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Austrian Minister Calls For a Constitutional Right To Pay In Cash
New submitter sittingnut writes: Bloomberg reports that Austrian Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahrer has called for a constitutional right to use cash to protect their privacy. According to the report, Mahrer said, "We don't want someone to be able to track digitally what we buy, eat and drink, what books we read and what movies we watch. We will fight everywhere against rules," including caps on cash purchases. EU finance ministers at a meeting in Brussels last Friday urged the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, to "explore the need for appropriate restrictions on cash payments exceeding certain thresholds," " to crack down on "illicit cash movements."
I can't help but to see where a cashless society will only raise new black markets and increase crime. Nearly every form of prohibition brings additional criminal elements with it and a cashless society is a prohibitive society. Hopefully this gets real traction among other nations as well.
paypal is not a bank
That's not what I've been told when I worked at eBay/PayPal (years before the recent corporate split). Although not a bank per se, PayPal does fall under banking regulations. What that meant for the IT department was that we had to keep eBay assets and PayPal assets separate from each other. (Assets being anything with an asset tag such as laptops and monitors; cables, keyboards and mice were interchangeable.) Also, if you worked for PayPal directly and not eBay/PayPal, your credit record has to be much cleaner than average, no bankruptcies in the last ten years, and any adverse downward changes in credit score can result in immediate termination when your credit report gets periodically reviewed.
And when they refused to take cash, you were no longer required to pay and could have, in fact, taken them to court over it.
IF you offer to pay any debt to any entity with cash, our current laws require them to take that cash or absolve you of the debt.
Not saying your anecdotal evidence is not true - just that there were larger ramifications to what occurred than perhaps you were aware.
I once paid 12,000 dollars in cash for a car. The guy wanted 15,500 but I kept counting 100's until he folded at 12G's. Nowadays they'd take it away and make me prove I got it legally. I wish George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and all those guys could see what these fuckers are doing nowadays. They'd spit on 'em before they slid hard cold steel through their guts.