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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."
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 :)
Cashless society means that Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx can impose sales tax on everyone in form of transaction fees.
I'm OK with this. Particularly if it finally means the adoption of Thunderdome as the chief method of conflict resolution.
Slashdot's "Digital" category was actually created for stories related to the Digital Equipment Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation hence the icon.
Maybe the category needs to be retired, or given the number of stories that have erroneously had it applied to them, maybe the icon need to be changed.
Using paper money, backed by nothing, certainly requires a financial system.
Design suggestions?
First buy visa gift cards. Then swap them around. :p
Every few months, swap your card.
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.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I don't know any transsexual hookers who take bitcoin.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When we have a cashless society we have slavery. Anyone who has deposited an out of town check has already discovered that you don't have the money right away. Oh, the bank where you deposited it has it that night. But you can't have it for up to 10 working days. This is called the "float". Banks "float" huge sums of money daily - your money - and lend it back to you and others at exorbitant interest rates. The banks, of course, keep those (up to 29% annually of the amount borrowed) interest collections. You can already, in the USA, transfer money only 10 times per month in the USA - even between your own accounts at the same bank. So already, you don't own your money and can't do with it what you please. You earned it. You've already paid taxes on your earning, but you still don't actually own what's left to do with as you please. You have restrictions on how much you can draw at a time etc. etc. Your money can be confiscated, blocked from usage and be divided by 1,000 overnight. Just ask anyone who lives in Argentina. You can literally go to bed a wealthy person, having worked fervently and saved your whole life, and wake up in the morning where every $100 you had in the bank is now only 10 cents. When your money is *completely* controlled electronically you are at the mercy of your government and the banks. Totally. You are effectively a hostage, if not a slave. I know, I've lived it already.
The one nice thing about the 'cashless economy' is that(unlike a great many awful ideas) both its backers and its detractors actually largely agree on the reasons for why it will be awesome/awful; they just phrase them slightly differently. More commonly you have to deal with one or both sides fundamentally disagreeing on what the effects of the plan will be, which requires you to sort out the fact of the matter, rather than just disagreeing on whether the effects are good or not.
The enthusiasts say "Hooray, saving the un-banked from their precarious existence and enabling access to financial services!" The detractors say "feeding the last holdouts and previously inaccessible markets into the maw of the financial service industry." They aren't actually disagreeing. The enthusiasts talk about the glorious transparency and ability to crack down on bribery, embezzlement, slush funds, and various similar things. The pessimists note the relentless and inescapable scrutiny and the ability to crack down on basically any flavor of transaction you don't much approve of. Again, not really a dispute over what the plan will do. Optimists extol the ease and convenience of frictionless electronic transacting without tedious stacks of paper. The less sanguine note that that's pretty much exactly what team Behavioral Econ says is the recipe to maximize impulse spending and consumer debt accumulation.
The difficulties presented by bartering have historically led to the introduction of an alternative currency instead.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In the case of a zombie apocalypse or stock market crash, cash paper might become as valuable as toilet paper.
So, extremely valuable?
The fundamental problem is the "scourge" of crime.
Unfortunately, we're in a state of Industrial level crime: from cartels, to terrorism, to state sponsored shenanigans.
Most of these cash free laws aim at abetting crime. Cashless laws are supposed to stifle money laundering, ransoms, drug payments, gun payments, etc.
Anonymous transactions enable criminal transactions.
But free societies need to allow for crime, especially low grade crime. Nobody wants cartels, or terrorist groups, or even state sponsored shenanigans. But I do want to be able to pay people under the table for painting my fence. Or buying some weed on the street corner. Or buying a stolen stereo from the back of somebodies van.
With the pervasive surveillance society, we can't prevent crime, but we can post-mortem hunt down the perpetrators. We can run the tape back. Watch the guy with the knife walk backwards out of the convenience store in to his car. The car drive backwards down the street. The broken window suddenly reassembling itself as the guy pulls the hammer out of it and walks backward to the back alley, where he rides his bicycle backwards to his house.
