Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft

>Possession of money should not be a crime.

Cash has been illegal for a long time, and it's not just civil forfeiture that makes it illegal. Your bank has been deputized to spy on you if you deposit sums above a limit, at the limit, and "below the limit" (that's structuring also a crime). Other "negotiable instruments" have been outlawed, so that if you want to carry around your wealth, you have to do it in (at most) $100 increments, and they have threatened all my life to stop printing those and bump it down to $20. Meanwhile, in the last two decades we've had two major incidents where if you deposited the money anyway, it could just disappear out from under you without any real guarantees. And when none of that is enough to deter you, they inflate it away day after day until 20 years later it is worth only half of what it used to be. The strong-armed the swiss into no longer offering numbered accounts 30 years ago now. These things aren't coincidences. Money is very much illegal.

[removed] 4 days ago

[deleted]

Reply View 0 replies

simoncion 4 days ago

> Cash has been illegal for a long time...

Weird. I pay for nearly everything with cash.

I agree that nearly all of the rest of the stuff your comment describes is totally real and totally bullshit, but please don't ruin a good retelling of the facts with breathless hyperbole.

Reply View 8 replies

AngryData 4 days ago

People do illegal stuff all the time without even knowing it, that doesn't mean the cops and courts can't still fuck you over with it at any time. And even if you just had $20 in your pocket, a cop could seize it and claim they think it was used to buy or was going to sometime in the future buy drugs, and legally that is a completely valid reason even if you have zero drugs in your system and zero on you and were inside a McDonalds waiting in line to buy a burger.

Reply View | 7 replies
- simoncion 3 days ago
  
  > People do illegal stuff all the time without even knowing it...
  If using and carrying cash was illegal, I wouldn't be able to go to -say- Wal*Mart and hand them cash in exchange for goods and services.
  I agree that cops in many jurisdictions are permitted to engage in consequence-free-for-the-perpetrators highway robbery whenever they encounter someone carrying cash. The thing that's illegal in that scenario is the robbery.
  
  Reply View | 6 replies
  
  AngryData 3 days ago
  
  Except the robbery isn't illegal because it is legally civil forfeiture which has repeatedly been upheld.
  If you want another example of things that technically should be and people think are illegal for the government to do but are not because the government decided the constitution is inconvenient, look at the 100 mile border zone around the US, of which 2/3rds of people live in, that allows the government to ignore the 4th amendment and other rights. If the feds decide they want to search you without cause, they can just claim they think you are involved with or are an illegal and search you and your property without cause or proof of anything and also setup checkpoints and stop and search everyone in it. And even outside of the external borders, airports have also on occasion been considered a border point to justify such searches and checkpoint stops.
  Just because some law isn't regularly enforced over some situation doesn't mean there isn't a law somewhere on the books to do so.
  
  Reply View | 5 replies

yieldcrv 4 days ago

Hyperbolic

If you don’t mind reporting when moving into the electronic cash system or between borders then it is not illegal

Reply View 2 replies

NoMoreNicksLeft 3 days ago

The "they didn't hassle me or even notice this time" theory of non-illegality.

Reply View | 1 reply
- yieldcrv 3 days ago
  
  Uhm no
  The vast vast majority of the money supply exists as electronic balances, the entire M2
  If you have a liquidity concern about harassment then have balances and passive growth in all forms of liquidity. Cash, electronic cash, crypto. Then you never have to transfer balances between those systems and dont have to make it your whole identity.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies