Couldn't think of a more incorrect diagnosis if I tried. State government budgets have been ballooning for the last decade; but political leaders don't give a shit about tracking outcomes, only celebrating starting things and how much money they spend.
Ok, but me and my buddies think you use tenuous judgement to characterize words as violence, and enable people to use physical violence in “retaliation”.
That’s a bright line violence against innocents, so we’re closing all your checking accounts and preventing you from paying for anything without cash. And if people try to help you, we’ll say loudly in polite society that they traffic in blood money.
> In short, despite the article's somewhat negative tone overall, I don't think anything described is actually a negative thing
I think the main thing to criticize, is that
1. Banks are deputized as ersatz law enforcement, and will cooperate in ways you would otherwise expect to warrant a warrant, or do damage to people you would otherwise expect a court to gate.
2. Government has set up laws that on their face sound reasonable, but are extremely easy to run afoul of, and extremely easy to prosecute.
3. Banks have delegated decision making to private entities, which confounds oversight and is probably extremely under regulated vs anyone’s expectations
4. A lot of this power is wielded at the discretion of political actors at both ends
5. The main lesson of American politics since Nov 2016 is that we need more guardrails than “discretion”
I guess this case is especially interesting and novel because of how the government has deputized banks as ersatz law enforcement, and banks have delegated decision making to SPLC as ersatz compliance officers.
I’m not sure what the law could and should be in this case, but I suspect it’s woefully underspeced to the chagrin of most parties.