But, we've been solving petty crimes like that forever using classic detective work and simply relying on people being people, and criminals being stupid.
That pervasive surveillance that nailed this guy with a mouse click is so oppressive as to stifle the real creativity of society. The growth of society. The change of society.
Adding money transfer tracking just broadens the net.
Cartels and terrorism are social issues, not criminal issues. It's a different category of ill. But pervasive surveillance, is worse.
"That is how it was done for thousands of years" is one of the worst arguments you could make for doing something. Especially on a tech site. 0/10.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
NIRP = Negative Interest Rates, a situation where a central bank tries to push interest rates below zero (instead of getting interest on your savings, you pay the bank to hold your cash). The theory is that THIS is the thing that will force consumers to spend their wealth, and yadda yadda, the economy starts growing and adding jobs (the reason for the 2% inflation target is similar, to make debt more attractive as one can pay it off in less valuable currency, and to institute a "use it or lose it" tax which doesn't need to be voted on by the legislature).
The PROBLEM is that if rates get too negative, then people will convert their wealth to cash. Large denomination bills enable that. That's why there has been a push on to eliminate the 100 dollar bill, under the guise of battling terrorists and criminals. The head of the European Central Bank has recently proposed eliminating the 500 Euro note for the same reason. A happy coincidence is that this makes it harder for people to convert their wealth to cash.
This won't be instituted all at once. This is how it is introduced, under a false casus belli.
A cashless society means you are a captive audience to these sorts of experiments. Additionally, while cash doesn't require infrastructure to complete transactions, cashless transactions require a great deal of infrastructure. Buying something electronically means you are requesting permission to buy - either via authentication or other constraints.
Humans have been using currency for thousands of years. Instead of hastily rushing to do away with it, we should approach the situation with a lot of caution. Something proponents most certainly do not want.
Currency is already a logical construct. The slips of paper are inherently worth very little. They don't even function that well as toilet paper (not that I would know). Currency which becomes an electronic logical construct gives a tremendous amount of power to the people running the servers. And even more importantly perhaps, their cronies.
"Payroll robberies" were a thriving industry when I started my working life in the 70's, electronic transfers have eliminated that risk and reduced insurance premiums, so good luck finding an employer who pays your wage in cash rather than direct deposit into your bank account.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Isn't cash similarly not-really anonymous though? Each bank note has a unique serial number on it ...
That's why I buy everything using pennies. Sure, buying the house and car was a bitch and my carry-on is troublesome at the airport, but the extra privacy is so worth it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
How will politicians collect their bribes if there is no more cash?
It's not like the government would ever make it illegal to own gold!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Fear is the correct word.
Few living people are able to remember the days when a wheelbarrow of cash was needed to buy a week's groceries. In various parts of the world in various times, inflation has created this situation where the traditional currency became worthless. It can happen anywhere, anytime.
The central banks who manage our financial experience can snap their fingers and put YOUR currency in that category. When that happens, you have to sell everything of value to get through the next month. When all the common people have released everything they hold dear to those who can pay (the 1%), the currency will normalize and they can buy their stuff back at the new (much higher) price.
This boom/bust cycle has repeated itself through history and is one way to keep the bulk of humanity in debt to the (sing along with me) 'one percent'. Fear is the correct word as millions have already learned on their way to an early grave. Forget history and reap the consequences.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This isn't a theoretical, academic problem. In 2013, the Cyprus government made a shock announcement, stating that they would be taking a "one-off" 'bailout levy' of 10% from any accounts over a certain balance value. Article on BBC News here:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... This was proposed because Cyprus, like Greece, had a failing economy and owed the European Central Bank some $13 Billion as part of a loan repayment. The economy was tanking, the government didn't have the tax revenue, so they decided to go after the savers. The really wealthy in Greece kept their money off-shore and were not hit, but ex-pats from other EU nations could have been hammered if this went through. The interesting thing was that before the proposal was announced the Cypriot government put rules in place to prohibit people withdrawing their cash [since that would have started a run on the banks]. We should not underestimate the danger of this proposal.
Cute, but I think you know this isn't accurate. The worst thing that can happen to any currency is rampant deflation. It serves to make it useless, just like rampant *in*flation, but the impact is even worse. When there's not enough money supply to service incomes and day to day transactions the entire economy of labor shuts down, potentially overnight. Add that to the fact that most of the world pegs the value of their currency (either directly or indirectly) to the US dollar and you'll understand why the bailout wasn't an option, it was a necessity. Once you understand that, then you should understand why nearly every political issue up for debate should be taking a back seat to monetary policy and banking reform.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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
Cash most certainly can be refused by a merchant. Legal tender just means that cash must be accepted for payment of debts. If a store lets me put a purchase on a tab and lets me leave with a product then they are required to accept cash later on if I want to settle that debt. But they are under no obligation to let me leave the store with the product in the first place because I offer cash. A store could have a policy that they only accept goats or squirrel skins or whatever. There's effectively a contract that is made during a payment and if I don't have whatever the store requests in exchange as a payment I have no right to demand that I get the product. Cash or not.
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.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
You don't need a can opener, just a rough surface like (relatively smooth) concrete, or even a smooth stone. Rub the top of the can on it until you wear through the outer layer of crimped over metal and the lid pops right off. Just sayin'...
With those tiny hands? Not a chance!
Canada offers gold and silver ETFs which they at least claim are backed ounce for ounce with the physical reserves of the government. You can actually send an armored truck to pick up your metal at the mint in Ottawa. How are you going to prevent Americans from owning that?
By eliminating cash and controlling all digital transactions, of course! This right here is a great case for cash. Once cash is gone, financial institutions will have the ability to deny any transaction. Remember when Mastercard refused to process donations to Wikileaks? Well what would happen if you only had a Mastercard to pay for things? Sure, there are other methods now but it doesn't take much imagination to get to a time when laws prevent certain transactions. Heck, that the case now, except cash enables us to get around them. It's not just about buying drugs or whatnot, it could be about diversifying financially, as you describe. It's just a bad idea to insert a middle-man into every single transaction. It's a recipe for oppression and control.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
True but let's not forget Roosevelt and Breton Woods which effectively took us off the gold standard. Nixon ended the facade.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
This is why most preppers collect "junk" or Constitutional silver. It's a lot easier to handle day-to-day small transactions because it's recognizable and hard to inflate. Gold is for storing long-term wealth, not buying milk and bread.
Note that I agree with Bill Still wrt monetary reform. But in a post collapse scenario, silver will be king along with alcohol, cigs medical supplies and knowledge and anything of actual use. Search shtfplan.com for Bosnia. That's how it'll prolly turn out, assuming no large-scale nuke warfare.
In a total collapse, people *might* accept silver but I'm not sure constitutional silver is going to do you any good. The average person can't tell the difference between a silver quarter and the silver plated coins we have today and even if they can, what makes you think anyone will trust it more than the money that just collapsed? Sure, you can make arguments all day long but I'm not sure it's a sure thing as it's still just symbolic and has no real use in the day to day. On the other hand, gasoline, food, ammunition, and medicine are useful in any scenario. My first gut reaction is to figure out how to create antibiotic ointment in my basement as this would be a very valuable skill. This, however, only works in a stationary scenario where people trust or can see that your antibiotics actually work and you're not selling snake oil. Hundreds of pounds of food is also problematic if you're on the move. For price/weight ammunition would probably be one of the most valuable but is a very fixed supply and very hard to manufacture without a bunch of heavy equipment. Skills and physical labor are about the only highly portable currency that are a sure thing. The best thing is to stay in one place where you can gain trust from your neighbors and stockpile food and don't have to worry about portability. If I was going to be a prepper, I would try to find a way to have a 3 year rotating stock of canned goods, gasoline, and ammunition and forget about gold/silver. After that, I would try to acquire the skills for creating gun powder, reloading shells, and creating basic antibiotics and other commonly needed medicines in my basement. Oh, and gardening skills.