So we're going to make government weaker, and by doing so, they will stand up to corporations that are now stronger than them?

If that's true then Libertarians have a rosier view of government than I do. A regular David vs. Goliath situation. Biblical stories aside, my money is on Goliath.

Does it though? We've been living through that experiment with elimination of anti-trust and with other libertarian goals being met -- reduction of taxes, introduction of private industry into the public sphere, collection of tolls from public infrastructure, austerity, and general reduction of the size of government. All we've gotten is a replacement of the government with private enterprise. IOW there are a lot of companies out there that provide "public goods" for profit that are some combination of more expensive or lower-quality than the equivalent public services were in the heyday of the US. I think you should agree that without any kind of regulation at all companies are merging into uncontrollable behemoths, and without the ability to meaningfully "vote with our wallets" one of the central tenets of libertarian capitalism is pretty broken. I disagree that the US federal government is responsible for this state of affairs. Rather, the US federal government is taking a pretty strong stance of irresponsibility for this.

What of observed human history gives you any hope that such a thing will happen?

All of these systems function well ... "in theory". Even the ones you may not agree with. Socialism and communism are perfectly fine theoretical systems, until you introduce humans into the equation with desires for power, wealth, etc.

I have seen no hint that Libertarianism is somehow above this and will be the panacea. I also have no idea how you come to the conclusion that collusion will not be a problem in a libertarian world.

That's cold comfort if you'd rather avoid a wrench beating.

> I think the intellectual position "it should be illegal for institutions transmitting money between two parties to identify either of those parties" might require some kind of logical argument behind it.

This is both a straw man position and begs the question. KYC laws aren't the option to identify either party, it's the requirement to identify both. The default throughout pretty much the whole of human history across cultures has been not having KYC laws. A logical and compelling argument must be made for implementing and unholding such laws.

> Are you saying all financial transactions should be anonmyous by law?

The anti-KYC position is that it should be possible for some financial transactions to be anonymous by law.

> How would banks function if they were required to be blind to their customers?

While they would not be required to be blind, most have been and by default would like to be. Maintaining identity records reliably tying people to transactions is a significant burden for banks for exactly the same reason it would be an incredible burden on you to keep track of which atm/cashier/couch cushion every dollar in your wallet came from.

> How would the government prosecute money laundering if all cash-trails went cold after the first time they passed a bank?

Presumably by going after the criminal infrastructure handling the money before it passed a bank. Giving up privacy rights tends to make law enforcement easier, but it is a common and reasonable opinion that we should not be trying to maximize the ease of law enforcement at the expense of privacy.

Explaining the intellectual position without saying that I accept it (my actual views on this are "it's complicated"):

Arguments against KYC usually go hand-in-hand with the belief that AML statutes are a constitutional overreach and grant the federal government powers that they should not have. The logic is that the government's only role is to provide a stable currency and enforce contracts, and that anything else is involving the government in business that it has no business being in. What's done between two consenting parties should remain between two consenting parties.

Note that such a position usually doesn't have a problem with banks having information on their customers, for the purpose of judging credit risks. But it holds that such information should only be used for judging credit risks, ie if you are just depositing and withdrawing money that has already been earned, the bank should be agnostic to this. And they also object to this information being shared with a central clearinghouse where it can be used to cut off all access to the banking system rather than just one specific bank who objects to the source of funds.

> I understand people often like to express extreme positions on the Internet, but I think it's pretty easy to see an ideal society has rules somewhere in between "you're not allowed to know your customers" and "you can't accept a penny unless the giver does a blood draw in front of you and is confirmed to be in a central register of DNA".

Yeah. This often results in ludicrous positions.

On the other hand, EFT flattens scale. Physical cash gets harder to handle in large quantities. Electronic money does not. It's equally easy to transfer a billion as a cent. So it's hard to get situations where small amounts have privacy and large amounts have scrutiny.

Call me old school, but money should be as free as the bank note - untraceable and anyone getting it could use it freely.

You know exactly what he means.

I suspect the argument is more the particular KYC required by American law, eg, as long as your bank can identify you as a particular customer, they shouldn’t be required to collect certain information by law.

Though if I were going to rant, it would be about how constructive surveillance, such as requiring banks keep certain records and then claiming those records aren’t protected from search because they’re third party business records and not those of a private citizen, would be a much higher priority to fix.

> the regulations that require institutions moving money between two parties to positively identify each of those two parties.

There is much more to it than that. If that were all KYC was, it wouldn't need regulations, because banks would need to do it anyway.

I've had banks straight out ask me, on the phone, what a wire transfer that I executed via their online system was for. And unlike, say, a traffic stop where when the cop starts fishing for things unrelated to the stop, you can exercise your right to remain silent, in the banking scenario the consequences for that can be losing access to your account, losing funds, and everything that follows from that.

Some of the info required by KYC:

* Why the customer wants an account

* Expected types of transactions

* Expected source and approximate volume of funds

* For businesses, the nature of the business and expected banking activity

* Source of funds

This can all translate into very invasive questions, especially when you do something that a computer system or middle manager thinks is suspicious, like sending money to your mother in another country.

"regulations that require institutions moving money between two parties to positively identify each of those two parties"

Any such kind of regulation is not compatible with financial privacy. Maybe you could argue corporations don't deserve financial privacy, but an individual should have the right to send money to someone without being spied on the same way they should have the right to send a private communication to someone without being spied on.

Hard disagree, low level crimes should not be so heavily enforced. A bit of blackmarket activity is not only beneficial but neccessary for any stable economy. It can't be allowed at mass scale, but you can't effectively micromanage every transaction and account for every situation for every single good or dollar.

The criminal money and money laundering has been researched since 19th century. It has stayed at constant 2-5% of world GDP. However the cost of compliance has gone up exponentially.

Today banks use $250B/year on KYC checks. You could fix the world hunger and still have $50B leftover money with this amount.

Why should our rights be restricted when law enforcement is impotent?

I just tried to pay my elderly neighbors cell phone bill here in California. I will spare you the details. Is all of this really required?

It reminds me of a time when credit and credit cards were flying fast. Large losses started appearing on consumer credit accounts by the tens of thousands. A casual look into it indicated that it was the employees and leaders of the sector, who read and understood the credit agreement that put liability ultimately on the company. The actual credit card employees, adjacent accountants, quick witted cons, all siphoning money from credit cards in very large numbers. Why say this? Actual customers with increasing security requirements were largely not at all involved with the growing fraud. It was the participants in the credit industry seizing the opportunity to steal, with relative impunity. Things have changed and changed again since then with scale, local rules, fraud detection systems etc.

The point of the rant is that ordinary people's rights are squeezed, privacy vanishes, routine humiliating document production and security, required because the people in the industry that created those is cheating.

Yes of course there is cheating on taxes over tip money, or no-show jobs for relatives.. but what kind of society is being built with constant oversight into ordinary people's activity ?

cash indeed

Who decides who we're sanctioning and who is a "terrorist"? Not me, that's for sure! My money is my business and I don't need the state nanny watching who I send it to.

when terrorism can be defined as "having a book" and can result in indefinite detention without charge or access to an attorney maybe i'm not 100% gung-ho by default on everything labelled anti-terrorism

In practice, KYC does little to stop any of that — but does do a lot to enable mass surveillance and oppression.