Why We Should Fear A Cashless World (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Dominic Frisby writes with a very interesting, albeit heavily opinionated, article from The Guardian discussing why we should all fear a cashless world. He argues "it will hand yet more power to the financial sector in that banks and related fintech companies will oversee all transactions." Every payment you will make will be traceable. While inequality is already a problem, it may be exacerbated even further in a cashless society. Frisby writes, "Cash, on the other hand, empowers its users. It enables them to buy and sell, and store their wealth, without being dependent on anyone else. They can stay outside the financial system, if so desired."

Comments

Be paranoid

[bretts]

If you give government a power, it will use it -- for its own purposes. Government is a business that makes money for its employees by inventing new ways to control you. Sure, it sounds like guy who lives in a van down by the river talk. The media and the $200k per year professors disagree. But history is clear on this: government serves itself, in the name of your best interests. Be cautious :)

Re:Be paranoid

[Dutch Gun]

Rather than calling government a "business", I think perhaps it's a bit more accurate to say that both businesses and governments share a common ancestry - they're both massive bureaucratic organizations, filled with people who wish to acquire and use power for their own benefit. In both cases, this means a natural tendency toward expanding their scope of responsibilities in order to build fiefdoms wherever possible, hiring underlings to boss around, and building very deep organizational charts which are massively inefficient, but with lots of mini-empire-building opportunities all the way down the ranks.

This isn't to say that there aren't good and decent people working in these organizations - most of them probably are, but in these sort of hierarchical structures, all you need is one asshole above you in the ranks to effectively negate all of your good intentions by issuing horrible directives and setting asinine rules and regulations.

Cashless society means banks can tax us

[sinij]

Cashless society means that Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx can impose sales tax on everyone in form of transaction fees.

I fear "Operation Choke Point plus"

[knorthern knight]

Operation Choke Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... is an illustration of what can happen. Porn actors, gun auctioneers, and other people that the government didn't like, suddenly found themselves denied bank accounts. The government's flimsy excuse was that these *MIGHT* be doing something illegal. This is on par with the IRS going after conservative non-profits.

At least for now, people can still put cash under their matresses. Even so, the police often seize cash from individuals carrrying large amounts. But imagine what happens when there is no cash option. You can't get paid because you have nowhere to deposit your "money".

Just because you're not a porn actor, or gun auctioneer, doesn't mean you're safe. "First they came for the porn actors, but I wasn't a porn actor... etc". Be very, very afraid.

Re:How anonymous is cash?

[rtb61]

What cash is, is something that can not be refused because it is your cash ie, how may I serve you today, oh you want to buy that loaf of bread, some milk and some baloney, sure and thank you for your money, oh wait the system says that money is shit because it's your money and I must refuse it, if it was someone else's that is OK but the banks have collectively decided that you can not eat today, please contact you nearest treasury officer for assistance.

A pocket full of cash and you eat, a pocket full of credit cards and you ask permission to eat. That is exactly how anonymous cash is, you do not need to ask permission to fucking spend it, it can not be rejected just because it is yours (most glaring example of exactly that, racism) and when it comes to stealing it, it takes real effort, rather than curruptly shifting around bits to enrich the minority at the majorities expence in some of the biggest scandals in history.

Also, don't ever forget, that the banks what to charge you too look after your money and pay not interest to use it for what ever they want to. Don't like that idea, tough fucking luck, we wont let you have that money we will only allow you to transfer it to one of our cartel members and charge a fee for that, so that then they can charge fees for gambling your money. The whole cashless society in capitalism thing is one huge scam, to basically enslave the majority.

Re:DEC

[wvmarle]

That's what happens when you start to hire youngsters. They don't know squat about the Real World and Real Computing History. This in compared to us oldies (oh... at 42 now I really start to feel old :))

Re:How anonymous is cash?

[pete6677]

How will politicians collect their bribes if there is no more cash?

Money will become worthless without cash

[blindseer]

So many comments and so few mentions of the mark of the beast?

What people value in money is the ability to spend it as they wish. A cashless economy removes this freedom. This will drive people to seek other means of trade. Expect barter, silver, gold, bit-coin, soup cans, laundry detergent bottles, whatever.

I heard some people discuss alternative currencies on late night talk radio not too long ago and the expert they had brought up several means to bypass reserve notes and coins. The topic was not on a cashless society exactly but more generally about the value we place in government issued money.

One thing mentioned in this talk show was the potential use of currency from another country. There are laws already existing in the USA protecting the right of people to keep foreign bank notes. For a cashless society to work then laws like this would have to be repealed to prevent people from just using Euros or whatever, not that it'd prevent it completely but it would drive it underground.

As mentioned in the article there's just too many transactions where electronic transfers just aren't suitable. There's a lot of charities and such that live on small cash transactions, we even have a name for them, "a penny drive".

Oh, and the biblical reference to a mark of the beast will cause a problem with a lot of people.

Re:Wow, really?

[stoborrobots]

You believe that paying with a credit card does not cost more than cash? You may not see the cost as it may be charged to the store instead of you, but you pay in higher prices for all goods and services.

For a long time, I used to think like you did - that the merchant was getting ripped off to the tune of 1-2% when I paid by credit card.

However, that was before taking into account the costs of handling cash - paying staff to count the cash twice a day, infrastructure/security to store cash safely overnight, paying staff to transfer cash safely to the bank regularly, potential costs of staff theft, arranging/maintaining sufficient float to give change to customers, sufficient security for float cash during the work day, etc.

These are real costs on a business, which are not relevant for card transactions, and also get factored into the costs of goods and services.