If the U.S. institutes another draft, I might just not come back.
Not sure whether to put the smiley up there or not. It's been hard enough keeping my income low enough to basically avoid funding this war (still have to pay payroll taxes, but allegedly that money goes to the SSDI fund). If the government went all out and tried to force people to participate in the war, I'd have some really tough decisions to make.
Q. What happens to U.S. citizens who attempt to re-enter the country without a passport or an alternative travel card?
Under the law, the new documentation requirements may be waived under certain circumstances. These exceptions include individual cases of unforeseen emergency and individual cases based on "humanitarian or national interest reasons." In addition, the State Department has processes to assist U.S. citizens overseas to obtain emergency travel documentation for those with lost or stolen passports.
For the general public, people who apply for entry but do not have appropriate documentation will be referred for secondary screening at the port. In secondary, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers will evaluate any evidence of citizenship or identity the individual may have and will verify all information against available databases. However, to prevent delay at the ports of entry, we would encourage all U.S. citizens to obtain the appropriate documents before they travel.
So basically, a U.S. citizen doesn't have to have a passport to travel to Mexico, it'll just make it easier to get back in if you have one.
For a while, a passport was not required for Mexico and Canada. Before, a birth certificate was good enough.
Or a drivers license (which I've used to get in) or even just a social security card (someone I was travelling with didn't have his license on him, but had his social security card - his interview lasted longer than ours but they let him back in - he was born in Puerto Rico and the interview was conducted partly in Spanish, the last question he had to answer was what is the puerto rican slang for "snow cone").
This is a bit of a nitpick but you do not require a passport to leave any country. You need a passport to enter a country.
Not the US, and probably not for the foreseeable future in the US (as it would likely be unconstitutional). "As early as January 1, 2008, ALL persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda by land or sea (including ferries), may be required to present a valid passport or other documents as determined by the Department of Homeland Security." http://travel.state.gov/travel/cbpmc/cbpmc_2223.ht ml
As long as you can prove that you were born here, and they can't prove that you intentionally lost your citizenship, they probably have to let you back in.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so if you want to do something stupid like leave the country without a passport don't assume I have any clue what I'm talking about. You probably don't want to deal with the long hard court battle anyway.
Laws requiring a passport to travel to Mexico from 2008 have already gone into effect.
How are such laws going to be enforced? What happens if I go to Mexico without a passport? As long as I can show that I was born here they have to let me back in.
This proposal is thus manifestly unconstitutional -- unless they try claiming that "you have the right to leave the US, but not by the means of transportation of your choice".
This would probably hold up by invoking a different principal. "While you have a right to leave the US, you don't have a right to transport others outside the U.S." possibly adding "for profit". After all, these laws don't regulate the travelers, they regulate the transportation industry.
Requiring permission to walk out of the country, or to build your own boat and leave, probably wouldn't hold up, which is also why such a law would do nothing to stop criminals, because they can just walk to Mexico or Canada and take a flight out from there.
Look at his web page. He's a Wikipedia admin. (the one who scheduules featured articles for the front page, even)
Just because he's a Wikipedia admin, and the one who schedules features articles for the front page, doesn't mean he'd know anything about a $100 million dollar deal between Wikimedia and AOL, before it is made public.
True. It would have been nice if Slashdot ran this story sooner after the news came out, though. And it would have been nice if they mentioned that Jimmy wasn't resigning from the board, just that Florence was unanimously elected as the new chair. And it would have been nice if the headline wasn't incorrect. Wikipedia doesn't [yet?] have a board, the Wikimedia Foundation does.
Slashdot accepts story submissions from the public, there are lots and lots of Wikipedians who submit stories to Slashdot, and it only takes one moderator to approve a story.
Or were you asking why this should be on Slashdot?
In any case, Wales is still a board member.. This wasn't a change of consequence to anyone outside the board. Not news.. and it doesn't matter.
There is a pending resignation from one of the 5 board members, Tim Shell. According to the bylaws he is to be replaced by a vote of the board, and in case of a tie (2 votes to 2) the Chair breaks the tie. So if you concede that the board of Wikimedia matters (considering for instance that they run one of the top trafficked websites in the world), then I think you should agree this does matter.
That said, it wasn't really news to anyone who follows this type of stuff.
If this seems pointless to Americans, it's because it is. In the US, the holder of a cell phone is always responsible for the charges, no matter who places the call.
