I don’t think so. A system with clear record keeping, auditable by third parties, and subject to the judiciary is far better than below:
> Trust and extensive use of connections are the components that distinguish it from other remittance systems. Hawaladar networks are often based on membership in the same family, village, clan, or ethnic group, and cheating is punished by effective excommunication and "loss of honour"—leading to severe economic hardship.[3]
Technology has obviated the need for unnecessary levels of allegiance to your tribe, as required in the above system.
And we've learned that record-keeping has its own very strong negative side. It alone can establish ties between people, and serve to eliminate privacy all in the names of "transparency". (And I can hear it now too - "Why want privacy if you have done nothing wrong?"). I think we're only at the beginning of crypto-fraud arrests, because the ledger is the log - and that's a liability.
And the auditability is primarily a governmental requirement, usually based around fraud, financing terrorists, or the like. If cheating occurs, the excommunication from the network is the punishment - you are removed from your position of power. And frankly, we can look at our systems of how auditability doesnt stop the various failure modes: blatant financing of terrorism/HBSC, billions of $ transferred away from citizens with usurious fines, overleveraging finance side affecting savings/loan. In the end, auditability is just a way to assign blame. And that blame is never directed towards those at the top who manufacture and use illegal techniques - it is used to blame the rank and file; the cashier, the teller, the engineer, the low middle manager.
And subject to the judiciary is an interesting case you bring up... Because transfers in (I believe) all cryptocurrency is not subject to the judiciary. And in many more popular cryptosystems, that is seen as a strong anti-government bonus, and not a malus. And
Point being, is that the Hawala is the last millenium's Bitcoin.. And when compared to BTC or ETH now, is still strictly better. (And we haven't discussed the barrier to entry, wasted electrical power, e-waste, etc.)
Hawala people can establish ties too, unless they are somehow incorruptible. And electronic money transfer systems and SWIFT and whatnot aren't perfect, but my contention is they are more preferable to almost all people than Hawala. I am aware of the corruption with regards to HSBC, but I can't agree with
>billions of $ transferred away from citizens with usurious fines, overleveraging finance side affecting savings/loan
Keeping funds secure and moving money has never been so easy and so cheap for almost all people. Yes, you can get screwed if the government deems you a terrorist, and a more distributed system like Hawala might be more resilient to that kind of attack, but there's other costs to Hawala that the current system doesn't have.
>Point being, is that the Hawala is the last millenium's Bitcoin.. And when compared to BTC or ETH now, is still strictly better. (And we haven't discussed the barrier to entry, wasted electrical power, e-waste, etc.)
I can't comment on this since I don't know enough about BTC or ETH or Hawala.
But does technology imply social capital? I don't think so.
So if you set up the dichotomy, and had to choose, I'd choose "social capital" every time.
I know, you didn't use this phrasing. But when I read "allegiance to your tribe", what does that even mean? If you're American and you support your troops, isn't that "allegiance to your tribe"?
Allegiance to the tribe means following the customs/social ordering/rules of the tribe. For example, how well would a gay/non religious/etc person fare in tribes that don't believe in civil liberties?
Unfortunately, I see what happens when 'We' use technology to remove middlemen...
Apple: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/02/amphetamine-app-store-r...
Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22348568
(person 17h ago on HN talking about google acct ban remediation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26218795 )
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-users-locked-out-afte...
That's what technology has gotten us. Accounts get closed down due to automated systems. Something gets flagged as "fraud" and you lose access/money. Your previous business selling apps gets cancelled when your app is deregistered and removed.
At least, the recourse is "Complain on HN or Twitter". Worst case is you file a lawsuit against a multi-billion dollar company (hah!).
Now, what do you do to file a dispute against Ethereum or Bitcoin? Well, nobody. There is no clearinghouse and no masters - that's the selling point! But what about fraud or likewise? Too bad, so sad.
With the hawaladars, their word, ethics, and livelihood is on the line. You have a real human who can handle the squishy and nigh-unautmatable parts. And they can talk with the person trying to transfer money in case there is problems unforseen.
> Allegiance to the tribe means following the customs/social ordering/rules of the tribe.
Well, yes.
> For example, how well would a gay/non religious/etc person fare in tribes that don't believe in civil liberties?
But this seems like a veiled way to attack a way of moving money around solely because the name is Islamic. And hate crimes happen nearly everywhere. And there was the Kentucky county clerk who refused to sign marriage certificates because a couple was gay.... And unlike the hawaladars whom you can go to a different one, these people in the county had no such choice.
It's easy to set up a strawman that someone may not support your beliefs, but it's a false narrative to think that only those people do it.
Automated solutions do not preclude having human reviewers, and I do not think it's unreasonable for the government to step in and mandate quality (such as subjecting the automated solutions to a small claims court style jurisdiction).
>With the hawaladars, their word, ethics, and livelihood is on the line. You have a real human who can handle the squishy and nigh-unautmatable parts. And they can talk with the person trying to transfer money in case there is problems unforseen.
While there's plusses, there's also minuses. What happens when something goes wrong with a $100M+ transaction? What happens if your hawaladar or the other one burns you? There's 7B+ people in the world, eventually some organization to manage reputation will develop, maybe even by the hawaladars themselves, and you end up back where you started.
>But this seems like a veiled way to attack a way of moving money around solely because the name is Islamic.
I specifically wrote "etc" so I didn't have to specify each and every instance of discrimination, and my example of "gay" would certainly include the KY county clerk, so I don't see how you could claim I was attacking an Islamic concept because it's Islamic.
I'm not even attacking it, it's a perfectly valid way for transactions to work. In fact, my family has done it many, many times when they immigrated and they did it between various African countries, UK, USA, AUS, NZ. But that was during a time when transferring money was more costly and they didn't have another option. Now they might choose to use transferwise.
It also allows for a new kind of system where the money dealers act as access points to the network, and customers trust their local money dealer, but you don't need trust connections between the money dealers: If I want to send money to you from my remote village to yours, I ask you which money dealer you trust, go to my trusted money dealer, give him cash, and tell him that it is to go to your trusted money dealer.
The two money dealers don't have to trust each other for the transaction to work, and the transactions are much harder to disrupt than classic banking transactions.
Exchanges all over the world have membership comprised of people who voluntarily group together to create and enforce trust. Using a different denominator for transactions wont take away the forces that cause this state of affairs.
Far more likely that money dealers held powerful positions, ensuring some very conservative social constructs stayed in place. People just routed around this by using "modern" technology.
And so the percentage of legitimate uses of the system dwindle, and the percentage of less legitimate increase till at some point you are no longer a useful social service but a money launderer for criminals who occasionally helps the diaspora send money home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
Its money dealer to money dealer, and the money dealers keep scrips. Average fees are from 0.2% to 0.5% . It's definitely un-sexy since its not technology based. No chains of blocks or programmers needed. Fees are low, so the money transferrers can make a living, but not allow speculation or other hazardous acts.
And the only reason why it's not more massively used is because of the US's adherence that it's "terrorism".
I'd imagine that the terrorism angle is more of a "allows people to ignore central banks ran by USA and Europe"... as the US didn't much care when HSBC was financing drug cartels, terrorists, and the like ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/07/16/hsbc-h... )