alex-ru
Well-known member
A lot of bank clients get upset when they learn about any new limitations related to banking or cash transfers that are instituted as a part of anti money laundering or anti terrorist measures. Their reasoning goes like this: "Money is mine, I should be able to use them as I see fit." That is a mistake: they do not actually own any money. Not even a dime.
A new feature about the AML measures that banks use garnered a huge amount of interest and a heated discussion in Russian Medias. In addition to the usual discontent with the Tinkoff bank, a lot of readers expressed their dissatisfaction with the government, which is acting too freely with their money, and towards the author, who isn't demonstrating enough outrage about that. That is a clear sign of lack of understanding about the nature of contemporary money and their role in the world of finance on the part of commenters.
The main idea that you need to understand, is that there is no such thing as "your money". That is, the money that belongs to you personally. As such, you can't really do as you see fit with your money (either cash or virtual). It is hard to understand, it is hard to be content about, but sooner or later you'll have to accept that as evident. All of the money that you "own" belongs to the government, and is controlled by a small circle of bureaucrats in central bank and government. This is true not only for rubles, but any other currency issued by any government.
The government gives you limited rights to use the money it gives you. Money is only given to you to "hold" as a way to simplify the exchange of goods and services, and some delayed consumption ("save for retirement", "put aside for a better car", etc), but no more. But there are no guarantees that you would be able to use those money now or later. Judging by the quality and the tendencies of the state government in all of the countries, it is possible to say with certainty, that in the long term any state issued currencies have real value of zero or close to zero.
Alongside this there are no doubts, that there are going to be more limitations on the current use of fiat money, as the time goes on. So called fight against "money laundering" and "terrorism funding" is an excellent excuse to finally abolish the vestiges of anonymity of payments and transfers. The end goal of government is to completely manage the "purchasing power" of every individual and through that their life. It is virtually impossible to function in the contemporary society without using money, even less if we are talking about having a fulfilling life.
Banks that the money are going through are private only on paper. The amount of regulation that they receive from the government in any developed countries is significant enough to be able to count them as "subsidiaries" of the central banks, operating in the field regulated by a set of really strict rules. Even in the countries where the regulation is more liberal right now it only means that the local central bank exercises a strong influence on banks, even if it is tangential and informal.
Cash provides some freedom, but that freedom isn't as great as it seems: one has only to go as far as the latest events in India, where the bills of two largest denominations that provided a significant portion of cash volume were suddenly prohibited. The total prohibition on usage of cash isn't that far away in the developed countries, which would absolutely solidify the control over your income, and more importantly your expenditure.
That is the reason why it is pointless to be upset about another set of limitations of the rights of the bank customers. It is about as pointless as blaming the wolves for eating sheep, which is their natural behaviour, the wolves eat the sheep, and the bureaucrats take all possible steps to turn the populace into worker-consumers, that are completely dependent on them. On other hand it is possible to regulate the wolf population, but the moment to curb the appetites of the governments seems to be lost.
Although things are not so bleak. Technological development enables us to create a parallel financial system, that is beyond the control by government (and ideally by any single entity). The cryptocurrencies, as they exist today is the first step in that direction, and while they are a bit inconvenient to use, there is a great demand for them, especially in the places where the government controls money the most. At the moment China is responsible for 98% of global bitcoin volume.
Non government issued money of the next generation would be significantly easier to use and more popular. Naturally they are being developed in a way, that would make to prohibit or limit their use would be quite hard technically. Even if these private money wouldn't win, they would carve out a niche, most likely for anonymous transactions, and perhaps savings.
Meanwhile, if you are earning and spending rubles, dollars, euro, yuan, and other fiat currencies, you should understand that you are using things that don't belong to you, and that are given to you only temporarily and on conditions that you know nothing about. And the owner of these things can do what he wishes with them: limit their usage scenarios, charge you for their use (inflation), or just take them from you if such a need arises. For that reason there is no sense in blaming any particular bank that follows the central bank policy, or even the central banks along with the governments is just a way to "blow off steam", to make an appearance of fighting injustice. Real ways to address the problems with governmental fiat currencies lies elsewhere.
TRANSLATION. Source (Russian)