Actually, some cell phones in the US have free incoming calls. At 2.5 cents a minute for a mobile-to-mobile call, that's a pretty good deal.
The only concern I have is privacy. They say privacy is guarenteed, but how I can know for sure?
It's going through the telephone system. Of course you don't have privacy. At least not if you're living in Bush Country (the United States). This has nothing to do with the fact that it's VOIP.
You seem to not understand my point. The problem isn't them figuring out my nationality, the problem is having to prove a particular nationality in order to be treated. Just stabilizing someone and keeping them alive costs lots and lots and lots of money.
In the U.S., that money doesn't come from taxes anyway. It gets tacked on to everyone else's bill. Treatment beyond keep 'em alive comes from insurance or the patient.
That is a good point, and it's true to some extent (some parts of treatment, such as paramedic services, fire rescue jaws of life type services, etc. do come at least in part from taxes). But even if it all just got tacked on to everyone else's bill, it still wouldn't be fair, and it would still present an enormous burden on the economy.
I included the question of nationality since in many cases the patient's home country will pay medical costs incurred abroad much like insurance claims are filed. Sorry I wasn't more clear on that point.
For the non-third-world countries, which provide equivalent services, this is a reasonable solution. It's what I was thinking when in my initial statement I suggested that this is only a problem as long as different countries offer drastically different services of this sort.
And maybe just opening the borders wide open would help fix the discrepancies. Right now the average American doesn't care very much about the health conditions of the average Mexican. Open up the borders, and watch the Mexicans start pouring in, and now it's quite clearly in the best interests of the United States to help Mexico solve its problems. In that sense I really like the concept, I don't like living in a world where Americans look out for Americans and Mexicans look out for Mexicans and we put up a big fence to keep the two as separated as possible. But at the same time I just don't see a solution to this happening any time soon. It's comfortable living here in America and enjoying all the free services the government provides, while at the same time paying relatively low taxes for them (speaking for someone in my income bracket with my family size anyway). Opening up the borders would likely seriously disturb that, certainly in the short term, and while it's something I'd personally be willing to do I don't think a majority of my fellow Americans would agree with me.
Of course, I seriously doubt anyone is going to come to the U.S. to get cheap medical care anyway (particularly not emergency care).
Maybe they won't come for that reason in particular, but I think people do come in part because it's safer to live here, and a big factor of that safeness is emergency care. Another big factor is national defense, which is one of the biggest expenditures of the federal government.
I do agree that some restructure would be necessary. I also agree that moiving to open borders is unlikely.
We're probably close to being on the same page, then. My initial comment on the matter was more toward how likely moving to open borders was going to be. My idea of a Utopian society would certainly involve open borders (really no borders or governments at all), but it's hard to imagine how to get there from where we are today.
Your "realistic" solution isn't very realistic. When I get into a car accident, I don't want the paramedics checking my birth certificate to see what level of care to provide me. Ditto after the paramedics take me to the hospital,
If you live in the U.S. you should already be familiar with the first question asked at ER admission, "Do you have insurance"?
To be honest, I've been to the ER a few times and I don't remember that being the first question, which is not to say that it wasn't. But one thing I do know, for a fact, is that the ER isn't going to deny someone treatment because they don't have insurance. I have a few friends who don't have insurance and have been to the ER on more than one occasion. In fact, a friend of a friend of a friend has some mental problems and goes on a somewhat regular basis (when things get really bad) and gets medication. The ER sends a ridiculous bill to him, and he never pays it.
In any event, one of the tasks performed early in emergency treatment is establishing the identity of the patient and determining who to call. As long as someone is going through your personal effects to figure that out, it's no extra problem to determine your nationality as well.
You seem to not understand my point. The problem isn't them figuring out my nationality, the problem is having to prove a particular nationality in order to be treated. Just stabilizing someone and keeping them alive costs lots and lots and lots of money. To only provide such services to certain people would cause two problems. 1) What about people who don't have ID on them, do we let them die? 2) Letting people of certain nationalities just die is utterly cruel and in any case would never be accepted by the populace.
If you own a home in the U.S. you pay property taxes. If you rent, your landlord pays property taxes and passes the cost on to you. That should entitle you to fire and police protection.
