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Ask Slashdot: What Are Anonymous Ways To Pay For Goods and Services?
Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr submitted a report a couple of days ago from Richard Stallman via The Guardian, which argues that we should be able to pay for news anonymously. "Online newspapers and magazines have come to depend, for their income, on a system of advertising and surveillance, which is both annoying and unjust... What they ought to do instead is give us a truly anonymous way to pay." In response to that report, an anonymous Slashdot reader writes: There was a recent article posted here on Slashdot about Richard Stallman and his attempt to make paying for online content anonymous. The corollary to that question is: What are the remaining ways to pay for stuff -- in the "real" world and online -- that are truly anonymous? Even cash can be tracked, but what about other methods? Have we completely given up on anonymous payments? No more anonymous/numbered bank accounts, no more pre-paid/virtual bank cards in Europe (just happened recently), for that matter no more prepaid phone numbers (you have to register the number in Europe)? What is left after we had let the politicos run rampant with forced registrations of all payment services?
The only way.
I just fax them cash. I keep it along with the fax confirmation sheet as a evidence that I paid.
You know, that paper money you referred to as cash isn't hard currency; it's fiat currency.
Let's hope the faith we have in the government continue unabated.
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Government was a lot like a religion, but lately it felt a lot closer to a cult.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
False. Canadian data show that suicide rates are *not* affected by easy access to firearm, which remains constant post gun control laws.
You can support your local newspaper by actually buying one.
You never expect irony, do you?
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But those ways aren't used nearly as often. and they're not nearly as lethal. Some of the most common means of attempting suicides have a success rate of around 5-10%. Very nearly 70% of all successful suicides are with a firearm. Not the number of attempts mind you, but the number of successes. All those other "relatively easy" ways to commit suicide are very often unsuccessful, and that means those people have a chance to get help. Firearm suicides are successful just about 90% of the time, which means a gun owner having a very bad day might be dead when if they didn't have ready access to a gun, they'd still be alive. And if they're still alive, they are very unlikely to die of suicide later.
High-gun ownership states have suicide rates just about double that of low-gun ownership states.
Oh yeah, people who attempt suicide and are unsuccessful are unlikely (less than 10%) to die by suicide later. But since only about 10% of gun-related suicide attempts survive, it's too late for them. Now put all that together for yourself.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/m...
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/m...
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/m...
You are welcome on my lawn.
True, but individual human privacy should always win over war on criminals. There are other ways to catch criminals; there is absolutely no need to put on file all transactions made by citizens.
I'm getting so tired of all that "security" theater going on to excuse more and more data collection. My favorite these days is the "give us a primary key to merge our datasources across the net" by the name of two-factor auth and phone numbers.
Cash in a brown paper envelope. If it's good enough for our politicians then it's good enough for me.
statistics show the opposite: the more guns you have, the more likely you are to die by being shot.
That's not what they show.
Most of that, of course, is suicide-- having guns around turns a brief bad moment into a permanent problem for somebody else-- but even subtracting that, gun owners are more likely to be victims than non gun owners.
I bought a handgun not because I wanted to go shoot people, but because I was worried about being harmed by a specific person who was a relative. Calling the cops would have been useless, and only exacerbated the situation. People who are more likely to be attacked are more likely to choose to own guns. If I'm risking a stabbing, it doesn't matter if I risk losing control of my gun and getting shot. It would hardly leave me worse off than being shot. It takes fifteen minutes to even get to my house and it's on a winding road so going faster in an ambulance is not an option. If I wind up on the financial hook for a life flight, I might as well just commit suicide because I'll be in debt for eternity.
Guns prevent crime every day, but just doing so is illegal ("brandishing") so the law discourages an accurate accounting.
I don't care if guns make suicide "easier". Sorry, but I really don't. So a few more people kill themselves. Whoopee. Taking the guns out might reduce the suicide rate slightly, and in exchange we get to be surrounded by more people who don't really want to be here. If we want to reduce suicide rates substantially, we're going to have to make some serious changes to our society. I'm all in favor of that, but removing the guns won't produce the change you're looking for. It will produce a whole lot of them which you aren't, though.
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Do you have any idea what forum you're on?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it