People who follow along to the Den-stravaganza train (The Den Rant Show? The Den Debacle?? Undiscipline's Disciples? ouh, I like that!) get rewarded with a weird, intimate insight into my production line. Mind getting out of my office, SIIIIRS?!

• I read stuff like books or articles,
• next: vent some early impressions, previously on Twitter or to friends; now mostly to my (clanker??) friends at SN
• and then three weeks later, when the raw dough has somehow set and I've gotten around to carefully writing up the most important stuff and the editors have finished decimating what's left of my lovely creation...

...THE PIE IS READY FOR TASTING. oh, yumyum.

So, when about a month ago I was ranting about money laundering and how Oliver Bullough's book Everybody Loves Our Dollars was kind of missing the point of money (#1455164, #1453638) — and thus, also, misunderstanding completely what the problem with money laundering is — you knew what was in store.

Alas, today we got:

Reading it now, with a few weeks of cooling down, the Swedish expression that comes to me in describing the review ("såga någon vid fotknölarna") is pretty vivid. Rough English equivalent = tearing someone to shreds, or, AI helping me out with this one, "flaying someone alive" uuuhh, OK Gemini... rude.

I killed this guy?

Like, honestly: his entire book, his entire work is COMPLETELY worthless because he doesn't understand what role/function money has in society.

As [In??] monetary economies, we use money as an informationally-efficient stand-in for reputation, trust, and value—virtues that, up until yesterday in human commercial affairs, constituted the bulk of economic transactions. To accept money in exchange for goods and services, we don’t need to inspect your tax return or know who your parents were. Its very purpose is to abstract away prior transactions, and instead of putting faith its wielder’s good character allows for value exchange between parties that otherwise might never have cooperated.

Being upset about money laundering, then, becomes a cue for not understanding the purpose of money. Every other error in Bullough’s quite entertaining and well-researched book follows downstream from that point

KYC is the illicit activity.

That's it, end the broadcast, throw the book out the window.

Looking at the piece now, I also suspect some editor cut or rearranged something (or I'm just an idiot and confused myself in writing?), bc the middle section seems unhooked... this bridge should come earlier:

As the book comes along, we’re treated to entertaining tales of failures, and head-shaking anecdotes for how ostensibly well-intentioned efforts to make economic life harder for criminals backfires and end up perpetrating racism and entrenching privilege. Bullough’s tale takes us on a journey from small Pacific islands to small European countries and to the Federal Reserve (dollar cash being the original money-laundering tool), as well as back in time to the origin of the Bank Secrecy Act. It’s animated by a sycophantic tale, where governments doing things together can make great improvements to the world.

(nice typo... perpetrating should be perpetuating... let's blame the editors once more!)

but whatevs:

"Money laundering” truly is the catch-all excuse for digging deep into a fellow man’s pockets, undermining his liberty and spitting on his dignity. It’s untoward for a free, modern society""Money laundering” truly is the catch-all excuse for digging deep into a fellow man’s pockets, undermining his liberty and spitting on his dignity. It’s untoward for a free, modern society"

Bullough’s intention with the book was to show all the ways in which bad people get around angelically motivated AML obstacles—and, on both accounts, that failed. It instead convinced me that AML regulation does nothing to stop bad transactions (while inconveniencing and damaging the rest of us). It also highlighted that, if you actually want to stop crime, you should do that where criminal acts were committed—not downstream by polluting and burdening the workings of the monetary system.