Fair enough, as far as those costs which can be directly tied to property ownership. Most fire services and some police services would fall under that. OTOH, many fire services and most police services aren't tied very well to property ownership.
In short, if taxes are restructured appropriatly, it can work without requiring any of the scenerios you mention.
It's probably possible, and if decently planned out I'd support it (open borders). But I definitely wouldn't say it's inevitable, or even likely.
We now have a situation where corporations are free to move across borders, but labor isn't.
What does it mean for a corporation "to move across borders"? Corporations are not physical entities, so the comparison can't possibly be that meaningful.
Your employer can move wherever the cost is cheapest, and sell where there's a good profit. But you and I can't do this.
Huh? Sure you can. You don't have to be an employer to sell stuff to people in other countries. I've done it, and you can too.
Realistically, it would just mean a system where you get the benefits of whichever country you pay your taxes to.
Sorry, I missed that comment when I first replied.
Your "realistic" solution isn't very realistic. When I get into a car accident, I don't want the paramedics checking my birth certificate to see what level of care to provide me. Ditto after the paramedics take me to the hospital, when I call the police about burglar breaking into my home, or when my house catches on fire. Besides, even if this solution was realistic, it would be far too cruel. Sorry, buddy, the country you were born in doesn't have a fire service, we're going to have to let you burn.
And as for national defense, that's not even something that could be separated, even if it was a smart thing to do so.
According to U.S. Republicans, it's great when a company can pay low wages in one country and make high profits in another.
Great for who? Do you have a quote from a Republican making this argument?
Why is it worse to let individuals make high wages in one country and enjoy the low cost of living in another?
Huh? What does that have to do with immigration? The problem with immigration doesn't come from people making high wages, it's comes from people who move into a country and then make no wages.
Therefore it is likely that there will come a time when restricted migration across national borders will be largely regarded as backward, restrictive, and even oppressive.
That will only be true when and if all nations provide equivalent levels of basic public welfare services. By "basic" I mean things like housing, health care, police, fire/rescue, national defense, etc. And by equivalent I don't mean to imply that all nations will have to provide these things, merely that if one nation doesn't provide it then the nations who do provide it can't possibly allow unrestricted migration from that nation.
Actually, the amount of wealth relative to others is what determines your freedom.
I don't think wealth and freedom are that tightly related. Sure, wealth can sometimes buy freedom, although sometimes it can't, and you really need a whole lot of it to buy your way into freedom.
It's no good having low taxes and a moderate salary, if everyone else has low taxes and a moderate salary.
I'd say that'd be the perfect situation. Whether or not it's possible is something I'm less sure about.
That way, you just get lots of people working, and spending selfishly to compete with each other.
It's perfectly possible to be on a moderate salary, work little, and spend little. I've spend years of my post-college days doing so, and I was more free then than I am now. This is not to say that freedom is everything. I am much happier than I was then. Wealth does not equal freedom. Freedom does not equal happiness. And happiness does not equal wealth. The three are related, but not directly (or inversely for that matter).
In a more socialist system, by contrast, higher taxes and moderate salaries means that everyone is working for each other, contributing to a community.
That really all depends on how those taxes are spent. It's possible in theory, I suppose, that the taxes will be spent on "contributing to a community", but I haven't ever seen it in practice.
Well, the law already limits the costs to card holders. Unless you're totally negligent (handed an unsigned card to someone), your liability is limited I believe to $50, and most card companies limit it to $0. Most of the time it's the merchants that get screwed, and they pass the costs on to the consumer, of course. And really, what would the credit card companies do if they carried the liabilities? They'd pass the costs on to the consumer anyway, in the form of higher interest rates, annual fees, or higher merchant fees (which in turn get passed on to the consumer).
So I dunno, no matter what happens the consumer is going to wind up paying for it. Is the convenience of credit cards worth the increased costs? People are voting every day with their dollars, and the answer seems to be that yes, it is worth it.
This is why there need to be laws making the credit card companies more liable for fraud.
Why? No one is being forced to do anything without their permission. The credit card holders know what their liability is, the merchants know what their liability is, and the credit card companies know what their liability is. Why should the law step in and change a situation where everyone is already accepting the situation? If you as a merchant don't accept the risk, don't accept credit cards. If you as a credit card holder don't accept the risk, don't get a credit card.
As long as it is profitable not to worry about it, they won't.
