[rt4mn]

> the implications of bitcoin & cryptocurrency to let these systems grow & be harder to deal with has only gone up & up & up ever-more.

While I agree the implications are concerning, I think its difficult to overstate just how much of a stranglehold the US regulatory and surveillance machine has over the global financial system.

Trying to buy and sell things online without sharing your real name or address is functionally impossible for 99% of people (unless you are willing to break the law or learn how to use cryptocurrency). This is because the gatekeepers to the Internets finances (banks, credit cards, etc) are required by law to identify who they are working with.

This makes a sort of sense until you zoom out and see the scope of the problem. Because it is impossible in 99% of cases to move money around online without using those gatekeepers, there functionally is no financial privacy online.

I should not have to share my bloody name or address with anyone to order a god damn box of chocolate.

> Ultimately we're far more tracked by corporations anyhow now,

True, and thats very concerning and should be pushed back against. But when corporations collect data on you, the worst thing they do with that data (generally speaking) is not treat it with care and the data gets stollen / made public.

When the government collects data on you, the worst thing they do with it (generally speaking) is throw you in jail or kill you. The scope of the concern is astronomically higher.

[forgetfreeman]

"I should not have to share my bloody name or address with anyone to order a god damn box of chocolate."

You don't. Get off your ass and go buy a box with cash. On the drive over meditate on who generally benefits when given the ability to move large sums of cash anonymously (hint: terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and tax dodging oligarchs).

[csydas]

I think you're missing the point here. I'm not a crypto advocate, but Visa and Mastercard definitely have too much power as do most online transaction processors, and the amount of information that online processors collect (at the request and joy of governments) is quite scary.

A select few organizations can control whether you can buy necessities or not and cut you off even from legally earned money on a whim. Banks have finite cash on hand which limits your mobility and liquidity at any given moment in the event of an emergency. Online commerce at this stage may as well be a secondary benefit given how your information is scooped up and resold to advertisers.

Financial systems are quite convenient, there's no denying that, but they're extremely fragile and the system exists at the whim of a few select people. Visa and Mastercard have demonstrated they can effectively remove persons from modern civilization at their discretion, not even with official government requirements, and that this has not been challenges is really unsettling.

To reiterate, cryptocurrencies are not the answer here in their current state, as they're too unstable and basically inherit not only all the issues that normal banks bring, but also introduce a ton of new issues. I don't know how to ensure sovereignty for individuals who are legally earning compensation when a support representative for banks can click on a checkbox and make them penniless. Nevermind if the company the representative works for is influenced by an unhappy government.

Finance is terrifying, and we're really in a strange place where we don't have a good answer for ensuring individual sovereignty with any currency, crypto included. I stress over this because I'm less and less confident every year that there is a good solution for this besides eschewing Finance entirely (and that's quite the magic trick...)

[forgetfreeman]

Individual what now? Sovereignty? We pretending fiat currency isn't a thing now? You a gold bug? Understand I don't disagree with any particular point you've made here but you may as well be freaking out about the weather. If the international financial system were to ever truly brick 2/3 of the world's population would busy themselves with killing each other. The surviving third that didn't succumb to disease would likely starve. What flavor of (now worthless) fiat currency you might have hoarded isn't going to alter any outcomes. I feel like what you're expressing here is less like a rant on international banking and more like pathological mistrust in institutions as a concept.

[CyanBird]

Please, reminder that the cia literally funded their own international bank (bcci) in order to do their clandestine operations

[forgetfreeman]

Yeah, they've also funded their own charter airlines and a few drug cartels, because apparently destabilizing all of central and South America is an expensive proposition. Where are you going with this?

[zehaeva]

What's entertaining about this line of thought, that corporations will only treat your data without care and you really need to worry about the government because they'll kill you is that there is a long history in the US of corporations straight up murdering people.

And I'm not even talking "accidentally", or though neglect. I'm thinking of the union busting efforts of the railroad and mining companies in the late 1800s and early 1900s where the corporations straight up murdered folks.

