When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s, my father used to go every summer for two weeks of military training as part of his commitment to the US Army Reserve. And whenever he flew home, we would always meet him at the airport.
But back then, my mom, sister, and I could all go straight through security and sit at the gate to wait for him. In fact that was normal all the way through the late 1990s.
Then, of course, everything changed after 9/11. The federal government took over airport security overnight, and for the past 23 years, we’ve been taking off our shoes, getting fondled by federal agents, and throwing away our liquids.
More than two decades after 9/11, most of these TSA Security rules (the majority of which have been adopted around the world) seem pretty stupid.
Does anyone honestly believe that a 3.4 ounce tube of toothpaste is OK, but 3.5 ounces of toothpaste is a security threat?
This is the kind of idiotic logic behind rules that add unnecessary inconvenience to people’s lives, without providing any discernible benefit.
The same thing applies to those ridiculous consent forms on countless websites across the Internet. Whenever we visit a site we are now forced to “accept cookies”, thanks to a law passed by the European Union’s most idiotic politicians.
They somehow think we are all safer and better off… and that our privacy is protected.
Except that our privacy isn’t protected. Mark Zuckerberg and the Google guys are still following us around the Internet watching everything we do and click. Not to mention the governments themselves grab our biometric and personal data, shove it all in a database, then leave it prone to breach by hackers.
But hey, at least we have those cookie notifications to keep our data safe, right?
It’s just another stupid rule that inconveniences people, without providing any discernible benefit.
Banking is another great example.
Some people aren’t old enough to remember, but it used to be a pretty simple process to open a bank account. You’d show up, sign some papers, and you were done. Now, we’re all threatened with imprisonment, forced to fill out a million forms, and every single transaction is scrutinized under anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism regulations.
The entire apparatus treats you like a criminal suspect rather than a valued customer. And for what?
Turns out, it’s all for nothing.
Laws like FATCA, CRS, and the USA PATRIOT Act were supposedly passed, at least in part, to cut off terrorist groups from the global financial system.
But all the regulators missed that Iran– a nation that has been blacklisted by the global financial system– sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas– a blacklisted terrorist organization. And then Hamas used that money to kill innocent Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
The US President himself agreed to release $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran for the release of a handful of Americans. So again, what exactly is the point of all that scrutiny in the financial system?
My mother has to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove that she’s not a criminal just to withdraw some cash from her bank account. But Hamas and the Taliban get hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to them, through the US banking system.
The latest example is actually the Iraqi banking system—which was set up in part by the US government after the 2003 invasion.
Top officials from the US Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve helped oversee the establishment of Iraq’s new financial system, including the anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering controls.
Well, big shocker, it turns out that the Iraqi banking system, i.e. the system set up by the US government, was used by terrorist groups to send money to Iran and to Hamas.
So once again, what exactly is the point of all these rules and regulations, which inconvenience regular, law-abiding citizens… if groups like Hamas can still receive ample funding through the system. It’s obvious the rules are pointless and have no real benefit.
The irony here is that so many governments around the world, including the US, are some of the most outspoken opponents of cryptocurrency.
The US Treasury Department hates crypto. They say it is dangerous to have an unregulated monetary system where terrorists and drug cartels can operate with total privacy.
Yet the very banking system that THEY established is what’s actually funding terrorists.
Everyone else has to suffer through daily friction and be treated like criminals, just to send some money from point A to point B; withdrawing $5,000 in cash brings a bureaucratic shock and awe.
And this is one of the biggest reasons why I think it makes sense to own crypto.
I’m not a crypto fanatic by any means. I don’t own it to speculate on the price. And most days, in fact, I don’t know the price of Bitcoin or Ether. Nor do I care.
To me there’s no point in trading dollars for crypto, only hoping to trade crypto back for more dollars. The larger idea is that crypto represents a way to send and receive funds outside of a system run by incompetent bureaucrats who constantly make our lives worse.
It’s similar to my belief that gold makes sense as a long-term store of value; I don’t trust the Federal Reserve or the White House with preserving the value of my savings. Gold is a great way to do so… without having to rely on the financial system.
With both crypto and gold, there’s no intermediary or incompetent bureaucrat standing in the middle.
That’s also why I’ve never seen any reason to debate which is better, gold vs crypto. There’s no reason to argue about it.
Both serve a useful purpose, and both are worth considering as part of any sensible Plan B.
