We do you need to seek permission by default to save, spend and transact over the internet? Do we need permission to send TCP packets? To send an email?
Consider that the internet works because it is permissive in what it accepts. What if money was abstracted from the states monetary policy, and it was as frictionless as any other internet protocol. The internet experiment changes our lives every day, in ways we cannot fathom.
I'm old enough to have lived in a cash society. We got paid in cash and paid for things in cash. You can send cash to others. Without a cap. We didn't own some government an explanation on what we do with our money, as it's none of their damn business. "Guilty by default, prove me that you're not" is to be rejected.
Society had less crime not more. Moreover, things like capital controls do nothing at all. Criminals with half a brain are quite obviously going to work around publicly known limitations.
Citation needed, at least if you're defining crime in the sense of what's experienced by regular people. Being a victim of violence was much more likely in those days, and the fact that you could easily spend the money of someone you mugged was a significant factor in that.
> Moreover, things like capital controls do nothing at all. Criminals with half a brain are quite obviously going to work around publicly known limitations.
The point isn't to eliminate it entirely but to make it more costly, and in that regard they seem to have been quite successful.
Only if you believe anything done without permission of an authority is criminal, which IMHO is no way to live the finite days we have trapped on this rock.
Peer to peer and permissionless does not mean criminal. It is how the web, email, end to end encryption protocols work. Most of HN would probably agree that E2EE and open source communication protocols are a good thing despite these tools also giving criminals an easier way to communicate without oversight.