And as long as it is profitable not to worry about it, they shouldn't. Security doesn't have to be 100% with everything all the time.
I was also under the impression that they just charge contested transactions back to the merchant.
9 times out of 10 they do, but that's because 9 times out of 10 the merchant isn't following the rules. If the rules allow you to accept certain small purchases without a signature, then the credit card companies must be eating the cost of those chargebacks.
The big problem is that somebody who has the misfortune of having a credit card company issue a card in their name/identity to someone who is not them still has to clean up the mess -- in a sane world, the company that issued the fraudulent card would at least have to help in the clean up. It's not identity theft, it's sloppy, crappy security.
Now there's somewhere I think we can agree. The laws against people putting libelous information on your credit report should be much much stronger.
You honestly think a minimum wage counter jockey at the 7/11 is going to perform a proper signature analysis on your credit card slip?
Heh, the 7/11 I go to doesn't even require a signature in the first place for small purchases (I think it's under $20).
Why would they check your signature?
For larger purchases, they'd check your signature because if they don't check it, and it was obviously fraudulent, and the store gets charged back, then they're going to get fired.
The only reason you sign it is so that there is a record in case you contest the charge later. It gives the CC company a way to try to prove you DID buy something.
...which in turn benefits the merchant, as they are ultimately the ones that have to pay for the fraud if they didn't get a valid signature.
Actually making purchases under a few bucks is one of the two times I ever use my PIN. I feel too guilty making the stores pay a 10-20% fee to the credit card companies just so I can buy a coke, and my 1.5% cash back isn't worth it to overcome the guilt.
I have quite a few debit cards from different banks, and only one of them charges me a fee for debit transactions, which leads me to the second reason I ever use my PIN. If I ever want to withdraw cash from one of my bank accounts, getting cash back on a debit card purchase is the easiest way to do it.
What's really dumb is when people use the ATM at the store and pay their stupid ATM fee when they could just buy a pack of gum, get cash back, and not pay anything (but the cost of the gum, anyway).
Normal smart cards are definitely much better than magstripe from a security point of view. RFID/contactless ones? Probably ot so much. The amount of power that can be drawn is severely limited, which makes implementing decent crypto on them difficult/impossible/expensive.
That's only true of passive RFID. Active RFID is powered from an internal power source (a battery), so the amount of power available is no less than with any other smart card.
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If the U.S. institutes another draft, I might just not come back.
Not sure whether to put the smiley up there or not. It's been hard enough keeping my income low enough to basically avoid funding this war (still have to pay payroll taxes, but allegedly that money goes to the SSDI fund). If the government went all out and tried to force people to participate in the war, I'd have some really tough decisions to make.
Or a drivers license (which I've used to get in) or even just a social security card (someone I was travelling with didn't have his license on him, but had his social security card - his interview lasted longer than ours but they let him back in - he was born in Puerto Rico and the interview was conducted partly in Spanish, the last question he had to answer was what is the puerto rican slang for "snow cone").
Not the US, and probably not for the foreseeable future in the US (as it would likely be unconstitutional). "As early as January 1, 2008, ALL persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda by land or sea (including ferries), may be required to present a valid passport or other documents as determined by the Department of Homeland Security." http://travel.state.gov/travel/cbpmc/cbpmc_2223.ht ml
As long as you can prove that you were born here, and they can't prove that you intentionally lost your citizenship, they probably have to let you back in.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so if you want to do something stupid like leave the country without a passport don't assume I have any clue what I'm talking about. You probably don't want to deal with the long hard court battle anyway.
How are such laws going to be enforced? What happens if I go to Mexico without a passport? As long as I can show that I was born here they have to let me back in.
This would probably hold up by invoking a different principal. "While you have a right to leave the US, you don't have a right to transport others outside the U.S." possibly adding "for profit". After all, these laws don't regulate the travelers, they regulate the transportation industry.
Requiring permission to walk out of the country, or to build your own boat and leave, probably wouldn't hold up, which is also why such a law would do nothing to stop criminals, because they can just walk to Mexico or Canada and take a flight out from there.
Just because he's a Wikipedia admin, and the one who schedules features articles for the front page, doesn't mean he'd know anything about a $100 million dollar deal between Wikimedia and AOL, before it is made public.
