Simply Seeking Balance · The Distance Problem · Part 3 of 4
A companion to The Distance Problem. Developed with Quinn; editorial revision by Enzo.
Banks tell me they are protecting my money. Sometimes I believe them.
What I find harder to accept is the suggestion that because they are protecting it, they should therefore decide when I may use it.
There are real reasons banks monitor transactions.
Fraud, money laundering, sanctions, and identity theft are real concerns. Banks have legal obligations, some of which are quite sensible.
But there is a difference between:
“The law requires us to verify this.”
and:
“Our system thinks your behavior looks unusual, so you must satisfy us before you may move your money.”
The first is a defined obligation.
The second can become a relationship in which I technically own the money while somebody else exercises practical authority over it.
That distinction has begun appearing everywhere I look.
I can pay for a Kindle ebook and read it. But I cannot treat it as I would a printed book.
I cannot necessarily move it wherever I please, lend or resell it like a printed copy, or guarantee access independently of the platform and its licensing terms.
So what did I buy?
A book, a licensed copy, or access under somebody else’s continuing technical and contractual terms?
Evernote was even more irritating because the information inside it was mine before I ever put it there.
I used the platform because I wanted a better way to preserve and retrieve my own material.
Years later, leaving required far more work than entering. My information remained mine in principle. In practice, it had become embedded in somebody else's structure.
Legal ownership and practical agency had separated. Property ownership raises a different version of the same discomfort. A homeowner may pay off every dollar of a mortgage and still owe property taxes indefinitely.
Failure to pay can eventually result in loss of the property.
That does not make property taxation legally incoherent. Property has always existed inside systems of law and obligation.
But it makes the word ownership more interesting.
If continued possession requires continuing payment to another authority, perhaps ownership is not absolute possession at all.
Perhaps much of what we call ownership is better understood as a bundle of durable rights subject to continuing obligations.
That may be perfectly reasonable. But if so, we should stop pretending the word explains more than it does. The bank example raises another strand that troubles me more.
A society can honor innocent until proven guilty in criminal law while making routine transactions increasingly dependent on advance verification.
The criminal-law principle is specific; a bank’s fraud algorithm is not a courtroom, and the analogy has limits.
Still, institutions teach habits.
More and more ordinary transactions begin with some version of: Something about this looks risky. Prove it is legitimate. Prove you are you, that the money is yours, and that you may move it.
Sometimes that is necessary. The danger is what happens when the exception becomes the architecture. The burden quietly moves.
Increasingly, the institution’s suspicion is enough to shift the burden: the individual must demonstrate a reason to be left alone.
That is not a constitutional argument. It is a cultural one.
What happens to a society's understanding of liberty when “protecting everyone” increasingly means requiring everyone to establish permission first?
Banks are a useful example because their incentives are mixed. They genuinely need to prevent fraud. They also benefit from customer inertia.
Suppose AI agents become capable of continuously comparing deposit rates and moving idle cash toward better returns.
Customers benefit. Banks lose some cheap deposits. Banks may respond by restricting outside agents.
They can have excellent security reasons for doing so. They can also have excellent business reasons. Both things can be true.
That is why transparency matters.
I would like institutions to distinguish what the law requires, what security requires, what the institution has chosen, and what protects its own economics.
The same principle applies to technology platforms. A restriction may genuinely improve safety while also making leaving difficult. A proprietary format may improve a product while also increasing lock-in.
A licensing system may protect intellectual property while also ensuring that the seller retains practical authority after the sale.
Protection and self-interest are not opposites. That does not make the protection illegitimate. It makes scrutiny necessary.
I think the question underneath all of this is:
How much practical authority may an institution acquire in the name of protecting something that still belongs to someone else?
There is no reason the answer must always be zero. A bank that could never stop a fraudulent transfer would not be a very useful bank. A government that could never collect taxes would not remain much of a government.
A platform with no way to enforce licensing terms would struggle to sell licensed material. The issue is proportionality, not the assumption that every restriction is illegitimate.
How much authority is actually required for the legitimate function?
Is the restriction visible?
Can it be challenged?
Can it expire?
Can I leave?
Can I take what is mine with me?
Does the institution retain control because the control is necessary, or because the control has become convenient?
Perhaps ownership should carry a practical presumption:
access, movement, delegation and exit remain with the owner unless a specific competing obligation justifies taking some portion of them away.
That does not make ownership unlimited. It makes restriction the thing requiring explanation.
Which seems, to me, much closer to the spirit of a society that claims not to presume guilt before evidence appears.
Protection becomes possession when the protector acquires so much practical control that ordinary use of what is mine depends upon its discretionary permission.
That is the point at which I would like the protector to explain itself.
The Distance Problem — read the series
2. Who Ultimately Supplied the Money?
3. When Protection Becomes Possession