A solution to the black markets, drugs and mafia…

[Amorphos]

A solution to the black markets, drugs and mafia…

The simple solution is to digitalise all money with a clever twist, instead of each credit just being that, give each credit an identity and a location! So when money gets exchanged the digital identity of the card holder is compared and given with the credits which each also have their own identity. This way you will a, not be able to exchange cash to buy drugs or stolen goods, or to buy black market products, and b, you will not be able to use bartering techniques as a replacement for cash.

Every purchase you make will go on computers and the exchange would be recorded, so anything dodgy will not go unnoticed, if e.g the police wish to investigate say a sweat shop, or drugs dealer, they will know where his money has gone to and how much was spent. A simple bit of software could detect abnormal purchases e.g. if the manager of a sweat shop paid his workers by giving them food and accommodation, he would be paying for many properties with no tenants [legal ones] and many more times the amount of food a family would normally eat.

Discuss.

& btw Think of all the products which could be made like e.g. an anti pick pocket device where your digital wallet alerts you when it is more than say a meter away from your body [with a locator on you belt or whathaveyou. Not that they would get very far because as soon as they spend any credit’s the game will be up, but lets presume such people would have stolen ID‘s.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

Government tracking of the populous to make sure they don't do terrible things like smoke cannabis?

That sounds like a fantastic idea, Herr Gauleiter! Why has nobody thought of this before?

[Amorphos]

^^^^ thanks!

Well I would make cannabis legal in its weaker forms, nice in fudge and cakes especially.

What about the mafia, sweat shops, heroine, burglary [the sale of stolen goods would not be possible] the black markets and identity theft etc etc? surely it would be a good thing to feel safe in our homes and for hard working businesses to not have to pay protection money to the mafia as like often happens in italy especially.

who are the real nazi's!!!

[removeduser_4536284751384]

What about the mafia, sweat shops, heroine, burglary [the sale of stolen goods would not be possible] the black markets and identity theft etc etc? surely it would be a good thing to feel safe in our homes and for hard working businesses to not have to pay protection money to the mafia as like often happens in italy especially.

if you suggestion were implemented, instead of ordinary citizens criminals doing these things, government officials would.



the less power and knowledge the government has of our everyday lives, the better.

[Jaketh]

those are some pretty good ideas

[JNS]

It's not a bad idea, it just has soooo many ways it can be abused. If you legalized drugs you would solve the problem anyway, and save the goverment gagillions in money + taxes from the now legal drug buissness.

[Amorphos]

It's not a bad idea, it just has soooo many ways it can be abused. If you legalized drugs you would solve the problem anyway, and save the goverment gagillions in money + taxes from the now legal drug buissness.

I agree partly with the latter part of your argument, but I fail to see how it can be abused even as much as current credit cards are? If you abuse it, as soon as you spend the money you get caught, its that simple.

The only thing I worry about is that people are dumb and would think they could still get away with things, which means the prisons would overspill rather rapidly.
after a while people would just know they have to do things legit like work for a living ~ hopefully.

[Amorphos]

if you suggestion were implemented, instead of ordinary citizens criminals doing these things, government officials would.

So you need a third party [e.g. banks are that anyways] to track where money goes. It is possible that anyone could track the money!!!!

the less power and knowledge the government has of our everyday lives, the better.

agreed, but why has it got anything to do with the govt?

[removeduser_4536284751384]

So you need a third party [e.g. banks are that anyways] to track where money goes. It is possible that anyone could track the money!!!!

and why would banks spend millions to decrease the amount of money they make?

Plus they'd be making themselves targets for attacks.

[Denny Crane!]

More power to the state? Not fricking likely.

[Amorphos]

and why would banks spend millions to decrease the amount of money they make?

They would increase it via the removal of most or all fraud. I don’t see how they would loose money anyways?

Plus they'd be making themselves targets for attacks.

It would be no different, most exchanges of credits are not done via cash anyways.

More power to the state? Not fricking likely.

