Cultivating, processing & producing drugs shouldn't be legal in the first place. Governments create cartels by making it illegal. In Mexico, cartels also run local some governments, states & also control many activities such as cattle sales, used auto parts, metals, meat, fish, flowers, etc... if you dare to buy from an unauthorized supplier or sell to someone other than them, you are beaten, extorted, or killed. On top of that they also kidnap, steal and require monthly payments to let businesses operate.

Terrorism is state funded and preventing laundering won't do much.

Laundering helps people in countries like Mexico, where a large part of the tax revenue goes into the hands of few. Why fund a state that is run by gangsters?

Your point is taken, but surely you will agree that there are at least some ways to make money surreptitiously that should be illegal?

> Like it's not illegal to swerve back and forth in your car without ever leaving your lane, but if a cop see you doing it you're probably going to get pulled over.

Well traffic law has similar catch-all like 'disorderly conduct' laws: 'careless driving'. Up to the officer's discretion, basically.

They don't need AML stuff to have this. If someone's laundromat is doing record income, sure, fine, hang out and watch them a bit and see if they look like a lead for a real crime.

I'd also note that encryption is "not be something that harms anyone" but "often done to conceal actions ... harm".

I actually had a line in there that said "Unlike encryption, there are very few legitimate reasons..." but I took it out because it seemed like too specific of an example so if someone brought it up I would argue it then, and not before.

This particular money laundering debate is very unlike the encryption debate. Actually, you could argue that money laundering is a very specific type of encryption, you're just encrypting the source of your income by adding noise instead of encrypting digital data.

Let's see just some of the reasons you'd use encryption:

So bad people can't find your passwords

So bad people can't get into your bank account

So bad people can't see what websites you've been visiting

So bad people can't see your pictures

So bad people can't steal your intellectual property

And why would you need this type of privacy?

So criminals and bad people can't injure you using your private information

So corrupt governments can't see what information you've been reading/writing/sharing

So you can have some assurance that your email/social media/etc accounts are fully controlled by you, and likewise for those you're interacting with

Now let's see some of the reasons you'd launder money:

So the government can't see where you got the money.

That's it.

And why would you need this type of privacy?

So the government doesn't know you committed a crime to get that money.

That's it.

People don't launder money because they're ashamed to admit they work at Microsoft. People don't launder money to hide their employer from criminals who want to hurt them. People don't launder money to hide it from other citizens. People don't launder money from legitimate businesses. People launder money so the government doesn't know that they got the money illegally. That's it.

There's a lot of legitimate reasons to encrypt various things, and no one has ever argued that encryption is only ever used for legal and good purposes. The argument is that while encryption is sometimes used for crimes, the good things it enables outweigh the bad things. But there's only one reason to launder money, and that's because you earned it illegally.

It sounds like you're trying to argue against the person you're replying to, but aren't you both saying essentially the same thing? It's a made up thing that makes prosecutors lives easier when they're trying to catch somebody committing a real crime.

Every law is a made-up thing. There's no inherent laws of man that govern the world divined by God himself.

What the parent is trying to argue is that the entire idea of money laundering should be forgotten and there should be no negative public perception of money laundering. What I'm arguing is sure, maybe people shouldn't go to jail for money laundering by itself, but there are zero legitimate reasons to launder money. The very fact that someone has gone to any length to hide the source of their income means they've committed a crime. Not the crime of money laundering, but the crime of whatever they did to earn the money. Because if they didn't commit a crime to earn it, they wouldn't go through the trouble of hiding it. Money laundering is probable cause for further investigation.

His argument sounds to me like people who argue that since the Constitution doesn't say the government can collect taxes, that means taxation is theft and we shouldn't pay them. It's the libertarian ideal that money is private property, humans are inherently good (unless they've won an election), and laws don't apply to you if you just believe it hard enough. Unfortunately that's not the way the world works. In reality, where there is smoke there is fire, and where there is money laundering there is someone concealing a crime.

Really? Zero? What if I work in something I'm embarrassed about and want to front it through something more respectable? Or what about the simple idea that I shouldn't have to tell anyone about my income sources?

I agree that a front is a reason for someone to be suspicious. Find a laundromat doing a million a day? Sure, investigate them. But that alone should not be a crime.

>what about the simple idea that I shouldn't have to tell anyone about my income sources?

That's not even an argument. That's the lack of an argument. That's throwing a temper tantrum and saying "but I don't wanna!"

It's a sovereign citizen argument and I love seeing YouTube videos of people telling the police that exact thing.

What does "made up" mean?

Someone who launders money for a hitman or human trafficker is enabling the hitman/trafficker's business.

If you help bury a body, you're guilty of something. If you help clean a violent criminal's money, you're guilty of something.

The launderer's guilt is only "made up" in-so-far as murder or human trafficking are "made up".

(Re: Drugs, sure. The correct solution here is to legalize drugs.)

> It's a made up thing that makes prosecutors lives easier when they're trying to catch somebody committing a real crime.

“Crime” is not a thing that exists aside from laws defining them; all crimes defined in law are equally “made up” (and, for the same reason, equally “real crimes”.)