True. It would have been nice if Slashdot ran this story sooner after the news came out, though. And it would have been nice if they mentioned that Jimmy wasn't resigning from the board, just that Florence was unanimously elected as the new chair. And it would have been nice if the headline wasn't incorrect. Wikipedia doesn't [yet?] have a board, the Wikimedia Foundation does.
Slashdot accepts story submissions from the public, there are lots and lots of Wikipedians who submit stories to Slashdot, and it only takes one moderator to approve a story.
Or were you asking why this should be on Slashdot?
There is a pending resignation from one of the 5 board members, Tim Shell. According to the bylaws he is to be replaced by a vote of the board, and in case of a tie (2 votes to 2) the Chair breaks the tie. So if you concede that the board of Wikimedia matters (considering for instance that they run one of the top trafficked websites in the world), then I think you should agree this does matter.
That said, it wasn't really news to anyone who follows this type of stuff.
Do you really have the audacity to think you would know if there was a such deal?
Skype requires the party initiating the call (and paying for the call) to be connected to a computer.
Actually, some cell phones in the US have free incoming calls. At 2.5 cents a minute for a mobile-to-mobile call, that's a pretty good deal.
It's going through the telephone system. Of course you don't have privacy. At least not if you're living in Bush Country (the United States). This has nothing to do with the fact that it's VOIP.
That is a good point, and it's true to some extent (some parts of treatment, such as paramedic services, fire rescue jaws of life type services, etc. do come at least in part from taxes). But even if it all just got tacked on to everyone else's bill, it still wouldn't be fair, and it would still present an enormous burden on the economy.
For the non-third-world countries, which provide equivalent services, this is a reasonable solution. It's what I was thinking when in my initial statement I suggested that this is only a problem as long as different countries offer drastically different services of this sort.
And maybe just opening the borders wide open would help fix the discrepancies. Right now the average American doesn't care very much about the health conditions of the average Mexican. Open up the borders, and watch the Mexicans start pouring in, and now it's quite clearly in the best interests of the United States to help Mexico solve its problems. In that sense I really like the concept, I don't like living in a world where Americans look out for Americans and Mexicans look out for Mexicans and we put up a big fence to keep the two as separated as possible. But at the same time I just don't see a solution to this happening any time soon. It's comfortable living here in America and enjoying all the free services the government provides, while at the same time paying relatively low taxes for them (speaking for someone in my income bracket with my family size anyway). Opening up the borders would likely seriously disturb that, certainly in the short term, and while it's something I'd personally be willing to do I don't think a majority of my fellow Americans would agree with me.
Maybe they won't come for that reason in particular, but I think people do come in part because it's safer to live here, and a big factor of that safeness is emergency care. Another big factor is national defense, which is one of the biggest expenditures of the federal government.
We're probably close to being on the same page, then. My initial comment on the matter was more toward how likely moving to open borders was going to be. My idea of a Utopian society would certainly involve open borders (really no borders or governments at all), but it's hard to imagine how to get there from where we are today.
To be honest, I've been to the ER a few times and I don't remember that being the first question, which is not to say that it wasn't. But one thing I do know, for a fact, is that the ER isn't going to deny someone treatment because they don't have insurance. I have a few friends who don't have insurance and have been to the ER on more than one occasion. In fact, a friend of a friend of a friend has some mental problems and goes on a somewhat regular basis (when things get really bad) and gets medication. The ER sends a ridiculous bill to him, and he never pays it.
You seem to not understand my point. The problem isn't them figuring out my nationality, the problem is having to prove a particular nationality in order to be treated. Just stabilizing someone and keeping them alive costs lots and lots and lots of money. To only provide such services to certain people would cause two problems. 1) What about people who don't have ID on them, do we let them die? 2) Letting people of certain nationalities just die is utterly cruel and in any case would never be accepted by the populace.
Fair enough, as far as those costs which can be directly tied to property ownership. Most fire services and some police services would fall under that. OTOH, many fire services and most police services aren't tied very well to property ownership.
It's probably possible, and if decently planned out I'd support it (open borders). But I definitely wouldn't say it's inevitable, or even likely.
What does it mean for a corporation "to move across borders"? Corporations are not physical entities, so the comparison can't possibly be that meaningful.
Huh? Sure you can. You don't have to be an employer to sell stuff to people in other countries. I've done it, and you can too.
Sorry, I missed that comment when I first replied.