??? Well the banks have more power than the state, so what’s so bad about the state ~ at least we vote and have a say over it. As I just said this doesn’t have to have anything to do with the state, the banks are mostly private still and it is they who print and hold all the money.

[Prince Odysseus]

I'm not quite sure which is funnier: the idea that you don't think that this has been thought of before or that government officials who pull in millions off of illicit activities would want to end the drug trade.

[Amorphos]

I'm not quite sure which is funnier: the idea that you don't think that this has been thought of before or that government officials who pull in millions off of illicit activities would want to end the drug trade.

Well you're a clever chap then arent you. I don’t know if anything similar has occurred before, got any evidence for that? Sometimes simple solutions pass people by, I don’t think that the direct linking of location identity and credit has occurred, even if the indirect form has been thought of. Either way I don’t know, I just know we don’t have such a system in place. Do governments pull more off of illicit activities than they would if the money was spent legally? Can they get away with such things these days and do you have evidence for them doing it.

All of this aside, whats wrong with the idea? You don’t need govt to implement it, it could be done privately.

[Prince Odysseus]

Well you're a clever chap then arent you. I don’t know if anything similar has occurred before, got any evidence for that? Sometimes simple solutions pass people by, I don’t think that the direct linking of location identity and credit has occurred, even if the indirect form has been thought of. Either way I don’t know, I just know we don’t have such a system in place. Do governments pull more off of illicit activities than they would if the money was spent legally? Can they get away with such things these days and do you have evidence for them doing it.

All of this aside, whats wrong with the idea? You don’t need govt to implement it, it could be done privately.

Don't need evidence; I'm sure every lobbyist, think-tank, and politician in Washington have thought about this at one point or the other and discarded the idea due to expense or other related issues. And on a side-note, it wouldn't be practical to implement this privately without billions in government subsidies which voters would be damned before approving anything like that in the wake of America's near-trillion dollar bailout.

Also, if everything was digitalized it would be a hell of a lot more difficult to back up currency value when a government could theorhetically 'print' more digitalized money. I'm just being skeptical, I suppose.

[Denny Crane!]

They would increase it via the removal of most or all fraud. I don’t see how they would loose money anyways?



It would be no different, most exchanges of credits are not done via cash anyways.



??? Well the banks have more power than the state, so what’s so bad about the state ~ at least we vote and have a say over it. As I just said this doesn’t have to have anything to do with the state, the banks are mostly private still and it is they who print and hold all the money.

Democracy doesn't transfer power to the people magically it is a hive of special interests and the lesser of two evils (which may contain if you are lucky a fraction of what you wanted which probably won't happen) so don't give me that.

The state in the UK particularly Labour have proven that they'll go against our democratic wishes in 'our best interests' so if you think I'd invest massive amounts of power in those baby killing freaks (hyperbole religious overtones not intentional lol) who will happily abuse our rights you are far from mistaken.

As bad ideas go I'm listing this as the worst this year, but then you shouldn't expect any less, I'm kinda an anarchist.

[Amorphos]

Phier

I am willing to accept the fact that criminals use money that can't be traced in exchange for freedom.

So freedom is to threaten families of businesses to extort protection money? Or to sell stolen goods from burglaries, or to sell your children hard drugs make your daughters into prostitutes etc? I know that’s the extreme end, but it happens and the less extreme stuff is always about taking some ones freedom away!!!

The government doesn't need to know every dildo you bought, etc.

ha maybe, but lets get this straight, the government doesn’t even have to be involved, secondly the banks already know most of where your money is and goes [and I expect the govt do too]. I for one rarely use cash, so every time I use my cards my bank knows exactly how much is in my account and how much has been used and what it has been spent on!

DarkProphet

While it could be a better system, there's so much that would have to change. It would cost so much to make it possible, from ending tickets, tokens, and cash payments for public transit, to installing technology in every store to handle it, and making everyone get a 'key' and bank account.

I don’t see why, you would use your credit card [or a digital wallet of some kind if you so wish] just as you do now, you can even use your card for car park tickets already, so it is only a matter of time before you can use it for anything. I wouldn’t expect it to happen overnight. I don’t know about a ‘key’, you just use your current credit card identity and number, the only difference is that the credits have changed and now have an identity and location code to each one [probably all in one different code for each credit perhaps].

