal. If it weren't for money laundering, they works have chosen something else to achieve their goals.

> Well of course they should be. You have been brainwashed so much that you can't even conceive of a different world.

Assuming you are talking about free basic necessities: I can conceive it fine, I just also understand that conceiving doesn't mean it will work, and history has shown it won't. Me making the statement was itself conception no?

I can conceive of a million different economic systems, but I also understand most of them are infeasible, and the risk of running the experiment is extremely high, with little to gain in a my country, where obesity is a much larger problem than starving.

>Like any other system, the purpose is what the system actually does. Especially a system that's been around for decades.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49260422

>We let them in, so they can work our fields and process our meat and whatever else. We shouldn't be surprised they want to buy cars, own business, and do other completely normal things.

So if the city/state/federal government lets a drug addict/dealer population to exist for too long (despite their best efforts at cracking down), they'll eventually get grandfathered in, and we can't enforce anti-money laundering regulations or dismantle their crack dens?

I mean it makes sense. Let them come and work illegally, which is much cheaper and enables proper exploitation and then blame them for all kind of things and frame them as the bad guys that exploit the society.

> If we want to stop illegal immigration, "not getting a car loan" and "harder to move money across the border" feel like the most humane ways to slow it down.

I can think of a more humane way: Prosecuting the employers who break the law by hiring undocumented workers. The prospect of employment is what draws migrants here in the first place.

> feel like the most humane ways to slow it down

(Let us not feel:) How many innocent economic actors does the regulation hit.

Nationalize businesses who get caught working with a permitless immigrant would be far, far more effective.

It ensure real checks, ensure that when the immigrant work permit expire, the employer have an incentive to help renew it (that alone ouwld probably solve 70 to 90% of illegal "aliens"

People with tourist visas I expect fully entitled and able to get car loans... (Edit: maybe I am misunderstanding the whole thing: is it "loaning cars" or is it "loaning the money to buy cars"?)

1. So you'd agree that AI datecenter with 100 (or whatever) jet turbines merely "lacks a permit" rather than "not supposed to be there"?

2. Practically speaking, how many people lack a work visa (or similar documentation), but are supposed to be here?

Yeah, cat is out of the bag now. Something like 1/10 workers in California are undocumented and you can be sure it is heavily biased for certain industries. Imagine the implications of some industry losing lets say half its workforce overnight. That would be like a COVID level shock in output and in all likelihood the industry would collapse vs somehow pull needed labor in a quick amount of time, and from where exactly, who knows? National unemployment rate is only 4% not like there is much spare labor capacity.

Perhaps they shouldn't

No, they used the existing system of due process to investigate whether crimes were committed at Mar-a-Lago. They didn't claim national security to shut it down.

My bad. I hear stuff like this all the time, not expressed sarcastically.

Thanks, I misread the parents sarcasm for garden variety MAGA comment.

And to think I have censored my "Welcome to the Internet, where you will find post-flatearthers that believe in the shape of a 2.5d Moebius bottle".

Given the type of things vocal people believe, no, posters must know we cannot assume people be joking.