Maybe I misread your comment. What did you mean by "Given the US's $20 trillion GDP, that's quite a lot"? What is "that" in this sentence referring to?
That "that" refers to the implied product of 16% times $20 trillion. It's meant to provide an order-of-magnitude notion of what rampant organized crime could cost an economy, so that people who had previously read "costs of such bureaucratic monstrosities is in the range of hundreds of billions, whereas the benefit is a few orders of magnitude lower" could more usefully think about what the benefits of crime reduction really are.
Let's try this again: What makes you believe that repealing KYC laws (which were introduced by the Patriot Act in the 2000s) would lead to the same conditions as Italy? And how is this consistent with the fact that the US didn’t lose 16% of its GDP to mafia activity before such laws were introduced?
Exactly. You have provided no reason at all to think that repealing KYC laws (which were introduced by the Patriot Act in the 2000s) would transform the US into Italy, which is frankly just silly.
It also flatly contradicts the fact that the US didn’t lose 16% of its GDP to mafia activity before KYC laws were introduced.
> Well I'm glad that after 4 comments, you've finally gotten to stating a point.
I stated my point quite clearly at the very beginning of this thread. Did you miss it?
> Unfortunately, your point is shallow and dismissive, rather than engaging substantively.
In what way is requesting evidence for an implausible extrapolation "shallow and dismissive"?
> If you're saying it seems silly to you, an anonymous rando, I can live with that.
Is "anonymous rando" supposed to be an insult of some sort? Is it relevant to the topic in some way, or just a plain ad hominem?
> try asking succinctly and with at least a modicum of respect
I did. You should do likewise.
> Because people generally have better things to do than spoon-feed anonymous jerks.
The only one being a jerk here is you, my friend. Take a deep breath and re-read the thread. And no, requesting evidence rather than accepting your assumptions at face value isn't "spoon-feeding". Frankly, your response (or lack thereof) gives the impression that you've been backed into a corner and have resorted to name-calling and "spoon-feeding" accusations to try to save face.
> Is "anonymous rando" supposed to be an insult of some sort? Is it relevant to the topic in some way, or just a plain ad hominem?
It's not about the quality of your point. It's about who's worth my time. This is the internet, where I can be in contact with most of the planet. As I explained long ago in my bio here, anonymous people with bad attitudes get less leeway from me. If you want conversation, you have to be worth it.
In addition, when you introduce words like "silly" and "implausible", you are either a) asserting you have a technology that allows you to objectively measure those qualities in discussions, or b) asserting that you have some expertise which makes you a more qualified judge than the person you are talking to. Presuming for a moment that it's the latter case, you're the one who has introduced yourself as the arbiter of all that's right and true. It's within bounds for me to point out that from my perspective you demonstrate no qualities that would make you the expert you are acting like.
You are of course welcome to have any impressions of me you like. Again, the feelings of anonymous randos are not high on my list of concerns. Less so, of course, for the ones who start out a discussion with the assumption I'm a fool.