And some problems are for homeless people, people who only get cash payments (ie. students getting paid to mow some people's lawns and shovel snow), the 'privacy invasion'... Maybe in the future, when everyone will have been born into an age of computers, internet, and digital money, and even the poor have everything necessary to make such a system easily available to them.

I disagree, a tramp has a dole card doesn’t he, so you just make a digital version of that which doubles up as a digital wallet with their money in. students have cards and there can be exceptions for things like mowing peoples lawns etc.

Denny Crane!

Democracy doesn't transfer power to the people magically it is a hive of special interests and the lesser of two evils (which may contain if you are lucky a fraction of what you wanted which probably won't happen) so don't give me that.

We have more of a say than we do in the private sector and govt knows if it messes up bad it will loose power, the banks and the city wont ever loose power. Hence I was right in saying that democracy transfers some power to the people, at least more than the city does.

The state in the UK particularly Labour have proven that they'll go against our democratic wishes in 'our best interests' so if you think I'd invest massive amounts of power in those baby killing freaks (hyperbole religious overtones not intentional lol) who will happily abuse our rights you are far from mistaken.

Well I too feel helpless and I don’t think any govt serves our interest, ed milliband is a jew so I cant see him doing anything to harm the banks [dare I say] at least I cannot know if he has an agenda we don’t see. I voted for clegg in the last election and then he joined with the tories, so I cant trust anyone these days [except the tories lols, one always knows what we‘ll get from them]].

Surely all of this is an argument for more democracy not less!

If money was digitalised in this sense [as suggested in op] then potentially anyone could read where all moneys are going [in a ‘read only’ fashion of the exchanges], it would all be completely transparent and so help stop corruption. This alone would make capitalism work far better because you wouldn’t have all the shadowy deals going on.

As bad ideas go I'm listing this as the worst this year, but then you shouldn't expect any less, I'm kinda an anarchist.

Oh thanks! I am too, but I see all the things this would stop as the main enemies to anarchism, you cant be free where people can steal and threaten you right? ...and beside your an anarchist who votes tory, i will never understand how that works or agree with it, and niether would any anarchist i have ever known.

[Denny Crane!]

Phier



So freedom is to threaten families of businesses to extort protection money? Or to sell stolen goods from burglaries, or to sell your children hard drugs make your daughters into prostitutes etc? I know that’s the extreme end, but it happens and the less extreme stuff is always about taking some ones freedom away!!!



ha maybe, but lets get this straight, the government doesn’t even have to be involved, secondly the banks already know most of where your money is and goes [and I expect the govt do too]. I for one rarely use cash, so every time I use my cards my bank knows exactly how much is in my account and how much has been used and what it has been spent on!

DarkProphet



I don’t see why, you would use your credit card [or a digital wallet of some kind if you so wish] just as you do now, you can even use your card for car park tickets already, so it is only a matter of time before you can use it for anything. I wouldn’t expect it to happen overnight. I don’t know about a ‘key’, you just use your current credit card identity and number, the only difference is that the credits have changed and now have an identity and location code to each one [probably all in one different code for each credit perhaps].



I disagree, a tramp has a dole card doesn’t he, so you just make a digital version of that which doubles up as a digital wallet with their money in. students have cards and there can be exceptions for things like mowing peoples lawns etc.

Denny Crane!



We have more of a say than we do in the private sector and govt knows if it messes up bad it will loose power, the banks and the city wont ever loose power. Hence I was right in saying that democracy transfers some power to the people, at least more than the city does.

At least if it was a private sector with no state then they would have less abilities to coerce or manipulate laws and legal matters in their favour.

But rather than enrich the state we should be enriching the people even if it is via the state. Not handing the state more power. You are basically saying you don't like having special interests on one side but you'll happily see it on another.

Well how about neither and find a better solution. Work harder to get money influence out of politics, work harder for more accountability over spending and waste but don't do the thing that allows governments to remove our freedoms based on what the Daily Mail and Mirror say.

Well I too feel helpless and I don’t think any govt serves our interest, ed milliband is a jew so I cant see him doing anything to harm the banks [dare I say] at least I cannot know if he has an agenda we don’t see. I voted for clegg in the last election and then he joined with the tories, so I cant trust anyone these days [except the tories lols, one always knows what we‘ll get from them]].

Surely all of this is an argument for more democracy not less!

If money was digitalised in this sense [as suggested in op] then potentially anyone could read where all moneys are going [in a ‘read only’ fashion of the exchanges], it would all be completely transparent and so help stop corruption. This alone would make capitalism work far better because you wouldn’t have all the shadowy deals going on.

Not really finance isn't that simple, they'd find plenty of ways around it and I can't imagine IT systems being able to cope with it and even if they did there would be corruption within that system.

Oh thanks! I am too, but I see all the things this would stop as the main enemies to anarchism, you cant be free where people can steal and threaten you right? ...and beside your an anarchist who votes tory, i will never understand how that works or agree with it, and niether would any anarchist i have ever known.

It is very communist to assume that you can get more freedom by enriching the state with more power and that is the route that led to tens of millions dying and leaving others in poverty. That can't be what you want.

I voted Tory because it was a choice between them and a party that I honestly perceived to be utterly dangerous in their abuse of freedoms, I am seriously concerned by the path that Labour were heading down both economically and with civil liberties, there was plenty to be worried about and I'll sacrifice abstract loyalties to a cause if it stops the UK sliding into authoritarianism and economic disaster which would directly affect me. Labour would have stripped the country bare.

And unfortunately democracy is so rubbish there is only a chance for two parties to get in properly. This election proved that despite the best libdem performance ever and labours arguably worst performance labour still bounced back in the polls at the last minute it is always going to be one or the other and my god I wish that choice was conservative or liberal because labour terrify me.

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

More power to the state? Not fricking likely.

I would agree with this actually....plus...more power to the banks is not a good thing.

Imagine if there was a serious crisis like what hit Argentina in the early 2000s' and your savings in the bank disappeared like what happened to many Argentines. In this scenario there would be no cash whatsover. The US would essentially become a 3rd world country overnight. To put it mildly.

It's a stretch, what caused the economic crisis in Argentina was because of some problems unique to that country at the time, but you see my point.

Today, I read an article where the journalist tried living without using a bank in the US, and she calculated it would cost over $1,000 in charges, fees, etc. to go without [EDIT: For a year (sorry)]. That alone tells me that the banks are too powerful in the US.

[Denny Crane!]

I would agree with this actually....plus...more power to the banks is not a good thing.

Imagine if there was a serious crisis like what hit Argentina in the early 2000s' and your savings in the bank disappeared like what happened to many Argentines. In this scenario there would be no cash whatsover. The US would essentially become a 3rd world country overnight. To put it mildly.

Today, I read an article where the journalist tried living without using a bank in the US, and she calculated it would cost over $1,000 in charges, fees, etc. to go without. That alone tells me that the banks are too powerful in the US.

This.

You kind of get the feeling that the banking system is ed up and I don't really want to hand any more money or influence to them.

It makes you wish there was an alternative banking structure that was completely separate from your investment/retail banking. In reality what I am talking about is such a simplistic statement that it couldn't happen. Though I suppose they say there is no money in the retail banking side of things, I've recently signed up for a bank to manage my money and I'm paying a monthly fee for my current account purely because it manages my direct debits and guarantees no charges. A £12.50 a month fee for a bank account... I'd say there is some money in retail banking.

edit: Weird how Dr Croccer shows up whenever me or TL posts touting the ''its all unproven crap'' post line, never shows up in any idealistic communist threads. Just saying, someone has a bee in his bonnet.

[Phier]

It comes down to this, if you give a government power, sooner or later that power will be abused. You give it only the amount of power absolutely needed.

You don't look for solutions to the now problems at the expense of future generations freedom.