If a legal activity is heavily overrepresented by financial crime, as crypto is, it would be incredibly irresponsible not to take action from a regulatory level.
A full-stop is surely overboard, but a pause on business related to this activity until mitigation strategies are implemented seems reasonable to me.
For a microcosm example, I work in fintech and have had to pause all gift card processing on payment gateways due to insecure/improperly implemented payment forms belonging to integrators being used to test stolen gift cards or do refund scams.
Two of the most fraud areas of society are in SNAP benefits and improper Medicaid payments. Yet we never seem to take regulatory action to solve this over-representation of crime.
Individuals who defraud those programs are regularly caught and prosecuted, the systemic offenders who get away with it are always wealthy and connected, and they wind up becoming the Governor and Senator of Florida instead of going to prison.
You find something you made up hilarious? That's kind of sad, don't you think?
I said individuals are routinely prosecuted, which doesn't take a massive effort, it takes a regular effort. It would take a massive effort to do something about Rick Scott's $100M+ fraud, and since he's in the Senate, you can be sure I don't think that.
I know someone involved in organized crime, and the entire crime is around stealing from Medicaid. The scam he is a component of involves hiring an immigrant to get into a contrived accident, then they go to their clinic to get treatment, then go to their specialists, and so on. All of it bilks Medicaid. There is literally no one who could care if I report this, and probably I would be killed.
The mafia never disappeared. They just fleece the government now. Much safer than shaking down pizza shops
Cool story? Doesn’t conflict with what I said. Medicaid still does way more good than bad and has lower overhead and waste than private insurers. The alternative is the working poor dying in poverty from a lack of available care.
This is the core difference in opinion. You are empathetic, which is a noble virtue, and give the benefit of the doubt. I am a hustler, and I understand the mindset of hustlers, and there are way more hustlers out there than you think, because your virtue and good nature has made you think the vast majority are this way.
Unfortunately the hustlers are businessmen, and their business is stealing from taxpayers. We need to do far, far more to prevent the fleecing of taxpayers from top to bottom. It is endemic and I have seen it with my own eyes in so many ways.
I am empathetic, but my viewpoint is based on the math that it's cheaper to provide basic care from cradle to grave than to shoulder the cost of chronic diseases - regardless of how you manage them. Even if you adopt the ultimate individualist position and decide everyone is on their own. Sick citizens make bad workers, bad workers have low output. Sick kids don't learn, don't gain skills, don't become the future.
Hustlers spend all their time thinking about how to fleece people, while people like me bake that in as a cost of doing business. There is always some waste, because at some point it's cost prohibitive to root it out.
I would argue your nature makes you far too cynical - you probably see other scammers everywhere because that's where you look, but don't seek out the vast amounts of good those programs do, so your priors are messed up.
And my counterpoint is that the lack of effective counter-measures to prevent fraud and abuse erodes the basic trust that society requires in order to support such societal welfare funded by taxpayer dollars.
Where is the outrage and indignation for people who make millions from government programs? Why not hire 80,000 agents strictly to audit NGOs, politicians, and anyone who sucks from the government tit? I believe you would find far more fraud, and it would be much more politically popular. Then hire 80,000 IRS agents to attack actual productive members of society
No, Fox News and right-wing media erode basic trust by heavily overemphasizing the waste aspect vs. the utility aspect, just like you are doing now. There is more waste and fraud happening with private insurers than Medicaid, so unless you have an alternative to health insurance, you are tilting at windmills.
> Biden trumpeted hiring 80,000 new IRS agents to audit taxpayers.
To audit wealthy* taxpayers. Working class people were already being audited because it's really easy to audit an incorrect return that only has a W-2 and Schedule A.
> The IRS is now auditing people who sell $600 on etsy and ebay
That's a lie and I'm assuming it is in bad faith since the article you linked doesn't support what you said. Having to enter a 1099-K is not the same as being audited. You are ridiculous.
You say the government found a tiny amount of fraud as evidence there is not fraud. My counterpoint the government doesn't have systems in place to ensure there is no fraud, and I know there is massive fraud, because I am friends with people who do this fraud. Why am I friends with them? Because I am an active member of my church and I help these people, and I know the way they work the system in order to earn cash.
Additionally, I own many rental properties. Some of them I have rented via Section 8. And I am a good landlord, and my tenants trust me. So I sign their forms, and help them work the system, and I don't make them pay me the cash portion of the section 8 because I'm rich and I don't need it. I know how the scams work, the disability, the SNAP, the "my niece lives with me so I get extra payments". It's so incredibly easy to scam the system.
I don't like this! I don't like the fraud! I'm not reporting these people, but it's so ingrained into the process it's just commonplace. I don't want an entire society of people who refuse to get gainful employment because it would jeopardize their welfare benefits. The system is fucked
You put a great deal of prose behind it, but what you have said is “don’t trust data from the administrators of this program, trust my personal anecdotes”.
That is not and should not be a compelling argument to anyone, for anything.
Surely if fraud on the scale you fervently believe exists, someone is tracking it. Until you can present that evidence, there is absolutely no reason to treat your beliefs as even probable.
Beyond that, by your admission you are a landlord who engages in crypto speculation. Two markets that provide you with profit that would be heavily stifled by common sense regulation. There is ample reason specifically to distrust anything you claim on this issue.
Because they don't pose systemic risk. If it were possible for a customer doing SNAP fraud to do so much damage that the stores they shop at are forced to close, there'd be a lot more regulation.
A full-stop is surely overboard, but a pause on business related to this activity until mitigation strategies are implemented seems reasonable to me.
For a microcosm example, I work in fintech and have had to pause all gift card processing on payment gateways due to insecure/improperly implemented payment forms belonging to integrators being used to test stolen gift cards or do refund scams.