An API for USD centrally controlled by the Treasury? Kiss your financial freedom goodbye. You gotta demand it be distributed blockchains or you'll be living in chains.
Technically, any occurring "federally illegal" activity is just not successfully policed criminal activity. (States can't actually make something legal the federal government says is not legal. They can just decline to use their own resources to police it.)
Generally speaking, most people would consider "not usable in crime" to be a feature rather than a bug. ;)
Widespread consensus doesn't determine what is and isn't a crime. The law does. Until the federal law changes, marijuana sales are a federal crime. Technically speaking, no state can actually "legalize" it.
> I don’t think there is as quite widespread consensus that all federal crimes are legitimately crime as you seem to think.
Your comment makes no sense at all. For something to be a crime it has to be explicitly defined in law. Consensus has zero to do with it. Either there is a law, or there isn't. The whole point of rule of law is that you don't get to pick and choose which law applies to you in a given day of the week.
There are many marijuana shops in the United States, and many millions of customers of those shops who disagree with you.
Also, Prohibition.
The law is not some inviolate thing in a society. Many millions will happily ignore unjust laws if they feel they shouldn’t be laws. More alcohol was consumed during Prohibition in the US than before it was banned.
> The whole point of rule of law is that you don't get to pick and choose which law applies to you in a given day of the week.
If the law is not enforced, then it does not exist. The only real law is the one that you see day-to-day. So shooting black people is fine (in the US), and you can buy weed in shops (in a few places).
> At least you'd have due process and couldn't be deplatformed for legal activity. Now you have neither.
I don't understand your train of thought. I mean, you are arguing for a monopoly controlling a centralized service just because one of the many freely available payment platforms you personally choosed may have terms of service you might break?
How is that a solution?
It seems you are not arguing for a solution to the problem you framed. You're instead confusing wishful thinking with a solution to the problem. I mean, your suggestions don't even qualify as unintended consequences: they are only unrealistic and absurd expectations from a reform that has absolutely no relation to the problem.
There are already two APIs operated by the Fed (not the treasury) Fedwire and ACH.
The problem is the account. I do not want an account in the federal reserve or anywhere so closely coupled with the government. Nor do I want an account with a public ledger or any way distributed which doesn’t allow for transaction reversals (theft) which rules out blockchain.
I often see US citizens being very wary of the government. Would you care to explain why is that so?
In cases such as this one it strikes me as really odd: I would say that as citizens you have much more leverage over the government's actions than over whatever bank does (including handing over your data to the government). Thus, how is it better to have an account in some random bank than in the federal reserve (or whatever)?
Simple fear of authoritarian government oppression. It was also decided in the very early days of our government that a national government bank wasn't constitutional.
With Snowden's revelations of things we mostly already knew, we can see that we don't really have much leverage over government abuse of power to collect and misuse data. The government is already doing broad data collections from private companies using secret courts... it would be a whole lot worse if the government already possessed the data.
With private banks, I can choose which one I use. There is at least some motivation for that bank to be on my side, and I don't have to wait for an election cycle and hope that my issue fits in with my side on other issues and that side gets >50% after 2 or 4 years ... my bank does something I don't like and I can switch today.
I don't trust my government to do a good job doing anything, or for anything my government does to not be vulnerable to political destruction (just look at the post office).
The concern is pretty strange since they already have that information thanks to banking regulations. There is nothing more to lose by doing it directly.
