[inbox-demon]

>Of course people will argue against this as the government would have full control over people’s money. But I think that’s the case anyway.

To an extent, but (speaking for the US primarily) there is significant added friction from the current distributed nature of the legacy banking system. If it were as easy as typing a person's ID number into a form and the system would take care of the rest, it would certainly be used more freely (freezing the accounts of thousands of people attending a protest with today's system would be a monumental task, even with full judicial endorsement).

[avidiax]

> freezing the accounts of thousands of people attending a protest with today's system would be a monumental task

We already have that system. They put your name on a list, and everyone with that name or similar has lots of paperwork to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force_bl...

[mo_42]

That’s what I have in mind. Currently, customers are subject to obscure internal rules of banks.

Given a governmental approach, this would be subject to the Fifth Amendment and other laws.

Also, there’s always the freedom to not choose this system and stay with private banks.

So I guess this it would be a net positive.

[inbox-demon]

I take your point, a well designed centralized system by a competent, benevolent government would be better than having to rely exclusively on a set of private banks not beholden to a constitution. My concern there, given the track record of most governments, this will not be built without tools for control, even if they are not used right away. It also sets a precedent for government involvement in individual transactions. Today we'll have an optional cashless payment system, tomorrow banks will start shifting over to keeping accounts with the government directly, the next all financial services will be required to use the government system for transaction processing to simplify monitoring. Anything to stop money laundering for terrorism, you know.