[chordalkeyboard]

> I'm thinking of the union busting efforts of the railroad and mining companies in the late 1800s and early 1900s where the corporations straight up murdered folks.

my favorite examples of corporate union busting from that era all involve the US Army being deployed against workers.

[Invictus0]

Corporations can deny you credit, change your interest rate, increase your bail, close your account, refuse to do business with you, and generally make your life harder.

[pa7ch]

I think you underestimate the worse things corporations do with data and how many people that affects. Cambridge analytica and the scandal with FB and Brexit would be one example.

[comfypotato]

Pointless yelling ensuing: why do you care if people track your chocolate spending? You’re not important enough for anyone to ever put your face to your name to your purchase of the chocolate. Forgive me if I’m talking to someone famous, but I’m not. Nobody gives a damn about you on the internet. They want to know you bought chocolate because they want to sell you more chocolate. That’s it! Just be grateful you don’t have to get off your ass to order the chocolate.

I’ve never understood the hubbub over privacy. Outside of obviously malicious attacks (that we should be well-protected from) it all just seems that you’re being observed so that other people can make money. That doesn’t bother me if I’m getting something out of it (chocolate). There are extreme examples of employees with access viewing the data, but they should be considered statistically insignificant in the discussion because they’re so rare.

[rektide]

It's easy to say when times are good. Government basically sort of tries & does good. But as others have pointed out, America has some ghastly data-collection-against-the-people situations in the past 100 years alone.

For example, Ralph Van Deman[1]. After being instrumental in the Philippine-American war (1899-1902)'s military intelligence division, creating some of the first (and incredibly far reaching) catalogs of potential enemies & associates & basically anyone anywhere near-by & using torture regularly to extract confessions/information, he came home to America... to start enormous files as leader of the new Military Intelligence on anti-War, labor, human rights & basically any American standing up or making any noise. Or who happened to be a couple degrees of separation away. Sending under-cover agents out to report back with unsigned reports, working under a veil of secrecy, & calling them "enemy agents" for not being happy-dumb American's & advocating voices.

Among many truly awful things, this lead to the sheriff of Bisbee gathering a vigilante posse of 2000, taking over the telephone network, and then leading the group by a car with a machine-gun mount on it (owned by the local mines of Phelps & Dodge), through Bisbee breaking into homes & pulling people out of beds at gunpoint. The strikers were told at gunpoint to get back to work, and 1186 refused & were shoved into passenger & cattle cars & hauled 180 miles under armed guard. Van Deman is far from personally responsible here, but he is an early leader of the modern world in weaponizing information against potential or related threats. You might be innocent, but if you talk to the wrong people or go to the wrong place, suddenly you're suspect, and maybe men with guns will come into your house & put you on a train out & that's that.

Creating systems that resist the impulse to corruption is necessary. "Abuse of power comes as no surprise", is one Holzer-ism. And what's safe today may not be safe tomorrow (power changes hands but records endure). And I think there is some essential need for human privacy at some level, that it's a gross & disgusting world if humans are deprived of a sense of independent identity, are too closely handled from above.

My example comes from American Midnight, which is a very very very long tale about awful things the US did just 100 years ago. It's well written and as the title says incredibly dark. A huge amount of the book touches on the power of information. We've seen other horrific examples in other states. It seems essential we have privacy, that we give people a sense that they have their own lives to live, with free choices.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Van_Deman

[comfypotato]

You failed to grasp the context of my comment. Do you really think I would advocate for a total lack of privacy? Of course it’s a balancing act.

The immediate example has to do with supplying identifying information in order to purchase online goods. I view it as the regulations that enable the data collection are in place to empower the consumer. Obviously, if we could keep the good parts (good return processes, immediate credit return for fraudulent transactions, etc.) I would prefer more privacy to less. It’s just not possible in today’s technological climate.