Your "realistic" solution isn't very realistic. When I get into a car accident, I don't want the paramedics checking my birth certificate to see what level of care to provide me. Ditto after the paramedics take me to the hospital, when I call the police about burglar breaking into my home, or when my house catches on fire. Besides, even if this solution was realistic, it would be far too cruel. Sorry, buddy, the country you were born in doesn't have a fire service, we're going to have to let you burn.
And as for national defense, that's not even something that could be separated, even if it was a smart thing to do so.
Great for who? Do you have a quote from a Republican making this argument?
Huh? What does that have to do with immigration? The problem with immigration doesn't come from people making high wages, it's comes from people who move into a country and then make no wages.
That will only be true when and if all nations provide equivalent levels of basic public welfare services. By "basic" I mean things like housing, health care, police, fire/rescue, national defense, etc. And by equivalent I don't mean to imply that all nations will have to provide these things, merely that if one nation doesn't provide it then the nations who do provide it can't possibly allow unrestricted migration from that nation.
I don't think wealth and freedom are that tightly related. Sure, wealth can sometimes buy freedom, although sometimes it can't, and you really need a whole lot of it to buy your way into freedom.
I'd say that'd be the perfect situation. Whether or not it's possible is something I'm less sure about.
It's perfectly possible to be on a moderate salary, work little, and spend little. I've spend years of my post-college days doing so, and I was more free then than I am now. This is not to say that freedom is everything. I am much happier than I was then. Wealth does not equal freedom. Freedom does not equal happiness. And happiness does not equal wealth. The three are related, but not directly (or inversely for that matter).
That really all depends on how those taxes are spent. It's possible in theory, I suppose, that the taxes will be spent on "contributing to a community", but I haven't ever seen it in practice.
Well, the law already limits the costs to card holders. Unless you're totally negligent (handed an unsigned card to someone), your liability is limited I believe to $50, and most card companies limit it to $0. Most of the time it's the merchants that get screwed, and they pass the costs on to the consumer, of course. And really, what would the credit card companies do if they carried the liabilities? They'd pass the costs on to the consumer anyway, in the form of higher interest rates, annual fees, or higher merchant fees (which in turn get passed on to the consumer).
So I dunno, no matter what happens the consumer is going to wind up paying for it. Is the convenience of credit cards worth the increased costs? People are voting every day with their dollars, and the answer seems to be that yes, it is worth it.
Why? No one is being forced to do anything without their permission. The credit card holders know what their liability is, the merchants know what their liability is, and the credit card companies know what their liability is. Why should the law step in and change a situation where everyone is already accepting the situation? If you as a merchant don't accept the risk, don't accept credit cards. If you as a credit card holder don't accept the risk, don't get a credit card.
And as long as it is profitable not to worry about it, they shouldn't. Security doesn't have to be 100% with everything all the time.
9 times out of 10 they do, but that's because 9 times out of 10 the merchant isn't following the rules. If the rules allow you to accept certain small purchases without a signature, then the credit card companies must be eating the cost of those chargebacks.
Now there's somewhere I think we can agree. The laws against people putting libelous information on your credit report should be much much stronger.
Heh, the 7/11 I go to doesn't even require a signature in the first place for small purchases (I think it's under $20).
For larger purchases, they'd check your signature because if they don't check it, and it was obviously fraudulent, and the store gets charged back, then they're going to get fired.
...which in turn benefits the merchant, as they are ultimately the ones that have to pay for the fraud if they didn't get a valid signature.
Of course having a minimum charge for using a credit card is a violation of the credit card agreement they sign with Visa/Mastercard.
Actually making purchases under a few bucks is one of the two times I ever use my PIN. I feel too guilty making the stores pay a 10-20% fee to the credit card companies just so I can buy a coke, and my 1.5% cash back isn't worth it to overcome the guilt.
I have quite a few debit cards from different banks, and only one of them charges me a fee for debit transactions, which leads me to the second reason I ever use my PIN. If I ever want to withdraw cash from one of my bank accounts, getting cash back on a debit card purchase is the easiest way to do it.
What's really dumb is when people use the ATM at the store and pay their stupid ATM fee when they could just buy a pack of gum, get cash back, and not pay anything (but the cost of the gum, anyway).
That's only true of passive RFID. Active RFID is powered from an internal power source (a battery), so the amount of power available is no less than with any other smart card.